Can Public Officials Correctly be Said to Have Obligations to Future Generations?
Author(s)
Fredrickson, George
Abstract
It seems that issues of intergenerational fairness are all around us. The current debate over the national deficit rings with charges that the debt was incurred by a profligate generation to be paid for by their children and their children’s children (Aaron, Bosworth, and Burtless, 1989). This debate is aside from the issue of which groups–lower, middle, or upper classes–benefited most from the run-away federal borrowing of the 1980s. Proposed solutions turn entirely on the question of who will pay if much of the deficit is not passed on to coming generations (Kotikoff, 1991). The health care finance issue is also mostly about fairness and equity between the insured and uninsured in present generations; the old and those not yet old; the medical and pharmaceutical professions; and the insurance companies. It is claimed with considerable evidence, that unless health care costs are contained the deficit cannot be reduced. Much of the essential thrust of the environmental movement is to preserve the earth’s resources for coming generations. The Social Security system is by definition intergenerational. These are but a few of the more visible policy issues that have mostly to do with questions of fairness and equity both between groups in present generations and between present and future generations.
