Avoiding intergenerational inequity.

• Author: Harbour, Dave
• Position: Special section: OIL & GAS

Only the most villainous among us would advocate I stealing from children. Yet if we are not careful, our national and local public policies will make debtors of our children to enrich this generation of adults.

As a former public utility and pipeline regulator, I always sought to avoid a situation in which government authorized one generation to enjoy services paid for by a future generation's ratepayers. In the regulatory world, one seeks to avoid "intergenerational inequity." It's a lot like "taxation without representation."

Carried to its logical extreme, if the current generation of voters benefits at the expense of the next generation, and that generation does the same to its young successors, and so on-then the economy becomes increasingly unsustainable. Civilization eventually breaks down. All of the hope and promise is drained from the future, leaving children with only a mailbox full of debts to pay on behalf of their greedy folks.

The practice of intergenerational inequity eventually conquered Rome. Two years ago our family viewed the ruins of a great civilization while standing on long-abandoned Roman stone highways in Roman-occupied Jordan. Like us, Roman citizens probably thought, "This will never end."

But end that civilization did. Its international conquests and social programs were money pits. Its tax policies evolved into progressive, anti-free enterprise policies. The Empire tried to manipulate its way out of its own imprudence. It debased the value of its currency by melting alloys into gold and silver coins. It created a head tax, a property tax and a tax on production to "increase revenue." Then, as desperation grew, Diocletian killed Christians as a revenue sport and when the economy continued its death spiral, he ordered a price freeze, which forced productive businesses out of business, further decreasing tax revenue. To buy support of citizens, Rome established welfare programs: purchasing citizen loyalty to politicians by giving free amphitheater tickets, free bread and olive oil, and subsidizing the prices of basic foods. Rome even instituted a form of progressive taxation, which removed incentives for profitability and productivity.

The effort to please the older generation at the younger generation's expense would result in a pillaging of Rome in the early 5th century-followed by the Empire's relocation to Constantinople.

We can find other examples of intergenerational inequity throughout history, in the...