By Gregory Williams
For several years, the Buzzfeed articles, memes, and all manner of sensational news reports have hammered it into our heads that young workers and retired workers are fundamentally opposed to one another. Every time a retail giant closes, for example, we see a slate of articles saying that youths caused it to tank. “Millennials don’t buy diamonds” – fair enough, young workers are not paid enough to afford rent.
From the other perspective, we see commentary to the effect that older workers ruined the economy or have trashed the environment, leaving future generations to deal with the emerging catastrophes. Nevermind the fact that – even if some of them are of that age, – the top dogs in Washington and on Wall Street are a tiny fraction of the population. The people who have any real impact in shaping the economy, or destroying the planet, are the capitalist elites and their lackeys, regardless of when they were born.
Some of us have probably laughed at a meme poking fun at generational differences. But, as I always ask in this column, does it have to be this way? Must we really have this inter-generational animosity, even if it’s mostly just a bunch of online jokes?
The Need for Inter-Generational Solidarity
I’m not raising this question idly. There is an urgent need for young and older working class people to band together. The fact is, young workers as well as older workers are getting massively screwed, and to think of millennials or baby boomers as opposed groups is to miss the point. We can only avert disaster if we work together.
We know that young people are saddled with debt and low-paying jobs. But let’s take a moment to consider the situation of older workers in this country. One telling measure is the number of seniors filing for bankruptcy.
The Consumer Bankruptcy Project recently analyzed the data from bankruptcy court records and written questionnaires, taken from all over the U.S. They found that bankruptcy among seniors has risen fivefold since 1991. And that’s not just because there are more seniors. The percentage of seniors filing for bankruptcy has radically increased. Now, 12.2% of bankruptcy filings come from households headed by seniors.
It’s not hard to understand why seniors are filing for bankruptcy: There are far more seniors in poverty than there were in decades past. This is especially true for older women.The retirement age keeps going up. More and more older people are in debt just like their younger counterparts. Medical costs keep going up. Very few workers in this country nowadays have real pensions.
None of this is accidental. The capitalist class, represented by both the Republicans and the Democrats, have systematically destroyed the social safety net and most of the protections that workers and oppressed people won through struggle. On an almost unimaginable scale, they have stolen the wealth generated by the society and hoarded it for themselves. And just as they don’t care about the brutality of putting a child in a cage, they don’t blink an eye at the thought of elderly people on the street.
One day young workers will need Social Security. The carefully crafted attack blaming selfish seniors for the falsely reported bankruptcy of the the social security fund, is to cover the grab of this pot of money to hand over to the bankers, Pentagon and super-rich.
To sum up, we need to start thinking about the total situation we’re facing in this rotten, every-worsening society. I don’t care if I repeat myself everywhere we go. We have to organize a fight back, and it needs to be inter-generational.