The `Undeserving Old'.

• Author: Ehrenreich, Barbara
• Position: Privatization of Social Security

First welfare, now Social Security. Undeterred by the febrile condition of the world financial markets, the drive to "save," privatize, and otherwise snuff out that venerable vestige of the New Deal is back and gaining steam.

We can expect that, as in the case of welfare, there will be an all-out propaganda effort to demonize the program's recipients. In the build-up to welfare "reform," people on welfare were consistently portrayed as promiscuous, substance-abusing, child-neglecting lay-abouts. If the same tactics prevail, we will soon be hearing chilling stories about geezers mugging teenagers and squandering their Social Security checks on Viagra and vodka.

Sadly, the elderly may have an even harder time defending themselves than the poverty-stricken single mothers did. Few of the latter, perhaps a total of thirty-five out of four million, ever fit the stereotype of the welfare queen spawning baby after baby in order to augment her benefits and hence her supply of mind-altering drugs. But the elderly are vulnerable to all of the predictable charges.

Lazy? Well, how many eighty-year-olds make the slightest attempt to support themselves? How many ninety-seven-year-olds can even recall how to set an alarm clock? As for "dependency," that great bugaboo of the welfare-reformers--visit a nursing home and you will find people who have been rendered so thoroughly dependent by Social Security that they no longer exert themselves to perambulate or lift spoon to mouth. There is no question about it: The longer one lives off one's Social Security checks, the more likely one is to maunder and drool.

You think that no one could be so churlish as to stigmatize our seniors? Consider the fact that the drive against Social Security is being led by some of the same think tanks--and even the same individuals within them--who blazed the trail to welfare reform. Michael Tanner, for example, famed for his Savanarola-like excoriations of the welfare poor, now serves as the Cato Institute's point man on Social Security privatization. For men like this--dedicated to the abolition of all government activities not involving the use of firearms--welfare was only a warm-up for Social Security, a chance to test-drive their most scurrilous slanders and hone their stigmatizing skills.

In the case of the elderly, there is a growing body of prejudice for the "reformers" and privatizers to work with. Even the considerably pre-elderly must have shuddered at the story of...