Druckenmiller's campus crusade is based on such preposterous economics that I hereby challenge him to a college debate or series of debates.
Source/Credit: The Huffington Post
By Robert Kuttner | October 20, 2013
America's very rich keep trying to start a movement among college students to blame senior citizens for the sorry state of the economy that kids will inherit. Specifically, the billionaires keep trying to scapegoat Social Security.
This is part of the public relations effort to create a "grand bargain" to cut America's (fast-declining) budget deficit. The Peter G. Peterson Foundation has spent about a billion dollars of Peterson's own money to create faux movements to get students to take up this unlikely cause.
The latest of the billionaires to try this gambit is Stanley Druckenmiller, net worth estimated at $2.9 billion, former head of the hedge fund Duquesne Capital. Druckenmiller's personal campus crusade has been the subject of two fawning profiles, one by Tom Friedman in Wednesday's Times, the other by James Freeman in Saturday's Wall Street Journal.
Druckenmiller's campus crusade is based on such preposterous economics that I hereby challenge him to a college debate or series of debates. Freeman's puff piece in the Journal begins thus:
Stan Druckenmiller makes an unlikely class warrior. He's a member of the 1% -- make that the 0.001% -- one of the most successful money managers of all time, and 60 years old to boot. But lately he has been touring college campuses promoting a message of income redistribution you don't hear out of Washington. It's how federal entitlements like Medicare and Social Security are letting Mr. Druckenmiller's generation rip off all those doting Barack Obama voters in Generation X, Y and Z.
"I have been shocked at the reception. I had planned to only visit Bowdoin, " his alma mater in Maine, he says. But he has since been invited to multiple campuses, and even the kids at Stanford and Berkeley have welcomed his theme of generational theft.
The Tom Friedman column, titled, "Sorry, Kids. We Ate It All.," which I addressed in the American Prospect Thursday, Friedman wrote:
After we baby boomers get done retiring -- at a rate of 7,000 to 11,000 a day -- if current taxes and entitlement promises are not reformed, the cupboard will be largely bare for today's Facebook generation. But what are the chances of them getting out of Facebook and into their parents' faces -- and demanding not only that the wealthy do their part but that the next generation as a whole leaves something for this one? Too bad young people aren't paying attention. Or are they?
Wait! Who is that speaking to crowds of students at Berkeley, Stanford, Brown, U.S.C., Bowdoin, Notre Dame and N.Y.U. -- urging these "future seniors" to start a movement to protect their interests? That's Stan Druckenmiller, the legendary investor...
Where to start? If you itemize all the reasons why recent college graduates face a wretched economy, Social Security doesn't even make the list. What does make the list are unreliable jobs that pay lousy wages, the aftereffects of a financial bubble created on Wall Street, and unaffordable college that leaves graduates starting life with more than a trillion dollars worth of debt.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/stanley-druckenmiller-social-security_b_4133863.html
Read original post here: Billionaires Against Social Security
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I'm sorry, but where's the conscience of these Billionaires? How can they blame America's current state to the elderly? Seriously? They have all the money; can't they solve the economic issue without taking away anyone's monetary support that they duly deserve?
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