Old Stealing from Young under Obama's 'Reforms'

From the Cato Institute - by Gene Healy - Ridiculing the French is an obnoxious right-wing cliche that I thought I'd outgrown. But sometimes they make it so hard to resist. Right now, France is paralyzed by Greek-style anti-"austerity" protests, triggered by President Nicolas Sarkozy's plan to raise the retirement age — one of the lowest in Europe — all the way from 60 to 62. Across the West, aging populations have exposed the false promise of retirement schemes based on intergenerational transfer payments. By 2050, every French working couple will have to carry one retiree on their backs as France's public debt hits 337 percent of GDP. Sarkozy's plan thus looks like a modest gesture toward fiscal sanity. Yet the French masses see it as cause for torching cars and barricading streets. Sigh. Pass the "Freedom Fries." Most galling is the zeal with which French youth have joined the retirement-age riots. They're the ones who are going to pay the tab for a sclerotic entitlement state that eats its young. Yet by Monday, student protests had rocked some 300 schools, with French youths throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at police in Paris suburbs. If there's a better example of misunderstanding your own class interests — what Marxists call "false consciousness" — I don't know what it is. On Thursday, just as French students hit the streets, U.S. President Barack Obama held an MTV "town hall" before a hand-picked student audience — part of his all-out effort to mobilize the youth vote for November. This gives rise to an important question: Are America's youth as dumb as the French? Read more

Old Stealing from Young under Obama's 'Reforms'