Leisureville, by Andrew D. Blechman

After reading his interview in the AARP bulletin, I am looking forward to reading Andrew Blechman's book, Leisureville. AARP's headline for the interview is the question, "Are retirees breaking their social contract?" In the Q&A that follows, Blechman is quoted as follows:

A perfect example would be Sun City. Sun City voted down 17 school bond measures in 12 years. Kids were going to school in staggered shifts, and they were often using trailers that doubled as classrooms. The message the older residents there are sending is “We don’t care about your families; we certainly don’t care about your children. We’ve done our share; we don’t want to pay anymore.” We’re programmed as humans to try to help the next generation do better than our generation, and this is kind of a reversal of that. Basically, you have these people seceding from society.

I am not sure how I will define retirement, but in some sense of the word I will be retiring in the next 4-8 years. One of the pre-retirement topics at our house is whether we will be able to afford to continue to live in our Austin home given escalating property values and taxes. The bulk of our property taxes goes to the Austin Independent School District. My personal opinion is that neither my wife and I, nor parents with school-age children, nor the schoolchildren themselves are receiving our money's worth for these taxes, and that the social contract has been broken by the school district for a decade or more. This opinion is shared by many of my coworkers with school-age children, and by district employees with whom I am personally acquainted. My point is that helping the next generation has not been a feature of the large sums of money that we have paid to AISD, and Mr. Blechman may be incorrect regarding the message older taxpayers are sending. He is certainly incorrect in my personal case.