Guest post by Robert Gore at Straight Line Logic
The youngsters are starting to ask questions.
You can find quotes from antiquity on down in which elders of the age disparage younger generations. Our age is filled with them. There are far fewer quotes from the past or present in which elders acknowledge their generations’ role in younger generations’ upbringing and education and consequently, some responsibility for outcomes. Perhaps my generation (I’m 66) should behold the beam in our own eyes before we pontificate further about the motes in our children’s and grandchildren’s eyes. This may cushion the shock for what’s coming—one of history’s most dramatic intergenerational repudiations.
Start with an inevitable repudiation: debt. One can go to the U.S. Debt Clock for the national debt numbers, but several conclusions are inescapable. Exponential growth function graphs have a characteristic course. They gently rise for a time, hit an inflection point, then shoot upwards. U.S. government debt is well past the inflection point.