Personal financial worries and the federal government’s growing debt cloud the future of younger Americans, who often seem neglected in Washington.
“As more and more baby boomers retire, younger Americans are expected to help sustain entitlement programs and, eventually, help lower federal deficits to put the debt on a sustainable path,” explains Chase Hagaman, The Concord Coalition’s 26-year-old New England regional director.
But young adults are also trying to pay off their college loans, launch careers, build new homes and even save for their own retirements. As Hagaman notes in a recent column in Seacoast Sunday, a slow economy has made all that even more challenging.
Nevertheless, he says young people must take a proactive approach in dealing with their personal finances as well as helping the country chart a better fiscal course.
Bob Kerrey, a former senator who also served as a Concord Coalition co-chairman, recently urged older Americans to demand more youth-oriented priorities in the federal budget.
“If we’re trying to figure out how to advance the next generation’s future,” the 70-year-old Kerrey told New York Times columnist Frank Bruni, “we need to be spending more on the next generation, and we’re spending it on yesterday’s generation. I am not the future. My 12-year-old son is. But if you look at the spending, you’d think I’m the future.”
External links:
Dear Millennials, We’re Sorry (N.Y. Times)
Millennials Mired in Wealth Gap (Bloomberg)
