A monthly dinner for curious people. One big question, good company, and room to disagree.
This month: what we inherit & what we leave
In 1789, Thomas Jefferson argued that each generation should start free of the last one’s debts and laws. James Madison wasn’t so sure. Over dinner, we’ll use their argument to ask what we owe the people who come after us, and what we can fairly ask of them.
A Bond Between Generations
Jefferson to Madison, from Paris
“The earth belongs always to the living generation.”
Start fresh every 19 years?
In September 1789, Thomas Jefferson was in Paris, recovering from an illness and watching France tear up its old order. He wrote James Madison a long letter with a radical idea: each generation should start free.
Using the mortality tables of his day, he figured a generation lasted about 19 years. By then its debts should be paid and its laws should lapse. The dead, he wrote, have “neither powers nor rights” over the earth. He kept the letter, revised it, and mailed it to Madison in January 1790.
“no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of it’s own existence.”
Quoted in his own spelling.
Madison answered politely and pushed back. Some debts, he wrote, are run up for people not yet born, like the cost of winning a war whose benefits last for generations.
To him, the improvements made by the dead were “a charge against the living who take the benefit of them.” He also feared a government remade every generation would never earn lasting trust. Congress was arguing over the war debt that same winter, so none of this was abstract.
Read Madison’s reply · Founders Online ↗Start in 1789 and step forward 19 years at a time. Today lands in the thirteenth. The people we’re asking about come next.
Our arithmetic, using Jefferson’s 19 years. Real generations overlap, which is part of the problem.
What would you sign?
Now move from 1789 to a choice of your own. Pick a position and consider what it protects, what it risks, and its strongest objection.
Your town needs a new water plant. It will serve the town for 50 years, but the only way to build it now is a 30-year loan. Many of the people who will repay it are children today, or not born yet. They get no vote. What do you argue for?
Pick a position. Every answer has something to answer for.
This is a modern thought experiment, not any real town’s budget. Your choice stays private and is not saved.
Three questions. A whole evening.
Choose one to bring to the table. You don’t need a finished answer.
No history degree or advance reading required. Listening counts, too.
Most of us feel we owe our kids a great deal. What about their grandchildren, or people living in 2226? Does a duty fade with distance?
Debts, contracts, laws, even a constitution. When is it fair to make choices that bind people who can’t vote yet?
Think of something you inherited and didn’t earn: a road, a park, a family business, a habit, a debt. What do you owe for it, and to whom?
Bring your best objection.
Come on your own or bring a friend. We meet over dinner, listen carefully, and leave room to change our minds.
Your name is only used to plan the table. The public headcount never shows names.
This meeting has ended. The next gathering is in December.
Entirely optional. Pull any thread.
Start with the letters. Go further if you have time. The reading is encouraged, never an entrance exam.
Jefferson’s letter. Find one sentence you would defend and one you would cross out.
Madison’s polite, pointed answer. Notice what he grants before he disagrees.
Edmund Burke, in 1790: society binds “those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”
Thomas Paine answers Burke: every generation must be as free to act for itself as the ones before it.
A boundary for our discussion: this isn’t a night about any one budget, bill or party. Bring the principle and leave the platform at home.
Each generation should start free of the last one’s debts and laws.
He asks Congress to fund the war debt for the long haul, state debts included.
Some debts are run up for people not yet born. They can fairly share the cost.
Burke defends a partnership across generations. Paine calls ruling from the grave a tyranny.
A compact argument for a clean slate. Every link needs to hold. Select a claim to reveal a challenge.
Did you agree to your country, your language or your family name? Much of what binds us, we never chose. Does that make all of it unfair?
True. But we act for people who cannot consent all the time: children, patients, the very old. Is acting on someone’s behalf always wrong?
Does the bill arrive alone, or with whatever it paid for? And could they refinance it, repay it early or vote to change it?
Would you rather inherit a clean slate or a finished bridge? A generation that never borrows may also never build what outlasts it.
So we owe the future a clean slate, and nothing more.
Four untested claims. Where does the argument first lose you?
Link No. 4 meets in December. Bring one sharp question with room for two honest sides. We’ll choose the next topic together on November 30.
Make the other person’s case fairly. Question ideas, respect people. Leave room for others. Changing your mind counts.