I want my future back, Mom

Nicholas Kristof writes in his NY Times column this week that back in the sixties when the parents of people my age were growing up the country made a huge effort to eliminate poverty among the elderly. It’s now down from 29% then to below 10% now. Unfortunately during the same time the poverty rate among children has remained steady at 18%.

As of 2003, the share of elderly below the poverty line had fallen by two-thirds to 10 percent - representing a huge national success. Retirement in America is no longer feared as a time of destitution, but anticipated as a time of comfort and leisure.

On the other hand, the proportion of children below the poverty line is still 18 percent, the same as it was in 1966. And while almost all the elderly now have health insurance under Medicare, about 29 percent of children had no health insurance at all at some point in the last 12 months.

His last point i made all the more real by people like the Govenor of Texas, Rick Perry, who chose to reduce property taxes by pratically eliminating an intiative started by his predecesor, President Bush, to insure most of Texas’s uninsured children.

But what he gets to at the end of this week’s article is that the present leaders in the federal and the state governments are spending so feverishly that they are pissing away my future. According to a government sponsored study the United States has a long-term fiscal gap of $51 trillion. That translates to, you’re screwing your children to the wall people.

I don’t think that is the act of a good parent.