Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Oil industry consultant Dana Nuccitelli, writing for the Guardian, has launched yet another green attack on democracy, by suggesting that older people who voted for Brexit, or who vote against green policies, are committing “intergenerational theft”.
The inter-generational theft of Brexit and climate change
Youth will bear the brunt of the poor decisions being made by today’s older generations
In last week’s Brexit vote results, there was a tremendous divide between age groups. 73% of voters under the age of 25 voted to remain in the EU, while about 58% over the age of 45 voted to leave.
This generational gap is among the many parallels between Brexit and climate change. A 2014 poll found that 74% of Americans under the age of 30 support government policies to cut carbon pollution, as compared to just 58% of respondents over the age of 40, and 52% over the age of 65.
Inter-generational theft
The problem is of course that younger generations will have to live with the consequences of the decisions we make today for much longer than older generations. Older generations in developed countries prospered as a result of the burning of fossil fuels for seemingly cheap energy.
However, we’ve already reached the point where even contrarian economists agree, any further global warming we experience will be detrimental for the global economy. For poorer countries, we passed that point decades ago. A new paper examining climate costs and fossil fuel industry profits for the years 2008–2012 found:
“For all companies and all years, the economic cost to society of their CO2 emissions was greater than their after‐tax profit, with the single exception of Exxon Mobil in 2008”
…
It now falls to the US to do better than the UK. Risk management and the well-being of future generations must trump ideology and fear in the November elections. We simply can’t afford two of the world’s superpowers being dictated by populism and xenophobia at the expense of our youth’s future.
Most old people I know would throw themselves into a fire if they thought it would somehow improve the lives of their grandkids. Claiming old people en-masse do not care about the young is utterly obscene.
When older people vote for Brexit, or vote against fanatics who think it is OK to advocate disenfranchising groups who oppose their views, just maybe it is because they have the life experience to see through the lies of would be tyrants.
Great idea!
Let’s only let people aged 15 to 30 vote. Since they have little compared to their elders, why not confiscate all their parents and grandparents wealth, as well as ignoring their wisdom accumulated over a lifetime?
Would Britain have gone to war against Germany in 1939 had Parliament been elected by teenagers and young adults?
I am reminded of the 1968 film “Wild In The Streets”, which is looking increasingly prophetic these days.
I cited Logan’s Run below.
The theme was a thing back then, when there were so many Boomers.
I liked the book version of Logan’s Run better than the movie – made the story a lot clearer.
Ditto, Gabro, on the Logan’s Run reference. Where’s my palm flower?
William Golding – ‘Lord of The Flies’ – the Green epitome of nirvana, updated by: Kevin Andrews, ‘The Greens’ Agenda, in Their Own Words’ http://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2011/01-02/the-greens-agenda-in-their-own-words/
idiocracy turned out to be a prophesy and not a comedy after all…
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/
Then are the younger demographic who vote in favor of costly Green Initiatives actually committing Geriatricide by committing their elders to costly energy while being relegated to a meager fixed income leading to premature death?
First and foremost the probable reason for the generational deficit is most likely the proliferation of climate change material being taught in schools now that wasn’t being taught 30 years ago. Very few courses, whether they be English, Social Studies, History, Economics, Chemistry, even Math, hasn’t been adjusted to include some form of the CO2 = Climate Change narrative. Today’s graduates have heard the dogma concerning AGW every day and in almost every course so it is ingrained in them thus the 73% statistic.
It then goes on to describe the older demographic (ages 45 to 65+) as Inter-Generational Thieves for voting contrary to the younger demographic due to the perceived “Cost of Carbon”. But, given the true cost of energy produced by the Green Alternatives it is really robing from the Older Crowd on Fixed incomes that higher energy costs tends to create. And as to the often reported catch phrase (redistribution of Wealth) referring to take money from those (that Can afford it) and giving it to those (other countries) that can’t afford it. The question arrises
“Which generation is it that has the money that is being redistributed and to which generation is it being redistributed”?
Before Mr Nuccitelli accuses the older generation of robbing the futures of the younger generation, he should consider the younger generation also robbing the accumulated wealth of the older generation.
It seems to me to be the same thing either way. It’s just a question of Who is robbing Who.
Is that the one where progressively the compulsory age of your death is lowered, the movie ending at age 11? I thought about it the other day, & thought it might have been called “If”.
