Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century

by Jessica Bruder

“greedy geezer”: a boogeyman conjured by critics of Social Security at the turn of the twenty-first century, foremost among them ex–U.S. Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming. The “greedy geezer” spends his golden years in affluent leisure while draining the lifeblood from younger generations. He’s a geriatric vampire, a septuagenarian version of Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen.” Except that she drove a Cadillac, and the caricature Alan Simpson described drives a Lexus. Simpson also famously railed against the “Pink Panthers,” a pro–Social Security lobbying group that does not actually exist; he invented it as a straw man—or straw woman?—to make an argument.