Occupy Wall Street protesters are right that some groups have more political power than others. However, they are mistaken to construe the lines only in stark economic terms (the 1 percent vs. the 99 percent.) There’s another war that pits one class against another and is fully the result of specific government policies: the systematic transfer of wealth from the relatively young (and poor) to the relatively old (and wealthy).

Using data from the Congressional Budget Office’s 2011 Long-Term Budget Outlook, the accompanying chart shows the annual share of the U.S. budget spent on programs benefiting senior citizens from 1970 to 2084.