Older people aren't just worried about fairness, and are far less concerned about opportunity (that was in the past!) as they are about their personal security, which goes beyond their health care and pension payments. By older people I mean retirees, those portions of the French electorate (in fact the only one if memory served) who voted majoritarily for Sarkozy in 2007. They are also worried about social cohesion, expressed in terms of defence of values sometimes, other times expressed in terms of identity politics (French versus immigrants, et c.)

But are these priorities due to them being old or due to them being of the particular generation that they are? That is, will all people, on average, tend to adopt these priorities as they age, in which case a greater share of elderly people must be accounted for in terms of political strategy. Or is the fact that the elderly have these priorities an accident of history, which would imply that long-term strategy should be centered around meeting the priorities of the next generation of the electorate (since the present generation of elderly, not to put too fine a point upon it, won't be around to vote in the long run).

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.