The question of intergenerational debt
My response to a facebook post dealing with an LPAC statement on the question of intergenerational debt:
The LaRouche group needs to think a bit harder on this one. A multigenerational debt is illegitimate by its very nature as Thomas Jefferson noted.
http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letters-of-thomas-jefferson/jefl81.php
"To render this conclusion palpable by example, suppose that Louis XIV. and XV. had contracted debts in the name of the French nation to the amount of 10.000 milliards of livres and that the whole had been contracted in Genoa. The interest of this sum would be 500 milliards, which is said to be the whole rent-roll, or nett proceeds of the territory of France. Must the present generation of men have retired from the territory in which nature produced them, and ceded it to the Genoese creditors? No. They have the same rights over the soil on which they were produced, as the preceding generations had. They derive these rights not from their predecessors, but from nature. They then and their soil are by nature clear of the debts of their predecessors. Again suppose Louis XV. and his contemporary generation had said to the money lenders of Genoa, give us money that we may eat, drink, and be merry in our day; and on condition you will demand no interest till the end of 19. years, you shall then forever after receive an annual interest of 100 pound at a compound interest of 6 per cent makes at the end of 19 years an aggregate of principal and interest of pound 252.14 the interest of which is a pound 12 degrees degrees. 12 " . 7 d. which is nearly 12". per. cent on the first capital of pound 100.')">(*) 12.'5 per cent. The money is lent on these conditions, is divided among the living, eaten, drank, and squandered. Would the present generation be obliged to apply the produce of the earth and of their labour to replace their dissipations? Not at all."
Jefferson uses the extreme example of an intergenerational debt being used to finance outright debauchery. Nonetheless the principal would be the same if one particular generation were to embark upon a questionable public policy of some sort requiring the assumption of debt by more than one generation. The next or subsequent generation might decide that the program in question never made any sense in the first place and that, they themselves never having agreed to any such debt, simply did not owe it and they would be correct.
One very excellent candidate for that sort of thing (a potential project with a substantial likelihood of such an outcome) would be a long-term and expensive program to generate electricity from nuclear fusion...
https://www.amazon.com/Abandoned-Betrayal-American-Middle-Class/dp/0819184594
William Quirk and R. Randall Bridwell ("Abandoned") discuss this topic in some detail, noting that up to a fairly recent point in time in the United States, debts were paid by the generation which incurred them, including the debts associated with World War II.
That book had become a popular reading item in northern Virginia in the late 80s and early 90s of the last century due to the manner in which the Fairfax County Imperial Palace and the adjacent B2/B3 building complex had been financed. In particular, the kinds of conflicting interests created by the use of "moral obligation" bonds to finance the B2/B3 complex would unerringly crop up in any scheme to pay for a public project requiring a multigenerational debt. That is, bonds for any such purpose would have to be insured, creating a class antagonism between insurers and a second or third generation of citizens.