My father was born into a tenant-farming family in western Oklahoma just a few years before even that meager existence was swept away by the arrival of the Great Dust Bowl of the 1920s. By hard work and intelligence, he worked his way through college and law school. But then, just as he began to establish himself in a career, he was drafted into the Army, in which he would serve from 1942 to the fall of 1946. When he returned, he found that his former position had been taken by a younger man.
Eventually, my father got his job back and worked his way to the top of his profession, but at such cost that he died at an early age. Even when he became affluent, half of his earnings were seized in taxes. His life was an unending catastrophe.
Very few young people, including those foolish students joining the anti-Israel demonstrations, have faced so much as an inconvenience in their lives so far. They are supported by prosperous families; are given everything they desire (including credit cards and smartphones from an early age); and, apparently, indulged themselves without ever having been corrected. It is a far cry from feeling lucky when you had a bite of squirrel to eat for supper or a pair of hand-me-down shoes with the toes cut out to accommodate growing feet.
And yet the world outside our prosperous bubble has not changed, even if it may appear to have. The self-indulgence of the very young in America will end at some point, and end badly.
Millennials experienced a taste of this with the appearance of COVID in 2020, but COVID was a brief and manageable epidemic, and we seem to have come through it, for the most part and for most of us, relatively unscathed.
Greater challenges lie ahead, and I wonder how well Millennials and their successors will face it. Recent inflation of 20 to 30% under Biden gives us a taste of what might come. Runaway inflation of 100% per year, or per month or per day, is common in countries outside the U.S. and Europe, and there is no reason it can’t happen here, especially with the burden of servicing a federal debt of over $34 trillion combined with state and local debt.
We are on our own, and, as a nation, we have not been doing very well lately. We are resting on our laurels — and on the credit we inherited as the world’s reserve currency, with all the advantages that it brings — but that good fortune will not last. The Chinese are establishing the yuan as a reserve currency in Brazil and other countries. We may soon become just another second-world nation and a defeated one at that. We will be lucky to avoid an occupation by Chinese troops.
In any case, we will be much poorer in real terms than we are now. That process has already begun with the Biden inflation, under which goods and services cost on average 20 to 30% more than they did just four years ago. As government continues to spend our way into oblivion, we will decline in real living standards another 20%, 50%, or 90%.
According to the Social Security Administration, the fund may run out of money by 2033. In addition, Social Security Disability is threatened by 2035 and Medicare by 2036. Since the Social Security fund by law cannot borrow, there must be some combination of tax increases and/or benefit cuts. Cutting benefits for seniors would trigger mass political discontent with unpredictable consequences.
The only large pool of money to tap would be middle-class earning and middle-class retirement savings — taxing “billionaires” (Biden’s perennial “solution”) does not work because, in the first place, there are not that many billionaires, and second, many would flee if they were heavily taxed, and in any event, taxing the rich simply drains investment from business, leading to higher prices and slower growth.
But Social Security and Medicare are only two programs that face potential cuts. As larger portions of federal and state revenues go toward servicing the debt, all programs, from aid to dependent children to education to military and police, will face potential defunding. We face a future of unanswered 911 calls, unavailable medical care, overrun schools, and shuttered libraries. Worst of all, if war breaks out, we may not have the revenues to fund a successful defense. It will be a catastrophe.
Human beings can live through catastrophe — sometimes — but only at great physical and psychological cost and with lasting scars. For the young in Ivy League schools, the good old days of marching around calling Jews “Nazis” will be over. Those who have not made an extraordinary effort in school and at work will be cast to the bottom, and they will be poor and enslaved in a nation with no ability to provide for them. That is the meaning of catastrophe, and although few young people believe it is coming — and none has experienced it in growing up — that is what they will face: the end of affluence, and the beginning of a long life of hardship.
My father was a strong man whom everyone respected. With no help from anyone, even his penniless parents, he worked his way through school and survived the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, and WWII. I see no evidence that any of today’s young are capable of the same sacrifices and strength. When the time comes, they may rise to the challenge, or they may simply roll over and play dead — and some may actually be dead. They will discover, as my father did, that there is really no help for them in this world of ours.
Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture including Heartland of the Imagination (2011).
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