No Country For Young Men
California’s government diverts resources from young people to special interests. As an example, in 1999 its state legislature and governor granted a massive unfunded retroactive pension increase to state employees. Since then, annual pension spending has grown nearly 1000 percent, and that doesn’t count nearly $10 billion in supplemental pension spending. The federal government behaves similarly. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, President Biden’s proposed budget for the 2023-24 fiscal year would grow federal debt by $19 trillion to $43.6 trillion by 2033, rising from an already-dangerous 98 percent of GDP to a record 110 percent, threatening the security of our descendants.
In 1999, the audience for California’s giveaway was government employee unions. In 2023, the audience for Mr. Biden’s proposal appears to be Medicare stakeholders and class warriors. But in both cases the consequences fall on young people. In an op-ed announcing his proposal, Mr. Biden selectively pointed out the growth in wealth differences since Medicare was adopted in 1965 but not the growth in lifespans since then. Maintaining the same ratio of eligibility age to expected lifespan in 1965 would raise the eligibility age today from 65 to 71. Just as Social Security provides cost-of-living adjustments to account for price inflation, shouldn’t Medicare account for lifespan changes? Later in his op-ed, the president panders to class warriors but hits young people when he claims that his opponents want to “protect billionaires from a penny more in taxes but won’t protect a retired firefighter’s hard-earned Medicare benefits” even though firefighters in states like California, New York and others can retire as early as age 50 with rich insurance coverage from state and local governments the cost of which — you guessed it — crowds out programs of benefit to young people. Mr. Biden also proposes to increase the tax on stock buybacks, which would penalize returns to public pension funds like the California State Teachers’ Retirement System and other shareholders in US companies even though every dollar CalSTRS doesn’t earn from investments means another dollar taken from classrooms to meet unfunded pension obligations.
Ben Franklin is reported to have said that “ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation to the prejudice and oppression of another is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy.” Too many elected leaders today support laws that favor one part of the population to the oppression of another. The antidote is for political philanthropists to persistently support lawmakers who support equal protection.