Intergenerational Inequity

by

Dave Harbour

We have elected a new president and couldn’t be more delighted.  We supported the man throughout the campaign and when circumstances were darkest, urged our friends and colleagues (i.e. and America’s elected leaders) to “keep your powder dry”.  We also believe our successor generations will look back, remember and thank our Creator for the miracle of events that produced the result of a government designed to, “Make America Great Again!”  While the platforms of both candidates largely appealed to the hopes, dreams and special interests of voters, neither candidate precisely focused on the best interests of our children — although President-elect Trump’s strong economic development, legislative, judicial and national defense platform will work amazingly well to the benefit of future generations and ease the specter of a debt burdened legacy.  One hopes that President Trump and the Congress will focus on caring as much for those who will end up paying the bills for our purchases as for those benefiting from spending programs.  Below is our editorial on this subject which appeared in the Washington Times yesterday, Election Day 2016.  -dh


Intergenerational Inequity

We’ve burdened our children with a horrible, future day of reckoning!

dave-harbour-los-angeles-7-16-11-by-gaeton-caronimg_3790-cr2_Intergenerational inequity is a fancy term for spending money we don’t have and letting our kids pay our debt, with interest.

Politicians love this form of theft by a voting generation from the young, unaware non-voting generation.  It is part of the fundamental problem the United States has as it spends imprudently when elected leaders all know the day of reckoning for a $20 trillion debt burden is standing in the road ahead like a grim reaper.

Some will say, “Well, look at all the money we’re saving by selling Federal Reserve notes at these low rates”.  No we’re not.

We’re not making a dent in the current debt nor are our elected leaders doing anything to confront more than $100 trillion in future, unfunded liabilities created mostly by entitlement programs.

My home state of Alaska is in a pickle, too.  Our state is almost 90% dependent on oil revenue but our great Trans Alaska Oil Pipeline is ¾ empty and oil is fetching less than half of what it brought in two and one-half years ago.

Alaska’s huge public employee retirement deficiency hovers around $7 billion and our bloated, entitlement spending – including our Governor’s imprudent expansion of Medicaid – finds the state joyfully skipping ahead as if everything were normal.

On both a national and state level socialist leaning lawmakers have tried to spend for all things for all constituents, taxing every possible entity that produces dollars.

When that is not enough, they tax non-voting kids.  Federal lawmakers tax the kids by printing money which also devalues everyone’s savings.  Alaska’s lawmakers tax the kids by spending savings to subsidize $4 billion in annual, deficit spending and, as far as paying off bonded debt, it’s as if our leaders say cavalierly, “pass the debt forward to the kids”.

I say, “Cavalierly” because as unbalanced budgets pile up debt, there is hardly ever a hit of concern for the welfare of our children.  …hardly a hint of concern for our precious young ones who will inherit a debt legacy that can only limit – if not destroy – their economic dreams.

Parents who do this to their kids should be locked into stocks in Anchorage’s Town Square and Washington’s National Mall.

But those responsible will instead retire with generous pensions and health plans as fewer and fewer privately employed persons work harder and harder to pay off the indenture placed upon their necks like an ox yoke.

Rise up, children, whether you can vote or not, and begin to tell your parents and elected leaders, “Don’t buy your generation services and stuff that I have to pay for!  I am not your indentured servant!  America’s founders fought for freedom from ‘taxation without representation’.  They won that fight.  When you put the debt for your purchases on my young shoulders, you do it selfishly—without my representation or approval.  Why do you want to make us kids pay for your stuff and force us to win our freedom all over again? 

Worst of all, why do we have to fight our own parents for financial freedom?


Dave Harbour is a Commissioner Emeritus of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, Chairman Emeritus of the Alaska Oil & Gas Congress, former Chairman of the Alaska Council on Economic Education and Publisher of www.northerngaspipelines.com.