Greedy Geezers? That's a Myth

The coming elections seem to have fired up an intergenerational war, with the older population cast as the “greedy geezers” eating so much of the pie that they leave only crumbs for the younger generation. Both Republicans and Democrats say that entitlements must be cut.

These hostile statements ignore some elementary and some surprising facts. Social Security comes close to paying for itself, after some recent revisions. The way to curb Medicare, is to cut the costs of health care rather than leave old people to chose between medications and their meals. Most important, it should surprise no one that people who completed the work years have earned and saved more than those who are just beginning to work or are early in their work career.

Utterly ignored in all these tirades against the old, is the notion that the elderly get much more than young is based merely on public budgets and pays no mind to what happens to the large mountains of private dough.

Read the rest at CNN.com