In Wednesday’s Grandparenting column, “Today’s kids in for rude awakening,” Tom and Dee Hardie made good points about people feeling entitled to more than they should be. However, the sentence “America is maxed out, with the national debt caused by European Unions’ social welfare net serving as a red flag” is poorly written and misleads the reader.

Blaming the problem of the “maxed out … national debt” on entitlement programs is oversimplification and ignores the major causes of our national debt problems. One root cause was the repeal of the Glass-Stegal act. This allowed banks to become investment houses in addition to their banking services, thus leading to the housing bubble, liars loans and bundled derivatives of worthless mortgages on which investors lost fortunes.

Another root cause is several unfunded wars. Of course the list is very, very long, including not enough jobs, mushrooming education costs, out of control medical costs and on and on. I think the columnists should stick to grandparenting and leave political and financial analysis out of their column.

Carrie Kaeding

Marysville