Senior Moment

Offering senior discounts is "absurd, illogical, and helping fuel the economic divide," opines Don Campbell in USA Today (1/18/12). "No doubt, there are seniors living in poverty and stories to be found of elderly couples eating dog food," he writes. "But the data are indisputable that seniors have continued to fare better financially than younger generations. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that from 1984 to 2009, the median net worth for people 65 and older had increased 42 percent, while the median net worth for those younger than 35 had dropped an astounding 68 percent."

A Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances, meanwhile, "found that net worth had dropped across the board" between 2009 and 2007, "but had dropped least for those heads of households ages 65 to 74. The same study showed that the median net worth of the 55-64 age bracket in 2009 was $222,000, while the median net worth for families in the 35-44 bracket was only $69,000." Seniors, says Don, are also "more likely to have a mortgage-free home, a retirement nest egg, Social Security income and perhaps a job-related pension."

What’s more, says Don, the "top income-earning years for most professional and skilled workers are from about age 50 to age 62. Which means that people who are making the most money and have the highest net worth are in effect being subsidized in the marketplace by a generation 20 and 30 years younger that often is struggling to pay off student loans, establish a career, start a family and buy a first home." He concludes: "What I wonder about is why thirty- and forty-somethings aren’t livid that senior citizens — the most pampered, patronized and pandered-to group in America — get to save money simply by maintaining a pulse."