What happened to this country? Things were looking so good one year ago. Sure, the government was heaping hundreds of billions of your dollars into failing megabanks, and we were still sending troops to die in foreign countries. But things were looking up when we overcame our prejudices to elect a tall, handsome, charismatic, male president who made lots of promises about change. After all, this president was “left” while the last president was “right,” right?

Things haven’t changed because there is no left or right. Your future still looks bleak because it is. The Bush and Obama administrations offer no help when they legacy-shop without concern for the fiscal consequences. It is time to rise up against the vestiges of politics past. No generation of Americans but yours has ever been so threatened by the fiscal recklessness of its government.

The problems with the Federal Reserve Bank are growing irreparably out of control. This private organization exists for the sole purpose of lending invented money to banks and to the federal government. Presidents used to understand economics — Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson went to battle for Americans against centralized banking — but the Federal Reserve reared its head again in 1913 and, today, no one really rocks the boat.

This enables the bankers and bureaucrats to create money out of nothing, dump bailouts into the system, and cheapen the value of the dollars in your pocket in order to cheapen the government’s debt. While the rich can keep up with this inflation by investing, the poor cannot. Thus, the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.

Thankfully, more than 60 percent of representatives in the House were bipartisan enough to co-sponsor H.R. 1207, “Audit the Federal Reserve.” Unfortunately, Barney Frank, house financial chairman, is attempting to incorporate that bill into Barack Obama’s larger request to empower the unaccountable Federal Reserve more than ever.

Entitlement programs are going to collapse while squeezing all productivity from the economy. Social Security is structured like the kind of illegal Ponzi scheme that landed Bernie Madoff in prison. UW professor Dwight Drake said in his book Gutless Neglect that Social Security will pass a point of no return in 2017, when the system can no longer be repaired. When that happens, the party is over. Your generation couldn’t get in the door, but it will get the hangover.

The well-meaning Obama health-care system will accelerate these problems with unprecedented deficit spending. There is no money for more government-run health care or, for that matter, current government-run health care. The fact that Congress is pushing it anyway indicates that the so-called “left” is just as reckless with your future as the “right.”

The left versus right myth is a tool used by politicians to invent issues and then placate constituencies. It is the reason that Obama can perpetuate two wars without any of the scrutiny exacted on George W. Bush. It is the reason we are divided over issues like gay marriage. Where is that robust anti-war movement now? Why should anyone beg grinning politicians for the right to get married in the first place? There is no left versus right anymore. There is only the coercive power of the government versus you.

Reach contributing columnist Greg Albert at opinion@dailyuw.com.