Outside the Box

The Clash of Generations

John Mauldin

May 15, 2012

There are plenty of books about the entitlement disaster in our future, but few come with the backing of an academic press. The Clash of Generations is an exception. Written by economist Larry Kotlikoff, one of the creators of generational accounting, and my good friend of long standing, Scott Burns, Clash shows what current policies have already done to young people, tells stories about how both parties have allowed it to happen, and offers actual policy solutions – for banking, taxes, healthcare, and Social Security.

But it's way more than a "policy book." It also tells us what we can do to protect ourselves if the politicians fail.

Nobel Laureate George Akerlof writes that the book "is so well written that Scott Burns and Laurence Kotlikoff should be considered the Stieg Larssons of economics." For today's Outside the Box, I asked Scott to give us some excerpts from the book, with an emphasis on policy matters rather than personal investing. This is a book you will want to read, and I hope our policy makers read it as well, to get a clue about the impending crisis, should they fail to take action. Will you like all of their solutions? I can guarantee you won't, as they will gore a lot of sacred oxen; but then any real set of solutions will. We have gone far past the point where there were easy solutions.

You can get the book at http://www.amazon.com/clash. And while you're at it, you should get a copy of my new book, The Little Book of Bull's Eye Investing. It is getting a lot of great reviews, and I am pleased with the response so far.

I am in Stamford, Connecticut tonight, where I will speak tomorrow morning at a private conference for Pitney-Bowes. They have brought in a rather solid line-up of speakers, trying to get a peek into the future so they set an effective business strategy. I am looking forward to listening and learning as much as I can.

Right now I am off to dinner with the other speakers, so it should be a fun evening with lots of interesting conversation, which I really enjoy. Wednesday and Thursday I am in NYC, with a lot of media appearances and interviews and a few meetings and speeches worked in here and there. It will be a very busy schedule, especially since I am trying to keep up with my reading and work on my own next book. Have a great week!

Your wondering how we solve the entitlement crisis analyst,

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box

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The Clash of Generations

By Laurence Kotlikoff and Scott Burns

Prologue: The Last Straw

The day was coming—for years, decades, really.

Warnings had been sounded, loud, clear, and often.

Most heard, few listened. The problem was distant, its size unclear.

"No worries. We'll fix it. The next election, the next party, the next leader."

There was time.

There wasn't.

The contract was simple: 100,000 barrels of oil, delivered to this country, at this port, on…

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Comments

Alan Coffey

June 22, 2012, 1:48 p.m.

John, H&M has joined “a lot of our rivals” in paying for clothing in yuan.  How many more straws can this camel carry?
http://www.swedishwire.com/business/14187-ham-says-hello-to-yuan-and-bye-to-dollar

Earl Richards

May 16, 2012, 4:10 p.m.

I enjoyed the article about the book, well most of it. I can’t get around the statement made, “you
know the maldistribution of income has gone too far”. WOW, really? Sounds like just another socialist
trying to create a heaven on earth. Let’s have a short review of what this country was founded on, mainly equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. I suppose the authors would like to raise the tax on the super rich to 90%. Whatever, they lost a boat load of credibility with that statement. Just in case you think I’m a self interested rich guy, I’m a plumber who believes the rich shouldn’t pay anymore tax than anyone else. In fact, if you read the Constitution you will find that there is not supposed to be any kind of a direct tax on the people or their incomes. Try this, actually read and follow the Constitution like we used to do before 1913 and see how things work out. It worked before and it can work again. Those that say it can’t or won’t are either ignorant or have something to gain from a welfare state, which today is a whole lot more than you might imagine. Sorry for the rant but redistribution comments like that set me off. It’s such B.S. and I didn’t expect to find crap like that in one of John’s e-mails. The fact is that if there is a free lunch, and we know there is a whole bunch of them, then somebody is paying for it. That somebody is the young generation and I hope they get their act together fast and start voting accordingly. There are so many quotes I could end with from Thomas Jefferson that if we had listened to would have prevented the current state of the union but I have chosen this one, ““In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” The biggest Constitutional offense of course is our money. Take away the legalized theft by bankers and most of our problems would fix themselves.

