Falling Standards of Living

The stan­dard of liv­ing that the Baby Boomer gen­er­a­tion enjoys may be the high­est that the United States will see for the fore­see­able future: My gen­er­a­tion will be the first in a while whose qual­ity of life will be less than that of the prior one.

John Farmer gets it (although I dis­agree with his rec­om­men­da­tion to cut social pro­grams — slash unnec­es­sary defense spend­ing instead). Why do so few others?

The rea­sons are numer­ous, yet easy to realize:

• Crush­ing debt from the sky­rock­et­ing cost of higher edu­ca­tion com­bined with increased stu­dent loans and credit cards;
• Wages that do not keep pace with infla­tion and the ris­ing cost of living;
• A fed­eral gov­ern­ment on the verge of bank­ruptcy once the Baby Boomers start to retire;
• $406 bil­lion spent (so far) on a use­less and mis­taken war in Iraq;
• An edu­ca­tion sys­tem that is not prepar­ing stu­dents for the chal­lenges that glob­al­iza­tion will bring;
• An faulty eco­nomic boom financed by peo­ple going into debt — like credit cards and home equity loans — in order to buy stuff; and
• Amer­i­cans want social pro­grams and low taxes. We can’t have both. Pick one.

I could go on, but free­lance jour­nal­ist and Vil­lage Voice colum­nist Anya Kamenetz presents a sober­ing analy­sis in her book, “Gen­er­a­tion Debt.” I highly rec­om­mend it.

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