-Caveat Lector-
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Date: Mon, 14 Jun 1999 11:30:01 -0500
Citation: The Progressive Feb 1999, v.63, 2, 12(1)
Author: Ehrenreich, Barbara
Title: The `Undeserving Old'.(privatization of Social Security)
by Barbara Ehrenreich
------------------------------------------------------------------------
COPYRIGHT 1999 Progressive Inc.
First welfare, now Social Security. Undeterred by the febrile condition of
the world financial markets, the drive to "save," privatize, and otherwise
snuff out that venerable vestige of the New Deal is back and gaining steam.
We can expect that, as in the case of welfare, there will be an all-out
propaganda effort to demonize the program's recipients. In the build-up to
welfare "reform," people on welfare were consistently portrayed as
promiscuous, substance-abusing, child-neglecting lay-abouts. If the same
tactics prevail, we will soon be hearing chilling stories about geezers
mugging teenagers and squandering their Social Security checks on Viagra and
vodka.
Sadly, the elderly may have an even harder time defending themselves than
the poverty-stricken single mothers did. Few of the latter, perhaps a total of
thirty-five out of four million, ever fit the stereotype of the welfare queen
spawning baby after baby in order to augment her benefits and hence her supply
of mind-altering drugs. But the elderly are vulnerable to all of the
predictable charges.
Lazy? Well, how many eighty-year-olds make the slightest attempt to support
themselves? How many ninety-seven-year-olds can even recall how to set an
alarm clock? As for "dependency," that great bugaboo of the
welfare-reformers--visit a nursing home and you will find people who have been
rendered so thoroughly dependent by Social Security that they no longer exert
themselves to perambulate or lift spoon to mouth. There is no question about
it: The longer one lives off one's Social Security checks, the more likely one
is to maunder and drool.
You think that no one could be so churlish as to stigmatize our seniors?
Consider the fact that the drive against Social Security is being led by some
of the same think tanks--and even the same individuals within them--who blazed
the trail to welfare reform. Michael Tanner, for example, famed for his
Savanarola-like excoriations of the welfare poor, now serves as the Cato
Institute's point man on Social Security privatization. For men like
this--dedicated to the abolition of all government activities not involving
the use of firearms--welfare was only a warm-up for Social Security, a chance
to test-drive their most scurrilous slanders and hone their stigmatizing
skills.
In the case of the elderly, there is a growing body of prejudice for the
"reformers" and privatizers to work with. Even the considerably pre-elderly
must have shuddered at the story of Riley Weston, the actor-writer who was
fired by Disney from her screenwriting job when it was revealed that she is
not nineteen, as her resume claimed, but a doddering thirty-one. Frank Rich
reports in The New York Times that veteran screenwriters (say, those over
fifty) are busily editing their resumes to remove credits from ancient series
like Mash, lest would-be employers judge them over the hill.
Most cultures to date have treasured the elderly for their wisdom and
experience; ours fears that these very qualities are antithetical to healthy
ratings.
John Glenn's space flight highlighted America's tortured ambivalence toward
the elderly.
First, it should be observed that his flight served no scientific purpose
whatsoever. NASA said in the beginning that it was an opportunity to study the
"aging process," although it should have been obvious that, at seventy-seven,
Glenn has pretty much completed the process. Later, NASA claimed that the goal
was to study "weightlessness," though everyone knows this subject can be
studied quite adequately in the CNN studios themselves.
So the real purpose of his mission was probably the propagandistic one--"to
give our senior citizens a boost." Which has a fine and filial sound to it
until you ask yourself, why did they need a boost in the first place? Is the
real function of Cape Canaveral to rehabilitate unpopular social groups, and,
if so, can we expect to soon see the first crack-dealer and IRS clerk in
space? Or could the Glenn flight have been a plot by the Social Security
reformers, aimed at proving you're never too old to hold down a job, even one
involving long hours and mortal danger?
The advertising industry has already been enlisted in the campaign to
portray the elderly as undeserving, and certainly repulsive, wretches. Sure,
they're always telling us "it's great to be silver" and that "life is an
adventure" if you manage to get to fifty without losing the ability to dress
yourself. But watch the evening news and you will find that these upbeat
vitamin pitches are buried within a torrent of commercials for denture
adhesives, incontinence products, arthritis remedies, and fiber-based
laxatives--all aimed to make aging look considerably less attractive than the
well-known alternative. And what do these commercials do for the image of the
elderly? They promote the idea that any gray-head, no matter how venerable--a
judge, for example, or a high school principal--is probably sitting in a wet
diaper and obsessing about the prospects for a successful bowel movement
sometime in the coming week.
Now, of course, the privatizers will insist that they only want to help the
elderly--by allowing everyone to take the money they would have paid in taxes
to the Social Security Administration and invest it directly in the stock
market on their own. Leaving aside the possible return of the business cycle,
if not a global market meltdown, do we really want to spend latter days
cheering the capitalists on? As in: Gee, I hope they downsize me so my stock
will go up! Not to mention the torture of spending those golden years, which
you have no doubt penciled in for good works and great books, following the
NASDAQ and Dow. And imagine the humiliation of begging on street corners at
age sixty-five, while the affluent young stroll by sneering, "Old fool, she
brought this on herself by failing to pick up any Netscape shares back in '94
when the prices were low!"
Lengthy contemplation of the privatized and stigmatized future that awaits
us may lead many of the pre-elderly to end it all now. In fact, that might
very well be the privatizers' secret solution to the Social Security "crisis":
mass self-euthanasia on the part of the recipients-to-be. This would also
explain the scientifically indefensible John Glenn flight: It was meant to
test-market the idea of launching geezers into space, where they will orbit
peacefully for all of eternity, with no need for any Social Security checks.
Barbara Ehrenreich, author of "Blood Rites" and "The Snarling Citizen,"
writes monthly for The Progressive.
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