In 1775, Sam Adams confidently predicted that the scraggly little colonies would one day be the world’s most powerful nation. In 1800, Noah Webster projected that the U.S. would someday have 300 million citizens, and that a country that big should have its own dictionary.
In his novel, “Giants in the Earth,” Ole Rolvaag has a pioneering farmer give a visitor a tour of his land. The farmer describes his beautiful home and his large buildings. The visitor confesses that he can’t see them. That’s because they haven’t been built yet, the farmer acknowledges, but they already exist as reality in his mind. . . . 
Today, Americans have inverted this way of thinking. Instead of sacrificing the present for the sake of the future, Americans now sacrifice the future for the sake of the present.
Federal spending is the most obvious example. The federal government is a machine that takes money from future earners and spends it on health care for retirees. Entitlement spending hurts the young in two ways. It squeezes government investment programs that boost future growth. Second, the young will have to pay the money back. To cover current obligations, according to the International Monetary Fund, young people will have to pay 35 percent more taxes and receive 35 percent fewer benefits.
But government is not the only place you can see signs of this present-ism. . . .      
Banks can lend money in two ways. They can lend to fund investments or they can lend to fund real estate purchases and other consumption. In 1982, banks were lending out 80 cents for investments for every $1 they were lending for consumption. By 2011, they lent only 30 cents to fund investments for every $1 of consumption. . . . 
Increasingly, companies have to spend their money on retirees, not future growth. Last week, for example, Ford announced that it was spending $5 billion to shore up its pension program. That’s an amount nearly equal to Ford’s investments in factories, equipment and innovation.
Why have Americans lost their devotion to the future? Part of the answer must be cultural. The Great Depression and World War II forced Americans to live with 16 straight years of scarcity. In the years after the war, people decided they’d had enough. There was what one historian called a “renunciation of renunciation.” We’ve now had a few generations raised with this consumption mind-set. There’s less of a sense that life is a partnership among the dead, the living and the unborn, with obligations to those to come. . . . 

Americans are neglecting the future, but I bet they’re still in love with it."
Summing Up

The time has come for us oldsters to accept the fact that we have a great responsibility to future generations --- to once again embrace the "slingshot" approach to life in America.

It's also time to acknowledge that the government has no money other than what its taxpaying citizens and its lenders provide. And that lenders will require repayment of the loans, including interest, down the road.

Our renewed emphasis on the slingshot approach must begin with the oldsters looking squarely in the face of our entitlements and growing welfare society. The money to pay for those entitlements is coming from those working and those who will be working in the future.

We oldsters simply didn't set enough funds aside to pay for our "entitlements" in the elderly years, no matter what the government officials that we selected have legislatively "agreed" to pay us. Period.

Having the government borrowing or printing money to pay for our present consumption spending is a genuine disservice to the future well being of our kids and grandkids.

That's my take about "fairness" and the salvation of the "middle class."

And it's one you won't be hearing from the President or the rest of the "progressives" in Washington.

Neither will you likely be hearing it from the AARP, mainstream Republicans or even from Tea Party members.

But it doesn't make it any less true.

The mess has been made. Somebody has to clean it up.

And that somebody doing the cleaning won't be the penniless fictional "government" in Washington. That somebody will be We the People.

Thanks. Bob.