SOAK THE RICH:

The Affluent Elderly (Robert Samuelson, 5/15/11, Washington Post)

I have been urging higher eligibility ages and more means-testing for Social Security and Medicare for so long that I forget that many Americans still accept the outdated and propagandistic notion that old age automatically impoverishes people. Asks one reader: Who are these "well-off" elderly you keep writing about? The suggestion is that they are figments of my imagination, invented to justify harsh cutbacks in Social Security and Medicare on the needy.

Just the opposite. We see every day that many people in their 60s and older live comfortably -- and still would if they received a little less in Social Security and paid a little more for Medicare. The trouble is that what's intuitively obvious becomes lost in the political debate; it's overwhelmed by selective and self-serving statistics that cast almost everyone over 65 as being on the edge of insolvency. The result: Government over-subsidizes the affluent elderly. It transfers resources from the struggling young to the secure old.

To correct the stereotype, consult a government publication called "Older Americans 2010, Key Indicators of Well-Being." It reminds us that Americans live longer and have gotten healthier. In 1930, life expectancy was 59.2 years at birth and 12.2 years at 65; in 2006, those figures were 77.7 and 18.5. Since 1981, death rates for heart disease and stroke have fallen by half for those 65 and over. In this population, about three-quarters rate their own health as "good" or "excellent."

"Most older people are enjoying greater prosperity than any previous generation," the report says.

It becomes even more important to hike retirement ages and means test as we put in place social safety net reforms that build savings.

Posted by oj at May 16, 2011 6:05 AM
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