Brooks on aging

Although it's like hiking a switchback, with several abrupt turns in new directions, I enjoyed David Brooks's piece on aging today. He writes about new research suggesting more happiness, more altruism, better life satisfaction, and much productivity past retirement. Then he links it to the looming fiscal issues we confront. Maybe Brooks thought of all this because Eugene Steuerle pointed out that "in 2009, for the first time in American history, every single penny of federal tax revenue went to pay for mandatory spending programs [i.e., mostly transfers to the elderly]."