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I upvoted you because I tend to agree. However, I came to a different conclusion as to why benefits like pensions and social security will be underfunded for Ge

I upvoted you because I tend to agree. However, I came to a different conclusion as to why benefits like pensions and social security will be underfunded for Gen X. It basically all comes down to tax policy. Boomers voted to cut taxes (especially on the wealthy) to roughly half what they should be, and ran up the national debt to match the GDP when there was no war or other crisis to justify it. The founding fathers warned against that, because if one generation offloads its debt to the next, then it effectively enslaves the next against its will (deprives it of property, and taxes it without representation, among other things). This is self-evidently unsustainable, because any generation could do it at any time. This concept can be trivially extended to all underfunded benefits. Maybe a shark raided retirement funds through legal smoke and mirrors but never got arrested. Maybe bankruptcy was abused multiple times to avoid paying workers, and that person not only didn't go to jail, but ended up a billionaire and president of the United States. You can see that this philosophy runs deep throughout our culture. So I don't buy that pensions are underfunded because a company collapsed due to loss of market or whatever. It's more likely that the funds were raided the same way that congress has been writing IOUs for social security since the 80s. Somebody stole that money. So I'd vote to pay down the national debt by raiding wealth created between 1980 and today. A high inheritance tax would do that. So would raising unearned income taxes (like capital gains) far above earned income tax. Yes, these would slow the economy. But we're all cheating right now, living off the backs of future generations. Growth won't matter if gen X and millennials wake up and decide to throw a jubilee and cancel the national debt (my pie in the sky preference).

sjy 7y ago
> The founding fathers warned against that, because if one generation offloads its debt to the next, then it effectively enslaves the next against its will (deprives it of property, and taxes it without representation, among other things). Enslaved to whom? You can’t send your labour into the past. A huge national debt ‘run up’ by a previous generation just means that the next generation becomes more unequal, as the majority are taxed to fund interest payments to the heirs of the original bondholders. I don’t really see how this is more unjust than the existence of any other law or policy established before I was born, which I had no say in. If the solution is to appropriate the wealth of bondholders, the next generation will be equally able to implement that policy.
- zackmorris 7y ago
  I believe it was Thomas Jefferson who was most opposed to intergenerational debt, because one generation could hoard wealth (mostly land at that time) and then future generations would be indebted to the dead, which goes against the spirit of liberty and justice in the United States: https://jeffersonpapers.princeton.edu/selected-documents/thomas-jefferson-james-madison https://jeffersonpapers.princeton.edu/selected-documents/tho... https://famguardian.org/Subjects/Politics/ThomasJefferson/jeff1340.htm https://famguardian.org/Subjects/Politics/ThomasJefferson/je... It basically comes down to: a child should not assume the debt of its parents in a free society. Some more info on the founding fathers' views: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/sponsored/alexander-hamilton-debt-national-bank-two-parties-1789-american-history-great-courses-plus-180962954/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/sponsored/alexander-hamilton-... I'm generally left-leaning, but here are some articles from right-leaning publications for anyone fearing "fake news": https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/americas-debt-through-the-eyes-the-founders https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/americas-d... https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/government-debt-jefferson-gallatin-were-right https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/government-debt... I agree with your sentiment though, that soon we'll have to make a choice as to whether to assume the debt of our parents or raid their assets to pay it down. I also feel rather strongly that if children shouldn't inherit their parents' debt, then they also shouldn't inherit their wealth. The best way to accomplish that is a high inheritance tax. I know that people object to this as an impingement on liberty, but we have to also consider justice for the broader population (as I've written about in my previous comments). And I also see your point that if we inherit infrastructure, we should also be ready to inherit debt (so that's perhaps not inherently unjust). But I'd just like to also point out that I've never seen the federal government vote to raise taxes to pay for the national debt. The debt went down briefly under Bill Clinton, but that was mostly through reducing welfare expenditures (which arguably later backfired, as experienced by people whose benefits ran out during the Great Recession, among other things). So I am also very skeptical that it will ever raid bondholders to pay for the debt, although that could explain the (cruel?) sentiment to destroy social security, medicare and medicaid to pay down the debt by republicans. Again, I am very skeptical that that would work, because prior experience indicates that they'll just give that money to the very wealthy and we'll still be left with a large national debt.
winfred 7y ago
Don't have to cancel it... All that debt is in US dollars. Just print so much money that you have 20% inflation per year for four or five years. Problem will be fixed. It's a scam you can only pull off once (after that the dollar isn't going to be the world reserve currency anymore), but it's a scam you can pull off once.
- desdiv 7y ago
  Most of that debt is owned by Americans, who incidentally also own 393.3 million firearms - twice as much as every police force and military in the world combined[0]. I shudder to imagine what 100 million pissed off gun owners would do when they find out that there's going to be a 50% haircut to their life savings. [0] http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/T-Briefing-Papers/SAS-BP-Civilian-Firearms-Numbers.pdf http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/T-Briefing-Pap...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- democracy 7y ago
  That's a cute thought but it will not work even once.