Winston Adams

May 15, 2012, 9:32 p.m.

Whenever the first libraries full of well over a hundred thousand cuneiform clay tablets—whose written language (the first known, and some think predecessor to the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians) that probably began its incubation circa 3,000 BC were discovered in the Mesopotamian city-states of the Sumerian people by the rising Semitic power that would become known as Babylonia, it made the headlines of whatever papers were internationally recognized at the time.  However, in spite of the Sumerian breakthrough in written language and the requisite urban technologies of the day that enabled hunters and gathers to become farmers and urbanized peoples that launched the impressive stream of the ancient and remarkably revolutionary efforts which produced the Seven Wonders of the World, no civilization in recorded history has yet stood the test of time or withstood the pressures of being a â??greatâ? civilization.  All have passed and gone the way of historically renowned civilizations, like those of the Greeks and Romans.  As already mentioned, a much earlier epoch spawned the Sumerian culture, predecessor to the Semitic confluence of the Babylonian and Assyrian empires.  Taken together, while they lasted several millennia longer than those of the Greeks and Romans,  still they crumbled under the strain of prosperity, advanced technology and socio-political liabilities that couldnâ??t keep pace with competing interests among neighboring populations. 

While neglected in the stream of history, to state the obvious with respect to that one enduring and everlasting civilization it seems all cultures strive for, it has long been accepted as true that those cultures which refuse to understand and heed the lessons of history are doomed to repeat its mistakes.  But, just because as yet there is no civilization that has achieved the unwritten goal of establishing an everlasting socio-political order is it proper to assume either that there never will be one or that the one in which we currently live is the one that will stand the test of time and become the continuing heritage of all generations to come? 

As a practical matter, most reasonable people would agree that every culture making up a civilization lives and builds its social edifices as if, in principle, they would last indefinitely.  In every advanced civilization, for instance, institutions of higher learning (or knowledge) have always existed.  Certainly, when university systems are built today we may not expect, as the Egyptians did when they created their pyramids, that the same bricks and mortar used to enclose our modern classrooms will be carrying on that function two millennia from now, nevertheless, in every way we act on the belief that some institutional form of higher education will be around for as long as our civilization exists, even if we donâ??t think about it that way on a conscious basis. 

At the same time, in spite of the fact that no civilization has withstood the test of time and today can say that it is their worldview which overshadows and directly influences the affairs of peoples everywhere, the board of regents for these institutions never directs the affairs of higher education as if there is some reasonable shelf life around which all of their resource planning and objectives should take place.  Regardless of the lessons of history, and properly so, we conceive and build our institutional edifices as if they will never fail.  And yet, there is no historical evidence to suggest that we should plan on our aspirations and their designs lasting more than a few hundred to a thousand years (if we think in terms of the Greeks or Romans).  In fact, by the current standards of the rate of change in our digital world, which are vastly more accelerated than they have been at any time in history, logic would dictate that to be truly good stewards of our resources we should probably build our institutions with the idea in mind that their entire form-function should be reevaluated and translated in a matter of a few decades.  But why is it in every historical age that mankind persists to build the affairs of state and greatness around the seemingly impossible dream of a kind of civilized immortality? 

To some extent, we must acknowledge those who would argue that dictators, or politicians and bureaucrats who act like them, are to blame.  Ultimately, however, that contention falls back on the individual—the people who in the collective of society individually continue to accept or in the case of a free people reelect such a political hierarchy.  In which case, the question still remains a metaphysical one:  beyond pride, as if the product of our chief labors in life are imperishable, what in the heart of mankind directs this persistent urge to build beyond what experience teaches is true to form? 

