It is not an issue many people are talking about, but it is the issue that has caused the continued decline of our nation since the early 1980s.
A large segment of the Baby Boomers refused to go to Vietnam. Whether or not that was the correct call is a question for which I do not have an answer. A decade after the war ended that generation was voting for Ronald Reagan and politicians who refused to tax the nation's citizens to pay for the continued operation of the government, and rather than curtailing spending, the Reagan administration doubled the national debt, then nearly doubled it again. During the first Bush Administration some rationality returned to tax policy and taxes were raised on the wealthy. By the end of the Clinton Administration that Bush era tax policy had NEARLY brought the annual budget into balance. While the Clinton Administration talked about surpluses, an examination of the government's accounts makes it clear that a man who committed perjury lied about that too.
Bill Clinton the first President from the Me Generation reduced the capital gains tax at a time when the stock market was rapidly increasing in value. Of course during the 1980s the Me Generation made a lot of money in the stock market by selling off and closing down the factories and the farms. Consolidation was the norm, and the leveraged buyout using other people's money to get rich became almost a generational mantra.
The second President from the Me Generation, George W. Bush, not to be confused with his father, cut taxes for the highest income Americans in a time of war and exploded the debt. The Me Generation continued to borrow against the equity in their homes as the value of that asset saw a rise in value, until the market could no longer sustain the inflated prices, nearly crashing the entire world economy in 2007 and 2008. If not for immediate government intervention, the entire economy would have imploded.
Now the Me Generation is retiring, many with less money than they anticipated because of the stock price drop anyone with a calendar could have predicted. Like clockwork the stock market crashed in 2008, the year the first Baby Boomers became eligible for Social Security retirement benefits and started withdrawing their investments from the market to pay for annuities and pay for their retirement in other ways.
With their first vote, the present Republican Congress through the rules of the House, virtually guaranteed that Social Security benefits will suffer actual cuts next year, and actual reduction in benefits, not merely a curtailed growth. The Republican Party intends to abolish Social Security. This has been a stated goal of their principle benefactor David Koch since his Vice Presidential run in 1981.
The candidate many people believe will be the nominee of the Democratic Party, much like President Obama has been "wishy washy" on the issue of Social Security, and if you don't feel she has been wishy washy, I do, and the reason I do is simple, I have never found either of the Clinton's particularly trustworthy. Both Secretary Clinton and her husband have had a malleable relationship with the truth. The current President was ready to trade a large portion of Social Security away during the manufactured debt limit crisis. President Obama was also the first and only President to not issue an annual cost of living adjustment for Social Security in the history of the program.
This brings us back to the Me Generation. The Baby Boomers have given us two economic disasters as Presidents, have voted consistently for politicians who will give them more money by lowering their taxes, and has demanded that the government continue to provide the same level of services while reducing their payments to the government. They are now retired or retiring and I do not believe they will risk their future Social Security benefits by voting for the Republicans, but I also do not believe they will vote in the primary for a candidate who hasn't committed to expanding Social Security benefits.
This leads me to the reason of this article. The final saving grace of the most consistently greedy, self-absorbed, generation of Americans ever have one final chance to take a little more from America without giving anything in return by voting for a candidate who is a little older than them, and not part of their generation.
That candidate has promised to expand Social Security benefits. He has also promised to fix our failed trade policy, restore the power of labor with card check, make public colleges and universities free, make health care a right and reduce the cost of health care with medicare for all, and restore sanity to our tax policy by ending loopholes which allow corporations to hide their money overseas, and deploy a tax policy which can best be described as soak the rich. He also wants to fix our dangerous crumbling infrastructure and create thirteen million jobs in the process.
Because the elderly in America are the largest voting block, there is a very good chance that the greed of the Me Generation might finally fix all of the problems they caused. Don't get me wrong, I think expanding Social Security benefits is actually the right thing to do, but appealing to the greed of the Baby Boomers has always been a winning proposition for American politicians. Maybe this time that greed will help fix the problems with America.
Vote Bernie 2016.