In the Developed World, Women Over 50 Need to Be Our Focus: My Reply to Cherie Blair

by Dr. Ellen Brandt


A few days ago, LinkedIn featured a post by Cherie Blair, reworked from her talk at the recent Milken Institute Global Conference on the world economy. Blair, the wife of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and a prominent attorney and political figure in her own right, is also, like Hillary Clinton, a leading Limousine Liberal, preaching a One-World agenda that advocates one-kind-fits-all economic strategies and practices for every country and region of the globe, seeking to level all economic, social, and cultural differences.


Many of us, especially we Republicans, don't like this philosophy one little bit! But addressing the general topic of the Limo-Lib One-Worlders is not the purpose of this article.


I want to share my reply to the specific story Blair just posted, called "Empowering Women Will Drive Economic Growth." The story cited a just-out study by management consultants, which claimed getting more women into the workforce in Developing Countries, plus aiding women entrepreneurs in those countries, would add $28 trillion to worldwide GDP.


Let me stress that I have nothing whatsoever against such efforts aimed at Developing Countries and its female populations, particularly if they are funded and implemented by those Developing Countries themselves.


But once more, good intentions towards the Developing World - and its demographic profile, which now skews dramatically younger than that of the Developed World (plus China) - emphasizes a persistent bias towards the Young and against the Mature, which hasn't been helping anyone anywhere, including the citizens of the Developing World itself, where the masses of the extremely poor have been growing, not shrinking, during at least 30 years of One-World agenda bias.


In any case, here is my reply to Cherie Blair, which I believe readers might appreciate:


(The Reply): Cherie, your headline and thesis is only true - at least, in the Developed World, plus China - if special efforts are made to include the close to 1/2 of American - and European and Japanese and Canadian and Australian and Chinese - women who are now age 50 and above.


In the United States, "Gray" women age 50 and older are already close to 46 percent of all women, period. And the statistics are similar in the other countries and regions cited.


Over 43 percent - or more than 2 in 5 - American women and men are now "Gray" Americans 50 and over. But women still outlive men in the Developed World and China, so women's demographics are "graying" faster.


Moreover, as I am certain you, Cherie, as a highly-educated older woman know, women over 50 throughout the Developed World and China tend to be better educated than our male counterparts, not less so, with higher, not lower, percentages of college-educated women in many Developed countries, for example.


And since women have been pretty much totally integrated into the workforce since we Baby Boomers - people in our 50s and 60s - were teenagers, we also tend to be every bit as experienced, skilled, and entrepreneurial as our male age peers.


The great economic gap - and employment gap - in the Developed World plus China right now has far less to do with Women versus Men - or any ethnic group versus any other ethnic group - than it has to do with generational inequalities, part and parcel of the overall income inequality that has hit this world hard the past 30 years.


All our "Gray" citizens, women and men alike, have been quite literally thrown on the garbage heap of economic, social, and cultural life, for the sole reason that we crossed an imaginary Economic Maginot Line when our hair turned gray.


It is high time to take up the cause of "Gray" Americans and Europeans and Japanese and Chinese and all the other "Gray" citizens worldwide. We - and no other group - are mainly responsible for the Populist upheavals shaking U.S. politics this cycle, with "Grays" in other countries and regions of the globe every bit as angry and as anxious for change.


In terms of international programs and development initiatives geared specifically towards women, be sure that Women Over 50 - which will soon mean an astonishing one-half of all women in the Developed World plus China - are included in such programs. In fact, because of our exceptional educational attainments and work experience, perhaps Women Over 50 should also be the ones implementing such programs and administering them.




 

Boomers and the Jobs Report - Both Parties, Most Pundits Still Getting It Wrong

by Dr. Ellen Brandt


The vaunted Death of the Middle Class and Rise of the Newly-Poor has pretty much nothing to do with the usual culprits: Young people with student loans, discrimination against so-called minorities, nor women impeded from breaking the corporate glass ceiling.


Youth are supposed to be at the bottom of the economic ladder, until they gain the education, skills, and experience to climb it. We are now a country where everyone is a member of one or, more likely, several minorities, and pitting ethnic groups against one another economically is both a distraction and a mistake. Women have been integrated into the workforce for decades now, and those working for large corporations have been making good progress and will continue to make more.


