On January 15th, prominent Democrats and other liberals will gather around the nation.
Their mission: oppose looming Republican reforms to Obamacare and government entitlement programs. It’s clear that liberals want to mobilize young Americans to join the protest. Two factors prove that intent. First, the Day of Action’s catchy title and its millennial-friendly social media campaign, “Our First Stand: Save Health Care.” Second, Bernie Sanders’s leading role.
Sanders, after all, is the Liberal Millennial God. Furious, populist, and cool in his un-coolness, the Senator from Vermont was able to attract millions of young Americans to his presidential campaign. Democrats are well aware that they will need these voters to help them return to power. And as such, they’re promoting Sanders to the top tier of the policy leadership.
But, millennials should be careful. Just like Sanders, while the Day of Action might sound good, it serves a future counter to millennial interests.
First off, there’s the entitlement issue. A key plank of “Our First Stand’’ is opposing reforms to Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid. But there’s a big problem here, math. Since the entitlements’ math are unassailably unambiguous, the math shows that if we fail to reform entitlements now, there will be little left for our generation.
As I noted in a recent article on the deficit and national debt:
Put simply, if we don’t reform entitlements, then America will go bankrupt. But it’s worse than that. If we keep ignoring the entitlement challenge, our interest payments on the national debt will continue to soar. And that means less investment, a less stable economy, and a sustained increase in the cost of loans. This would concern any millennial who, in ten years from now, hopes to have a good job and an affordable mortgage. Democrats like Sanders, claim that the fiscal hole can be filled by taxing the rich. But they are either stupid or liars. Again, the math to justify such claims simply isn’t there.
And that speaks to what’s actually going on here: the Day of Action is a pretense of morality in defense of an immoral status quo. Democrats don’t want to reform entitlements because they don’t want to upset older voters. But a failure to reform entitlements isn’t just a betrayal of America’s future, it’s a betrayal of basic fairness. As the Urban Institute has shown, from 2015, the average new Medicare recipient will now receive three times in benefits what they actually paid in Medicare taxes. Who will fill the gap? Taxpayers. Specifically, young Americans with most of our taxpaying days ahead of us!
There’s an alternative to the liberal approach. The best one, as I’ve explained, is a process of reforming entitlements to prevent national bankruptcy while protecting America’s poorest citizens. That process would also ensure that Medicare and Social Security are there for us in the future.
Nevertheless, the Day of Action isn’t just about entitlements. More broadly, it reflects the liberal blueprint for the coming years. Namely, the liberal intention to expand government’s role in the provision of key services. And that’s more bad news for millennials.
Take Obamacare, for example. President Obama and Democrats claim that Obamacare is a moral program that delivers health care more affordably and efficiently. But for young Americans, Obamacare has been a disaster. It has meant an immoral attack on our savings in return for a poor provision of services.
It’s not just Obamacare. It’s also the sharing economy. Today, Democrats are now acting in the shadows to restrict firms like Uber and Airbnb. They are doing so because they are beholden to powerful special interests struggling to compete in the free market. This is the morality they offer. And it is putrid.
If you’re a millennial, you should steer clear of the January 15th protests. That is, of course, unless you are a sadomasochist who enjoys inflicting pain on yourself, or if you’re happy to reside in your parent’s basement for all eternity.
