Letter 2 America for July 26, 2013

Dear America,

When we discuss demographics in this country we are usually talking about race, and with good reason.  Our nation's changing racial demographics will, by 2042 it is estimated, result in a country that is no longer a majority white, and no doubt with that change will come a change in national direction.  A non-white majority will cast votes leading to different foreign policy with regard to the non-white, non-Judeo-Christian countries of the world, and even domestically we will see a change as the priorities of the voting majority change.  The electoral value of those of certain economic status--that is, the 2% versus the other 98%--will be altered as will many things that we assume today like language, market strategy, manufacturing priorities and much more.  Race, national origin, sexual preference and many other demographic parameters will gain in importance as money recedes in importance in light of the power of larger numbers of people without it, and politics will respond to those new forces in our national life.  But one demographic change that may soon be of pivotal importance is being effectively ignored today, and the portent with regard to our politics is that the affected group will be ever more dispensable to politicians in the future.  I'm talking about age.

I was watching the news on PBS two nights ago and I just caught the end of an interview with two young people discussing insurance.  Their rather insular point was that young people do not want to carry the old, but rather want insurance that reflects their health alone and thus is appropriately priced.  And the evidence that such attitudinal bents will ultimately prevail is already apparent in our politics.  Paul Ryan, whose budgets have included reduction of Medicare to a voucher system inadequate to fund the health care needs of the elderly as a general rule, went from being the relatively obscure Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee to candidate for vice-president largely as a consequence of his position on Medicare.  And other leading conservatives, like editorialist David Brooks, have repeated their desire to change the national creed from that which has taken into account the needs of Baby-Boomers for the past sixty five years to one that focuses on youth and allocates more common resources--that is tax revenue--toward their needs.  Brooks has more than once made reference to the cost in social terms of the last year of life, and he has advocated sacrificing that year, not just allowing but basically insisting on "death with dignity" rather than paying for life for as long as you can get it.  Of course, that's easy to advocate when it is someone else's life you're talking about or you can afford to pay for that last year yourself, but that is the point when it comes to insurance, whether the topic of discussion is "Obamacare" or Medicare.  In all those discussions by the young and the powerful to which we are privy today, the fact that everyone who is lucky enough will get old and have ever-increasing needs when it comes to healthcare seems to be ignored, but it is a postulate of human existence.  From the perspective of the baby-boomer, and I am one, fewer and fewer people whose opinions dictate national policy care much about us.  We have our first pos-boomer president, and most of The Senate is younger than the baby-boom generation, at least as I define it: people born in the period after World War II but before the year after the end of the Korean conflict, 1956.  As to The House of Representatives, youth is even more prevalent as The House is where most politicians start their careers in national politics while The Senate is where they hope to end up.

To put it bluntly, we seem to be headed for what I might refer to as "ice floe politics."  As time passes, more and more sacrifices in the way of things that cost government money will be called for by the ever-younger electorate regardless of race, religion or creed.  The demographics that matter in politics will shift away from us post-war babies, that is post WWII babies, and ineluctably toward the children of the veterans of other wars: generation X, generation Y, millenials and who knows what next.  And as the shift occurs, the orientation toward the needs of youth will become ever more palpable in our national priorities as more and more of us older people find that our destiny isn't comfortable golden years, but the figurative ice floe for which Eskimos are apocryphally fabled.  We are going out of favor, we old people, and those who will make the decisions as to where and how to spend our national weal will change relentlessly in terms of their age.  They will be younger, and as they do so, they will more and more focus on their contemporaries and become more and more inured to the needs of a population that no longer contributes economically to the wealth of the nation.  But the problem that the elderly represent will never go away, and as surely as we are all born and we ultimately die, the vast majority of Americans will one day be old, and will also be in need in one way or another.  

So as the partisan wars go on in Washington, and as race continues to be an issue that we dance around for the most part, one issue will get larger and larger without anyone caring to notice.  It is part of a trend away from collective compassion and toward solipsism and self-centeredness.  Maybe it is this way with every generation, but I don't remember it that way.  As a child, a young man and later as a not so young man, I never lost sight of the fact that the elderly have to be paid for, and they deserve to be for many reasons.  But perhaps like today's young and powerful, I didn't realize that I would one day be old before that day came.  None-the-less, that fact should inform the philosophy of everyone in my opinion.  One day we will all be old...if we're lucky.  Political fashion should not be allowed to obliterate our awareness of that indisputable fact, or the moral imperatives that go with it.

Your friend,

Mike