Old People Suck

Nick Kristof hit the nail on the head in the NYTimes yesterday. He looks at the progress America has made in eliminating senior poverty in the U.S. in the last forty years, and the lack of progress we've made among children. He calls the Boomers "the greediest generation", and warns his co-generationalists not to get so greedy that they end up living off their children in the 2010's much as they lived off their parents in the 1970's.

While his article focuses on poverty, I have another beef: Social Security. In polls, most seniors oppose Bush's SocSec privatization plan even when they are informed by pollsters that benefits for current retirees will not change. What the heck? What right does the AARP have to loudly opine about a policy change that is fundamentally the business of young workers? They're all going to be pushing up daisies in the 2040's - I'm going to be retiring, having paid their Social Security checks all my life, and I want to have something left over for me. I'm not convinced that Bush's plan will work (though his proposal to slow the growth of middle- and upper-class benefits is a step in the right direction), but I am convinced that this is an issue that should be decided by the young. Old people have plenty of programs of their own. I don't get involved in the Medicare drug benefit debate - why should old folks mess up the politics of the debate over my retirement?