I Apologize--NOT!!

My youngest son Scott recently sent me an e-mail with a link to a Wall Street Journal article. Scott added a personal comment: "I accept your apology."


Apologize? Me?? For what? So I clicked on the link.


It was an article about how college commencement speakers, mostly notable baby boomers, were apologizing for the collective behavior of their generation. Some excerpts from the article:


--"Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, 60 years old, told the graduating class of Butler University last month that boomers have been "self-absorbed, self-indulgent and all too often just plain selfish."


--"New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, 55, told Grinnell College graduates in Iowa that his was "the grasshopper generation, eating through just about everything like hungry locusts."


--"Sen. Michael Bennet, Colorado College commencement, May 9, 2009: "We have limited the potential of future generations by burdening them with our poor choices and our unwillingness to make tough ones."


Of course, my son knows how to push my buttons. It doesn't take much to get me involved in an argument over politics. So I e-mailed back:


"There's certainly another side of the story. We're the sandwich generation, supporting both the lifestyle of our parents who are generally living comfortably on pensions and benefits that we will be lucky to see (as pensions are disappearing and social security/Medicare will soon be under attack) and the lifestyle of your generation with its Ipods, cell phones, and generally carefree attitude towards debt and personal responsibility.


Remember, your mother and I had to live on a strict budget when we were young. We had to count pennies to save enough money for a down payment on a house, if we ate out it was mostly at McDonalds, we made sure we paid our credit card bill in full monthly so we wouldn't have any debt., etc. How many young families do that nowadays?"


Ha, I told him. But the more I think about it, the more it rattles me. We're from the generation where mothers were expected to work outside the home to support the family, rather than stay at home. Is that something I should apologize for too? We're the generation that has had to deal with hordes of shoddy imported goods from overseas, while good jobs in this country are getting exported there. Should I apologize for that too?


We're the generation that has had to deal with sharply escalating costs in health care, education and housing. My parents bought our family home in a nice Bay City neighborhood for less than $10,000. Our family home cost more than $100,000. And unlike the value of homes in previous generations, the value of our home is going down fast. We just paid it off last month and now can start putting some of those funds towards our own retirement.


I know where this is going . . . all this rumbling about baby boomers allegedly crashing and burning the economy. It's politicians and their cohorts trying to guilt us into accepting a big tax increase, or several big tax increases. We need to work longer in life, for less money, with fewer government benefits so to share with others who more than likely don't contribute as much as we do, never have and never will. Retire? Don't even think about it.


But speaking of retirement, I paid a visit to the company that handles my pension funds. I was surprised to find the heavy plexiglass door locked. You had to be buzzed in. I wonder if that had something to do with a lot of folks angry that the stock market crash cleaned out their 401K. Anyway, the pension adviser strongly suggested I contribute more out-of-pocket to a new, separate retirement account in order to keep pace with the expected sharply rising costs of basic necessities in my golden years..


And taxes too, I guess.