Older Americans may find solace in David Brooks’ report today on longitudinal studies “producing a rosier portrait of life after retirement. These studies don’t portray old age as surrender or even serenity. They portray it as a period of development…”
So much for Charles DeGaulle’s famous aphorism, “Old age is a shipwreck,” and Freud’s assertion, “Old people are no longer educable.”
It’s comforting to learn that we are getting “more outgoing, self-confident and warm with age,” but Brooks is only leading us up to a grim Catch-22–we are stealing our happiness at the financial expense of our grandchildren: “the federal government now spends $7 on the elderly for each $1 it spends on children.”
Overlooking the fact that most of that comes from a lifetime of Social Security paycheck deductions, the middle-aged Brooks asserts: “Only the old can lead a generativity revolution–millions of people demanding changes in health care spending and the retirement age to make life better for their grandchildren.”
As an example of the stirrings of such a movement, Brooks cites Tea Party enthusiasts as a symptom of “the only way the U.S. is going to avoid an economic crisis…if the oldsters take it upon themselves to arise and force change.”