March 4 (Lifesitenews.com) In a new book, Peter G. Peterson, the chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations and the director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, warns the Boomer generation that the government will not be able to shell out the retirement and health care “insurance” which they have paid for. Peterson, a former secretary of commerce in the U.S., says while many of the Boomers are retiring, there are far too few working taxpayers to. As a result, the “pyramid scheme” approach to government funded social programs risks collapse.
Estimates indicate that the “public-pension entitlements and health-care costs amount to at least $70 trillion in unfunded liabilities for Canada and the other 22 member nations of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development between 1973 and 1993.” Peterson notes that there is no way the respective governments could “tax-and-spend [their] way out of the problem”. The Ottawa Citizen interviewed Peterson and said that “deficit financing would require more loan money than the entire developed world has in savings.”
One of Peterson’s suggestions for getting out of the mess is for governments to encourage “pronatalist” tax policies that promote more births. Pro-life forces are concerned that governments will turn to other measures such as encouraging assisted suicide and euthanasia, especially considering their track record for opposing almost every policy proposal that even appears to be “pro-life.”
Source: The Ottawa Citizen