A Tale of Two Charts

Our collective debt, at the Federal level, 1980-2019 (projected of course, extrapolated using what appears at a glance to be the CBO's alternative fiscal scenario):

As for individual debt:

This debt was created by a very specific group of people, those of whom were at least of voting age in 1980 (or born in 1962) through those who are still voting in significant enough numbers to matter, say up to age eighty-five (or born in 1927), a combination of our "Greatest Generation" and their postwar bumper crop.

This massive run up in debt allowed them to have very nice things indeed, from MX missiles to McMansions. They managed to avoid paying for it by refusing either to save or to tax themselves sufficiently, creating a debt that has now come due. In the private sector, they are refusing to retire in order to make way for my generation to begin to build our lives, and in the public sector they are securing their own own retirement at the cost of our future economic security. If that weren't galling enough, the common chorus is that these decisions are being made for the sake of "our children."

This will not be the last you hear from he on this topic. Hardly.