By Mark Staples
Montana Tavern Assocation
Legal and Government Affairs Counsel
My parents' generation is often justly heralded for surviving the Great Depression and winning World War II (even though it was actually their parents' generation that led that successful fight).
They're also lauded for the post-war tooling of an American industrial economy that cranked in high gear for half a century, giving rise to the sprawling U.S. "middle" class.
However, in my opinion, the smartest thing they did for themselves, for which they've never been sufficiently credited, was "get after it" in terms of having babies.
Some say this fecundity wasn't purposeful, rather, just the absence of pharmaceutical birth control means. My dad attributed the large broods--six children was the average in my hometown of Butte--to the fact that the Catholic Church-prescribed "rhythm method" (of "natural" contraception) was "fine in theory" but it was "so damn hard to find a band at one in morning."
My mom counters that the large families were more likely because "remote TV controls didn't yet exist."
Whatever the cause, the result was large litters, known collectively as "the Baby Boom."
In this "go forth and multiply" facet of their salad days, our parents guaranteed themselves many sleepless nights, but also a secure retirement.
In doing what came naturally--apparently over and over--they ensured that they one day would have a wealth of consumers for their wares, ample assistance for their golden age needs, and multiple back-up offers for their homes, which because of an abundance of young buyers, would appreciate many times over in their ownership span.
In contrast, what did our so-called "progressive" generation do?
We had a whopping average of 1.8 children per family, engendering for us, yes, much freer and more flexible "lifestyles," but also assuring a shortage of workers for our businesses as well as folks to one day sell those businesses and our homes to, a scarcity of taxpayers to repay us on our prepaid (Social Security) retirements, and not nearly enough souls to actually physically care for us in our dotage.
My, aren't we the enlightened ones?
It's a good thing that we have all read over the decades, best-sellers on what will soon be a pressing topic for us. All together now, can you say "Self-help"? Or maybe just "help!" as in, "where do we find any?"
Recently, President Bush's (and Sen. Ted Kennedy's) immigration reform legislation fell victim to bi-partisan strangulation My sense is they'll never get such a bill passed as long as it has "amnesty" for illegals prominently featured.
However, the immigration conundrum is a pressing one, which like Social Security, will not go away, and will before long, if not resolved, turn from problematical to disastrous. And both phenomena, the looming insolvency of the Social Security system and the growing scarcity of American workers, stem at least in part from the same dearth of boomer offspring.
Meanwhile, our massive population bulge is lumbering into what will likely be multiple decades of retirement. (The good news is we're going to live longer; the bad news is also--for our kids' and grandkids' solvency--that we're going to live longer).
In the face of this spectre, which is already manifesting itself in worker shortages even in Montana, how can we not take a serious and open-minded look at the necessity of importing (yes, that nasty word) some productive population?
I, too, believe the Bush immigration reform proposal was flawed and unworkable in fundamental (not to mention political) ways.
Nevertheless, for the sake of my own not so "enlightened" generation--not to mention American societal sustenance as a whole--it's a subject upon which we need to concentrate our brightest minds and whatever objectivity actually remains in today's polarized national policy deliberations.
Either that, or boomers need to prepare for their remaining decades to be ones in which retirement, Social Security checks, repairmen, waiters, bartenders, bus drivers, doctors, nurses, or even a bedpan...may just never come.
Source: The Montana Tavern Times, August, 2007, published monthly by Continental Communications, 125 W. Granite St., Suite 102, Butte, MT 59701.