I keep coming back to this topic, but it irks me something wicked. Conservatives like to talk about the debt and the deficit we are "leaving to our children..." Sure, our kids don't deserve to foot a massive bill for our irresponsibility - but what, pray tell, SHOULD we be leaving to our children?
A crumbling infrastructure?
*According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, more than 25 percent of America's nearly 600,000 bridges need significant repairs or are burdened with more traffic than they were designed to carry.*According to the Federal Highway Administration, approximately a third of America's major roadways are in substandard condition - a significant factor in a third of the more than 43,000 traffic fatalities in the United States each year.
*The Texas Transportation Institute estimates that traffic jams caused by insufficient infrastructure waste 4 billion hours of commuters' time and nearly 3 billion gallons of gasoline a year.
*The Association of State Dam Safety Officials has found that the number of dams in the United States that could fail has grown 134% since 1999 to 3,346, and more than 1,300 of those are considered "high-hazard" - meaning that their collapse would threaten lives.
*More than a third of all dam failures or near failures since 1874 have happened in just the last decade.
*According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, aging sewer systems spill an estimated 1.26 trillion gallons of untreated sewage every single year, resulting in an estimated 50.6 billion dollars in cleanup costs.
- from the pew research center, as compiled by theeconomiccollapseblog.com
Should we be leaving that for our children? Bridges and dams that are going to collapse on them? Roads inadequate to move people and materiel fast enough to let the economy function? Traffic jams that eat up productivity, time, and yes, lives?
How about a health care system ranked 37th worldwide? Not first, second, or tenth. 37th. Beaten out by Colombia, Denmark, and Costa Rica - just to name a few. Is that what we want to leave our children?
How about a climate that is likely to see rising sea levels, a dramatic increase in unpredictable and violent weather patterns, mass species extinctions, and dangerously reduced air quality? I'm sure they will have no problem dealing with any of that... what with the freedom from bills we are leaving to them.
Shall we leave them a planet with no natural resources, no protected green spaces, no preserved wetlands, no beautiful and exotic animals and plants to explore? Shall we leave them a black sky and brown, toxic oceans? Shall we shred their social safety net, cut their education, gut their public services, shutter their libraries, and sell of their museums so that they can start life not being beholden to no one?
I could go on and on, but the point is obvious. Given the choice between spending money, even copious amounts of it, to fix, or at least ameliorate these problems now, or just pushing them under the rug in the name of "deficit reduction," I'll take the deficits. And given the choice of what to hand my daughter, I'll give her the bill. At least I'll be handing her a world that's worth the price she'll pay for it.