War on the elderly

The clearest case of social progress in the United States during the second half of the twentieth century was the steep fall in poverty among the elderly. For a change of this magnitude in a long-established historical reality, the transformation in the economic status of seniors was swift and radical yet relatively unheralded. When I was in college sociology students were taught that the elderly, like minorities, suffered disproportionately from poverty. By the time I was in graduate school a few years later, all this had begun to change.

Between 1960 and 1995, the poverty rate of those aged 65 and above fell from 35 percent to 10 percent. It was a huge triumph for the welfare state. But just as this dramatic success for economic equity and social justice was taking place, conservatives like Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United States were selling a different story about the welfare state and enacting policies diametrically contrary to the principles that brought about the Big Shrink in elder poverty.

By the 1980s, with hyper-capitalism becoming the dominant credo, improvements in the living standards of older people began to stall. The development of new public housing units, for example, which had helped many seniors access decent housing at an affordable cost, plummeted and was replaced by Section 8 housing vouchers. Public housing had fallen into disrepute as places of crime, drugs and despair fostering dependency on government programs across generations. The buildings went into disrepair and maintenance was slow and poor. Public housing designated for the elderly did not fit this pattern but it paid the price of sharply dropping funding as well.

After 2016, with conservatives attaining control of all three branches of government, the threat to the moderate standard of living seniors had just recently acquired became more severe. As part and parcel of the GOP’s long class war on behalf of the affluent at the expense of the poor and the middle class, Republicans gave corporations and rich individuals a huge tax cut. Republicans claimed the tax cut would generate so much economic growth it would “pay for itself,” a claim made by earlier GOP administrations and found to be false. This time the claim has also been found to be false.

Now, Republicans are looking to make up for rivers of red ink by robbing the most vulnerable. The elderly are a prime target since programs benefiting the rest of the needy have already been cut to the bone. Republicans are eying programs like Social Security and Medicare, once thought sacrosanct because of the voting power of the elderly population and the lobbying of AARP, as a rich source of money to make up the deficit they created to coddle the rich and the superrich. Like the apocryphal saying attributed to a bank robber, they are looking at Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid (not exclusively a program for the elderly but on which the elderly depend a great deal on as well, especially for long-term care) because like the bank, that’s where the money is. Or at least all the money except that which the Republicans do consider sacred, the obscenely bloated and rapidly growing budget for the tools of killing and destruction, otherwise known as the military budget.

The assault on Social Security and Medicare, what Republicans call “entitlements” to cast them in a dubious light, was put on the table by no less than Mitch McConnell, the GOP Senate Majority Leader. It also has long been in the crosshairs of Paul Ryan, the outgoing Speaker of the House.

The GOP loss of the House in the midterm election means the Republicans won’t be able to gut those programs—yet. But they are going for them as soon as they regain power if they ever do. Meanwhile, they have been chipping away at them for years. Cutting Medicaid, closing dozens of Social Security offices all over the country, scheming to slice Meals on Wheels and food assistance generally. The connection between Republican rule, beginning with Reagan in the 1980s, and the flat-lining of elder living standards, is clear. A study cited in a recent report by the Bureau of Economic Analysis found that “when poverty is measured relative to median non-elderly income rather than relative to the official poverty line, the decline in elderly poverty ended in the early 1980s.”

The last battle of the Republican class war is the campaign against Social Security, which research indicates is by far the most important factor in the decline of poverty among seniors. We are at a turning point. If the Republicans regain the kind of total control they had until the election, the surviving remnants of the New Deal will be buried. All the progress it took decades to achieve in reducing poverty among retirees will be lost.

The next few elections are critical. We need to organize with skill and zeal. We must vote unfailingly.

If progressives and liberals can hold the line against the GOP in these coming contests, Republicans will never be able to fulfill their obscene dream to turn to dust all that once was decent in this society. Before they can, they will be drowned by the coming demographic landslide that will turn this country into a nation of empowered minorities. Good riddance to the reactionary, lily-white party of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump.