As Life Expectancy Increases Will the Elderly Become a Greater ‘Burden on Society’?
At dinner the other night, a cardiologist spoke of the economic burden on modern society of the elderly. This, he said, could only increase as life expectancy improved.
I was not sure that he was right, and not merely because I am now fast approaching old age and do not like to consider myself (yet) a burden on or to society. A very large percentage of a person’s lifetime medical costs arise in the last six years of his life; and, after all, a person only dies once. Besides, and more importantly, it is clear that active old age is much more common than it once was. Eighty really is the new seventy, seventy the new sixty, and so forth. It is far from clear that the number of years of disabled or dependent life are increasing just because life expectancy is increasing.
There used to be a similar pessimism about cardiopulmonary resuscitation. What was the point of trying to restart the heart of someone whose heart had stopped if a) the chances of success were not very great, b) they were likely soon to have another cardiac arrest and so their long-term survival rate was low and c) even when restarted, the person whose heart it was would live burdened with neurological deficits caused by a period of hypoxia (low oxygen)?
A paper in the New England Journal of Medicine examines the question of whether rates of survival of cardiopulmonary resuscitation have improved over the last years and, if so, whether the patients who are resuscitated have a better neurological outcome.
The authors entered 84,625 episodes of cardiac arrest (either complete asystole or ventricular tachycardia) among in-patients in 374 hospitals in their study, which covered the years 2000 to 2009. They found that, between those two years, the rate of survival to discharge from the hospital for patients who had been resuscitated increased from 13.7 to 22.3 percent. This improvement was very unlikely to have been by chance alone. Moreover, the percentage of those who left the hospital with clinically significant neurological impairment as a result of their cardiac arrest decreased from 32.9 percent in 2000 to 28.1 percent in 2009. Extrapolating to figures in the United States as a whole, where there are about 200,000 cardiac arrests per year among hospital in-patients, the authors estimate that 17,200 extra patients survived to discharge in 2009 compared to 2000, and 13,000 extra with no significant neurological disability – if, that is, the 384 hospitals were representative of U.S. hospitals as a whole, which they may not have been.
Of course, it is usually possible to extract pessimistic data from the most optimistic data. The study could have emphasized that, thanks to improvement in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, 4,200 extra patients with significant neurological disability were being discharged from hospitals annually, a burden, as the dinner guest would have put it, on society.
In addition, only 22.3 percent of patients given CPR survived to discharge while 54.1 percent responded initially to it. This means that in 2009, 31.8 percent of patients resuscitated died in the hospital after initial success; in 2000, the figure had been only 29.0 percent. Presumably patients who responded initially to resuscitation but subsequently died used up a lot of expensive resources in the meantime.
The authors are cautiously optimistic. They admit that the improvement might have been due to something other than better technique of CPR: a change in the nature of the patients having it, for example. Nevertheless, these results are more encouraging than those of a previous study, which showed no improvement in survival of CPR patients in the Medicare system between 1992 and 2005.
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Related at PJ Lifestyle:
Thank you again for such stimulating articles. I feel, however, that you missed just what makes an elderly person (and I include myself in the group) a BURDEN on society. The “burden” derives not from the expenses plus the insecure results of life prolonging means. No, the root cause is that I, in my age, do not contribute to the productivity of the society I now live in (Germany). To put in the terms of George Bernard Shaw (if I have remembered his first name), I consume more calories of energy than I produce goods. I just am efficaciously of no use for the ongoing upkeep of a sustainable society. I will illustrate.
Not long ago an inflated prostrate plus PSA values brought me to an operation where the gland was removed and, as predicted, cancer was discovered. It was at an incipient stage, so I have had a cure (I hope). A few days ago I mentioned to my urologist that I had read an article about the restrictions upon PSA tests now coming to be in America. I was taken back by the news. I was more taken back by the doctors reply. The good doctor looked me straight in the eyes and said (and I freely translate): “The German state simply does not want to allow too many PSA tests. And why? Too many old people, that is why.” The shades of Shaw!
