Current US fiscal policy places the hardest burden on young people in favor of the older generation and can be branded “fiscal child abuse”, believes professor of economics from Boston University Larry Kotlikoff.
“What we have been doing and other countries have been doing this too, is you keep taking from young people more and more resources and you give them to old people and then you tell the young people: ‘Don’t worry, when you become old you will have your turn to get back what you gave us plus a lot more, because we go after the next generation to pay you’,” he said.
“We are in effect feeding off our children, it is fiscal child abuse and we are doing this through all these different programs – Medicare, Medicaid, social security, borrowing to pay for defense spending. It changes the tax structure – the young have a bigger burden and the older are given tax breaks,” Kotlikoff added.