A specter is stalking the Western world, and it looks a lot like Grandma. As President Bush has repeatedly put it, the problem with Social Security is that "baby boomers will be living longer." Not "too" long, he's careful to say, but long enough to create a fiscal catastrophe. And it's not just Social Security. Medicare, as well as any company rash enough to have offered pensions, may eventually sink under the weight of its obligations to the elderly. A welfare state designed in the era of bacon, eggs and Lucky Strikes cannot expect to survive in an age of "active seniors" who wash down their Viagra with soy milk and think a six-pack is something you get at the gym.Read it here.
. . .
Get born, get into the crucial 18-to-35-year-old consumer demographic, and have the good sense to get out before you've overstayed your welcome. And it would take genuine heroism to confront baby boomers with the question usually addressed to 18-year-old grunts: Are you willing to die for your country? Like maybe right now? Because that's what they want from us, folks, unless we can come up with a better idea.
6.07.2005
kill grandma
Barbara Ehrenreich has a plan to solve the Social Security non-crisis - and all our other problems, too.
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3 comments:
Struggling with whether or not that article is humour or actual belief.
It walks a tightrope on that one.
Would be strange for an organization that drafted an unconstitutional law to attempt to save a dying woman's life to suddenly turn around and want seniors dropping off. They tried to save Terri to appease the church and keep its vote - doesn't this writer realize that most of the church consists of seniors? You'd think the Gov would want them around for their vote.
Although, the old 180 spin isn't exactly new news with this Gov, so anything is possible, I guess. Hey, Saddam gassed his own people ... Hitler gassed those he blamed for economic strife (and other things) ... but I won't go into those analogies. Oops, just did.
It's humor.
In case you don't recognize the name, it's the author of (among other things) "Nickled and Dimed".
The perils and pitfalls of first-time column reading of authors who write humour far too well.
I still stand by the church comment though. And the gassing one. Just wait. It'll happen. Fiction writing always has a strange way of becoming truth down the road, after all.
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