Gregg Easterbrook doesn't feel so sorry for seniors:
As a group, seniors are the least hardest hit [by the recession]. Most are retired, so unemployment, the biggest economic problem associated with the recession, does not impact them. Many consumer prices have fallen, which increases seniors’ buying power.
Two kinds of prices are rising college education and health care. The former has no impact on seniors, while the latter has limited impact because seniors don’t pay most of their health care costs. Young workers pay those costs via Medicare taxes.
Of course there are individual seniors in need but for senior-citizen lobbies to depict seniors overall as hard-hit by the recession is political selfishness in the extreme.
2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan