December, 2010:

Boomers are often criticized for being selfish, self-centered, fat, and lazy. I would disagree with the part about being lazy. But maybe... I guess a lot of us are. Critics claim that we have dumbed down our schools and coddled and abandoned our kids. To those critics I say, "Make up your mind." But they have a point. Though one other thing trumps all those.

Other failures of our generation can be corrected by the next, or the next. Maybe there is still time for us to fix some of them. But one will go on for the rest of the century. We turned our heads, or trivialized it for too long. And now, about all we can do is work to prevent it from getting worse. But the time to ignore, or pretend that it does not matter.... is gone.

Let me show it to you on a graph. Suppose I presented this to you:

You see a bulge in the center -- not a huge explosion -- but a noticeable bulge. Without even knowing what the graph represents, you might reasonably assume that bulge is not a huge anomaly.

Your assumption would be correct. That is a graph of births in the United States from 1935 to 1970. The bulge in the center represents the baby boomer generation. The increase in births from 1946 through 1964 was substantial, but not dramatic.

Now, allow me to show you another graph:

In this graph, you can see considerable..... change from the start on the left to the end on the right. Section 1 is very stable. Section 2 shows a significant increase. The increase stabilizes in section 3. But in section 4, whatever it is... explodes. The increase in section 4 warrants close attention.

Just by looking at the unlabeled graph, you know that something very dramatic has occurred. Without knowing what the graph represents, you cannot tell if it is very good, or very bad, or irrelevant. But you can tell that it shows a substantial change.

Suppose I were to tell you that the graph represents the amount of rainwater that has leaked through your roof into your attic walls over a period of 20 years. You have never examined the attic walls closely, so you had no idea what might be happening. Sections 1-3, the first 15 years, might not have been cause for much concern. But the period of time represented in section 4 is a big problem. Something serious has happened that has caused a relatively huge amount of rainwater to leak. This is not good. Whatever appeared to be working in the first three sections has failed in the fourth section.

Well, I have good news, and I have bad news. The graph probably does not represent rainwater leaking into your roof. That's the good news. I have no idea how solid your roof is. The bad news is that the graph represents the federal debt over the last 115 years. It is the amount of money that the federal government -- that's you and I -- owes.

To be more complete, I should have shown the debt from the founding of the country in the 18th century. But for the first 150 years that the U.S. existed, the debt was statistically insignificant. The important part is that, for the first 150 years that the U.S. existed, each generation paid off its own debt. They left no debt for their children. Even though the depression and WWI and WWII, we covered our debt -- or our parents and grandparents did. They paid their own way.

But beginning in 1970, about the time the baby boomer generation reached voting age, the debt started rising. From 1990 through 2005, the debt grew at an enormous rate. And after that... "exploded" is too mild a term to describe what happened.

I could tell you that, as of December, 2010, the United States owes over 14 trillion dollars. I could tell you that the debt has doubled in the past five years, and that it will double again in the next ten years. But seeing it on a graph demonstrates it more clearly.

And there is nothing to indicate that the direction of that graph will change substantially... nothing, as far into the future as we might imagine.

Commenting on the exploding debt, economist and author Dr. Thomas Sowell wrote this:

The worst part is that we -- our generation -- will never be able to pay off this enormous debt that we have created. Unlike every generation before us, we will not pay our own way. We will leave a debt that will have to be paid by our children, and our children's children, and our children's children's children.

And even, if by some miracle, in the future we stopped the flood -- we balanced the budget... every year, the U.S. would still have a debt of over 15 trillion dollars. Our children, and our children's children, and our children's children's children will still owe that money -- a debt that we created.

Now, Nancy Pelosi and her ilk will say that we have "invested" in the future -- that future generations will benefit from what we have done. But that's crap! The ugly details say otherwise. Most of this gargantuan debt that we are accumulating has gone to pay for our excesses: medical payments to a health care system that has ignored costs and discouraged competition and efficiency; retirement payments far beyond the amount for which people paid; gross and unchecked inefficiency, fraud and abuse; political payoffs to unions and businesses; payments to able-bodied people who simply chose not to work; and a bloated, inefficient, and ineffective government bureaucracy that has discouraged individualism and restricted freedom. We pay farmers not to farm and teachers not to teach. We give money to foreign governments that teach their children to hate the U.S. We pay for and build weapons systems that the military says it does not want and cannot use. Our federal government has now agreed to pay healthy, capable, unemployed workers to do nothing... absolutely nothing... for three years! For nearly 10 percent of their working life, Americans can sit on the sidelines, collect taxpayer money, and contribute absolutely nothing to our society -- and send the bill to the next generation. Your children, and your children's children, and your children's children's children will pay for this mammoth irresponsibility.

Why, in the last year alone, we wasted what will amount to over a trillion dollars on a "stimulus plan" that stimulated virtually nothing. Mostly, what it did was to keep businesses and local and state governments going when there was no rationale to allow them to do so. A trillion dollars later, and we have virtually nothing to show for it.

When they reach our age, how will our children, and our children's children, and our children's children's children look at that graph? What will they think of us -- the baby boomer generation?

That is the legacy we leave behind... intentionally, thoughtlessly, and selfishly.

That is the greatest immorality of the baby boomer generation.

So that is where we stand today -- unquestionably, undeniably. The question is, what are you prepared to do about it?

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