I wonder how much dystopian Dana Nuccitelli, would like the old movie Soylent Green? I suspect she would endorse and RELISH it.
Old people sent to the knacker factory to be turned into GREEN protein wafers, yummy!
Dana is a boy, at least biologically at birth.
My foible,
I wonder how much dystopian Dana Nuccitelli, would like the old movie Soylent Green? I suspect it would endorse and RELISH it.
Old people sent to the knacker factory to be turned into GREEN protein wafers, yummy!
Dana is of indeterminate species let alone gender, IMO. It is even indeterminate if it is a carbon based life form. Methinks its silicon based or even just hydrogen based. Helium would be far to balanced to be possible.
This conversation with Governor Henry C. Santini…
… is brought to you by Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow…
… high-energy vegetable concentrates…
… and new, delicious Soylent Green…
… the miracle food of high-energy plankton gathered from the oceans of the world.
Because of its enormous popularity, Soylent Green is in short supply.
Remember, Tuesday is Soylent Green Day.
And now, Governor Santini.
…
This is the police.
This is the police. This is the police.
I am asking you to disperse.
The supply of Soylent Green has been exhausted.
You must evacuate the area.
The scoops are on their way.
The scoops are on their way!
~Here is the complete script of ‘Soylent Green’
It’s about getting enough people believing that Marxism will stop climate change?
M Seward
Not sure about Dana being Silicon Based (Horta) or Hydrogen Based
But more probably Carbon-Hydrogen Based (CH4)
Good old Soylent Green. An imaginative romp through a distopian future brought about by combining all the Greens most fevered predictions. The Population Bomb. Mass Extinctions. Peak Oil. Environmental Destruction. Resource Depletion. And of course Global Warming. Set 50 years in the future, it showed what horrors could await humanity if we failed in our stewardship of the Earth.
Of course, it came out in 73, so that 50 years placed it in 2022. Personally I doubt we’ll be forced to stoop to cannibalism in the next 6 years. But as any Green can tell you, just because their predictions failed doesn’t mean they weren’t right.
“Lord of the flies” comes to mind.
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm
Obviously one diminishes in equality as one ages…
exactly….
Like declaring 95% of countries developing and get paid…..
Then voting to make it look democratic and equal
Nuccitelli is lying through his teeth. Again.
The breakdown of age demographics he’s quoting missed out one vital statistic. The stats for under 25 voting was thirty six percent. That 75% Nucci is blathering on about is nonsense. It comes from the same stable as the 97%. It means means the Yoof vote was so important to the Yoofs only approximately one in five bothered to get off their backsides to vote. And now a small minority of vociferous activists on social media are banging on about “intergenerational theft”. It’s all bollocks.
And would Nucci please explain why the older generation would vote Brexit to deliberatly wreck the lives and future of thei children and grandchildren? I have yet to hear a sensible reply to that one. The Guardian and the BBC are doing their utmost to be divisive, widening a gulf between families and using young people, too wrapped up in their own lives, who do not undersand what the EU really is – a fascist state with an unelected politburo intent on dictating whatever they damn well please.
It’s a logical fallacy – begging the question.
People voted Leave because they thought it was good for their children and grandchildren.
The whole point of the argument is whether Leaving is good or bad – you can’t bypass that step to start pontificating about the poor children.
+10
Yup. Under 25 years of age 27% of those eligible voted “remain”, above 65 it was 32%. That’s what 36% vs. 83% turnout does.
Hopefully, as they get older, youngsters are going to gain a bit of responsibility.
The British may consider introducing compulsory voting, as it was done in Australia almost a century ago. With that device they were able to keep turnout around 95% since then.
Ah, don’t worry about the young people, they’re far too wrapped up in more important things in life like which pop-star is sleeping with which thesbian & vice-versa, or will the new latest mobile phone ring-tone work on their phone, or will they need a new one!
Very astute comment. When those who elect not to vote through laziness or ignorance then complain the correct response is to ignore them.
The inter-generational theft is where the current ruling generations make decisions regarding climate change that result in huge amounts of money being borrowed, & repaid by future generations of taxpayers. Nuccitelli & his ilk don’t care about that – only the warm & fuzzy feelings they get from believing they are saving the planet from humanity! Such ignorance. Such arrogance.
Great idea!
