Samuelson Writes About Boomers' "Economic Crimes"By Heidi Neel

In today’s Washington Post, Robert Samuelson reviews the new Christopher Buckley book, “Boomsday,” a satirical look at our nation’s entitlement problem.  Protagonist Cassandra Devine, is a 29-year-old blogger who is incensed by the self-serving lifestyle of Baby Boomers. In her view, Boomers do little more than drain Social Security and pass on debt. So Cassandra urges her generation to march on retirement communities.

Samuelson compares “Boomsday” to the writing of Jonathan Swift, “who once suggested that the Irish relieve a famine by eating their young;” in other words using the absurd to discuss moral outrages.

But sometimes fact is stranger then fiction, and in fact a growing number of experts, such as Larry Kotlikoff, predict a time of warfare between the young and the old.  They see the day when younger workers will refuse to pay higher and higher payroll taxes to provide the growing number of elderly with a secure retirement when those young people know there will not be enough workers to pay for their retirement. 

While he doesn’t prophesize generational warfare, Comptroller General of the United States, David Walker isn’t handing out gold stars to Boomers for stewardship.

Walker told CBS news program “60 Minutes” that “we have promised almost unlimited health care to senior citizens who never see the bills, and the government already is borrowing money to pay them.”

Walker says, “each of us as public officials…have a responsibility not just to deliver positive results today, not just to leave our organizations, our states, our localities, and our country better off when we leave than when we came. We have a responsibility to leave it better positioned for the future. The Baby Boom generation may be the first in the history of this country to break that long-standing tradition.”

Understanding the gravity of our entitlement situation, Samuelson humbly writes, “I was born in late 1945 and count myself a part of this failure. In our careless self-absorption, we are committing a political and economic crime against our children and perhaps -- when they awaken to their victimization -- even ourselves.”