An open letter to America's young voters

In this election season, polls continue to show that President Obama holds a wide lead in popularity with under-30 voters over Mitt Romney.  And I get it: Obama is hip, he's cool, you voted for him in 2008.  Maybe you agree with him on a host of social issues.  But Obama's policies and failure to lead are deeply compromising your future.  Your folks see the problem, too.

First of all, Obama has added $5.5 trillion in new debt to our now $16 trillion-plus national debt.  This is all swiped onto the national credit card to be repaid by future generations.  It also serves to suppress the economy (see: Europe), driving the under-30 unemployment rate to nearly 12%.

If you happen to have a job, watch for more stories like this as Obamacare is implemented: businesses will be cutting back worktime under 30 hours a week to avoid the health care expense.  And then there's the little-known Obamacare practice of "community rating".  From Hit and Run: "How Obamacare, like Medicare, royally screws young people"

Obamacare forces insurers to charge their eldest beneficiaries no more than 3 times what they charge their youngest ones: a policy known as “community rating.” This, despite the fact that these older beneficiaries typically have six times the health expenditures that younger people face. The net effect of this “community rating” provision is the redistribution of insurance costs from the old to the young.

So young Americans are subsidizing everybody else's health care: fairness and all.  Finally, there's the generational warfare of entitlement spending:

Social Security and Medicare, which provide retirement and health insurance benefits for senior Americans, generally without regard to need, are funded by taxes on the relatively meager wages of younger Americans who will never enjoy anything close to the same benefits.

According to the government's own accountants, the Medicare Trust Fund will be depleted in 2024 and the Social Security Trust Fund will be zeroed out in 2033; after these dates, benefits will be cut sharply.  Obama hasn't done the slightest thing to defuse this time bomb set for young Americans who will pay into these programs all their lives.  Tough luck, kids.

What has Obama offered for young Americans in return?  Well, you can stay on your parents' insurance until you're 26 and Sandra Fluke can get her employer to pay for her birth control pills (assuming the Olive Garden hasn't cut her hours).  And then there's federal student loans and some studies have suggested that these are actually working to drive up tuition costs.  So you'll need more student debt, a.k.a. the next subprime crisis.

So I need to ask: are young Americans really going to sell their vote - and future - for the magic beans of Pell Grants and subsidized contraception?  Time to grow up.