The Judeo-Christian, religious explanation is that in creating man in His image God has in the nature of man implanted an innate drive to conquer and have an everlasting dominion over Godâ??s creation in His name.  In the Old Testament or Jewish Covenant, as it does in the Newer Testamental or Church age Covenant, this meant that the chief task of mankind was to prepare, â??dressâ? or â??cultivateâ?  all of creation or every spectrum of life for the coming earthly kingdom of God that would eventuate in the new heavens and new earth .  It is that kingdom and the glory it brings to Him which is the guiding purpose, intent or end behind every act of creation that has come into being, and apart from that desire God has no other concern or desire.  If then, as today science claims, its impetus is to better understand the universe in order to better understand manâ??s purpose and place therein, to attempt to derive the purpose of mankind apart from its life giving roots in the image of God, with all of its implications, is worse than folly, it is futile and is an illusion based on a lie, or suppression or denial of the truth .

If carefully traced, however, it can be demonstrated that regardless of the conquering intent and warlike power of outside opposition or invading forces every great civilization has actually fallen due more to unarmed insurgencies of culture from within than from menacing external aggression.  Of course, the symptomatic tracers of these cultural defects are predictable to the careful student of history.  But, in real-time they arenâ??t obvious to the common man, until the stakes are raised and it is too late.  Then, they are recognized as unseen fault lines running throughout the greatest institutions of law, education and politics that are the necessary pillars of a growing and powerful collective of expanding, populations, territories and strategic global interests.  Deemed necessary to manage progress and the realities of becoming a world power and a nation to be reckoned with, by then the centralization of power has become a holy obligation of the politician and seems irreversible.  Besides, who can fight city hall, really, has always been a part of the bigger is better mentality of nation building.  Literally thousands of years later, with experience and reason as our tutor, we can see that repeatedly similar outcomes, namely the end of a civilization and its age, are a harbinger of systemic instabilities that are the natural result of ineffectual concepts of government which appear endemic to mankind and the scope of the challenge of growth and endurance.  So where is the problem specifically, and is its scope insurmountable?

There are those, like the famous Christian philosopher, Francis Schaeffer, PhD, who attributed real points in time, like the Enlightenment and the growth of Humanism, with their corrupted theological and philosophical assumptions and conclusions, as the primary movers in the convergence of these cultural fault lines that are resulting in the disintegration of the latest, most advanced and currently reigning â??greatest civilization in recorded historyâ?—that of Western Civilization.  This author, for the most part, has no argument with Schaeffer, with the symptomatic realities he points to or with the analysis of the specific theological or philosophical fallacies of Humanism he has written about.  In fact, he is absolutely correct when he says that Western Civilization, as evidenced by â??Northern European culture, including the United States,â? suffers from the collision of â??two world views.â?  One view, he alleges, â??was at least Christian (Judeo-Christian) in memory, even if the individuals were not individually Christian.â?  Each view (Judeo-Christian and Humanism), he properly observes, â??Stand as totals in complete antithesis to each other in content and also in their natural results â?? including sociological and governmental results, and specifically including law.â? 

Where this author differs with Dr. Schaeffer and with many other observers is not so much in symptomatic descriptions and their analysis but in assigning the proper emphasis and quality to the most endemic and fundamental, architectural problem, its origin and results, its commonality and ubiquity in every culture so far known to mankind—even those of early Judaism and early Christianity—and, ultimately (outside of sin, the lowest common denominator among men), why it is so persistent.  In other words, in Schaefferâ??s analysis, while the Christian has duties and responsibilities, its weakness is with the rank and file Christian.  Here a lack of simple human understanding, philosophical and theological doctrine is unjustly weighted toward excuses explaining why the system is defective, not why the individual is and has been defective and, therefore, stands to be blamed.  Of course, in one very real sense, it is the worldview that is defective.  But in a much more important sense, the worldview (theological-philosophical perspective concerning how we should live) is fundamentally flawed not so much by the symptomatic evidences that logically show up as â??natural results,â? and specifically in the institutions of society everywhere, but by the fact that the consummating end of all creation, Godâ??s design and His nature are either radically misunderstood or dismissed as irrelevant, culturally, yes, but beginning with the individual first and foremost.  Herein, at the deepest level, lies the problem.