‘Let’s only let people aged 15 to 30 vote’
Better idea!
Let only people who pay taxes vote.
Or let votes be directly proportional to paid taxes? Not a very good idea though.
Actually, it is an excellent idea. He who pays the piper should call the tune.
This old person voted leave. When we voted to join, I was too young to get a vote, so seeing the diaster that generation got us into, I decided to vote to fix it.
Paul Mackey June 28, 2016 at 2:03 am
I’m with you on that I didn’t get to vote join or stay out but I was not going to let the chance to get out go by without having my say.
I voted out and am happy with the result if the result had been otherwise I wouldn’t have been happy but I wouldn’t be trying to make out the vote was wrong, fixed or those who voted for what I didn’t want were somehow under the undue influence of corrupting powers! AS the BBC and Grauniad are doing.
James Bull
I missed out on voting the last time too. My parents both voted NO because they had lived in Germany and understood what the Common Market, as it was then, really meant; a huge hike in the cost of living.
Many people who voted to join the Single Market back in the 70s voted Leave because now they are 40 years older and wiser they know they were duped and acted to reverse it.
Unfortunately we are now witnessing the Establishment closing ranks to try and overturn or fudge the Brexit result. What do we have to do to get the message across? Foment a civil war?
Aged 64(!) I voted not to join in the first place,and voted “leave” this time around.Have to say I am increasingly worried at the attitude of the press towards older people,and how it is,in many cases,affecting how we are viewed by the younger generation.
Dan Nut-Celli is a typical vile spoilt middle class white western lefty . They have no idea or concept of the struggle that humans had experienced to get where we are today which is a damn-site preferable that that of our ancestors. This shallowness is caused by pampered easy affluent lifestyles made only possible by the older generations . As for the concept that the youth are the best stewards to save the planet! Well if you want to see a world smothered in graffiti, wrecked by vandalism, strewn with rubbish, millions of abortions, porn being encouraged at increasingly younger ages, a globe of idiots laying in bed all day, the ability to lie and carry out herculean levels of hypocrisy , well I guess the youth are your best bet to save our planet
great rant. Has the virtue of being true!
When future generations look upon Brexit they will realize that it was the older generation that saved the UK.
One need look no further than the statements coming out of Germany and its lap dog France, to realize that the EU has no Magna Carta to limit the power of the King.
Twice in the past 100 years the UK saved Europe from Germany. Brexit is simply a continuation of this process. As Greece, Spain, Italy and such crumble under mountains of debt and unemployment, to feed the industrial might of Germany, they too will wish they had voted with their feet.
Dear Mr. Nuccitelli,
Tell me: Who created the Euro, what year, and why.
You can’t.
That’s why your comment is jejune, uneducated bordering on stupid, and devoid of any historicity or context.
Granted, the majority of the working people who voted for Brexit have no clue either. But their common sense prevailed. Luckily, the best thing that ever happened to Britons was that the (late) Wynne Godley convinced Margaret Thatcher in 1990-1992 not to adopt the Euro, whose advice she did not ignore.
How old were you in 1990, Mr. Nuccitelli? Twelve? Ten? Younger? Older?
While you were discovering the unleashed independence of your young gonads, those of us who did read history remember and understood it.
Correction: “Wynne Godley convinced Margaret Thatcher in 1990-1992” should read “Wynne Godley convinced Margaret Thatcher in 1990.”
Wynne Godley wrote his public objection to the Euro and the Maastricht Treaty in the London Review of Books on October 8, 1992.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v14/n19/wynne-godley/maastricht-and-all-that
We need to set up a La-La land where they can live out their fantasies. (Of course, we could also send them to Venezuela.) The survivors, if they can muster sufficient evidence that they have achieved some degree of maturity, would be allowed back into a country run by adults.
Well those old fogeys with their quaint ideas of freedom, may just have saved all of those wild eyed millenials from living under sharia law.
G
The last two paragraphs here sum this nonsense up perfectly.
Who voted to leave the Little Ice Age?
Same as it ever was, and the world goes on, get over it Dana.
Dana needs to stop the projection.
When it comes the generational theft and ripping off children,Nutty Boy and his chosen comrades have shown their skills.
Here in the US, the government has $20 Trillion in debt which will be on the backs of the younger generation to pay off. But some of my children are so brainwashed with Left ideology, they don’t consider that debt is made of real dollars.