By all means, every constituency - women, men, individual ethnic groups, youth - have a perfect right to lobby for their peers and try to ensure they are not lagging behind other constituencies.


But these "usual culprit" groups are not the key problem now, in terms of our fighting economic stagnation and promoting far better long-term growth, while preserving the National Social Contract which binds all Americans into a civilized society, with an overriding common interest and a desire to protect and foster one another.


So let's all - economists, demographers, politicians, journalists - start telling the naked truth for a change, even if that truth doesn't jibe with what you believe your Party's or your favorite constituency's best interests might or might not be:


***** Those who used to be part of a healthy "middle class," but are no longer part of it, overwhelmingly come from just one major constituency: People Over Age 50.


***** Those who used to be above - often well-above - the poverty line, but are now the Newly Poor, overwhelmingly come from just one constituency: People Over Age 50.


***** People who used to be homeowners, but no longer can afford to own their homes, overwhelmingly come from just one constituency: People Over Age 50.


***** People who spent most of their lifetimes not needing transfer payments, including food stamps, nor other forms of entitlements, but who desperately need them now, overwhelmingly come from just one constituency: People Over Age 50.


***** People included in the "long-term unemployed" or "under-employed" categories, or who have slipped through the statistical cracks and do not appear in any economic category other than "not in the labor force" - i.e. those responsible for that historically dismal U.S. labor participation rate - overwhelmingly come from just one constituency: People Over Age 50.


And some other facts every American needs to recognize, memorize, and take to heart - especially politicians, business and media leaders, and others who wield influence over their fellow Americans and help form public opinion:


***** "Gray" Americans age 50 and over already make up 43 percent of the U.S. population - or more than 2 in 5 Americans. Since people age 0-17 cannot vote, Gray Americans will account for close to 50 percent - or 1 in 2 - American voters in the next four presidential elections cycles - 2016, 2020, 2024, and 2028.


***** The largest generation among current Gray Americans, the Baby Boomers, are age 52-70 in 2016. Boomers still make up over 25 percent of the U.S. population, or more than 1 in 4 Americans. There are about 1.1 billion Baby Boomers worldwide, concentrated in the Developed World plus China.


***** Boomers are the best-educated generation in American history, with the largest percentages of college graduates, lawyers, doctors, engineers, nurses, and holders of Ph.D. and M.B.A. degrees, as well as large percentages of skilled manufacturing workers in every category.


***** But Boomers' "older siblings," the unsung generation born in the Great Depression and during World War 2, which includes people currently in the 71-88 age range (utilizing the current norm of 18-year generations), tended to be well-educated and highly-skilled as well. Meanwhile, the demographically fortunate Gen-X generation (fortunate because there were relatively fewer of them, between the huge Boomer and Millennial generations) started to turn 50 last year.


***** And all four generations now in the Gray population: Gen-Xers, Boomers, Depression-WW2 Babies, and the remnants of the "Greatest" Generation, Boomers' parents, now age 89-plus, are benefiting from immense strides in U.S. longevity. There are more American centenarians every year. And we may soon see people living until age 110 or more.


All of the above provides both an extraordinary challenge and an extraordinary opportunity for the United States, the rest of the Devloped World, and China - all those parts of the world with similar increasingly Gray demographic profiles.


No government can be satisfied or sanguine or say we have "nearly full employment," if those productively employed do not include the more than 2 in 5 Americans over age 50.


This is especially - dramatically - true, if many of those American Grays are likely to be alive another 30 or 40 or 50 years.


Our entire national attitude towards mature Americans and employment has to change now - not 10 years from now, not 5 years from now, but right now.


A House-of-Cards economy, like the one we currently have, in which we are not growing the economic pie, but simply camouflaging stagnant or negative growth by taking jobs - and assets and wealth - from people over 50, mostly totally against their will, and redistributing it to younger and less-educated and less-experienced people creates a tattered National Social Contract and a citizenry up in (Populist) arms.


Which, indeed, is what we are now experiencing.