Disinherited. Diana Furchtgott-Roth

highest labor-force participation rate since the early 1960s.² Since the late 1990s, the labor-force participation rates of workers 65 and older have been rising steadily as well.

      These trends of increased labor-force participation by older workers are commendable—after all, life expectancy continues to lengthen. What is troubling is that the biggest decline in labor-force participation is among workers ages 16 to 24, from a rate of 61 percent in 2004 to 55 percent in 2014. In other words, young people have been hit the hardest by the recession and slow economic recovery.

      Male Employment Population Ratio, by Age

      Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey

      This is causing millennials to delay important milestones in their lives, such as getting a full-time job, moving out of the family home, and buying a house. More are working part time, because that is all the work that they can find.

      The percentage of employed 20- to 24-year-olds who work part time was 21 percent in the mid-1980s. This percentage grew steadily to 30 percent by 2008 and then rose to 36 percent in 2014—an increase of more than 70 percent in just a quarter century. The percentage of employed people over the age of 25 who work part time increased only 11 percent over that same time period.³

      Those unable to find jobs find it difficult to pay rent or qualify for a mortgage. From 1968 to 2007, the percentage of 18- to 31-year-olds living with their parents held steady at around 32 percent. By 2012, that number had increased to 36 percent. Among young people 18 to 24 years old, 56 percent lived at home in 2012—a historic high.⁴ “The unwritten social contract of their [parents of millennials] era presumed that the economy would be strong enough so that when children reached a certain age, they could be ‘launched’ into the adult world and would not crash. It’s this contract that has now broken down,” explains columnist Robert Samuelson.⁵ Only one-third of 27-year-olds, those who graduated college during the recession, are married.⁶ Starting a family is much more difficult while struggling to find work.

      Percent of 18- to 31-Year-Olds Living at Home

      Source: Pew Research Center tabulations of March 2012 Current Population Survey data

      Each section of this book is able to stand on its own. Readers may find some chapters more interesting than others and can follow their own progression while reading the book. We interviewed a number of people in the course of our research. Some were glad to speak on the record, and we have provided their full names. Others preferred to be anonymous, and when quoting them or discussing their experiences, we use only their first names or a pseudonym. The book is divided as follows:

      Part I: Stealing from the Young to Enrich the Old describes Washington’s expansion of entitlement benefits and other government services, along with the taxes young people will have to pay to support them, mostly to subsidize older Americans. The federal government has a debt of $18 trillion, and this is only projected to rise.⁷ Entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare are bankrupt. Unfunded liabilities driven by these programs push the total federal fiscal shortfall to more than $200 trillion. When Social Security and Medicare were originally put in place, no one forecast that they would grow so rapidly and take over almost two-thirds of the federal budget. In addition, state governments face $5 trillion in unfunded liabilities, mostly in retirement-benefit debt.⁸

      In Chapter 1: Unfunded Promises, we describe how politicians in Washington are taking from the future earnings of young people, many of them not old enough to vote, to pay for services for their parents and grandparents, who do vote. Burdened with an obligation to pay government debt they did not incur, young people begin life at least partially robbed of their birthright.

      Their parents and grandparents, beneficiaries of the New Deal and Great Society programs that are now bankrupting America, never intended this. They are deeply concerned that their children and grandchildren cannot find jobs and are facing a future of decreased opportunity. They never anticipated that their comforts would come at the expense of their progeny. But, regardless of intentions, that is what has occurred. The question remains, What can be done to create a system that is more fair and sustainable?

      Mary Parrilli, now in her twenties, living outside Chicago, told us: “I am outraged. We have been scammed, end of story. I do not expect to get back any of the money I am paying into Social Security—to me, it’s just another tax. I think people should help the elderly, especially their own family, but it is immoral for the government to force this upon us. This is a perfect example of punishing the young and successful, and rewarding the irresponsible.”

      We know the increasingly devastating fiscal condition being handed to our nation’s youth. Every Social Security and Medicare Trustees Report and every Budget Outlook from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office shows fiscal deficits far into the future. These deficits drive the national debt even higher, and someday the bill will come due. Only substantial tax increases or spending cuts will solve the problem, and, judging by the current political climate, these are not coming anytime soon.

      Our budget is controlled by “dead men ruling,” in the words of economist Eugene Steuerle. “In 2009,” he writes, “every dollar of revenue had been committed before that Congress walked in the doors of the Capitol.”⁹ Because of automatic entitlement spending, Congress is unable to balance the budget without taking direct action to rein in the growth of these programs. To make matters worse, spending in 2009 was $3.5 trillion and revenue was $2.1 trillion, leaving a deficit of $1.4 trillion.¹⁰ Seven years from now, the deficit is expected to surpass $1 trillion again and continue rising after that. This will leave debt held by the public at more than 79 percent of GDP in 2024, compared with about 73 percent now.¹¹ While this disproportionate spending is clearly a major component of the future problems facing America’s youth, the issue extends far beyond the fact that young people will be stuck with their parents’ and grandparents’ debt.

      As if this were not enough, the Affordable Care Act has raised health-insurance premiums for young Americans and lowered them for middle-aged and older people. Young, healthy Americans are, in effect, being required to pay for the health care of older Americans. We address this in Chapter 2: Paying for Parents’ Health Care. Rather than solve the problem, Washington has added to it by raising the cost of insurance for millennials and lowering it for their parents.

      We interviewed Tommy Groves (not his real name), a young professional working at a small firm in Washington, D.C., whose health-insurance provider terminated his coverage. Tommy’s employer gave him a set amount of money to spend on health insurance, and he spent hours on the computer trying to purchase insurance through the D.C. health exchange, called D.C. Health Link. When that failed, he spent hours on the phone. Even that was not sufficient to allow him to enroll, so he had to visit the office to sign up in person. Tommy’s premium for his “silver plan” went up to $225 a month from his $175 pre-ACA rate.

      Before the passage of the Affordable Care Act, premiums for 18-year-olds cost about one-fifth those of 64-year-olds.¹² Since older people are at a much greater risk of serious health problems than are people just out of high school, it makes sense that insurance companies would charge the 64-year-old more. Given that income typically rises with age, the 64-year-old would be better able to afford the higher premiums. But the new law prohibits insurance companies from charging older people more than three times as much as it charges young Americans, so premiums for people such as Tommy had to increase.

      Part II: Keeping Young People Uneducated describes educational barriers to progress. Young people are disadvantaged from their elementary and high school years until they graduate from college—and beyond. In elementary and secondary school, ill-qualified teachers are protected from being fired. This favors older teachers, but it harms