Burdening the next generation
1 October 2011
The financial crisis is laying a heavy burden on the next generation.
As western governments recapitalise their banks and cut their profligate spending programmes, they have saddled the next generation with paying off our debts. Banks have over lent and governments have over spent. It has often been pointed out that the post-war generation has done very well out of the welfare state. They avoided the terrors of the second World War, enjoyed free eduction and the benefits of the National Health Service, which made the oral contraceptive pill available and allowed the irresponsible promiscuity of the swinging Sixties, with the social consequences of the break-down of marriage, fatherless children and the ill effects of a poor start in life.
However the music has stopped and the next generation will pick up the tabs. The free access to end of life care which the post-war generation enjoyed has been replaced with spending the kids’ inheritance on looking after grandad or grandma in their old age. University students from England and Wales now have to pay for their education. Pensions are under threat and even delayed until people are older. The goalposts keep moving in order to accommodate the incompetent profligacy of governments with their short-term electoral cycle, who look around for the next rich sector to rob when the going gets tough. Taxation has become another way of incompetent governments covering their tracks by stealing from the wealthy. They are the modern Robin Hood without the disguise, without the philanthropy and without the risk of being an outlaw - for they are the law. They have legalised stealing.
This is not a surprising situation to be in, when we consider that the electorate assess politicians by the wrong criteria. The primary factor is “are they one of us” - that is, they vote by party, come what may, and they expect politicians to follow the party line. This tends to neuter Christians in mainline parties from giving a forthright Christian response to current issues. It is because of this pragmatic assessment, that we need a Christian party.
What can one say about the poor inheritance for our children? It makes us recall the Lord’s words in the Second Commandment: “I, the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and showing mercy to thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments” Exodus 20:5-6. So what is the Second Commandment about? Idolatry. “Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them”. We have worshipped money, and now the consequences will come down heavily upon our children and our children’s children to repay the profligacy and debt of our idolatrous generation.
