Viromike:
Thanks, hope some of these ideas are useful to you. I appreciate the encouragement.

Ed

I also appreciate your points and perspective. I, too, am a USNA grad, though younger than your brother (I’m class of 73). Since I can’t thank him for his service, and sacrifice, please allow me to express my thanks to you, and also to share, however momentarily with you, his loss.

Glenn

Thanks for your kind words Glenn. I’ve benefitted from your contributions to the Alidade discussions.

Ed

While I won’t argue your core points, I will disagree on the boomer-greatest divide. Diana West convincingly argues that the core change started before the boomers were even born. I will add that the greatest generation was perfectly happy to collect unsustainable social security and medicare benefits, courtesy of the triples tax rates the boomers paid — but which would be enough only for the greatest gen people to benefit from, as it alal would not support the boomers when their time came. In other words, the boomers’ willingness to fund benefits for their elders was just fine by the elders — who happily collected them (and continue to actually demand them via AARP) at record rates! So I’m not so easy on the elders, nor as harsh on the boomers.

Glenn:
Point well made and well taken. To me the Greatest Generation was relatively modest in their entitlements, and much of that was indirectly paid for by wartime sacrifices and hefty income taxes that enabled them to build the economic infrastructure. Their major mistake was to overindulge their progeny. They did indeed co-operate to put in place inadequately funded social security and medicare benefits that later generations would pay most of; adding to that they presented a rationale that these were “earned benefits” rather than welfare…because they were contractual. That myth of fully meriting these benefits, which I find people of my age group spouting in defense of their entitlements, is part of a belief system that impedes a workable solution. I am one of those post-Greatest Generation pre-Boomer babies whose father Graduated from the Naval Academy in the 30’s and fought WWII in the Pacific and whose younger brother (a Boomer) also graduated from the Academy in 1962 and died over Hanoi on his third tour of combat duty in July of 1967.

In any event, it is not my intent to find people or generations to praise or blame, rather to understand causes. I’m an engineer by profession and in outlook, a correct understanding of basics is essential to developing workable solutions.

Ed Lee