From this study, a complex picture of senior participation and policy emerges. One aspect is that, as with many stereotypes, there is a grain of truth in the "greedy geezer" image. To an extent, seniors defend their own programs at the expense of policies benefiting others. Economists have shown for example, that the proportion of elderly residents in a location is associated with a significant reduction in per child education spending. By contrast, there was a positive association between elderly population share and school spending in the early 1900s, before Social Security's enactment. Government policy seems to have shifted seniors' self-interests away from supporting the education of younger people upon whom they were once directly dependent, toward defending the government benefits upon which their livelihoods now depend.In sum, by draining resources, distorting economic incentives, and shortchanging future generations, oldsters have evened out inequalities in political participation and created a happy, healthy, unified and invincible lobby that can effectively drive the state into bankruptcy by destroying any effort to deny or curtail their benefits. Win for participatory democracy!
But if this crowding-out effect is not desirable from the standpoint of democratic governance, other age-related policy effects are. Social Security has democratized senior participation, reducing participatory inequality within the senior constituency. Hence seniors' welfare state programs have exacerbated political inequality between age groups, but have moderated it within the senior population. Social Security has both deleterious and laudable effects on American democracy...Over time seniors eclipsed nonseniors in the participatory arena, and now are disproportionately active. At the same time, Social Security and Medicare coverage expanded and benefits grew, with profound effects on seniors' empirical and attitudinal well-being.
--How Policies Make Citizens
Monday, September 07, 2009
"Laudable effects on American democracy"
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3 comments:
Isn't that the expected endgame for democracy? I find it hilarious that geezers go nuts at the idea of "future reductions" in Social Security. They'll be dead before they take effect, but no matter, they still go crazy.
I think they expect to live longer than you expect them to. Medicare has already seen to that--"The programs helped transform seniors from the poorest, most beleaguered age group to the most comfortable."
Well, some of the proposals that I have seem the "walker brigade" protesting were those that only applied to people younger than them, so I fail to see how they could live long enough to be affected by that - whatever the 'odometer limit' is for age, it's long enough that people don't wrap it around that often.
I have an aunt who is in her late 80's, and she isn't tracking that well. I have no idea how common her cognitive problems are, but her vote counts the same as mine and yours, and she is easily excited about certain things. If the AARP sends her a large-print notice that "something is bad", she can be counted on to get worried about it. But try to explain pretty much anything with numbers in it to her, and she is totally lost. If she is typical of this group, we're in big trouble...
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