Someday they’ll wake up and find they were wrong.
“Dollars? Where do DOLLARS come from, Mommy?” You can bet the answer won’t be “Hard Work!”
Propose an Amendment (USA) that all things that are “generational” theft be banned, including government borrowing money. I would like to see how they would justify government debt, but without it, most all their cherished government programs would come to a halt.
Jtom
Speaking of intergenerational theft, who stole democracy from the youth in the UK and handed it to unimpeachable EU commissars? Dana’s squealing is painful to hear because of the hypocrisy it contains. I guess Dana thinks the young are too stupid to have an opinion on the matter – if it disagrees with the EU regulators, but are all smart and responsible if they agree. Huh. That’s mature.
The fact that older people are harder to swindle is not too surprising. The same applied when I was young.
To the young, I say get your heads out of your phones and look around. Your entire future is being stolen from you by a multi-tentacled green blob intent on telling you which green leaf you can use to wipe your ass. They are not your friends. There is no free lunch. That charging station is actually paid for by someone. Having national dominion over national affairs is not an error, it is common sense.
The squealing is going to get a lot louder. Carefully and crafty plans are starting to unravel. You can be a world citizen without giving up your rights as one.
Government debt is true generational theft!
+1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
You could have just used the mathematical expression of 10^100 ( a google) instead of 10^42 and a really big number is 10 ^google.
Excellent comment, I was thinking when I read this article how the marxist wannabe’s never mention how the current or older generation is robbing the younger generation’s future by endless increases in deficits and borrowing. Currently, we are on the same path as Greece but who will bail us out? The answer is nobody.
Amen, amen, amen!!! I am in my thirties, and even in my late teens, I started to realize how bad the US debt situation. Now it is so much worse, yet even fewer people seem aware. Probably because all the old people who lived through the Depression are dying, and hardly anyone remembers how dangerous credit and money on “paper” can be.
The only question is, will the revolution occur before China calls in the IOUs?
Strange the generational theft term was used when the Progressives are the biggest thieves supporting the 20 trillion and rising debt burden on our next generation.
Projection indeed.
It was the older generations who built up wealth in developed countries and actually own property rather than a life-time of debt and a negative equity loan.
It is the younger generation who to give all that wealth to third world despots.
Key figures have admitted on several occasions that AGW is all about wealth redistribution. Whose wealth is it the younger generation wants to redistribute?
Inter-generational theft indeed.
The older generation who grew up with the old fashioned idea of being able to elect those in charge of running the country want to retain the means of sacking them if they don’t perform. The younger generation who seem generally disinterested in politics seem in favour letting that be taken away, thus depriving the rest of us of our democracy.
Inter-generational theft indeed.
It is stunning how close the parallels are with these nut jobs and 1984. They steal and live off government tax dollars, pursue quixotic idealized policies with no grounding in fact, sentence generations to sub-standard living, deny basic freedoms and then when the peasants revolt — call it inter-generational theft.
Oceania must be proud of its native son.
Factorial (Google ). Now that IS a big number ! or Google^google .
g
…I bet 97% of those kids under 25 also think that “Basket Weaving” is a great college course to further their careers !
No, “Gender Studies,” preferably performed naked and underwater. . .
I’m 70 & I’d enroll for a 3 yr course of that (:-))
Hey! A grade is a grade. They all go in the win column.
so much BS–I remember a time when the wisdom that comes with age was respected. The younger folk vote in stupid ways because they have not yet experienced life in all of its many faces. As these “younger” generations grow up, they too will (hopefully) gain the wisdom that comes with experience.
Plus, the young people today are so much smarter than the old people because internet, computers and software.
For those that don’t get it ….. internet, computers and software, that the old people invented.
Yes the young are so smart they can’t even bother to register to vote. In many societies the wise council of the elders is held in high esteem; also they have seen it all before and voted wrongly to stay in in 1975 – only to see the common market/EEC morph into an unaccountable political/fiscal union that is corrupt and undemocratic.
Unfortunately for them, lived experience is not something you can Google or ask Siri about.
Well we are born smart a*** know it alls, and we slowly forget all the stuff that didn’t work, until we know nothing; and then we die.
g
I remember an old saying. “When I was 15,my father was really dumb. I am now 21,and amazed how much my father learnt in 6 years”.
