Molly-coddled Seniors, beware . . .

In our ‘seventies today, my wife and I have many friends of similar age, but the majority of our friends and acquaintances are a few years younger and they make up the Baby Boomer population. Quite a number are financially well-off, sufficiently that they spend their retirement traveling and otherwise enjoying the fruits of their years of employment. A number of them have two homes—one in Washington and one in Arizona. Their seasonal greeting cards have letters enclosed, bragging about the accomplishments of their children and grandchildren. We enjoy these, but we also are concerned. There are danger signs, and I want to mention these and then suggest alternatives to the course that our generation is on.

Primarily this has to do with global issues, and these are huge. Our generations, the “wisdom boomers,” I call the Baby Boomers and ours (born in the early ‘40s, a little ahead of the curve) are having a good time, but we should think ahead. We have Social Security and a Professor’s Pension coming in and both of these are at risk if we fail to ensure the education of young citizens of the USA. We can ensure the learning preparedness of the very young, and we can invest some of our money and intellectual capital in education for all.

I think our friends who are over 50 are being taken down a primrose path by, among others, the entertainment industry. My theory (call it conspiracy if you like) is that US Americans are encouraged to consume as much as possible in order to keep US Industry going and keep Americans employed. It’s like a timber company encouraging everyone to cut down trees to keep the sawmill going, blind to the inevitable barren hills that will result.

Our traveling friends seem not to give a second thought to hopping on a jet to travel, often for the most trivial reasons—a birthday party, a round of golf, or a cruise. I’m afraid this happens in my own family, too. The “carbon footprint” was a popular expression for awhile, but it fails to stop the enormous consumption of fossil fuels. This is an environmental issue. It is ironic that conservation is taught in the schools, but the lessons do not seem to come home.

This is all old news and if you have read this far, I am preaching to the choir; and I don’t think anyone is going to cancel their plans for a winter trip to Mexico or Hawaii just because I’m writing these things down. Everyone knows these things.

Your Social Security and Retirement plan is an education issue

Young people are alone in paying money into your social security for as long as the current system is in force. Young people, as the wage-earners of tomorrow, are alone in paying into retirement plans of various kinds—their own and ours, too.

Social Security has been around since 1935 and is always under discussion as to its liquidity and viability. Retirement plans are generally based on US Business and Industry plus the value of the dollar on the world money market. These all depend on the employment of US Americans, and as competition for productive work grows with the growing world population, no one will get the paying jobs merely because they are US Citizens. American youth will have to compete, albeit indirectly, for the jobs paying the most money and, hence, put the most money into social security and retirement plans for us Seniors.

If children in other countries come out of school ready to work before US American children are ready to work, the jobs will go to those other children. They will pay into their tax systems, wherever they are, and their industrial base will get the benefits of those children’s educations. The country with the best education system wins.

Senior requirement

Seniors in the USA are required to invest in education if they want their future dollars to be worth much on the world market, their Social Security checks to keep coming, and their retirement funds to keep paying their pensions. If US American youth are not as well educated as foreign children are, they will not get the best jobs. If US American youth are educated in the wrong way (such as training in over-spending, high consumption of resources and wasting valuable, early education years), they will work for foreigners at lower-paying jobs, and their lower salaries will yield lower Social Security input and poorer retirement funds for themselves. Industry will suffer, which will, in turn, be reflected in lower payouts from pension plans.

Exit plan

When industry needs new ideas, methods and products, it has been effective in the past to innovate, invent, discover and imagine new industries or change old ones to meet the changing times. In pursuit of new ideas—especially new ideas that will create new jobs for youth—entrepreneurs are encouraged to come forward with innovative new businesses. As a former teacher, an artist and designer of new art-making products and recreational learning games, I qualify as an entrepreneur.

From this role I am acquainted with financing methods for new businesses—from bank loans and equity investments (which I have used) to venture capital—so I know what “exit plan” means. Investors want to know what the entrepreneur plans to do if and when the company succeeds. Will he quit and move on to another venture? Or, what if he dies? Is the entrepreneur indispensable, or does he or she just think so?

There is another kind of exit plan which you don’t hear people talk about, and that is the self-made man’s exit plan. No one needs to tell me if it is time to quit; I am not one of those stubborn-heads that insists on running the show even though he or she may be running the show out of town. If a CEO is bad, the company will go down. Venture capitalists have good reason to assume control of a venture if their combined wisdom says it will protect their investment and grow profits.

The USA Venture

American capitalism is a kind of venture, but it is not the only kind of economic model. Education of the young is the only kind of model that has a chance to succeed, and without learning the lessons of education, an entire country’s economy can fail. We don’t want the USA to go down in history as a lesson in what happens when the educational infrastructure of a country fails to take into account this reality.

What seniors can do is invest more in education, not in more consumerism. It is a fallacy—a reckless gamble—to think that consuming more fossil fuels and leisure lifestyles will help US industrial growth and a secure economic outlook. The traveler who thinks his or her fare to Mexico will help the young people of America get a better education while they are enjoying the beach is a fool. The “snow birds” who think their winter-time trip to Arizona is somehow good for the economy and only a little damaging to the environment are fools, too.

If you argue, I will argue that kids in Korea, for example, are spending enormous amounts of time in school and minimal amounts in consumerism. What are they studying at with such industry? Could it be that they know something we adults don’t know? Could it be that they are learning things that US American kids are not learning, and—like us adults—don’t know? I wonder if the word is out that those crazy Americans are burning up the world’s resources and everybody else better be learning what to do about it and how.

Could you learn how to change American consumer patterns in a foreign school? US children seldom learn more than one language—English—so it will be hard for us to talk about it with foreigners. It already is, in fact, almost impossible.

I wanted to write my exit plan, and that is to get a factory school going where US American kids can take the lead in learning some art methods and also learn about running a factory making things for those art methods. And then I want to leave this factory school in the hands of young people, who can make it succeed where I have only failed.