The wealth gap between younger and older Americans is reported to be wider than ever. According to census bureau numbers young working families are worse off than older people. This would be expected if you consider that the longer you work the more your income goes up and the more you save for retirement. And when you’re starting out, you’re not making as much.

But funny thing about this is I don’t feel wealthy. And I sure don’t want young people thinking their elders are all sipping Glenlivet and perusing the cruise catalog.

I recognize the horrible squeeze on young people. I’m related to some. But older people have taken some of the same hits.

The numbers show the typical American household headed by a person 65 and older has a net worth 47 times greater than a household headed by someone under 35. That is, a median net worth of $3,662 for young families opposed to $170,494 for older ones.

The Pew Research Center analyzed the discrepancy this way. Young families are hurting because they’ve got mortgages on houses that aren’t worth as much as they paid for them and carry a load of student loans and credit card debt. The old are presumably doing better because we are thought to have paid off our houses and have investments. And on top of that we get Social Security.

And that’s when I thought uh-oh, this sounds like ammunition for generation warfare. And there it was.

Responding to the report, economist Harry Holzer from Georgetown University said, “It makes us wonder whether the extraordinary amount of resources we spend on retirees and their health care should be at least partially reallocated to those who are hurting worse than them.”

Oh Harry, I do agree. In part.  If you are eligible for Social Security and don’t need it or you can tell Medicare no thanks it would be a grand gesture to pass it on to a young family, maybe your own children and grandchildren.

But while I know some retirees who are living quite well, I doubt the majority of  oldsters are feeling fat on Social Security.  According to the Social Security Administration most retirees count on those monthly checks for a major  chunk of their income. And people over 65 represent the fastest growth in bankruptcy filings.

As for sharing the wealth that’s pretty much the message of the Occupy Wall Street movement. But the occupiers’ beef is not with greedy grannies. It’s with the one percent with all the dough. That’s why you see signs that say “Education is a Right” next to ones insisting “Save Medicare not Billionaires.”

I don’t know many older people who are leading a madcap life – okay, a few – but I do worry the image handily serves those wanting to gut retirement programs . We old ones are pretty mad at the system, too. Older people can remember when they were in their 30s and struggling and hoping that by the time they were in their 60s they would be feeling a lot more secure.

Older people are part of the dwindling middle class., too. We’ve seen our savings and investments shredded. We too have been hit by the housing bubble.  If we have any extra we may be paying for our adult kids’ health insurance or paying on those students loans and even caring for elderly parents.

I know plenty in their 60s and early 70s who say,  “I’m going to be working until I die.”

In fact the wage gap study noted that older Americans are holding onto to their jobs longer than ever while young people are facing the highest unemployment since World War II.

So, if we’re so wealthy why are we still working?

I was in Austin to meet the new boy baby and provide emotional assistance and technical backup to the new parents. In between Derby duty (that’s his name…Derby), making up nonsense lullabies, studying the breast pump manual and stomping on Texas-sized cockroaches, I was reading Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises for our book club.

Derby is good and strong and lean and can drink long into the night and next day. But he won’t have to grow up to be a Hemingway he-man. And isn’t he a lucky fellow?

His tiny clothes are covered with trucks and tigers but he can also wear polka dots with panache. His favorite pacifier is pink. He’s a beautiful boy whose looks change daily, but I’m pretty sure he has my ex-husband’s nose.

He will likely one day read Hemingway because he comes from a family of readers.  The Hemingway stories may inspire him to go to Paris and sit in cafes and write at least one simple declarative sentence. Or he may read Hemingway and think, “Huh, what an interesting anthropological peek into the evolution of the American male.” Maybe he’ll ask his grandfathers, “Did you ever want to shoot a water buffalo to prove you had the stuff?”

Hemingway’s Lost Generation was a messed up macho one, scarred by war, distrusting, always wanting to pick a fight. Worried about losing face, being called a coward. Too tough to show feelings.  Wary and resentful of women.

I always liked the places in his stories a lot more than the people. In re-reading Hemingway I’m still unclear how, for being so worried about the rent, they still managed to spend all winter skiing.

