<i>The most obvious symptom of the malaise is the huge debts we have managed to accumulate in recent decades, which - unlike in the past - cannot largely be blamed on wars.</i><p>U.S. Defense spending is around $900 B/yr (including veterans health, etc). That is the post-Iraq War cost. Social Security is net $0 (what comes in, goes out, either today or tomorrow, and with relatively minor adjustments and the elimination of gov't "borrowing" from SS funds, it can stay that way forever). Medicare is perhaps 1/4 the cost of defense spending.<p>I fail to see how debt can be attributed to social services simply because you might decide to stop calling things "war".<p>"Young" people might consider austerity if, firstly, defense budgets were cut down by orders of magnitude. Let's see how much debt is accumulated when we're not throwing away (bombing away) nearly 50% of revenue.<p><i>The heart of the matter is the way public debt allows the current generation of voters to live at the expense of those as yet too young to vote or as yet unborn.</i><p>No. The heart of the matter is the way public debt allows relatively few to massively and outrageously profit via post-9/11 escalation of defense spending.<p><i>If young Americans knew what was good for them, they would all be in the Tea Party.</i><p>Even excluding the complete failure to acknowledge out of control defense spending as the #1 cause of economic issues, there are many, many aspects of the Tea Party that simply have nothing to do with economics, and are in themselves completely out of sync with large swathes of people (perhaps most particularly young people). And now, with consideration that defense spending is the #1 issue, the attraction of youth to Occupy makes a lot of sense.<p>If older American's knew what was good for their children, they'd run as fast as they could from the Tea Party, and perhaps Occupy would be less viewed (inaccurately) as naive.<p>And all that's leaving aside the fact that a significant portion of the economic downturn was due to the machinations of the financial market leaders. Yet these leaders are the least affected by austerity measures. Perhaps some minor tangible steps should be taken to address those leaders before asking the rest of the world to pick up the slack.