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Written by: Eugene Steuerle
When a family with children spends money on a home mortgage or education, it’s investing for the long term, not just the next few years. When our nation has made progress in advancing liberty, competition, education, or civil rights, it, too, has approached the issue as a generational, rather than near-term, problem or opportunity. Thinking generationally allows us to turn from the past to the future, putting each year’s trials into perspective. I suggest setting generational goals is still the best way today to achieve true and lasting governmental reform.
Consider the many issues surrounding our spending, tax, and budget policy. Focusing on what you and I get or pay next year makes for great political fighting. It may dominate political campaigns, but it’s child’s play. The primary national interest depends on how our government best serves generations yet to come. In another 25 years, even if we grow as slowly as we have since 2007, just before the Great Recession, we’ll again be about 1/3 richer per person. With gross domestic product or income already over $200,000 per household, there’s plenty of room to foster better lives for most citizens while solving our current debt and deficit problems—if we think generationally. The World War II generation tackled a similar level of debt relative to its economy. Why do we keep whining that our extraordinarily more affluent nation can’t do the same?
The same calculus applies to issues such as the shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare revenues relative to spending—which are just subsets of the broader budgetary issue. Congress has scheduled lifetime Social Security and Medicare benefits upon retirement to grow unsustainably, so an average-income millennial couple will receive over $2 million in constant, inflation-adjusted dollars, compared to $1 million for an average-income couple who retired around 2015. Even if we slow down this growth rate to stay in line with whatever tax rate we’re willing to accept, future generations will garner significantly higher benefits than their predecessors. Does any millennial or younger person, thinking generationally about their own children and grandchildren, believe that the primary purpose of government is to maintain such a high growth rate in elderly benefits that almost every other priority and for every other age group becomes neglected?
How about politics? If Donald Trump serves as president until 2029, four individuals born between 1942 and 1946 will have occupied the presidency for 28 of the last 36 years. (Only President Obama, born in 1961, broke that pattern.) That small cohort’s dominance soon ends, one way or the other. When I last looked at medical science, it appeared that even baby boomers—the youngest of whom, like Kamala Harris, turn 60 this year—can’t live and hold onto power forever. New generations are about to accede to power.
Even the nastiness of politics seems more containable if we can think generationally, rather than for the next year or two, about how the Republican and Democratic parties could and should evolve. Both lack any vision about attacking the unsustainable policies noted above, so they keep reverting to cultural warfare. When they do address policy, for the most part, they keep trying to replicate past successes rather than identify what actions best serve future generations. Does anyone think that another tax cut for high-income individuals or adding enormous amounts of spending to a healthcare sector that already absorbs over $13,000 per person and $30,000 per household deserves the extraordinary priority status they have had continually for decades? Yet when it comes to tax and spending policy, those continue to be the top priorities, respectively, of the Republican and Democratic parties. On the other hand, thinking generationally demands that our two political parties be guided more by principles such as equal justice, efficiency, efficiency in shifting money to higher needs, and integrity in governing.
I’m not suggesting that we take our democratic institutions for granted in the short run—current levels of nastiness and disregard for truth remain genuine threats that we must address. It’s simply that a generational focus offers a superior approach to advancing opportunities and solving problems. Our founders certainly did not have a short-term focus. Instead, they went to great lengths to adopt mutually acceptable rules allowing the nation to survive and advance, regardless of who might accede to power.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could replace some of today’s tribalism aside with a similar generational focus?