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Just caught a bit of John F’n Kerry on Meet the Press. He started in on the typical politician siren song, about some hard luck guy he met in Waterloo, who’s wife was handicapped, who is 49 years old, unemployed, blah blah blah blah blah.

Why the fuck do politicians think that people are impressed with their ability to recite the statistics of these hard luck stories to us on camera?

Do they really believe that in hearing these stories, that the people will think that this guy’s life is indicative of the state of the country as a whole? That would be the fallacy of composition that these politicians expect us to commit. Do they really expect to get elected on the basis of voters falling for silly logical fallacies?

Here’s the deal. Even in the biggest economic boom in the history of humanity, it is possible, indeed not that hard even, to find somebody who’s down on their luck. There are always people whose lives are fucked up. It’s sad, but inevitable. But the ability to recite the particulars of one person’s story does not qualify one to be president. Nor does the story necessarily mean anything about the economy as a whole. Boy, is Kerry a fuckhead.

Here’s a story he could have told, had he been offering a solution to it somewhere in his position papers, which as far as I can see, he isn’t. There’s an entire generation out there, better known as Generation X, who graduated from high school and college into a recession. There are about 47 million Americans counted in that generation. After graduation, they moved largely into the tech sector which after a brief run-up was abruptly squashed by the Fed’s tightening of the money supply and congressional lethargy in unraveling telecommunications regulations in a timely or meaningful way. Now, while the economy is generally improving, the tech sector remains depressed, and an entire generation of Americans is left trying to figure out how to retool their careers having had the rug pulled out from under them just as they were getting their lives going. So tell me Senator, what are you going to do for them?

Let’s go further. There’s a much bigger generation that preceded Generation X, known as the Baby Boomer generation. They outnumber Generation X, and their social security burden is nowhere as high as Generation X’s will be. Consider the following:

• In 1940, the ratio of people working (and supporting the system) to people receiving benefits under Social Security was 42 to 1.

• By 1960, that ratio was 5 workers for every recipient.
• By 2000, it had dropped to 3 to 1.
• By the year 2044, it is projected to be as low as 2 to 1.

This is not sustainable. Throughout the majority of the Boomer’s life, the social security tax was only 6.5% of their income. Generation X, by contrast, has paid 12.4% their entire lives, and will likely face higher rates in the future. This, from a generation that had the economic rug pulled out from under them at the pivotal moment in their careers, in their mid-thirties. What the fuck are you going to do about Social Security, huh Senator?

Or how about this? Housing prices have gone through the roof in the past thirty years. Part of this was due to the inflation in the 1970′s, which I might add managed to forgive the fixed rate mortgages of all the boomers who owned houses during that period. With debts forgiven by inflation and a newly valued house in their possession, many went out and upgraded their homes, leading to a real estate boom in the 1980′s. Then, in the 1990′s, with the increasing cost of schools and the the desire to prevent “overcrowding” and maintain “open spaces” and preserve “wetlands”, thousands of acres were placed off limits to new construction, causing the housing prices especially in Massachusetts where both the Senator and I live, to skyrocket. By way of anecdotal example, which I know the Senator loves, the house in Waltham that my parents purchased in 1978 for about $140k would now go on the market for roughly $700k, judging by the prices of homes for sale in the vicinity (they sold the house in 1987 for about $350k, for reference). So housing prices have increased by about 500% in the past 25 years. During a time when (even including inflation) salaries haven’t gone up nearly that much, when Social Security taxes (which are regressive, by the way) have nearly doubled, the cost of housing has risen 5 times. When you consider that the public schools have gotten significantly worse during that time, it’s no wonder that Generation X is having children later than their parents, if at all. Between the increased taxes, cost of housing, and cost of schooling (which in order to be done properly must be paid for twice, once to the government and again to a private school to get the job done right) it’s becoming prohibitively expensive to do the things that the Boomer generation did when they were still in their twenties. So what are you going to do about that, Senator? Or are you only concerned with 49 year olds?

Senator Kerry is typical of his Boomer generation. Typical lefty who couldn’t give a shit about anything unless it involves Viet Nam or Richard Nixon. And while there are real problems that are truly distressing an entire generation of people, John Kerry is concerned with using individual hard luck cases whose conditions are ideally suited to be solved by private charity to dig deeper into the pockets of those whose careers are largely still ahead of them. Well fuck you John Kerry. I can’t wait to watch you lose to a primary challenger in your Senate election in 2008. You already wreak of the stench of defeat, and not a single vote has been cast yet. Peeyoo!

Step aside and make room for someone who’s serious about solving this country’s problems, would you please?

(crossposted at ZogbyBlog)

UPDATE: The transcript of Kerry on Meet the Press is here.