Swickard: A warning to young people

© 2015 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.  Let me speak gently to the young people of our country. Someday in the future each of you may discover this column and be forced to admit you were warned by me and others about what was going to happen to you and your generation's wealth.

            Your future wealth is being spent today without your permission. When you figure it all out the ones stealing your future will already be gone. And you will have no one still alive to blame but yourselves.

            Most young people are self-absorbed and feel superior to us geezers and geezerettes. Truth be told, that's how I felt fifty years ago when I got advice from the oldsters of my generation. The politicians of today are counting on the young people remaining clueless.

            The greatest generation who fought the Second World War did not always think about their possible grandchildren and how the changes in the geo-political world would help or hinder those unborn children. They were trying to bring our world out of chaos and return peace to all people instead of war.

            We have lived most of seventy years afterwards without a catastrophic world war. At the same time over those years politicians came to realize they could steal the future wealth of young people without a protest.

            What is going to happen to the next generations is truly unprecedented. The theft of their future is happening today and no one really cares that they will live lesser lives because of my generation. Well, I care, hence this column.

            In 1960, when I was ten years old President Eisenhower and Congress ran a tight ship financially. There were very little in the way of deficits. Over the ensuring years more and more debt was absorbed first by Social Security and then by the Federal Reserve just printing money.

            Currently the professed national debt is twenty trillion dollars or about sixty thousand dollars for every man, woman and child in our nation. There is no intention by the current national leadership to reduce that debt. It will come due. Who will pay it? The debt has been allowed to grow unchecked.

            Truth for the young people in our country is that the wealth for that debt will come from their generation. That is the sad truth. Each day we are spending for the purpose of politics the future wealth of our children and grandchildren. And those future citizens cannot stop the theft.

            Voting people into office seems to not make any difference. The media puts our attention to important items such as the cost of a Taylor Swift dress. The future of our young people does not look rosy.

            Yes, our young people have youth which is a blessing many do not realize and will only understand as it leaves them. The young have all of their fellow youth who are determined to remain as ignorant as possible. They will not vote because they do not see a reason to do so.

            Years from now the young people of that future generation, if honest with themselves, will see why our generation should have stopped the theft of their future wealth. Today, despite this being the information age they are caught without the education to understand the effect of our political actions on their future. The blush of youth makes them think they are on top of their problems. They are not.

            Money is taken from one person to buy the vote of another. Worse, it is taken from future generations to buy votes now. I have protested this theft many times but rarely do I find any of the next generation who pay the slightest attention to that theft of their future wealth.

            The day of reckoning will come for the incredible debt and unfunded liabilities. In fifty years that went from zero to one hundred twenty trillion dollars. Someone will pick up the tab for all of that vote buying and it is going to be coming generations.

            Don't say you were not warned. Vote for those who will address the financial crisis, not the ones promising to give you things for your votes. But I guess you will learn this lesson someday.

 Email: drswickard@comcast.net 

Swickard: A warning to young people