Ageism Section 4

     Social ranking with age on who gets power, wealth, and prestige. But the inequality among older people is worse than any other age group out there. But as the median age of the United States gets older the inequality and ageism it will be affecting more and more people.
     Most elderly people according to functionalism are treated accordingly to the role the age played in society. In many cultures the elder are treated with great respect, as in agricultural societies elderly men usually play important roles. In the Early colonial America there was no stigma attached to age, elderly brought respect. They filled the most prestigious positions in the community. God was said to favor those who got old, the older you got the more likely you were to go to heaven.
      In the 1600 and 1700's people tried to appear older wearing older clothes and powdered wigs, also they said they were older on the census. The technical society had a different view though. The view on age lessens when the elders couldn't contribute fully, age also lead to lower status's. Modern society changes rapidly, younger workers possess the current skills needed to carry out jobs. And the older they got the more of their skills were out to date.  There was an increase of suicide rate for men that came around the time of retirement age, because men had a greater difficulty in accepting the way age was affecting their work life.

     Conflict theory states that elders compete with other age groups for economic resources, power, and prestige. In Pre-Industrial societies older people get a fair share of scarce resources because work is labor intensive. The more hands on deck the better. The elders also have valuable knowledge about practices and history.
     Industrial society has more workers than is needed, and they save scarce resources replacing high priced older workers with less costly younger workers. Forced retirement is also a big thing against elders. Prejudice and discrimination is used by dominate groups as weapons to control minority groups. And older people are stereotyped as intellectually dull, closed-minded, inflexible, unproductive, which forces retirement so there is more jobs for the younger part of society.