ABSTRACT
The Americans for Generational Equity (AGE) had created the notion that the problem of inadequate societal resources for children was a product of excessive benefits for the aged. This chapter aims to trace the development of AGE, examines its tactics, and analyzes the underlying policy agenda of the generational equity message. It addresses issues such as the representation of the AGE and the organization’s public policy agenda, and explores how AGE has managed to achieve success in structuring debates about Social Security. AGE proponents encapsulate advocacy for increasing the labor-force participation of older people within a rejection of Keynesianism. The chapter shows that the AGE message contains serious internal flaws ranging from such narrow but significant issues as the erroneous reporting of spending patterns to skewed predictions about future population growth. The chapter also examines the relationship between federal revenues and expenditures in the 1980s.
