Posted by
Bill Crawford on Thursday, December 25, 2008 9:29:42 PM
This down cycle is the beginning of an era- only not what people think.
The Baby Boomers are noted for their spending and saving habits. Maxing out their credit cards and paying them off with a nifty re-fi of their home mortgages. Their habits are the source of the fear of out of control government spending in entitlements and Social Security.
Here's the unholy surprise: the Boomer generation will live out their later years in a comparitively monastic fashion, surprising their descendants with their spendthrift ways. They will face down their own deficient retirement funds and their potential drain on Social Security and Medicare by not only working until they die, but making an effort to not drain the money that could instead go to their children.
They will do this out of their messianic sensibilities. They will learn to live modestly for their children's sakes. They will fill the future shortages in the labor markets with their own efforts. They will not go fishing and play tennis in their out years like the WWII generation did, because they all still have something to prove. This is the way they will "change the world".
It all runs in cycles. The FDR generation was the same way. The only difference is that, because of health and nutrition superiorities, they will do the same thing in far greater numbers, and the effort will be impossible not to notice.
The first signs of all this is the parade of wealthies apologizing for their past million dollar birthday parties and their opulent lifestyles. It is the beginning of the new frugality.
So the next time you see Katie Couric droning on about the amount of entitlement money that will be sucked out of the budget circa 2035, chalk it up to static analysis stupidity and shuffle over to the Daily Show for better information.
That's the way it's going to be. You heard it here first.