Back to G. Bernard Shaw: He was part of a eugenics movement in the pre-Hitler world (and eugenics from America and elsewhere influenced the Nazis). Simple calculation: I consume more than I produce. Ergo: I should be eliminated. Let us not beat around the bush. I suggest that oppositon to life increasing (and often costly) means will center in the non-producitivity of the older person. We are drags on the society!! What the hel., oops, heck, if we rid ourselves of unwanted humans in the womb because they interfer with the quality of our life, why should we keep those old guys alive when the costs interfer with quality of our life. Put differently, why should “I”, the old drag on society, be allowed to continue as part of the “our” of “our quality life”? The answer to that hangs from a HHS Mandate justification.
There is more to human life than hands-on production, the knowledge of the elderly was presumedly useful to the tribe even in ancient days, so buck up, friend!
Two comments on the main topic, first that those percentages are frightening to mere laymen like myself, and one can certainly see “death panels” looking at those numbers and saying “What the heck, eliminate it all, no great ROI there anyway”. The reality is something else, that even a few good outcomes, which there do seem to be, both motivates the rest and makes it an issue.
Second that, even discounting for knowledge and such, the answer has to be that yes the elderly are going to become a greater burden on society, including for the expensive medical reasons mentioned. I’ve just gone through this with my parents and my own turn is coming fast, and see my friends and their families going through it all over. With today’s life styles the elderly tend to have a last few years that aren’t easy on anybody. They comprise an emotional burden even when the money is there for an acceptable level of care and life.
Maybe someday medicine will advance to where we stabilize at some level, say 50-ish, and maintain there for thirty or so years before just waking up dead one morning. Seems unlikely, but until then I guess the difficulties are just not going to go away.
“There is more to human life than hands-on production, the knowledge of the elderly was presumedly useful to the tribe even in ancient days, so buck up, friend!”
And in ancient days your tribe was lucky to have a few of them.
One elderly person is a source of wisdom.
Three is an argument that rambles to the point where no one remember what the original issue was. Or cares.
A room full of them…
Leonard, thanks for your post. Now that I am old, past sixty, and have trouble navigating steps, I have thought a lot about health care for those advanced in years….from an dispassionate view, your “I consume more than I produce” has much merit. but that is only because you have an old world mentality….you feel bad about being old and not productive…have you ever read Jack London? that story about the eskimos leaving an old man alone in the cold to expire?
That is the way I think it should be….people are these days so afraid of death and meeting God that they will do anything to evade that final step. I myself look forward to it; to shake Jesus’ hand will be worth much more than seeing another picture of Pelosi or Biden or Harry Ried. It must be blasphemy to use the name of Jesus in the same sentence with those other three…much more BHO.
Are you sure you’re going to Heaven despite having this casual attitude toward murder?
That would include a casual attitude toward self-murder as well.
Homo sapiens are here, and neanderthals are not. Some archeologists say part of it is because homo sapien kids have grandparents to share experience. Neanderthals did not.
Not all Neanderthals have gone. I have had neighbors who were definitely Neanderthals.
Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop made film series entitled “How Then Shall We Live?” It centered on these very issues. Abortion on demand and the dehumanization
of those with disabilities would foster a philosophy that some life has no value.
Ultimately when demographics make Social Security and Medicare unsustainable, involuntary euthanasia would follow. It’s coming.
Can we just skip to living Logan’s Run and be done with it?
Not long now, what with the government commencing its takeover of medical access … might take a couple of decades, but 70 will soon no longer be the new 60, it will be the cutoff … or in today’s lingo, the existential cliff …
So we’ll be living “Pebble in the Sky” instead of “Logan’s Run.” Talk about small comfort!
Asimov’s “labor Zionist” SF novel? Was that in there?
What all of this reminds me is of is “Brave New World”. Everyone lived happy, drugged lives in good health until shortly before 60, when they got old and died in a few months or so.
P.S. The book Logan’s Run or the silly movie? The book, which was quite clever, assumed the baby boom would continue to the point where most people would be under 21, the old voting age. Then they would take over and you couldn’t live past 21 (not 30 as in the movie).
If you dont belong to a protected class of people, you will be the first to get the axe….the bureaucrats wanting to insulate themselves from charges of racism, sexism, etc.
The short version.
Old White Males will be the first to be denied life saving medical treatment.
The good news, youll still be treated better than the unborn.
Like, as in ‘Soylent Green’ (music, wonderful panoramas, and a tasty hemlock concoction with the backdrop of the well connected getting actual food instead of government manufactured crackers).
