The Plight of the Elderly; Beware the Plight of the Young
The Plight of the Elderly; Beware the Plight of the Young
I am a Baby-Boomer. What magic that phrase once held! We were the Generation that was going to change the world and in some aspects, I think we did but not all for the good. We shook our country up with our "unreasonable" demands for peace (or the end of war) and that old fashioned ideas and political views could no longer be tolerated. Children were no longer meant to be seen and not heard. We were very visible and we demanded to be heard, and hear us they did!
What did all of this get us? Not very much. We changed the voting age to 18 and Women's Lib changed the way men would have to look at us but still we did not really rock the foundation of the establishment as it remained an impenetrable rock of tradition and somewhat corrupt way of doing things. For all of our antidisestablishmentarianism, we really got no farther than any other generation had before us. If one could view our objections in the regards of government taking the form of an establishment in the rhetorical church. Like us, they had changed certain things but not the bulk of the rot in our government's core...dirty politics and anal retentive thinking.
Now, the Baby-Boomers are becoming the elderly and their grandchildren are the new generation and it seems that the discontent is just as strong and unhappy as it had been for us. I have viewed many documentaries on different decades in the past and it seems to me that the same things that were wrong in those decades are the same things wrong now. Bad economy, war, unfair standards and fear of the stability of the United States. Our enemies may have changed names and locations; our wars fought in different places, the candidates for public office look different and have different names but all in all, it is still the same pot of soup as before. Their is no difference in the vile taste of the concoction.
But to the point of my essay anyway.
Social Security is amok. I went on early retirement recently and yet I still have to work an outside job just to make ends meet. I was not one of the smart ones who invested in their retirement but sadly, many of those wise ones are still in the same boat as I am. The crash of stocks and bankruptcy of many companies have wiped many of these people out of their life savings and their retirement funds. The prospect for myself and for many of them is grim at the thought of what happens when we are no longer able to work at all, possibly due to age or health reasons. What will become of us? The thought is terrifying and very real.
It is frightening plight of the elderly and also unless things drastically change, the same plight that will face the young when they grow old. I warn them to beware!