In fact, according to the Biblical account of history, this has been misunderstood from the time of Adamâ??s expulsion from the Garden of Eden where he would have enjoyed free access to the Tree of Life.  As a result, not only in principle but, more importantly, in practice—just as Dr. Schaeffer and many others have pointed out, either directly or indirectly—the postmodern state of Western Civilization suffers from a conflicting form of agnostic polytheism.  As important as that realization is in the diagnostic process, it is not the problem but symptomatic of the problem.  More importantly, understanding the end purpose in creation is the key to reclaiming the virtues and self-policing benefits of true knowledge. 

In postmodern Christianity (as is also evident in other forms in Judaism) we have failed to understand the telos of God.  In place of His plans for His own glory in His own kingdom, being full of His own chosen subjects, that is to reign in the new heavens and new earth, based upon a false concept of God, we have become idolaters by conjuring a false conception of the nature of man and his proper place in the creation scheme.  To his credit, Dr. Schaeffer sees all of these failures but does not arrive at the pivotal conclusion that the game changing problem and solution centers on reordering life around the earthly kingdom mandate that is Godâ??s eternal concern.  Consequently, in failing to clearly draw this distinction, we have failed to apply the simplest standard (that of ultimate purpose) to every sphere of life—first, to ourselves and family and, second, to every arena of society which governs how our culture develops and to which, individually and collectively, we have any moral exposure and responsibility.  In a sense, we have become like assembly line ship builders.  Everyone is very good at building their life around something that looks like a part, but no one has the final blueprint and none of the parts fit together, so that finally nothing that resembles a seaworthy vessel is produced.  To make matters worse, among those who profess to care, they have reduced lifeâ??s journey to some kind of vague spiritual intuition that allows them to do whatever it is that they do with only a pretext of concern that at the end of the day, when all of the work of mankind is tested for dross and chaff , what remains will be a seaworthy vessel, with all of their misdirected work fully in place.  Since it is harder to identify the causal role of mankind in civilization than it is to perceive an overt attack on the plan of God, all of the busy work of great civilized progress and personal success or happiness makes finding and enacting real long term solutions more elusive.

As important as reform certainly is, lasting solutions must begin where the deepest problem lies.  This is not in institutional reform but in the reform of the individual who must remake every important aspect of his life and way of thinking (world view) by asking the simple question:  â??What is the end goal of the creation of mankind?â?  Of course, we really do know that individually we are the problem, but working on the self is always a means of last resort, especially among the people who possess the pride and challenges of a rapidly advancing civilization.  Having inherited the mantel of world leadership, we need someone to remind us in terms we are not likely to forget that the natural pressures of organization and franchising (so to speak) a society for the responsible position of being the most prosperous and advanced civilization on earth and, at the same time, the most enduring, takes it s toll on the individual.  The â??natural resultâ? (as Schaeffer puts it) is an inevitable assault on the plan of God.  In terms of becoming and remaining a great civilization, more intractable is the interrelated disintegration of the nature of man himself. 

Despite all of manâ??s energy to the contrary, the plan of God in its telos is indissoluble in creation. Therefore, whether acknowledged or not, its tension has been and will be present in every age.  The disintegration of the nature of man, however, is another matter.  As the evidence suggests, the benevolent teacher, history, points to the Scriptural conclusion that not all people are made to respect the plan of God; nor is the plan meant to enrapture the attention of all people, as it is intended to do among the truly redeemed.  Just because, however, not all are intended to respect the plan of God, this is not to be confused with the fact that all are held accountable for any lack of respect.  And, herein lays the power of example.  For all but the most recalcitrant, the majority example of upright individuals within the social flux of a culture, and the threat of a kind of social excommunication by being the extremist or odd-man out, will, in spite of himself, capture a conformity and self-restraint from within the natural man.  This socially cohesive effect springs from the intent of the Judeo-Christian ethos, which is based upon the spiritual authority of Mosaic Law and, when held in the majority opinion, acts as the single largest contributor to the preservative nature of an active living code of conduct measured according to the supernatural dictates of divine legislation. 

