Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 14, 1991 TAG: 9104160449
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Alan Sorensen
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
I appreciated her call. It got me thinking.
The woman, who declined to give her name, said she's 64 and lives in Roanoke.
She was bothered that we had lamented the plight of children. But her main complaint was that we had compared their situation with the supposedly more favorable status of the elderly.
"Poor kids, my foot," she said. "The young people today are the most pampered people this country has ever seen."
Having entered stern middle age myself, I might be inclined to agree. The evidence, however, suggests otherwise:
A child in America today is nearly twice as likely to be poor as a senior citizen is, studies show. One of the principal reasons is that the federal government spends more than four times on the elderly what it spends on children.
According to the Census Bureau, 82 percent of the elderly who would be poor if there were no federal government are lifted out of poverty by government benefits and programs, including Social Security. Only 32 percent of children who would be poor without the government's help escape poverty because of it.
From 1978 to 1987, federal spending (adjusted for inflation) targeted for senior citizens rose by 52 percent; spending for children fell by 4 percent, according to an analysis by the Republican staff of the House Budget Committee. In 1987, the federal government spent $259 billion on the elderly and $55 billion on children.
I didn't recite these figures to my caller. (I didn't have them handy at the time.) Instead, I listened.
Did I know, she asked, how many federal dollars go to teen-aged mothers and their children? "If they're poor and have nothing to eat, why should they bring another child into this world? And where's the father? . . . . The government has become the sugar daddy."
Or how about the tax dollars going to education? "These kids are illiterate. What are the teachers doing, taking coffee breaks? We're spending billions of dollars on schools, and what are we getting?"
And don't forget the criminal-justice system. My caller had had to appear recently in court. "I saw all these people who committed crimes. They were all young. I didn't see any 60-year-olds there."
The biggest slice of the government pie, the woman insisted, goes not to the elderly, but to youth.
I remained skeptical. It bothered me that she so begrudges spending on children, worried me that she views them as a threat. Shouldn't older persons empathize with youth's vulnerability? Still, I was struck by another point she made: Why even draw the comparison between young and old?
Editorials such as we had published are dangerous to senior citizens, she suggested, because they reinforce the perception that greedy geezers are grabbing all the goodies at the expense of young people. The effect is to encourage resentment.
Which, of course, already exists. "That old hag, that old coot. You hear that kind of thing all the time," said the caller. An angry young person recently confronted her, she recalled, with the charge that when that person reached retirement age, Social Security would be all used up.
America, meanwhile, continues to worship youth. "In China, they revere old people. Here, you can't say you're old. It's socially unacceptable. People are actually ashamed to be old. And it's socially acceptable to kick people like me around."
Is it editorially acceptable, too?
I've long been attracted to utilitarian arguments, which determine the value of things by their usefulness. I try to incorporate such reasoning into my editorials.
Thus, I'd tend not to say we should care for children out of sympathy or kindness or love, or just because it's the right thing to do. I'd wonder who would buy such a plea.
Instead, I might resort to cost-benefit analysis. The caller is worried about the social costs of teen-age pregnancy, inadequate education and juvenile delinquency? Well, she might appreciate early-childhood expenditures as investments that promise future savings.
According to a study by the Children's Defense Fund, we can spend $1 on childhood immunizations now or $10 in later medical costs; $1 on quality preschool or $4.75 on special education, crime and welfare; $1 on prenatal care or $3 in short-term hospital costs. Better protect assets, or they become liabilities.
If such calculations aren't convincing enough, an economic argument also can be fashioned from historical experience. Traditionally, many social hierarchies have tended to lead upward through tiers of advancing age to a patriarch figure - a pope or a party chairman who has outlived as well as outsmarted his adversaries. Such groups, dominated by the aged, often rigidly limit change. Rituals rule, and everything thought worth knowing is believed to be already known.
In a global marketplace, such societies won't fare well in economic competition against societies quicker to adapt and innovate - another reason to invest in youth.
I'm convinced by such arguments. I think our priorities are misguided, skewed by politics. (Seniors vote; children don't.) A vigorous nation will favor the promise of the future over the weight of the past. I'm appalled that America has the world's largest age bias in poverty rates and allocation of resources. That should change.
Still, on the phone last week, I spoke not with a resource to be judged by its potential usefulness. I spoke with a person.
Of course, a strong utilitarian case can be made for not treating older people as over the hill. If we lament the wasted potential of high-school dropouts in the work force, what about the wasted potential of the over-50s? A flexible society shouldn't categorically exclude anyone from an innovative future. It can't be blind to the fact that people live and remain healthy and potentially productive longer nowadays.
My phone conversation reminded me, though, that these can't be the only arguments. Economic usefulness can't be the only value. Concern for young people shouldn't come at the expense of any other group - a war between the generations or a reversal of seniors' gains.
"Young people already have an antagonistic attitude toward old people. They would deny old people the right to breathe," said my caller. An exaggeration, but her feeling of vulnerability was real.
"In Nazi Germany, the weak, the crippled - the old - went to the gas ovens. I wouldn't want that to happen here."
Nor would I. I'm glad the anonymous lady called. I hope she calls again soon.
by CNB