Our new baby boy was born into a world where fathers sleep in the labor room and carry their own diaper bags. Who are more into swaddling than swagger. And while some may still wish for a return to the days when the measure of a man is the size of his gun collection, today’s boys get to grow up with more than macho to choose from.

Hemingway helped create the man of his times. The man’s man – aggressive, tough,   proud, stoic, pugnacious, domineering, loutish even. The woman of the times, of course, had her own rigorous standards. We’ve been working on these stereotypes since Derby’s grandmother became a feminist and Derby’s mother was a little girl with a toolbox and pink overalls. And we all sang It’s All Right to Cry and William Has a Doll.

We imagined this daughter having a girl baby. She did, too, although for a long time she said she didn’t want to have children. The first surprise was she was pregnant. The second was she was having a boy.

I knew she had been thinking girl and started a campaign to convince her that mothers and sons make great combos. I gave her examples of all the wonderful women I know whose boys were their sweet little buddies. And once they got past the teenage years, which are just as painful with daughters as sons (as she well knows) they grew up to be thoughtful adults who remember their mothers’ birthdays and bring home cool women to become daughters.

She said I could lay off the propaganda. She had already decided it would be fun to have a boy.

Derby blasted into life as storm clouds gathered over Austin, which caused the sky to rumble and flash and finally deliver rain to Texas after months of drought. Then came a full moon and cool breezes and those who lived in Derby’s house could finally turn off the air conditioner and listen to the night.

And it was right and it was fine and this baby didn’t have to prove another darn thing.

The morning before I talked to Shirley MacLaine I saw a bumper sticker in my neighborhood that said “Multi-dimensional and loving it.” It all seemed so synchronistic, so meant to be. Of course I live in Northern California and the famous actress/author/channeler lives in Santa Fe. Places that are comfortable with the woo-woo.

But Shirley said, oh no. It’s everywhere. In fact as she does her one woman show around the country, performing in Santa Rosa last weekend, the audience asks her more about mystical stuff than the movies. “I show them film clips of the Rat Pack and talk about Dean and Frank. And what do they want to ask me about? About the things in my books. They want to know what does this memory mean? Why am I here?

“You know why? Because the world’s in a terrible mess. The civilization is faltering. Everyone’s looking for answers.”

I like Shirley. I like that she says she’s never going to stop asking why. And that while many scoffed at her claims of reincarnation and books on psychic searching she did a lot to help nudge the mainstream into considering what else is out there.

I also love that she’s 77 and vibrant. With those long legs and that delighted laugh that goes with the grinning twinkling face.  As a friend said, “That woman had cute down pat.”

At her age, however, cute is not big enough. More like nicely seasoned. Now she’s written a book called I’m Over All That.. and Other Confessions. It’s her 13th book. The woman has sold  20 million books.

She’s made 63 films including the new Bernie with Jack Black. It’s about a funeral director in Texas. “I play the town bitch,” she bragged.

She also just won the Legion of Honor in France, that country’s most prestigious cultural award. For those looking for role models on how to stay passionate, relevant and visible Shirley MacLaine is a good one.

She’s adamant about daily exercise – yoga, tai chi, stretching exercises for her hips -“you have to take care of your hips.” She lives alone with her dog,  prefers hanging out with friends to Hollywood parties, had a face lift at 50 and colors her hair red to match her spirit which is one of the best rationalizations I’ve ever heard for covering the gray.

Another beauty tip: “No overhead lights. They make you look like Grandma Moses.”

Her role as Aurora, the controlling mother in Terms of Endearment, is the one she best relates to personally. “Impossible at times, all over the map with her emotions, funny, judgmental, loving.” We talked about the scene where her hospitalized daughter needs pain meds and no one brings her any until Aurora rages after them. They’re delivered and she quietly says, “Thank you.”

“We did that in one take,” she said. “I don’t know if that was pure Aurora or pure Shirely MacLaine.”

About the men she’s bedded, it felt so People Magazine-y to ask. But of course I checked them out in her book.  Yes on Robert Mitchum and Yves Montand. No on Jack Lemmon. Too nice. And Jack Nicholson, too dangerous. I told her that my husband lovingly recalls the shot of her in Irma le Douce walking up the stairs in her green tights. He says it is forever etched in his mind.

That brought the famous laugh.