Many baby boomers put a high priority on “investing” in their children by encouraging good health habits, getting them to doctors and dentists for regular check-ups, and preparing them for college.
But Diane Lim Rogers, The Concord Coalition’s chief economist, points out a contradiction: These same parents often ignore the growing burden of federal debt that they will be passing on to the next generation.
“That is why any parent should be particularly concerned about the budget outlook: it directly undermines all of our personal efforts to provide for our kids and set them on that good path,” Rogers says in a recently published monograph for a conference at the Naval War College.
Rogers also argues that Americans have become so accustomed to budget deficits that they have lost sight of the connection between what we want from government and the taxes we are willing to pay: “Often people who say they want a smaller government really don’t want a smaller government; they just want lower taxes.”
External links:
The Way Out of the Fiscal Hole: An Economist Mom’s Perspective
