Interesting perspective—especially the common focus on justice against crony capitalism.
Published: July 16, 2011
Indeed, if there is one sentiment that unites the crises in Europe and America it is a powerful sense of “baby boomers behaving badly” — a powerful sense that the generation that came of age in the last 50 years, my generation, will be remembered most for the incredible bounty and freedom it received from its parents and the incredible debt burden and constraints it left on its kids.
. . . . . . .
I was struck by one big similarity between what I heard in Tahrir Square in Cairo in February and what one hears in Syntagma Square today. It’s the word “justice.” You hear it more than “freedom.” That is because there is a deep sense of theft in both countries, a sense that the way capitalism played out in Egypt and Greece in the last decade was in its most crony-esque, rigged and corrupt deformation, letting some people get fantastically rich simply because of their proximity to power. So there is a hunger not just for freedom, but for justice. Or, as Rothkopf puts it, “not just for accounting, but for accountability.”
Read full article at Friedman's page….
See Also:
Clash of generations: Britain will be rent, not by class warfare, but by an age divide, a new book argues
The Economist, Feb 11th 2010 | from the print edition
David Willetts, The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Took their Children’s Future—and Why They Should Give it Back (Atlantic Books, 2011)
