There are many Americans who are cliché driven. When a person sneezes, they say “God bless you.” Tardiness is treated as “Better late than never.” Young daughters are told as they meet their dates, “Get home early” or “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” Women are involved in monstrous untruths when they say, “Oh, I love your dress.” Those are not much more than automatic responses which have little or no real meaning. There is one cliché however, that is, at heart, often a distortion of hope and the facts. That cliché is almost always delivered to people as they retire from full time employment. The retiree is told by well wishers who envision endless golf games, Queen Mary II excursions, sleeping late and receiving senior discounts on all kinds of tickets, “Oh, those golden years.”
Unfortunately, those golden years occur at a time of reduced income. And those golden years take place when the body is most vulnerable to aches, pains and diseases never known before.
Those fabulous golden years occur when the energy level is diminished or in some cases, non-existent. The golden years take place with rising prices of everything except in the pension payment. Gas prices at the pump are at the mercy of foreign suppliers, but there is no gas price differential in the pension system. No one seems to have any control over home heating and electricity bills. The medical profession doesn’t give a two tiered structure in their fees for those in their golden years.
Those golden years happen when hearing and eyesight falter. Teeth fall out and we look for elevators or escalators to avoid steps. Perhaps the cruel acme of the years of gold takes place when the happy retiree has to choose which drugs and medicines he can afford or choose between paying the heating bill in January as opposed to his or her bills for medical treatment. For many Americans, these are the facts on the ground. This is often the era of pills and drops. This is the era of canes and walkers. In some cases, the years of gold are spent in a wheelchair.
About the only factor which makes a token gesture to the rising cost of just about everything is Social Security payments. But rather than to let the most successful social program in history continue, this administration wants to invent private accounts which would diminish the payments to the Social Security base. A terrible, terrible idea and one of sinister proportions.
Somewhere there seems to be a critical political voice saying that you retirees have lived too long. Well, maybe that is true, but the complainers don’t offer any acceptable alternatives. And they too will someday become drags on the go-go generations to follow.
Looking at things in a pragmatic way would lead one to conclude that with prices and taxes pressing down and with pension payments being stagnant – or being taken away, as in the airline industry, those poor old retirees are caught in a classic vise. And no amount of cheerleading from politicians is going to alter the situation. Anyone who expects help from this administration or the party in power must remember that the minimum wage in this country has not gone up by even one cent in six or seven years. Try feeding a family on wages of $5.15 an hour. But we must remember that this country has a holy obligation to make the richer class even more wealthy through tax cuts aimed at the super well-to-do.
This may seem like a depressing look about retirement, and perhaps it is. It could be argued, on the other hand, that it is nothing more than a pragmatic examination of what many retirees may experience. Those golden years have a mythical quality to them.
On the bright side of the golden years, there is the thought that ailments such as measles and whooping cough are no longer of concern. It may also be said of pregnancy, either planned or unplanned. So all is not totally bleak.
Once in a while this old essay writer recalls his days as a union negotiator. Good negotiators hate clichés which are nothing more than substitutes for reasoned thought. “The company wants all of its employees to be happy, healthy and to enjoy all the good things in life.” Pragmatically, the prospects for equity among the golden years set could be much improved. But once that pragmatism is stated, the fact is that the rich get richer and the poor have to do the best they can. Is that not the way things have always been?
If the last statement about the rich getting richer is a cliché, my apologies are offered – in spite of the truth of what has been stated.
E. E. CARR
June 9, 2005
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I wonder if, in my golden years, I’ll have the opportunity to download my brain onto some sort of cloud database. Not sure I’ll get there, but my kids or at least theirs will. Seems like that would obviate most of these issues.
In the meantime we’re going to start having to tax wealthy people more and more. That’s really the only way forward as the workforce continues to automate. But we’ve touched on that already.