However, when the individual allows himself to be overwhelmed by the contrary norms of â??conventional wisdom,â? he has disparaged and discredited the image of God in man.  For a Christian this is sin.  The redeemed are to be the social preservative of any culture, to the extent they lose their saltiness, or the socially preservational measure of their sanctified thinking and way of life, to that degree they deny God and the powers of redemption and His Spirit.  As it has happened now among professing Christians, when enough of them practically deny the image of God in man the culture loses its self-curative effect, and with the loss of its almost magnetic social control, it disintegrates and is good for nothing except to be trampled underfoot by the so-called wisdom of political correctness , falling, eventually, to outside aggressors.

Signs of creeping permissiveness sweeping through a culture should be an individual warning of inherent danger.  Because, when the individual loses or never has a grip on the true purpose of life and his place in society and fails to apply it to his life practices, he is actually attacking his very nature and, by these acts, is committing a kind of personal hari kari.  Likewise, aided by mounting cycles of random political correctness and relative meaninglessness with respect to the aims of an ultimate purpose, when a majority of individuals in a culture become similarly impaired, the collective damage to the nature of man ends in a type of social genocide.  Thus, the individual through his lack of personal responsibility has a negative impact on society at large and faces a kind of double indemnity.  First, he loses himself and his immediate family to the insatiable appetite of an overreaching gaggle of intrusive government sanctions, second, joined by others his lack of responsibility has directly or indirectly influenced, a kind of synergy of the collective forces of society sweeps back through his spheres of influence and with a force greater than the sum of its parts his intended position and authority in the world around him is further undermined.  In Schaeffer terms, this is the natural result; but, in a culture, it is the end of an age and the dawn of a new one, which for Western Civilization is an unwelcomed outcome. 

Worse still is the eventuating Cultural Death Spiral, or the fact that the morally dead beget ethically dead children and a comatose heritage.  Christ taught such a stern principle two thousand years ago to his newly found disciples in Matthew 8:22 when he said to a follower, who wanted enough time to bury his father before setting out with his new teacher to warn the nation of Israel, â??Follow me, let the dead bury their own dead.â?  The lesson is obvious; to follow Christ is to have a singularity of end purpose.  Such a purpose makes no allowance for wistful looks over oneâ??s shoulder to manmade traditions and comforts of a past Sodom and Gomorrah in place of the consuming passions of the truth, which is the brightness of a certain and final future hope.

If, as logic demands, the plan of God is irrefutable, with each passing generation that gets further from the truth the only alternative to an actual self-imposed reformation must involve a sweeping condemnation and cataclysmic social shock.  Of course, that means there must always be a remnant around of those who like Noah are ridiculed for not acquiescing to the temporal wisdom of the day.  But what respectable parent wants to bequeath that kind of future to their children?  Yet, we continue marching on as if with blinders on, and, in increasing measure, leaving undone all the duties and requirements of being made in the image of God to be His ambassadors on earth and the subjects of His kingdom.  By denying the Divine Purpose in creation, man denies himself and the eternal distinctions that separate him from everything else in nature.

Bruce Ball

May 15, 2012, 5:51 p.m.

Unfortunately, I don’t see any cure for this other than collapse. Politicians have one goal…re-election. They avoid making tough decisions by forming commissions and then ignoring the recommendations. When we wanted to attempt to contain spending we formed the ‘deficit reduction committee” who could not come to a decision and thus we were handed the previously agreed to cuts which it would seem are now to be voted against and thus turn themselves into heroes for saving SS or Medicare or whatever.
The result is the same. Nothing happens. If you want to know what is going to happen just look at Europe. They are 5 years ahead of us. It is a tragedy that we will be destroyed by a lack of courage. Something that this country was famous for. It is now the country of self interest. Political courage is non-existent.

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