The Sorensen Monologues

Thomas Friedman, Please Stop Trying to Help Young People

You know when a Thomas Friedman column is titled “Sorry, Kids. We Ate It All” that it’s going to be bad. This one does not disappoint in its more-centrist-than-thou fearmongering about government spending (way to lend credibility to GOP extortion tactics, dude!). “What are the chances of [young people] getting out of Facebook and into their parents’ faces?” he cleverly ponders, not invoking cliches at all. Among the solutions to mild Social Security shortfalls projected in the distant future he touts:

“…phasing in higher age qualifications for entitlements and cutting corporate taxes to zero, so the people who actually create jobs will have more resources to do so.”

Maybe young people realize deficit spending is not the problem — unemployment is. And health insurance too, which is being remedied by the Affordable Care Act. Maybe some of us even understand that corporations are already barely paying taxes, sitting on enormous piles of cash, and not hiring people. And maybe we don’t want our benefits cut in the name of not cutting our future benefits. Because that’s absurd.