"But for those of us who grew up during the long postwar boom, it is easy to forget just how large a role government programs played in the spread of mass prosperity -- starting with the New Deal and including, crucially Social Security, the Federal Housing Administration's home loan programs, the G.I. Bill, the antipoverty programs of the 1960s (particularly Medicare and Medicaid), the industrial subsidies and jobs programs (though they were not called that) of the immense Cold War military buildup (including construction of the interstate highway system), and, above all, wave after wave of massive investment in public education. It is easy to forget because, having reaped the benefits of all this public investment, my generation (and our parents') decided at some point that paying taxes on our hard-earned incomes had become an undue burden, was almost un-American, and a Reagan-style amnesia because convenient to all the tax-cutting and privatization that followed."
On a side note, that article mentioned the recent "Time" magazine story about parents indulging their children in material goods. It reminded me of a book I read recently called "Affluenza." Both the "Time" story and the book are insipid; both are examples of baby- boomer self-criticism which amount to very little.
-- David