Blame Boomers or Fat Cats? Debate Rolls from Tyee to Sun and Back

[Editor's note: This is a longer, unedited version of a rebuttal to Paul Kershaw that Donald Gutstein published in the Vancouver Sun earlier this week.]

I wrote a column in The Tyee, "Stoking the false war between generations," which Paul Kershaw alludes to negatively but does not name in his April 12 column for the Sun. I was responding to Kershaw's claim that the generation with young families -- he calls it Generation Squeeze -- is not doing as well as its parents' generation, the Boomers, because of Boomer greed.

This message seems to be appearing frequently in the U.S. American blogger Michelle Malkin, keynote speaker at the first Tea Party rally, coined the term "generational theft" to frame the Obama administration's fiscal stimulus plan. House Republican leader John Boehner, Arizona Senator John McCain and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin all used it. The Heritage Foundation is even writing a book about it.

In Canada, Quebec Freedom Network co-founder Eric Duhaime recently published a book on a similar topic, the "intergenerational hold-up."

This generational theft theme detracts from an understanding of the larger issue that was so clearly enunciated by the Occupy Wall Street movement: an ever-greater share of income is being appropriated by the one per cent, leaving less for everybody else, whatever their generation.

Kershaw admits that "the richest one per cent of Canadians make 14 per cent of total income." He also admits that "Occupy Wall Street [signals] a growing concern about inequity between the rich and the rest," but his conclusion is wrong. "We can only address these pressures by tackling the intergenerational tension," he claimed in an October Sun column.

Why is this the only way to proceed? Why not tackle inequity head on, by re-installing a progressive tax system in which corporations and individuals are taxed on their ability to pay? Why not re-install strong regulations that protect the environment, consumers and the workplace?

It is here I believe Kershaw's work diverts our attention away from the real issue -- the growing income and wealth gap -- and focuses on a largely fictitious one -- intergenerational tension.

As a result we may end up trying to solve the wrong problems.

Many Boomers are income gap losers, too

The grievances Kershaw touches on -- soaring post-secondary tuition and student debt; soaring housing costs; rampant air, water and land pollution; soaring carbon dioxide emissions -- are real. But these ills have little to do with the alleged activity or neglect of Boomers.

Their roots lie in the 1970s, when the income gap between the rich and the rest was at its lowest level in a century thanks to a vibrant union movement, unemployment insurance, social welfare, a progressive tax system, medicare, environmental regulation, government enterprise and inexpensive post-secondary education.

That's when the business elite decided to end its three-decades-long truce with labour, reassert its control over the economy, and restore its historical fraction of income and wealth. And that's what it has largely achieved 40 years later.

The agenda is well-known: undermine union rights, cut regulation and taxation (at least for the rich), reduce government's role in the economy, cut social spending, impose free-trade deals, offshore good-paying industrial jobs, and offload costs onto the environment.

Who is the One Per Cent?

I commend the Surrey Board of Trade, as Kershaw does, as well as other business groups that realize daycare, decent wages and working conditions make for a more stable work force. And actions such as VanCity's Living Wage for Families for all its employees are needed, as is a taxation base to provide daycare for working families.

But equating the Surrey Board of Trade with the one per cent, as Kershaw does, is a fallacy. To qualify for membership in the one per cent, you need an estimated annual income of at least $220,000. I doubt if many Surrey Board of Trade members make the cut. One percenters are more likely to be found in the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, the CEOs of the 150 largest corporations in Canada, with their multi-million-dollar compensation packages and their unparalleled influence on federal government policy.

Joe Brewer, director of Seattle-based Cognitive Policy Works, warns that creating a generational conflict frame shifts the blame from "the real culprits -- the reckless bankers and their enablers who have infiltrated our government."

Unless we pay attention to his message we face the prospect of the 99 per cent continuing to scramble for our shrinking share of the pie.