I'm Not Picking Up The Tab, You People Are

Tom Friedman apparently thinks the middle class shrinking is a really good idea, so much so that he declares today that Serious Village Centrists like himself think it's a great idea if you unwashed masses start getting used to Republicans and ConservaDems taking things away from you, because that's what's coming once we get rid of Obama.

Yes, sir, we’ve just had our 70 fat years in America, thanks to the Greatest Generation and the bounty of freedom and prosperity they built for us. And in these past 70 years, leadership — whether of the country, a university, a company, a state, a charity, or a township — has largely been about giving things away, building things from scratch, lowering taxes or making grants.

But now it feels as if we are entering a new era, “where the great task of government and of leadership is going to be about taking things away from people,” said the Johns Hopkins University foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum.

Indeed, to lead now is to trim, to fire or to downsize services, programs or personnel. We’ve gone from the age of government handouts to the age of citizen givebacks, from the age of companions fly free to the age of paying for each bag.

Let’s just hope our lean years will only number seven. That will depend a lot on us and whether we rise to the economic challenges of this moment. Our parents truly were the Greatest Generation. We, alas, in too many ways, have been what the writer Kurt Andersen called “The Grasshopper Generation,” eating through the prosperity that was bequeathed us like hungry locusts. Now we and our kids together need to be “The Regeneration” — the generation that renews, refreshes, re-energizes and rebuilds America for the 21st century.

We have a lot of work to do.  And by "we", Tom Friedman means "you middle class schmucks making less than six figures a year."  And by "work" he means "you have the next 30 years of Baby Boomer Social Security and Medicare to pay for, so get crackin."