Selfish Brats of the World, Unite : Pete Wilson is the perfect candidate for the spoiled generation of baby boomers.

The speech opening his second term as governor should have dispelled any doubts: Pete Wilson is cut out to be President in 1996.

Wilson is the consummate spokesman for my spoiled-rotten class of baby boomers and our elders who have wrecked California schools to slash our taxes, amassed record personal wealth while generating massive state debt and now lash out at scapegoats handy to blame for our epic selfishness.

Wilson knows just what enrages the most subsidized, pampered and richest generation of middle-agers and seniors in history. He knows that we over-40 voters don’t really care about values, welfare or crime. We don’t give a whit about political leaders who cheat on their wives, rich candidates who break illegal-immigrant hiring laws, the billions of dollars spent in undeserved welfare for the old and wealthy or the epidemic of adult violence against children.

No, what we fear and loathe is the new. In Wilson’s world, older Californians are losing the state to the uneducated, the illegal, the welfare mothers, the criminal. Translation: those who are “not like us.”

The 1990 census underscores the state’s divisions: 70% of the state’s 60-year-olds are whites; 55% of the 10-year-olds are minorities. Three decades of Californians’ school slashings, university defunding, tax-cutting, social-services axing and immigrant bashing (and now the logical culmination of intergenerational attrition: a bankruptcy debt-financed prison explosion to warehouse the minority young) reveal a single-minded purpose: punish the generations to come.

This wrath has nothing to do with fairness or “values.” Today’s over-40 Californians grew up attending public schools ranked among the top nationally. We paid a mere $200 in fees in 1967 to get tuition-free higher education that was among the finest in the world.

Today, a three-decade orgy of tax-slashing greed has left California schools ranked 38th in per-pupil funding and second in classroom crowding. The University of California system charges fees topping $5,000 per year for a deteriorating, packed system that turns away thousands of students for lack of space. Wilson, whose tenure alone has cost universities $900 million in funding, rails that “uneducated youths” are wrecking the state.

California’s 1993 per-capita income, nearing $22,000, ranks with the richest nations of the world. Average annual household incomes among 40- to 64-year-olds top $60,000. Elder poverty is at an all-time low. Yet 40% of California’s youth live near or below poverty-income guidelines, a travesty unheard of in other industrial nations. Of households headed by people under age 30 in California, less than one-third can hope to buy their own homes in a market dominated by middle-aged and elder profiteers.

We older generations will be the first in history to dump crushing debts on our children--$38 billion in California deficits on top of $4 trillion in national and $1.2 trillion in local red ink (nationwide). Wilson, with a straight face, champions us as “law-abiding taxpayers” who “pull their own weight.” Industrialist emeritus Lee Iacocca, too candid to win office, brands his peers as “the most selfish and irresponsible generation this country has ever produced,” wrecking our children’s future “with our eyes wide open.”

Are over-40 Californians proud of our legacy? Obviously not, or we wouldn’t be angry, casting about for scapegoats.

Our hypocrisy is boundless. Californians have known for decades that kicking out illegal immigrants spells disaster for farm, hotel and restaurant, garment, domestic service and other businesses. The billions Californians reap from cheap immigrant labor far offset anything those workers may cost in public benefits.

Had Proposition 187 actually risked banishing illegal immigrants, it would have lost handily. Like Wilson’s message, 187’s one substantive provision was crafted to focus the anger of elders seeking scapegoats: Kick the illegals’ children out of school. Perfect. Slam the young and the immigrant with one sweeping vote.

However popular now, such politics has no future. Over-40 voters will decisively control one or two more elections before we fade from the scene, replaced by a younger electorate that shows evidence of perceiving the massive intergenerational rip-off suffered at the hands of elders.

Wilson and the Republicans can’t be happy at The Times Poll’s revelation of their repudiation by 18- to 29-year-olds. Give Wilson’s and the sycophant New Democrats’ plans a bit more ripening in Sacramento and Washington, and we will learn what a true generation war means.