Jenny Agutter then or now? Her recent photos are instructive. She’s quite bright, but how many would go the extra mile for her today? Nobody ever said life was fair in Logan’s Run.
Eighty really is the new seventy, seventy the new sixty, and so forth. It is far from clear that the number of years of disabled or dependent life are increasing just because life expectancy is increasing.
Medical advances have been dramatic but there may be another reason why a lot of people are living longer and better than before. For a high percentage of people, the workplace has changed from what prior generations experienced. A lot of us don’t perform heavy physical labor so we have less wear and tear on our bodies. By contrast, my maternal grandfather raised 5 kids as a sharecropper during the Great Depression. After that, he was a laborer. By age 60, his body was pretty worn out. Heavy physical labor, be it on farms or in factories or construction, used to make up a large percentage of the workforce. Today, not so much. Non physical laborers like myself can retire with “younger” bodies if we take care of ourselves.
But in the end, we’re all going to die. No one gets out of here alive.
And childbirth is much easier on women – even if they have 10 children; I know lots who have near that or more – and infinitely safer.
You make a good point – but there’s more to it than that. Remember, life “expectancy” is an average. A lot more people in your grandfather’s day died of accident while doing that heavy labor. As well as “non-old age” diseases – influenza, measles, smallpox, even mumps were all too often fatal in those days.
As Life Expectancy Increases Will the Elderly Become a Greater ‘Burden on Society’?
Only if you consider mandatory euthanasia a burden. And remember, it’s not like you’d be smothering Grandma, the health care professionals will do it for you! Look at your parents… they’ve had a good run, they’ve got some money in the bank… wouldn’t you like to move out of the basement?
Isn’t mandatory euthanasia the justifiable outcome for bankrupting the kids and grand kids? Why yes, yes it is. We’re just lucky that the youth doesn’t vote. Otherwise, there would be candidates running on platforms about the rich stealing from the poor, and by any measure the young are “the poor” and the elderly are “the rich”. Uh, oh…
I’d like to see a full-scale counterattack on the notion that the elderly are necessarily a “burden on society.” If a senior citizen is self-supporting — in particular, if he pays his own medical bills — how does he constitute a “burden” on anything?
The only response I’ve ever heard is that the elderly gent “consumes more medical resources than a younger person.” But what of that? If he’s capable of affording what he needs, and if there are practitioners willing to sell him the services he might require, how does he “burden” that great undefined phantasm “society?”
The division of our populace into “elderly” and (presumably) “not elderly” tends to obscure an important fact: The “elderly” as as much a part of “society” as anyone else. To speak of them as a “burden” implicitly excludes them from membership — and many a septuagenarian of my acquaintance is a more valuable contributor to “society,” however you view it, than a lot of punks half his age!
If it weren’t for Medicare, this assault on the value and dignity of our older citizens would never have occurred. Unfortunately, I can do nothing about that this week, as my time machine is in the shop.
I would not.
In fact, I would fight AGAINST you in such an effort.
Why?
Becuae, as I replied to Myriah, the minute we engage in that disucssion we have lost the war.
When we argue about who is productive or what is productive we have automatically surrendered the only meaningful issue in this debate – what gives value to human life?
If we argue about productivity, we are conceding that productivity is what gives value to human life.
Once we have done that, we are condemned to a series of losing battles about what constitutes productivity, and who gets to define it.
When we argue about productivity, we have already been defeated without a fight.
I forgot to add, let them be a burden!
It’s one we should embrace, not shun.
I agree with you. The moment we need to clarify anything, we call it into question. Look what defining life did to unborn babies… Look what debating offical language laws has done to the status of English in America… look what asserting the definition of marriage has done to that institution lately. No, old age is a burden to no one.
Don’t fret, Obamacare’s death panel is here in time to save the day. The old folks, who need them? When they are death panelled out, the govt save a lot of Medicare money, and can get a fat chunk from their estates. Win-win for Big Gov.
A modern and truly civilized and genuinely compassionate society would let the “no longer productive” live on for as long as they are able simply because they had done their part for a half century or more. That was the idea in the near past anyway. Now, instead of the elderly living off their own self-generated income, we’re moving towards providing taxpayer-funded “living wages” for those who are still of a productive age. The depravity of this upside-down moral logic is breathtaking.
