Your Voice

I spent some time talking the other day with a group of four relatively mainstream suburban Connecticut moms. What I mean by mainstream is fiscally conservative, socially progressive (Democrat and Republican) women who understand the important role government plays in our lives, but at the same time, are concerned about what happens to our money when the government gets it. The topic of conversation ….. TAXES, Taxes, taxes!

One woman brought up the book the “Greatest Generation” (most of our grandparents) and how all of society was asked to contribute or sacrifice for the sake of the war. But for us…well?!?! One of the women had a daughter who was learning about WWII and how the country sacrificed at many levels to win the war, she pointedly asked her mother one night, “ Mom, what are we doing to help win the war?” She said, “Well honey, the President told us to go shopping.” We all laughed but then realized this was not that untrue.

In the book, The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman writes about that point. He says, “when we got hit with 9/11, it was a once-in-a-generation opportunity to summon the nation to sacrifice, to address some of the pressing fiscal, energy, science and education shortfalls that we had let slide. But our President did not summon us to sacrifice. He summoned us to go shopping.” The other women in the group had not read the book but they certainly understood.

Government costs associated to the war go up and revenue coming in goes down because of tax cuts. So decisions are being made at the federal level to reconcile some of this by gutting social policy spending whenever possible? The rest of the unreconciled debt will just be left for someone else.

I guess we ended up in a sort of melancholy mood commenting on the future we are allowing to be created for our kids. One friend commented that those in the “greatest generation” would be remembered for their sacrifice and what would we be remembered for, would our generation have a label? “Selfish… Just went shopping!”