Planting trees, literally and figuratively

Uprooting the future

By JOHN GUNYOU
April 15, 2008

John Gunyou is city manager for Minnetonka, Minn., and a former Minnesota finance commissioner.

My father planted a tree. Tethered to an oxygen bottle, in what would be the last year of his life, my 84-year-old father planted a tree.

It wasn't much of a tree -- more Charlie Brown than Paul Bunyan. When I kidded him about the unlikely prospect that he would ever sit in the shade of that tree, Dad simply said, "You don't plant trees for yourself. You plant them for your grandchildren."

It was the most important lesson he ever taught me -- living your life today as if the future matters.

But then, my father was from a different time. Like their parents and grandparents before them, members of the Greatest Generation are leaving their children far better off than they were themselves.

But the times, they are a-changin'. We're not planting as many trees nowadays.

The national debt recently soared past $9.4 trillion, meaning every child born today inherits a $31,000 debt. That's quite a legacy we baby boomers are leaving our children.

In the alternate universe inhabited by our president and congress, budgets are balanced by cutting taxes and increasing spending. They've jettisoned the pay-as-you-go discipline of their parents to rationalize living beyond their means.

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