Incidentally: has anyone else noticed that the pro-abortion vegetarian euthanizers almost universally oppose the death penalty for monstrous criminals?
In our modern society, you have white collar and blue collar jobs.
The blue collar jobs are manual labor, the white collar jobs are the desk jockeys.
Both have their place. The blue collar worker can’t figure out how to design the widget, but the white collar worker doesn’t know how to operate the lathe or drill press.
Together, though, they can make something useful.
Same with this whole young versus old thing.
The young are the “blue collar” labor of society. If something needs to be grown, built, or killed – they are the ones tasked with the job.
The elderly are the “white collar” labor of society. They have been around long enough that if you are having trouble with the baby that won’t stop crying, want to know how something was done years earlier, or why certain elements of the family or society interact the way they do – you ask the old person.
They are the institutional memory of society – and there is definitely value in that.
To casually discard the elderly is to discard a valuable link to the past from which we continually learn, and reflects nothing more than a shallow fixation on youth (who, coincidentally are more easily led and manipulated) to the greater detriment of society.
that you’re making too much sense.
Ah, but the Left will tell you that breaking with the Old White Male Racist Past, is not only desirable but leads to good outcomes.
Part of the 1984 aspect of the fundamental transformation we are going through is that the past can and will be rewritten depending on the political requirements of “the Party.” Having old people around with a memory of how life was in the past would be a hindrance to convincing the young people that slavery is preferable to freedom.
The wheel is turning again. Not all ancient cultures looked so kindly on the elderly. Many killed them off if they weren’t able to support themselves or had family to look after them. Sometimes this was commonplace and sometimes it happened only during times of crisis like famine. Looks like we are heading back to that, except for the elite who want such a policy of course.
As for the burden, look to Japan. Japan has had a low birth rate for a long time and a rapidly aging population. Just look at what’s happening there to see our near future.
The difference then was those were pre-civilizational societies, especially hunter-gatherers, and even they only “asked” the elderly to die (starvation and exposure being the most common methods of death) under conditions of severe hardship. The modern “regressives” (which is what “progressives” really are) are simply depraved, because they don’t even need a genuine, dire set of calamities to institute “selective die-offs.” In neolithic and early civilization times, the elderly were more likely to die during severe food emergencies and conflict due to the limitations of the time, but not by deliberate killing or death by neglect.
With the best care in the world the elderly died much quicker – as late as the 1960s, much less 1860 or 660 BC. Today we live much longer in good shape, seventy being the new sixty and all, but then we start living longer in not so good shape with many fragile, difficult, painful years that are almost as difficult to watch as to experience. The problem is we can’t just legislate the elderly back to health by limiting the cup size of soft drinks or something. Whatever the difficulties used to be for a year or two, now go on for a decade or two. Of course the immediate problems are the finances for social security and medicare, that were never designed for such demographics, but who can even imagine today cutting them back to nothing? AS WILL HAPPEN when their finances implode, the way things are going, in fact have already imploded, and that doesn’t even count retirement funds for civil servants and the like.
living longer in not so good shape with many fragile, difficult, painful years that are almost as difficult to watch as to experience
Josh: A majority of the elderly who endure these infirmities do not find these infirmities “difficult to experience.” They adapt. It has been found in a survey that a great majority of the very elderly would not trade their many “infirm” years for just a couple of vigorous, youthful years. Their caretakers and relatives, OTOH, were mostly convinced that their elderly charges/relatives would opt for the short-lived option of two-three years of good health. They were wrong by a spectacular margin. This is both very telling and unnerving. It means that the advanced elderly are widely misunderstood in regards to how they view their own quality of life. It means that in the coming Brave New World that most of the elderly sent to their death by the authorities will do so unwillingly.
there should be more Clones like you.
There is a social conservative in you, yet, Bozo.
EscapeVelocity:
There is a social conservative in you, yet, Bozo.
You can thank the increasingly aggressive Left for that. By their very actions they are creating an increasingly bigger tent for “social conservatism.”
You have to understand that the Communists and the Social Democrats only disagree on the means, not the ends.
Farther and farther Left, they will drive. There is no compromise that will satisfy them.
Eugenicists are celebrated, Margaret Sanger, in “decent” Leftwing circles.
The Euthanasists wont be satisfied with voluntary suicide.