LOLZ
An old Mark Twain quote as I recall.
Bill W has it right.
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
HA, are not all local, state and federal elected politicians …… as well as 98% of all public sector employees ….. classified as “grown ups”?
Gaining the wisdom that comes with experience …. is 100% dependent upon the environment that one “grows up” in (subjected to).
90+% of the “younger” generations are already doomed to be deficient of “wisdom and experiences” …. primarily because of their Public School Environment.
Well, there are people who have converted oxygen to carbon dioxide for 18 or more years, and there are grownups/adults.
Sadly, the former tend to somehow amass a heck of a lot of power.
Human history is a long perpetual cycle of Big Kids making Big Messes and the long-suffering adults who spend a century or three cleaning up after them.
Here’s to those nameless legions of responsible people. If not for them, history’s Big Kids would have probably killed us all by now.
The only thing this proves beyond a doubt is that the voting age should be raised to 26 !
How about…no tax payments, no vote?
That would put unemployed and elderly away. A republic needs ways to protect those who don’t have a job or who are not yet, any more, or just now capable of working. Voting right is one of those.
But I do think consevatism that comes with age is a good thing. To certain smount at least.
What country do you live in where old people don’t pay taxes? I’d like to move there in about 5 years.
I like the “no pay, no play” idea. In the US, approximately 47% of wage earners pay no federal income tax, but they get to decide how to spend my money. When it tips over 50%, who’s going to stop them from pillaging those of us left to pay?
The problem we have in this country is that those who pay no taxes are continually voting for more free stuff.
Unless you are without a job for the entire period between elections, then you did pay taxes.
@MarkW
To your first point, that’s exactly what I was saying.
To your second point, please note that I said “federal income tax”. The FICA tax is nominally to support SSI payments although the surplus is entirely spent. When SSI outgo exceeds income, the shortfall will be made up out of general revenues, or more likely added to the general debt.
SSI outgo started exceed income about 5 years ago.
Just get rid of everyone over 30; they can’t be trusted anyway.
That’s because of the Left’s march through the institutions teaching propaganda, not science. Bill Ayers and his ilk being a major socialist pusher.
PiperPaul
“Just get rid of everyone over 30; they can’t be trusted anyway.”
According to Sendero Luminoso, the age to exterminate is those >13.
http://fas.org/irp/world/para/sendero_luminoso.htm
Before they get to breeding age, and create more know it alls.
g
Good idea: Hansen, Al Gore and al lot of other old green crackpots had to stop their anti-human agenda… 😉
It never seems to occur to people that they might be wrong.
To all you “youngens” out their.
I would like to remind you that the AVERAGE age of the un-elected EU commissioners,
in whom you seem to want to put all your decisions and regulatory power…..
is approximately 55 ! 🙂
And they’d better stop listening to GreenGuru David Suzuki, as well; ‘cuz he’s waaaay past his best before date!
But when will he at his worst?
he’s there
Nasty! Nuccitelli is not too young either.
Unfortunately, he can always get worse.
Yet another recidivist, wanting to revert to the Eco-Purity of the Dark Ages,
Modern society is largely built on Energy. Mankind has moved from harnessing cropping & animal husbandry, to adopting the wonders offered by the exploitation of Energy, and moving into the (amazing!!) advancement we now have, and will continue to have, bar Luddites like this moron.
@Ross King
You missed slavery as another form of energy,witch it was in times past
Witch is not a pronoun but ‘which’ is and should be used in this context.
@Ross King
You missed slavery as another form of energy,which it was in times past
Socialism is already bringing slavery back.
One group of people is forced to work to support others.
Considering that the “old people” voting to leave the EU are pretty much the same people who voted in favor of joining/staying in the EU over the last few decades, it’s more of a case of “what the hell were we thinking all of those years?”
The British people never voted to join the EU. They voted to stay in the Common Market, when there were assured that it was just a free trade zone and had no intention of becoming a European superstate that would take Britain’s sovereignty away. The government told them that even though they already knew that was exactly what the EU was meant to be.
It’s taken this long to get another vote to get the heck out.
So, the left have proven that they hate the right, the working class, and now the old farts. Pretty soon they’ll have run out of people to hate.
