Ellen Goodman made reference to "generational war" in her March 19 column, "Making sense of age-based conflicts." This is another one of those easily remembered highly emotional "memes" that the parasites who are trying to destroy your Social Security want you to have in your subconscious whenever you think about "entitlements."

There is no generational war. Your parents fed you and gave you a home, and sent you to school, while paying the taxes that defended the country and built the roads and did the science that makes it easier for you to make twice as much money as they ever made, while working half as hard. Moreover, even though most people can't seem to understand how "pay-as-you-go" protects your own retirement savings from inflation and market failure, not to mention personal bad luck, the fact is that your payroll tax is NOT going to pay for greedy grannies. They already paid for their own retirement check.

Your money is going to pay for your own future retirement check. It works the same way money works when you put it in the bank.

Social Security, pay as you go, works for the industrial age, exactly the way "Honor your father and your mother" worked for the thousands of years before the invention of money economies. But you will have to be a little older, dear, before you understand that.

Dale Coberly, Corvallis