Grays on The Go

(6 of 9)
Consider the following: Martha Dierdre is 72 and worth about $300,000. Widowed five years ago, she lives in a $150,000 condominium in Los Angeles, drives an Audi, consults her broker weekly, and plays bridge on Tuesdays over tea and crumpets. Her most solemn ritual takes place at the beginning of each month, when she walks to her bank and deposits a $420 Social Security check. She thinks of her husband, a warehouseman who worked hard and saved for 30 years. "A deal is a deal is a deal," she declares. "I don't care what I'm worth; that money is mine."

Dierdre's only grandchild Paul earns $16,000 a year working at a lumberyard in Portland, Ore. His wife Karen brings in an additional $6,000 as a part-time secretary. Since they cannot afford a house, they rent a two-bedroom apartment for $500 a month, where they raise their three-year-old daughter. They too have a ritual. Every two weeks, when they deposit their paychecks, they agonize over the 7% deduction for Social Security tax and wonder if they will ever see that money again -- unless, of course, they visit Grandma. "This whole system just beats the hell out of me," says Paul, 27. "It's like that old saying: robbing from the poor to pay the rich."

Paul does not personally blame the elderly. Few young people do, even when they sense, as they read the newspapers or go shopping for a house, that they are walking into a trap. Who is going to protect young families, they wonder, from an economic system that is eroding their living standards? Or a health system that promises at least partial care for the elderly but guarantees nothing for families with sick children? Or a political system that allows communities to outlaw residents under 19 to ensure peace and quiet -- and reduce school taxes at the same time? Or a Social Security system that seems to assure only that the young will never draw out anything like the amount they are required to pay in? "I don't have a grudge against older people collecting Social Security because the Government told them to expect it," says Law Student Jeffrey Rosen, 28. "But what about us? Something has got to be done."

Jeffrey's is a generation that viewed progress as an American birthright, only to discover its expectations vastly exceed its prospects. For the past 15 years, even as their parents grew more financially secure, young workers have faced declining real wages, rising taxes, high interest rates and prohibitive housing costs. At times, the Government seems to be conspiring against them. During the Reagan Administration, payments to the elderly have risen 35%, so that now more than a quarter of all Government spending goes to the 12% of the population who are 65 or older. Meanwhile, America's infant-mortality rate remains one of the highest among industrialized nations, and one in five children lives in poverty. While Social Security remains off limits, Aid to Families with Dependent Children was cut by 19% and school-meal programs by 41% between 1981 and 1984. The U.S., argues Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, may be the "first society in history in which a person is more likely to be poor if young rather than old."