The Elderly Are Doing Just Fine

Paul Ryan's plan to reform Medicare has Democrats itching to resurrect their "Mediscare" campaign, depicting the elderly as victims. "I admire and like the elderly," writes Charles Lane of the Washington Post, playfully noting that "I myself hope to be elderly someday." But "I do not feel sorry for the elderly as a group, and neither should you." The truth is the elderly are doing better than the rest of us. As of 2010, households headed by people 75 or older had the highest median net worth—$216,800—of any demographic.

That same report found that households headed by someone under 35, by contrast, had a median net worth of $9,300. "We must never go back to the days when old age was a time of privation," Lane writes. "But as nightmare scenarios go, that one seems more remote than entitlement-driven national bankruptcy." Paul Ryan's plan isn't necessarily good, but it's more than Democrats, terrified of notoriously high senior voter turnout, have proposed. It's time politicians treated seniors as what they are: "secure and fortunate citizens, who can and should contribute their fair share." Click for his full column. (More Paul Ryan stories.)