Good knee-jerk rant against “the left” but if you’ve been following the story, the left wing leader of the Labour party is currently undergoing a leadership coup because “it’s his fault” that he did not “deliver” the votes of Labour supporter for the Remain camp. ( Like parties are there to tell their followers what to vote for rather than to represent them ).
“The Left” in Britain are just a split on this question as the right are. Without “the Left” there are not enough Euro-sceptics on the right for Britain to have decided to abandon the anti-democratic federal Europe.
Sorry to spoil a good rant.
Yeah, because Labour and the Guardian are right-wing. I forgot.
> Pretty soon they’ll have run out of people to hate
Naah, there’s still all the young farts to go.
There was a major grassroots left wing vote to leave, without them Brexit would have lost.
The Labour party in the UK is out of step with the working people it claims to represent. It was the Midlands of England, the industrial heart of the nation that carried the vote against the EU. It is the disconnect between the politicians and their constituents that is at the heart of the problems facing Labour.
Jeremy Corbyn has campaigned against the EU many times in the past, his campaign was half hearted, and the Labour heartlands voted comprehensively and decisively out. Its safe to say when Coal mining areas such as County Durham, Sunderland, The Rhondda and Merthyr Tydfyl are voting out , and Bolsover (MP Dennis Skinner) has a 40% margin. Then its not a right wing result
Bolsover (MP Dennis Skinner) has a 40% margin.”
Dennis Skinner aka ‘the Beast of Bolsover’ is one of the few honest MPs we have.
Nuccitelli apparently likes relying on imaginary “costs” of CO2. Like what real costs, as in real people paying out real money, Dana, not estimated costs no one ever actually paid.
So much for the concept of wisdom coming with age.
Nuccitelli apparently would have us believe the those under 25 know what is best for us rather than those who have been around the block (so to speak) many more times in life and know when to be suspicious of what politicians and the MSM are telling us.
Nuccitelli clearly has not spent any time on a college campus in the last few years. Who is dumb enough to want to risk those crazy special snowflakes grabbing power?
Dana provides an excellent advice to both Americans and Britons. He probably lives in both countries and drinks in pubs all day long, getting acquainted with a public opinion. I wonder when does he pen down his wisdoms.
When he is 3 parts cut. I’m not sure if that translates across the oceans too well. 3 sheets to the wind.
The ideal Green Meanie movie:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan%27s_Run_(film)
Dana and his ilk are birds of a feather with jihadis screaming “Death to the Infidels!”
for Brexit in headline would be helpful.
…
D.I.N.K.s
Double Income No Kids Remember that term from the 80s?
The idea was that there was a group within society that felt no social obligation to contribute to the population, and thereby suffer the burdens and joys of raising children. The couple, by their own choice, once raised by selfless parents, had no kids and lived like college kids for the rest of their lives. It was put to me then that D.I.N.K.s should not have a right to vote nor should they be able to collect social security payments. The rationale was that if you don’t contribute to society, you should not reap the rewards.
Now we have a reverse situation wherein the baby boomers have spent the futures of their grandchildren so that they can have various forms of security like health care or a second home in the sunny south. The grandchildren will be taking up the tab in their 40s and 50s.
The rationale now is that the baby-boomers have screwed up the environment and won’t be around long enough to suffer the consequences of their life-long actions. The kids are aware of where the hurt is coming from…. vaguely.
I offer this counter argument:
The young (under 25) and those without children should not be able to vote.
The young are too ignorant and dependent of the social gov-funded fabric to make an informed decisions. People who willfully have no children have no stake in the future. So why should they have any control over national finance?
So I propose the only people who should be able to vote are those who ultimately will be responsible for carrying the burden of the popular will. Hmmm who does that leave at the voting booths?
Democracy is a messy thing.
I must be a SCAR–“Single Crusty Aging Republican!” 😉
Nahhh.. Not if you have to practice this, Goldrider.
GET OFF MY LAWN!
If you don’t have to practice that, then you’re just normal.
You don’t have to bear children in order to contribute to society.
Anyone who works an honest job contributes.
We have plenty of deadbeats who have more kids in order to get more $$$s from the gov. Doesn’t mean they’re contributing to society.
The major flaw in the argument: the assumption that people who have kids a) care about them and b) are more concerned with the future than non-parents. It is good that childless people care about children and the future, it is sad that many parents do not.
