Of Banks and Tooth Fairies

This morning's Sunday NYT has a column by Thomas Friedman that represents the kind of lie that if told often enough becomes truth. Friedman argues that the riots in Athens and the British election are examples of the profligacy of the baby-boom generation coming home to roost. Thus

After 65 years in which politics in the West was, mostly, about giving things away to voters, it’s now going to be, mostly, about taking things away. Goodbye Tooth Fairy politics, hello Root Canal politics.

What he fails to mention is that it was left of center governments, particularly in Britain and the U.S., that had left public sectors in pretty good shape. It was giveaways to the rich, particularly in the U.S., followed by historic generosity to a criminally negligent financial sector over the past couple of years, that put, and will continue to put, governments in impossible positions. In short, we gave away trillions to the already wealthy while children starved, and now we would like the poor, who derived no benefit from this, to pay for it.