Odd and Even generations: one takes care of the ones before and after; the other is taken care of by both.

Yoda has long believed that generations of families often divide in binary fashion. One kind, call it the ODD generation, takes care of the ones before it and the ones after. The other, call it the EVEN generation, likes to BE taken care OF by the generation before AND the ones after. This even happens in society at large.The "Greatest Generation" was clearly odd, both because of its sacrifices and contributions and because its like has not been seen since. The generation spanning Bill Clinton and Barack Obama both cheerfully takes from the past and also ignores its responsibilities to the future, even borrowing from its posterity.
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We're Wasting Riches Others Earned For Us By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Today's Americans inherited the wealthiest nation in history — but only because earlier generations learned how to feed, fuel, finance and defend themselves in ways unrivaled elsewhere.Lately we have forgotten that and instead seem to expect others to do for us what we used to do ourselves.****We are dissipating our patrimony not only out of sloth but also out of egotistical emphasis on whimsical fads and fancies.*** Take our plentiful, cheap and safe food supply....irrigation to make possible the world's most diverse and inexpensive agriculture....the population is skyrocketing toward 40 million. Yet hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland this year are going out of production, and with them thousands of jobs....environmentalists have sued to stop irrigation deliveries in order to save threatened two-inch-long delta fish that need infusions of fresh water diverted from agricultural use. And for environmental and financial reasons, we long ago stopped building canals and dams in the Sierra Nevada to find sources of replacement irrigation water....The result will be more imported food from less environmentally sound farms abroad.
Consider energy consumption and supply as well. The U.S. still has plenty of untapped natural gas and oil — both offshore and in Alaska. We have nearly unlimited coal supplies and oil shale, in addition to the ability to build dozens of new nuclear plants....it will mean less sloppy foreign drilling off places like Nigeria or in the fragile Russian tundra to feed American cars and trucks. But this generation of Americans does not want messy drilling at home. We just want to keep driving. That means more borrowing to buy imported fuel while telling others to do the dirty work of drilling crude oil in their backyard....also taken for granted having enough military power to intervene overseas to remove tyrants...and to stop atrocities whenever we can. But such power takes hundreds of billions of dollars in expensive hardware and military personnel. Barack Obama ...sent more troops into Afghanistan, keeps attacking terrorists in Pakistan and, during the campaign, talked about deploying additional troops to save those in Darfur..He also wants to keep the defense budget static, or even cut it in some places.
...our have-it-both-ways generation,...national debt. We are projected to run a record $1.7 trillion deficit — and may add $9 trillion to our existing $11 trillion in aggregate debt over the next eight years. Meanwhile, the president has outlined vast new entitlement programs in health care, education, environmental programs and infrastructure...we have not earned enough money to pay for any of these additional expenditures....glamorous ends get the attention, never the mundane means of how to obtain them.
Americans became wealthy and strong through unique self-reliance, common sense and delayed gratification. We — or our children — will become poor precisely because we hold on to the romance that ...icky tasks to be ignored or left to others.Until we change that attitude, we'll keep borrowing and spending on ourselves what we have not yet earned — all the way to bankruptcy