Are Old People Useless?

Many elderly persons come to think of themselves as useless, often because of widespread stereotyping. When the government agrees, the result threatens to become murderous.

Apr 29, 2025

Image by Rajesh Balouria from Pixabay

The Trump regime’s approach to cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid – all vital elements of the nation’s social safety net – appears to answer “Yes” to this question. Proposals to load up Medicaid with onerous work requirements and to extend means testing to Social Security and Medicare relegate a person’s worth to society to some notion of productivity.

Moreover, older people are often the only remaining target of socially accepted discrimination and joking. Age discrimination in hiring and promotion is against the law, but the law is rarely enforced. Older people’s declining physical and mental abilities provide fodder for comedians and movies. Even I engage in self-deprecating humor that reflects my experience of aging.

When I emerged from graduate school and sought a college teaching position, I thought that older professors should retire and make room for me and other new applicants. They couldn’t possibly be energetic enough to measure up to younger colleagues.

Now, I’m old! Surprise! My views have shifted. I now realize that much misunderstanding of elderly folks arises from misleading stereotyping.

What Changed My Views about Older Folks

One summer, I was invited by an older history professor to join him in offering a course to elderly students through Elderhostel (now Road Scholar). Our course focused on the Jesus tradition and the early Christian church up to the time that Christianity became an official religion of the Roman Empire.

I was completely unprepared for the fireworks that ensued. About a dozen folks, age 65 to 90, enrolled in the course. We met for three hours for five days with lunch following each session. During the class time, participants asked searching questions of my colleague and me and got into arguments with one another.

Some disrupted the flow of our course with questions like

“Did Jesus really exist? What’s the evidence for his existence? I think all the Jesus stories in the New Testament are just myths.”
“I’ve been told that Christianity is simply an amalgamation of various cults and religions in lands controlled by the Roman Empire. Is that true?”
“In college, I had to read the Gilgamesh Epic. How is that related to Christianity? Did the early Christians know about that?”

My colleague and I tried our best to report the scholarly consensus in response to these and other questions. Our answers often proved unconvincing to our audience. These participants (many were retired teachers, judges, physicians, etc.) continued to argue strenuously with one another regardless of what we said.

At the end of the week, I invited all of them to take my regular courses at the college. They were lively, interested, informed, and eager to learn new things. And they completely upended my prior experience of older folks!

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Stereotyping Is Dangerous

Stereotyping elderly people endangers their physical and mental health. Studies have shown that elderly persons often live up (or down) to negative expectations about them. If they believe that they and their peers are subject to inevitable decline in cognition, they perform worse on cognitive tests.

While aging does result in some decline in physical ability, unwarranted assumptions about the physical effects of aging can lead to denying elderly persons the sort of medical treatment that they need and deserve. Many have pointed out that physicians sometimes presume, wrongly, that older cancer patients are too frail to benefit from more aggressive therapies.

Since most psychotherapists receive little training in psychology for the elderly, they presume, incorrectly, that depression is a natural consequence of growing older.[1] Ironically, persons who internalize such a view of old age and depression are more likely to become depressed.

Other equally damaging assumptions overlook the very real contributions that elderly people make to society. While many older persons are forced to retire or are denied employment, at least 60 million elderly persons are employed full-time or part-time, or they are self-employed entrepreneurs. And, of course, many volunteer their services for nonprofit organizations.

Without such active participation by older folks in society – and encouragement of them to remain engaged – the society as a whole will be poorer.

My own journey illustrates what I mean. When I was precluded from further employment in academia, I suffered loss of confidence and depression. Please believe me when I say that it would have been all too easy to simply succumb to presumptions that growing older means being washed up with nothing better to do than prepare to die.

It took some time, and the support of my wife, for me to realize that my sense of self was not tied simply to my status as a professor and dean. Over the years, I had developed advanced research, analytical, and communication skills that could be transferred to other endeavors.

I eventually ran my own copywriting and consulting business through which I helped small businesses and nonprofit organizations in a wide variety of fields from transportation to health care. Today, I manage this newsletter and do some grant writing for a nonprofit organization that provides support services for neurodivergent children and adults.

Some Examples of Stereotyping

Here are some examples of especially damaging stereotypes that should be resisted.

1. Elderly people are frail and weak. While some decline it physical and cognitive ability is expected, many individuals maintain their strength through healthy eating and moderate exercise.

2. Old people are bad with technology. Some might not be up-to-date on the latest office applications, but the vast majority of elderly persons are quite adept at using smartphones and navigating the Internet.

3. Elderly folks are isolated and lonely. I have already acknowledged that this is a problem for many, but some organizations, such as the Age-Friendly University movement,[2] are working to overcome conditions that lead to social isolation.

4. Senior citizens are financially well off. Except for the minority of individuals who enjoy wealth and retirement pensions, a large proportion of seniors are dependent on Social Security for the bulk of their monthly income.

5. The elderly are set in their ways. From personal experience, I can say that many of my peers are more open-minded and flexible in their interactions with others than are some younger people.

6. Old people are not interested in intimacy. While many elderly persons might not wish to remarry after their spouse has died, most are open to forging new, close friendships. Contrary to popular belief, many remain sexually active well into their 80s and 90s.

7. Old folks simply want to die. I can report that many of my peers fear many other things more than dying. Having survived the deaths of family and friends, many develop profound wisdom regarding death. “Simply wanting to die” is vastly oversimplistic.

Anti-DEI Initiatives Threaten Older People

So, the Trump regime is planning to severely curtail or eliminate federal support for Meals on Wheels (of all things!) and other programs that benefit primarily the elderly and disabled. As Dr. Joanne Lynne, clinical professor geriatrics and palliative care at George Washington University says,

“The bottom line is that people in charge simply don’t care about large swaths of the American people....We have made living with disability and old age exceedingly unpleasant. We are on course to make it virtually intolerable.”[3]

When added to Republican plans to gut Social Security and slash the budget for Medicaid, the elderly and disabled are threatened with increasing marginalization and extreme deprivation.

For the authors of Project 2025, many of whom are now senior officials in the Trump regime, elderly and disabled persons are economically useless. They are regarded as unnecessary costs to hard-working taxpayers. Several of the stereotypes listed above reinforce this view.

As the planned cuts are implemented, the elderly, as a special subgroup of the population, are deemed unworthy of assistance. As the government targets subgroups by searching for keywords in programs that support them as part of the anti-DEIA campaign, the result will be increased illness and early death. In a word, the elderly and other subgroups will become expendable.

For nearly 100 years, this country has moved in the opposite direction by supporting the elderly and other subgroups to improve their lives and maintain human dignity. Going down the road of eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse” (which is virtually non-existent) -- thereby making the elderly who rely on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid expendable – is a very dark journey. Escorting the elderly to inhabit ice floes (which are rapidly vanishing) is the next logical step.

It's bad enough that many elderly persons come to think of themselves as useless, often because of widespread stereotyping. When society as a matter of policy considers them useless, the result threatens to become murderous.

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Elder Vibes