Arianna Huffington points to an troubling dichotomy in Florida – people with jobs losing their homes in the foreclosure crisis and education budgets being slashed while well to do retirees ignore the whole problem so long as they can ride around their carefully manufactured world on golf carts.
It’s a story about much more than some people doing better than others. In the course of his interviews, Ben examines the economic gulf that increasingly separates the old from the young, putting flesh and blood on what one economist calls a coming “demographic train wreck.” As the number of elderly Floridians increases, with those over 85 emerging as the fastest-growing group, state leaders are slashing billions from the public education budget, and opportunities for young people — like Dennis Hebert, an unemployed 26-year-old who for a time had to move his wife and young son into their car — are dwindling. Forty percent of Florida’s recent college graduates are unable to find work in the state — a dilemma that’s affecting young people in all parts of the country. As William Collon, a 75-year-old Villages resident, puts it: “The retired folks around here have done just fine. It’s the young people who got in trouble.”
As an aside, the Villages sounds like my vision of hell:
. . . the world’s largest retirement community, the Villages, with 88,000 residents. Here, in stark contrast to the blight of foreclosure, bulldozers clear land for yet more housing construction and residents navigate the pristine grounds in golf carts. The telling statistics are not boom-and-bust home sale prices but amenities: 95 restaurants, 63 swimming pools, 513 holes of golf.
Nothing but old people? 88,000 of them driving around on golf carts all day? It sounds like hell.
#1 by Richard Warnick on July 13, 2012 - 10:32 am
I’m not too many years away from getting a golf cart (or Jazzy/Hoveround). If I make it to 65 and qualify for Medicare, I might have a chance at a decent retirement (though not at age 65, I’ll need to keep working past that).
Because I am a member of the middle class (i.e. a mere peasant in right-wing ideology), if I have a major illness or accident, there’s a 50 percent chance my health insurance will drop me or refuse to cover it. I’ll have to spend all my savings on medical costs, declare bankruptcy, forget about retirement and hope for death!
I know the Affordable Care Act prohibits insurance companies from rescinding policies, except in cases of fraud or intentional misrepresentation of material fact. However, a WellPoint exec wrote the law – presumably including that loophole.
#2 by Glenden Brown on July 13, 2012 - 10:57 am
Dear God NO! Don’t join the Hoveround cult!
#3 by Knife on July 15, 2012 - 11:17 am
The obese/diabetic corn syrup retirement plan is built on the Hoveround, which can be obtained at no cost to you.
Hoveround will qualify you and process the paperwork..ah, obamacare will rule the world.
#4 by Becky Stauffer on July 15, 2012 - 12:40 pm
I’m five months from retirement, and the Villages sounds like my idea of Hell, too.
#5 by Glenden Brown on July 15, 2012 - 7:17 pm
Becky – I would hate living in such a community – Sun City AZ and Sun City West AZ spring to mind as examples. I read an article years ago about a woman living in Sun City; her child had died and her grandchild, with nowhere else to go, had moved in and because her grandchild was a teenager she was being forced to leave Sun city, where the HOA banned anyone under the age of 55.
I like the idea of living in an intergenerational community. In my 40s, I’ve come to appreciate the younger and older members of community.
#6 by Becky Stauffer on July 15, 2012 - 9:30 pm
I like that idea, too. Although in my neighborhood, I am one of the old ones.