Changing Demography and Your Future

My youngest daughter and I were driving together a couple of days ago when out of the clear blue she asked me why we were in Iraq. And she said it just like that: “Why are we in Iraq?” It took me aback for a moment. My daughter is twelve. For me it was as if she crossed some kind of line between kid and adult. I was very pleased. I looked at her and said “Do you really want to know?” She looked at me incredulously and said “That’s why I asked.” I asked her what answer she wanted. Did she want the conventional wisdom answer or the real answer? This puzzled her. “There are two answers?” she said. “There are probably forty-two answers.” I said. “But let me tell you the two that I know.”

Our president states that we attacked Iraq militarily to prevent a corrupt unstable leader from using his Weapons of Mass Destruction against his enemies, presumably including The United States, Israel and Europe. Saddam Hussein had after all used poison gas on his own people and now it was determined by our own intelligence that he had or was close to having nuclear weapons. We were shown the footage over and over again of innocent Kurd victims including the unmistakable corpses of women and very young children. And as if that was not enough reason to kill Saddam Hussein we linked him to terrorism and 911 for good measure. As a nation we were convinced that we should take this guy out. Furthermore the people of Iraq would embrace us once this was accomplished because they, like us, just wanted to be free to govern themselves with a Democratic system that we would help them put in place. It was simple and more importantly, it was right. It sounded good. The problem is it is smoke and mirrors.

I always ask people if they know the Golden Rule. Most say “yes” and I get a variation of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” I tell them that is not the Golden Rule I was thinking of. The one I am thinking of states “He who has the gold, rules.” If you want the answer to a big picture “why” question that involves governments and even big industry just look for the money and you will find out who is calling the shots. It is no secret that George W. Bush was put in office by George Shultz and oil money, big Texas oil money. Is it any mystery to us that Iraq is about oil? We don’t even need to cloud the issues with numbers. Where is most of the world’s oil? The Middle East. Are the world economies dependant on oil? Yes. If you mess with the oil flow coming out of the Middle East you risk world economic chaos. Saddam Hussein had the capacity to do just that. He was a loose cannon. We simply could not allow that threat to continue. So we attacked Iraq and pretended that it was “mission accomplished” after a few days. Anyone with half a brain knew that the United States would be mired in Iraq for a very long time, but that is ok because we have no intention of leaving. We never planned to leave. We can’t leave, not in the foreseeable future. And if you think that our intelligence didn’t forecast this I have a bridge I’d like to sell you. The only way we can stabilize this volatile region is military might. On sight. If you don’t think we are in this for the long term take a look at the embassy we are building on the Tigres River in Baghdad. It is a self contained one hundred and four acre fortress that will be as big as the Vatican and cost in excess of one billion dollars. Can you just imagine the technology inside? It will serve as the command post for our presence in the middle east.

I am sure there are some of you wondering what all this has to do with demographics. This is a blog about demographics after all. Well, here it is. The United States has been having babies, over four million a year for almost twenty years with more to come. This is Generation Y. Generation Y is now the largest generation in the history of the United States, bigger than the Baby Boomers. Large populations like Generation Y that follow small populations like Generation X through the time continuum face unique challenges especially when it comes to employment. Generation X cannot exit enough jobs as they age and move up the ladder to satisfy the job needs of Generation Y. The net is very high unemployment at the entry level. Generation Y at this writing is 22 years old and under, peaked at age 17. Simply stated, we are going to have a lot of young men without work. That’s the bad news. What’s the good news? The military will have all the young men they need to wage war starting now and until further notice. In addition the largest part of the Baby Boomer Generation, those born 1957 to 1961 are at the peak of their earning ability so the feds are flush with income tax dollars. There is no such thing as a bargin war and this one is no exception. So I guess you might say that if the United States was going to pick a time to stabilize the Middle East, especially Iran, it would be right now. I don’t believe any of this is a coincidence.

I picked up the paper last Monday and read the headline “Greenspan: Iraq War Was A Necessity”. A pull quote next to his photo stated “I have never heard Bush and Cheney basically say ‘We’ve got to protect the oil supplies of the world,’ but that would have been my motive.”

I like Alan Greenspan.