sjy 7y ago

> The founding fathers warned against that, because if one generation offloads its debt to the next, then it effectively enslaves the next against its will (deprives it of property, and taxes it without representation, among other things). Enslaved to whom? You can’t send your labour into the past. A huge national debt ‘run up’ by a previous generation just means that the next generation becomes more unequal, as the majority are taxed to fund interest payments to the heirs of the original bondholders. I don’t really see how this is more unjust than the existence of any other law or policy established before I was born, which I had no say in. If the solution is to appropriate the wealth of bondholders, the next generation will be equally able to implement that policy.

zackmorris 7y ago
I believe it was Thomas Jefferson who was most opposed to intergenerational debt, because one generation could hoard wealth (mostly land at that time) and then future generations would be indebted to the dead, which goes against the spirit of liberty and justice in the United States: https://jeffersonpapers.princeton.edu/selected-documents/thomas-jefferson-james-madison https://jeffersonpapers.princeton.edu/selected-documents/tho... https://famguardian.org/Subjects/Politics/ThomasJefferson/jeff1340.htm https://famguardian.org/Subjects/Politics/ThomasJefferson/je... It basically comes down to: a child should not assume the debt of its parents in a free society. Some more info on the founding fathers' views: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/sponsored/alexander-hamilton-debt-national-bank-two-parties-1789-american-history-great-courses-plus-180962954/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/sponsored/alexander-hamilton-... I'm generally left-leaning, but here are some articles from right-leaning publications for anyone fearing "fake news": https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/americas-debt-through-the-eyes-the-founders https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/americas-d... https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/government-debt-jefferson-gallatin-were-right https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/government-debt... I agree with your sentiment though, that soon we'll have to make a choice as to whether to assume the debt of our parents or raid their assets to pay it down. I also feel rather strongly that if children shouldn't inherit their parents' debt, then they also shouldn't inherit their wealth. The best way to accomplish that is a high inheritance tax. I know that people object to this as an impingement on liberty, but we have to also consider justice for the broader population (as I've written about in my previous comments). And I also see your point that if we inherit infrastructure, we should also be ready to inherit debt (so that's perhaps not inherently unjust). But I'd just like to also point out that I've never seen the federal government vote to raise taxes to pay for the national debt. The debt went down briefly under Bill Clinton, but that was mostly through reducing welfare expenditures (which arguably later backfired, as experienced by people whose benefits ran out during the Great Recession, among other things). So I am also very skeptical that it will ever raid bondholders to pay for the debt, although that could explain the (cruel?) sentiment to destroy social security, medicare and medicaid to pay down the debt by republicans. Again, I am very skeptical that that would work, because prior experience indicates that they'll just give that money to the very wealthy and we'll still be left with a large national debt.

winfred 7y ago

Don't have to cancel it... All that debt is in US dollars. Just print so much money that you have 20% inflation per year for four or five years. Problem will be fixed. It's a scam you can only pull off once (after that the dollar isn't going to be the world reserve currency anymore), but it's a scam you can pull off once.

desdiv 7y ago
Most of that debt is owned by Americans, who incidentally also own 393.3 million firearms - twice as much as every police force and military in the world combined[0]. I shudder to imagine what 100 million pissed off gun owners would do when they find out that there's going to be a 50% haircut to their life savings. [0] http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/T-Briefing-Papers/SAS-BP-Civilian-Firearms-Numbers.pdf http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/T-Briefing-Pap...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
democracy 7y ago
That's a cute thought but it will not work even once.