I did not write this I was linked to it from this site, however I thought it warranted being shared and that site can’t be submitted to any social news sites.  I have messaged the Author letting them know this is posted but unless they ask me to take it down I will leave it up.

You may be right.

You probably make more than $250,000 a year, and that does mean that your taxes would probably go up if Obama were elected. There’s something bigger going on here, though. Something more important than your wealth.

I know, we’ve relied on your wealth our entire lives. We still rely on your wealth. And that is what is more important.

We are the first generation- we, Generation Y, or the Millennial Generation, or Twixters, or whatever you want to call us- we are the first generation to have less economic opportunity than our parents.

When you were our age, you could graduate from high school and get a job that would provide for you family. So many more of you went to college than your parents. Generation X, our predecessors, could count on a job out of college that would provide them the same. Now? With our bachelor’s degrees, we can get secretarial positions that pay us slightly more than minimum wage. If we’re lucky.

We are the first generation in the history of this country with less opportunity than you, our parents.

And that is was this election is about. Yes, you might lose some money to taxation, but you’re not going to get taxed out of your home. But you don’t have much to worry about. You’re set for life- you have Social Security. You have money already saved away for your retirement. We don’t.

And we know why you want to maintain your wealth. It’s for us. You want to know that your children, and our children, are provided for when you’re gone. And we appreciate that. But we want more- we want what you had when you were our age. We want to opportunity to build our own wealth, and to provide for our own families.

I think I understand you. Obama and his politics frighten you, because they are not FOR you. For the first time in your lives, this election is not about you. It is about us. It’s about whether we will start to shift our policies for the realities of OUR lives, and not for yours. It’s a statement that perhaps your time has passed. Of course that seems unfair- you’re still working hard, you’re still active and healthy, but that’s where we are now. The time seems to have come in this country to stop building policy around you, and to begin to build policy around us.

We are already worrying about providing our children with the health care. We grew up surrounded by the struggle of you and our friends’ parents trying to cover the health care expenses of children with ADHD and autism. We don’t even dream of making what you made when we were children. We see home ownership as a terrifying and impossible dream and risk at once, no longer a standard step towards adulthood and security. We are ready to start providing for our children, and you are terrified to take the next step in providing for yours. The step of letting them take charge of their own destinies.

Your fears are warranted. We don’t have the experience that you do, we don’t have the resources, or the opportunities. But we share with you one fundamental thing- our values. American values. We want to make a life for ourselves, to eke out our own niche, our own livings, and provide everything for our own families.

You will never be able to prepare us for this, but you are our parents. It’s your job to understand us and to support us. To help us make the right choices. Not to take all choices away from us.

Thank you for the past thirty years. They’ve been so different from the thirty years before, and we are different people than you were when you were thirty years younger. But you’ve finished your job, and we’re ready to claim our country.

Thank you to the girl from Chicago who shared this.

Posted on October 1st, 2008 by Furious Citizen
Filed under: Election 2008, Politics