This is true of the majority of people with a disability, whether it is incurred by age, accident or genetics. And it’s what makes the whole “quality of life” argument complete garbage. Believe me, right now there are people out there carrying on a “cost-benefit analysis” to see if treatments are worthwhile base on completely fabricated measurements of “quality of life.” In other words- who is going to be “worth” treating and who isn’t.
In the 1960′s there were very few nursing homes. Most seniors died of something that killed relatively quickly, like heart attacks or massive strokes. Today, thanks to blood pressure and cholesterol medicine, there are fewer heart attacks and strokes and your chances of survival are greater. With longer life expectancy, we’re now seeing cancer moving up to the #2 cause of death from its #3 position. Plus longer life expectancy means that you are much more likely to “outlive” your body and end up in a nursing home. The cost of which is one of the major “drains” on Medicaid. I remember seeing an science fiction TV series which told of a future America where only pain relieving medicine was given to those beyond 65. There was a black market for blood pressure and cholesterol medicine for those wealthy enough to purchase it.
It happened rather more than that including in civilized places like the Greek City States, Rome and elsewhere around the world. And it wasn’t just in times of famine. Life was always hard and most people lived right on the line of survival. Mouths that couldn’t work sometimes were disposed of. Whether that was unwanted children, widows or other elderly, they’d be driven out or given hemlock or other poisons. For example, it was said of Rome that “in the mornings the Tiber flowed with sewage and the unwanted babes born in the night” along with plenty of adult corpses.
to the classical age of Greek & Roman times, the same squalor, only this time, with no class or brains at all
The fairy tale Hansel and Gretal is a nod to this.
Well, yes, I stand corrected — sort of. You make good points Thane36425. But again, those were earlier and coarser times, “civilized” or not. The idea that in an age of wealth and medical advances and much bleating about “caring” and “compassion” that we would find no need to return to the barbarisms of past ages.
For the record: there is a hidden battle going on in the “progressive” community between the untilitarian faction and those who are advocates for the disabled. The utilitarians — of which Obama is definitely one and therefore depraved in this regard — are winning.
Unfortunately, the elderly WILL become a burden to society for the following three reasons:
1) Advances in medicine have enabled patients to cure or at least live with many conditions that would have killed them 50 years ago. Thus, instead of dying from a heart attack, patients are now able to survive or even prevent fatal health issues.
2)Coupled with the advances in medical science is the diminishment of the concepts of personal responsibility and Protestant work ethic in modern society. Many current and near future retirees could not live without their Social Security and Medicare because they did not see the need to plan due to the presumption that the government would subsidize their irresponsibility.
The Protestant work ethic used to be the cornerstone of American society. In the past, one did not stop working until they either died or became physical unable. Now, the elderly believe they are simply entitled to stop working completely once they reach a certain age. Hence, irresponsibility and and a sense of entitlement amongst the elderly indicate that they will be a burden to society.
3) Lastly, American society has, in a sense, become obsessed with immortality. We fear death and try to avoid it at all costs, regardless of quality of life or practicality of stalling death off. I am in no way endorsing “death panels,” but should an 80 year really get a kidney transplant? I think not.
to kill us 80-year-oldtimers for our kidneys instead . . .
Riiighht….
It’s truly a problem that medicine has kept old codgers alive far longer than they should have.
I mean, in the neolithic period our ancestors only had a life expectancy of about 20 years of age!
Life expectancy in medieval Britain? About 30 years of age.
Early 1900′s, still only about 31 years of age.
It’s disgraceful how medical advances have kept old codgers alive and a drain on society long after their 30′s when they should have just gracefully accepted that long dirt nap….
Actually the so-called short life expectancy of the past was due to high mortality in infancy and childhood. The span of life was for those who avoided the common diseases and such was about 70 years or so at the time of the Roman empire.
Thank you Jerome. That needed saying. The ancient and medieval “longevity” stats are grossly distorted by non-age-related mortality rates. Most people get a skewed understanding of the past this way. But I think Scotch’s (sp?) other points are well-taken.
Correction. Current medicine does not treat the aging process itself. Its “advances” cannot be considered real advances. This is the entire problem.
We need effective anti-aging medicine such as SENS and genetically engineering stem cell regeneration. The medical establishment and the regulatory agencies such as the FDA are often hostile towards the development of real anti-aging medicine. Hence the problem cannot be solved within the current system.
