by Wayne Mclaughlin

Created on: March 24, 2007   Last Updated: April 30, 2007

Will the next generation be able to pay for enjoyment of all the benefits of this generation's progress? Today's (March 24, 2007) New York Times carried a story about the cost of childhood vaccination, a regimen in 1980 encompassing seven shots and three oral doses costing 59 of today's dollars. The current process requires 37 shots and three oral doses with a tab of $1600.

Leaving aside consideration of unintended consequences for the moment, who can logically argue that additional health protection for our children is not a good thing?

Within this recent generation, the medical industry has added many more arrows to practitioner's quivers, none of them cheap, not the least of which is the ability to prolong life beyond the previous death sentences of heart disease and cancer.

In addition to medical advances which are close to outstripping our ability to pay for and use them, what is the next generation going to do about the cost of energy? This generation has done nothing but argue like a couple of cats over a dead mouse. Energy is like the fictional Shadow with the ability to cloud men's minds so that they cannot see it.

Where will the next generation live? Appreciating real estate values are great for middle class households but are young people at the early stages of building a family ever going to be able climb on the spiral?

Today's opulent, by 1940's standards, living is the last ferry to leave the dock. The next generation will need to build their own bridge to the future.

This discussion is not about answers - I don't have any and the last thing the next generation wants to hear are instructions from our generation. New generations have had to survive those who came before from the beginning of genealogy. The Civil War, The Great Depression, two World Wars and the like were all resolved by young people who had no hand in creating them.

This is not to deny the heritage of the Mayflower, American Revolutionaries, Lincoln's generation and the rest of America's heroes through the ages. And I make no apologies for my generation now. Progress simply carries a price which time inflates.

Since man's God given gift of intelligence has fostered an explosion in scientific knowledge over the last 100 years, it is time to pause briefly and reflect to what purpose. It is time to examine the institutions of government, business and culture and if we don't like what we see, do something about it.

If the next generation can strengthen our priorities and diminish the acceptability of corruption and perversion they will have achieved the resourcefulness to build that bridge to the future.

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