I think there is some merit to the idea, perhaps with a few alterations. Sometimes I think people should have to prove they are sensible enough to vote. A single question might be enough: do you think the government can spend your money more wisely than you?
The problem is that for way to many of those voting, the government isn’t spending their money. It’s spending someone else’s money.
Where do you get the utterly erroneous idea that those without children do not contribute to society. My wife and I can’t have children & it’s too late now anyway but we worked all our lives since college. She’s a nurse in an ICU – tell her she doesnt contribute. She’s made more of a contribution in her life than you ever will in yours. If you have a credit card or a debit card I’ll bet you use software to process your transactions that was created by my teams and me. No contribution? Then how about paying more taxes than you because of no child credits, no child deductions and years of the marriage penalty? How about local taxes that support your kid’s education and health services? How about more in state taxes that also support your kid’s education and general public health services. No contribution anywhere there? You Prick!
“… maybe it is because they have the life experience to see through the lies of would be tyrants”
That’s almost exactly what I was thinking as I was reading Nuccitelli’s words. I can’t remember how many times I’ve heard this or that was the next thing I should fear, from the threat of nuclear war to SARS to the bird flu. I saw an interview with one of the young people suing the federal government (with James Hansen’s help) over climate change and I had to laugh at both his passion and naivete.
No lie–right now they’re trying to foment hysteria about spraying for Zika mosquitoes–in CONNECTICUT!
Is the hysteria for or against spraying? One never knows these days. 😛
Dana is relatively young with a small memory frame-of-reference. “Old” people recall experiencing or hearing about weird and extravagant weather which, today, sends younger people into paroxysms of fear and high anxiety. Climate is mainly a function of latitude, ocean currents and land mass variations. “Managing” that would be an exercise in expensive experimental magic. But people keep pretending because it seems to them to be the “responsible” thing to do. It’s just a new version of sacrificing goats, virgins, burnt offerings, etc. which seemed rational back in days of yore. A few generations from now, now will be “days of yore”.
Dana is a Peter Pan-er. For him “old” is always someone 25-30 years older than he.
The voting turnout in the Brexit referendum among 18-24 year olds was 36%. In fact, a greater proportion of 65 and overs voted to “remain” than the proportion of 18-24 year olds who voted “remain”, it’s just that the vast bulk of the rest of the over 65’s voted leave while the vast bulk of the rest of the 18-24’s didn’t vote at all.
I’m not criticising the 18-24’s who didn’t vote. Maybe they thought that they simply didn’t have enough reliable information to make an informed vote amidst all the unverifiable hyberbole.
But Nuccitelli is clearly being dishonest or stupid in implying that the Brexit vote demonstrates overwhelming support for “remain” among the young.
“Maybe they thought that they simply didn’t have enough reliable information to make an informed vote amidst all the unverifiable hyberbole.”
Tim,
NONE of us had enough reliable information to make an informed vote amidst all the unverifiable hyperbole.
Both sides used the well practiced CAGW method – each lie is more intimidating than the last one
‘Guardian ‘ readers are typified by the Ivory-Tower , self-proclaimed “inner leckual”, Elite: “Only Our Way is Best”.
And so went the French Revolution .
Delighted to see another Revolution propagated (bloodlessly?) by today;s proletariat.
To MARCUS @ur momisugly 6:21pm . . .
It is “Underwater Basket Weaving” if you puhleese for goodness’ sake. I graduated Summa Cum Bono U2 in ’63. And I think it highly discriminatory to focus just on above water Basket Weaving.
Dana NutJob – what a great and perfectly apposite name.
Nuttercelli actually. I think the celli part means a twisted bit of pasta.
I’m wondering….just how many children does Dana have? Is he indeed a parent….in what we used to call a nuclear family ? Or is procreation not sufficiently “green” for this miserably ignorant individual?
I’m too old to contact Dana in about 25 years, but someone younger out there….please make a note to do just that, and attach (or perhaps telepathically transmit) this goofy opinion piece. If able, I’d pay to see his reaction to his youthful idiocy.
The question I still have is why on earth would The Guardian print such nonsense?
Oh never mind. It’s just The Guardian. The increasingly irrelevant Guardian.
Nuclear families are so last century–hadn’t you heard, we’re all “non-binary” now?
I miss watchdog journalism.
Age bias is another form of “racism”. Dana shows his true colors.