By Liz Peek
Financial Columnist

Today we will almost surely elect Barack Obama President of the United States. A new generation will vote for Mr. Obama –- a generation that has grown up with the Internet. This new crop of voters has access to more information than any that came before, and yet has swallowed Obama’s impossible campaign promises and contradictory policies just as trustingly as those who in earlier times looked for a chicken in every pot.

Welcome to the disillusionment of another generation. I don’t anticipate this inevitable consequence of today’s election with any glee, believe me. To see young people turning out in droves to vote for this eloquent, attractive young man is inspiring. To hear them buy into his promises, though, is sobering.

For instance, we are told that the image of the United States has suffered mightily under George Bush, and that Obama is going to usher in a veritable global love-fest. Would those falling over themselves to herald our new president include the peoples of South Korea and Colombia –- allies both — whose much-needed free trade agreements with the U.S. Obama has opposed?

How about our neighbors in Canada or Mexico; will Obama’s promised re-write of NAFTA endear them to the U.S.? Is it possible that Obama’s opposition to free trade demonstrates his gratitude to labor unions –- groups that aroused his ire by donating to the Clinton and Edwards campaigns but suddenly were much more warmly welcomed when they began shifting funds his way?

Over a year ago I wrote a tongue-in-cheek column defending the status quo against the pressing demand for “Change” writ large. While politicians of all stripes were heralding new directions, they were ignoring, for example, that the U.S. has been blessed for many years with low inflation. Voters in their 30s and 40s could not be expected to remember the devastating inflation of the 1970s. They couldn’t be expected to understand how double-digit price hikes threw the fear of God into retirees on fixed incomes and created the same kind of paralysis in lending that we are witnessing today.

They might not connect the dots between Obama’s enthusiasm for the Employee Free Choice Act, a resurgence of unionization, and wage-driven inflation. They might not realize that restricting trade with China, re-writing NAFTA and barring adoption of free trade agreements with Colombia and South Korea will indeed drive prices higher.

The United States has also enjoyed a period of stable employment. The new generation has never seen serious unemployment. True, they have witnessed shifts in employment as manufacturing jobs have been lost to lower-priced locales. But they have never seen unemployment rates go much above 6%, where it is now. In 1982, when unemployment reached 9.7%, Obama was 21 years old. I doubt he was much focused on the dismal state of the economy. Voters, however, were focused, and gave Ronald Reagan a mandate to set the country on a new course –- one which encouraged growth through lower taxes, expanded trade and deregulation.

That program was adopted by both Democrats and Republicans because it worked. People in their thirties and forties cannot imagine that raising taxes on successful people might harm the economy. That’s because they weren’t around to witness the exodus of talent from England –- a country wherein punitive marginal tax rates squashed incentives and drove out anyone who could locate elsewhere. Margaret Thatcher didn’t just join the Reagan Revolution –- she clung to it for dear life.

What young voters have seen, and have responded to, is the collapse of Wall Street. Because bankers, politicians and speculators conspired to create the worst investment bubble in modern times, we are about to abandon the policies that brought millions of people around the world into the middle class. Policies that gave people real hope –- not just its rhetorical facsimile. This is a tragedy.