The worst cross-subsidy is how public universities were nearly free for the boomers but kids these days have to rack up huge debts to pay for the same education because the Boomers won't support the kinds of taxes their parents paid. That's a more pernicious cross-subsidy.
You might be interested in some Forums on generational history -- that Boomers got pampered but were not so generous with their kids. (Really, it is a matter of Boomer executives and their political stooges gutting the public sector except for graft; those executives and their political stooges have been ungenerous with fellow Boomers not in the economic elite, too).
Such is not good for creating young conservatives. Traditionally, creditors have been on the Right out of concern for the value of their assets and have gone further to the Right as they are bigger creditors, and debtors have tended to the Left on economics -- desiring either more economic opportunity or inflation to reduce the severity of their debts. We used to have lots of moderate conservatives when millions had savings accounts, life-insurance policies, and such low-end investments as corporate bonds, 401Ks, IRAs, and mutual funds... and after some hard years, savers have largely devoured their savings, bonds pay next to nothing, and the valuations of 401K accounts have been ravaged. A few tycoons and executives have done extremely well by treating others badly.
America is polarized much like Spain in the 1930s in politics. We have no moderate conservatives because we have few surviving small-scale creditors... and they know that they can become destitute at the caprice of some tycoon or executive.
