If you're 30 or older, stop reading. This isn't for you. This is for America's sacrificial lambs -- our children.
Young men and women, boys and girls. Gather round. I'm writing something you crave, but seldom get -- the truth.
The truth is we grownups don't care about you. Oh, we care here and there about the few of you we know or raised, but as a group, you aren't collectively on our minds or in our hearts. You may be our earthly posterity, but you're not really our concern or problem.
Instead, we're your problem. We've squandered your bodies and lives in wars with no point and no end. We've laid waste to the economy, leaving you scrambling for scarce jobs at low pay. We've played take-as-you-go fiscal policy for six decades, placing you at the dirty end of an extravagant chain letter. We've made our Social Security your private insecurity, our healthcare, your tax obligation, our financial crisis your unemployment. We've shortchanged your education, but made you pick up the bill. We've left Wall Street to prey on you at each stage of your lives. And we've staged an ongoing political sideshow to distract you from our economic child abuse.
That stage is set. The politicians, clothed in red and blue, are now taking the field to defend the rich against the poor and the poor against the rich, when the real war pits us against you -- the old against the young. Whichever candidate wins this year's battle of billions, generational exploitation will prevail and the real loser will be you.
Your loss will sadly be your fault. For you suffer from love. You love us too much. And your love has left you bewildered and disarmed.
How can people you love destroy your future? How can they turn your first-world country into a third-world wannabe, with 27 million people out of work or short on work, a fiscal gap of $211 trillion, massive official deficits, enormous trade deficits, a Social Security system in record trouble, a Medicare system with exponentially exploding costs, a Medicaid system with exponentially exploding costs, an employer-based health insurance tax subsidy with exponentially exploding costs, a new health exchange system with potentially exponentially exploding costs, a national saving rate close to zero, a domestic investment rate close to zero, a real wage growth rate close to zero, a central bank printing money at an astronomical rate, an inflation rate poised to explode, an education system that's flunking, an energy policy that's destroying your health and the planet's climate, and a 20 percent and rapidly growing child poverty rate.
You have two choices. You can sit back and pretend nothing can change, that you have no power, and no time to get involved. Or you can gather everyone you know, join my campaign at www.kotlikoff2012.org, and save our country while there is still time.