The Next American Civil War . . .

Wednesday, January 7

The editorial page of the January 5, 2009 Wall Street Journal notes that

"Barack Obama will soon request an economic stimulus package of some $775 billion over a mere two years and optimistically hopes to hold the final figure under $1 trillion."

But the biggest threat to future generations of taxpayers, according to the Journal, is

". . . the unfunded liability of Medicare, which is $36 trillion over the next 75 years, give or take a few trillion."

All these expenses will add up to an unprecedented national debt, the cost of which will be born by our children and grandchildren.

The entitlements of Baby Boomers represent a demographic "pig in the python", which when swallowed whole, may choke the economy of the mid 21st century.

The problem will kick in when 90 million Baby Boomers (born 1946 to 1963) reach the age at which they're eligible for Social Security and Medicare. That time is upon us.

In a dangerous confluence, life-saving innovations promise to extend life for Baby Boomers to an unimagined extent. Today, already, Boomers are burdened with caring for THEIR parents whose life expectancy now reaches well into their 90's--many of my patients in their 60's and 70's tell me they are stressed by care demands for their elderly, incapacitated parents, and this is with present medical technology that will be vastly superseded in cost and efficacy by imminent medical breakthroughs.

I'm talking about impending designer drugs that will cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars per year--medicines harnessing breakthroughs in molecular biology to halt heart disease, cancer, and autoimmune diseases. We see their prototypes in Avastin, Remicade, and Humira.

Additionally, stem cell therapies will offer the promise of organ regeneration to halt many of today's life-limiting scourges. We will have technologies to regenerate livers, kidneys, coronary arteries, spinal cords, perhaps even brains. But they will be VERY costly.

And finally, new breakthroughs will offer replacement body parts using nanotechnology and futuristic electronics. To routine knee and hip replacement, we will add eyes, ears, and even implantable electrodes to quell pain and modulate mood.

We have just seen a sea-change in American politics, where a liberal coalition of progressive young people, frustrated working class Americans, and the poor and minorities joined with Boomers politicized during the Vietnam era to usher in a new administration.

Conservatism and the Republican Party seem in disarray as the Obama era begins.

As country club conservatives, values voters, and national security hawks dwindle in numbers, what hope is there for a counter-force to emerge to oppose the progressive juggernaut of big government and tax-and-spend stimulus? Republicans can no longer muster a winning coalition with anti-immigrant slogans, fear-mongering about terrorism, or calls for "traditional marriage" and the "sanctity of life."

A few weeks ago, I came up with a theory--the new hope for a Republican resurgence.

I thought it was pretty original. Here it is:

As Boomers earn less, and become an aging majority, they will relax into their golden years of government entitlements: Social Security, Medicare, and tax benefits favoring the retired. Via monolithic organizations like AARP, they will lobby effectively for preservation of their prerogatives, supporting Democratic candidates. As America's multi-trillion dollar national debt spirals, the tax burden will be disproportionately passed along to succeeding generations--young people who currently are the left-leaning mainstay of progressive politics.

Here's where it will get interesting. These young stalwarts of Big Government will suddenly get hit with crippling taxes: Federal, State, local, payroll, sales, inheritance and capital gains. They will be groaning under the burden of subsidizing extraordinary life support measures for Baby Boomers who will seem like they are NEVER GOING TO DIE! While Boomers sit comfortably in retirement communities recovering from amazing joint reconstruction surgeries, listening to their favorite Classic Rock stations, their grandchildren and great grandchildren will be toiling to support their crushing medical debts!

What happens next is like a scene out of George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead." Enraged young people will turn against seniors and hunt them down, hoping to restore demographic balance in America's Next Civil War!

A little far-fetched? It turns out that great minds think alike. In a startling instance of synchronicity (simultaneous discovery, as in the creation of the same new idea at disconnected places by two persons at approximately the same time), someone coincidentally recommended a book to me called "Boomsday," written in 2007 by Chris Buckley, the son of the late William F. Buckley, Jr.

In "Boomsday," riots break out across America as disgruntled young people descend on retirement communities to decry their tax enslavement. One protestor proclaims: "My generation, in the spring of our lives, is forking over half our paychecks to pay for your meds and martinis." And, I might add, Viagra.

OK, civil war may be hyperbole. But as the basis for a counter-movement in American politics to apply a correction to the current bail-out mania, just wait and see. America's Boomer crisis is roiling, and our addiction to high-tech medicine is placing us on a collision course with disaster. Some painful decisions about our priorities lie ahead--we can't have it all. Who will live, who will die, and, crucially, who will PAY?