Boomer bashing, always a fun activity for some, could become an extreme sport this year now that the generation has officially hit Medicare age. Instead of just going after boomers as self important bores the trend is to paint boomers as burdens.

And who benefits from this new round of boomer bashing, we might wonder,  as we see headlines like:

Squeeze from retiring boomers starts now

Big demanding generation.. expected to strain resources

Baby boomers may bust plans

While it is true that the boomer generation has come up with a lot to change society, like pushing to end racism, sexism and ageism, Medicare and Social Security are not boomer inventions. Social Security, a government run insurance program funded by payroll taxes, was started in 1935. Medicare and Medicaid were added in 1965.

Boomers have been paying into both ever since we looked at our first paycheck and wondered “what’s FICA.” Medicare began just as the oldest boomers started working, meaning that boomers have paid more into Medicare than any other generation.

But instead of being considered big contributors we’re now considered a liability.

The deal was we paid then so the government would deliver it when we need it, now.

It’s not that boomers aren’t aware of concerns over risks to funding Medicare and Social Security. The math is there. There are more older workers ready to make claims than younger workers paying into the system. Some say fix the system. Some say scrap it. In any case, boomers are made out as the big burden. The big drain.

Some even suggest boomers are asking for some fat allowance that we don’t deserve. That’s bunk. The average monthly Social Security benefit in 2010 was $1,158, an essential safety net if you’re in the struggling class. If you’re rich, the cost of a couple pair of kick-butt shoes. Medicare does not cover lip plumping.

It’s not like boomers are a bunch of newcomers asking for special privileges.

We’re the parents and grandparents and older siblings of the younger generation. Most people probably had at least one boomer at their table over the holidays. We’re not aliens who just walked in the door demanding all the good wine.

And we’re not cavalier about threats to Social Security and Medicare. Polls show that boomers are, in large part, willing to make some sacrifices by raising the eligibility age and/or paying higher Medicare taxes rather than slicing benefits. We’re as worried for the younger generation as ourselves.

No self respecting boomer should let the propagandists get away with implying that older people want it all now, the future be damned.

Who does it benefit to convince young workers that Medicare and Social Security are doomed, rather than engaging them as advocates in coming up with ways to make the system sound and fair for everyone? Who stands to gain from creating a generation war over Social Security and Medicare?

Critics say leave health care for older people to the insurance companies. Dump Social Security and let people invest in their retirement.

This would take away the government’s responsibility to its older citizens and turn it over to the private sector which some consider a one way ticket to an ice floe.

The best alternative would be to insure meaningful, well paid jobs for as long as you want to work and then to age without ever getting sick. But no one, not even a boomer, has figured out how to do that.

Had April and Frank Wheeler been sorting out their unhappy suburban lives today instead of in the 1950s things might have turned out better. Right off, they could have gone to couple’s counseling. Maybe even had separate therapeutic life coaches, depending on Frank’s employee assistance plan.
Frank’s men group would have understood his need to go find himself. April would at least have been able to talk to her Facebook friends – “April is sitting in her knotty pine kitchen today wishing she had a different life.”

Instead of dropping everything to move to Paris, they could have gone online and swapped houses. Maybe found someone eager to trade a cramped Left Bank walk-up for a sprawling four bedroom with woodsy backyard.

I know it sounds like I’m making fun but that’s only because I walked out of the movie “Revolutionary Road” giving thanks for being too young in the 1950s to worry about adult things and having Betty Friedan waiting in the 1960s before I turned into an un-liberated April.

The 1950s were a pretty good time to be a kid, however, especially a middle class kid having the run of a safe neighborhood where most of the dads drove off in the morning and most of the mothers stayed home and the streets remained silent until school let out.

The 1950s were a good time to be a kid.

I had no idea if the parents in my own woodsy Connecticut suburb were feeling stifled and stuck. Last year when my book club discussed the Richard Yates novel, on which the film is based, we talked about what we as kids were doing in the 1950s. Who lived in the suburbs? Whose parents played Canasta and drank whiskey sours?

My mother, like every mother I knew except for one who sold real estate, didn’t work. I never questioned that she might have wanted to be something besides a housewife until I was in college, and she told me she always wanted to teach high school. My father was a company man, working his way up the management ladder at the same manufacturing plant as a lot of friends’ fathers. I never thought to ask if he had other dreams.

One movie reviewer of “Revolutionary Road” referred to the 1950s as “the alleged graveyard of American hope,” which is pretty ironic considering that the generation before had lived on little more than hope as they struggled through the Great Depression, World War II and the Korean War to make a better life for their kids. Many of those kids went on to become middle class home-owners with secure jobs and cars and Danish modern coffee tables, and, maybe for the first time, the luxury to ask “Is that all there is?”

Frank and April Wheeler rejected the common comfort of suburban life. Naturally, their peers both envied and resented them for daring to be discontent and thinking they were special. Today the Wheelers would be in good company, another couple of anxious Boomers trying to find themselves, with dreams they can’t afford. Of course in the current financial crisis, most everyone’s self fulfillment is on hold, at least until the 401ks bounce back. In the meantime you’re grateful to hang onto what you have, especially your house, even a faux colonial on Revolutionary Road.

Photo Courtesy of Interview Magazine