The problem, like any other problem, can only be solved by private individuals working outside the bureaucratic driven system. Only then will the problem get solved.
Your day is coming, babe. It might be when you are an elder, say about 55, or maybe 50, as the age at which the burden status is assigned becomes ever earlier to conserve dwindling resources. It might be when you find you have a catastrophic illness requiring tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of dollars to treat. It might be when your child or your spouse (or partner, if that’s your thing) has an illness or injury perceived as too costly for the ROI of his or her expected life span and earning capacity. And do you still have parents or grandparents? If so, are you that anxious to shovel them into a crypt? One might reasonably question your motives.
In any case, what goes around, comes around, and your callous attitude because death of old age is still a distant bell in your world will come back to bite you where and when it hurts most.
A good example of this sort of thing was the “Oregon Plan” where calculations were made as to whether or not it made sense to spend a great deal of money on those who objectively didn’t have all that long to live in any case. An example was doing a heart transplant (a very expensive operation when total costs are taken into account) on an 80 year man. A number of countries (Great Britain for one)have policies somewhat similar to this in that they will place limits upon the amount of money spent to keep elderly people alive, especially if they are not in good health to start with or are suffering from other incurable diseases. We can likely expect such things here in the USA eventually. Most likely if you are in poor physical condition to start with, you’ll get “hospice” instead of some very expensive operation that will not add a great deal to your probable life span. Whether you like it or not, this is the way it will be when scarce economic resources have to be spent upon those with little realistic future left.
Government healthcare rules will become so arbitray that age rather than physical condition will be the final arbiter. For instance: a healthy, robust individual who is 70 gets lymphoma — a cancer that can often be successfully pushed back into remission with aggressive treatment. If you came into the treatment as a robust individual, you could come out weakened but still functional. But because you are past an age threshold, the guidelines won’t care about that. They won’t even factor in that you may still be fully employed and productive.
In the British NHS system, dialysis is denied to people over age 65, irregardless of their prognosis.
Actually, we can expect it here in one year and 25 days. Obamacare originally included, and I believe still includes, a provision to take the cost of a certain operation/course of treatment and divide it by the expected number of “good years” -good to be decided by some bureaucrat- to determine if it is to be authorized as cost effective. Part of the duties of the appointed “Medicare Advisory Board”, which is, of course, not a death panel.
I thought hateful, emotionally based responses were the standard for the Left. Perhaps you would feel more at home commenting at The Huffington Post.
Seriously, why such ill will towards me, not to mention my husband and three kids, simply because I made statements with which you do not agree? Your suggestion that I would want the death of my parents and grandparents, for inauspicious reasons nonetheless, is disgusting, hurtful and needless to say untrue. I am not callous towards death; I just accept that it is a part of life. My grandparents and parents have living wills for this very reason; furthermore, each relative personally informed me of their wishes. When the time comes,I will honor their wishes, even though it will pain me to lose them.
As much as you may not like it, there is a huge difference between providing expensive treatment to a 20 year old patient and to a 90 year old patient. The 20 year old will most likely live many more years, while the 90 year old most likely will not. This distinction becomes important when there are limited resources, such as organ transplants recipients. Should a 90 year old still receive medical care to try and stave off death? Yes, there should be no cut off of care simply due to age. Should a 90 year old accept their mortality and realize that medicine only buys a person a few more years at this stage in life? Yes.
And if your 90 yr old paid her insurance and Medicare and income taxes her whole life, is a still vital part of a loving family, and has always done her best to help others; while your 20 yr old has never paid a penny into the system, even tried to get a job,much less insurance, and is basically an immoral, gangbanging thug?
Yes, even so. If you’re a Christian you might understand, but if you’re a confused something-or-other, then do whatever…….
Kaila, your last point is telling……
For a supposedly Christian nation to be so thoroughly thanophobic is almost indecent. Have we forgotten that we are not to live entirely for this world? There was World and Life before we came and there will be same after we’re gone, but between the past, our living present and what lays ahead; those first two should serve the future. For without future; life, living and all the world has no point nor meaning. The future is the home of hope and for that reason, she is queen and must be served. Yes, life is precious and one will adapt to anything to remain in its sweet embrace, but life isn’t all about you. If Revelation means anything to you, time may come when you should embrace it and trust in a destiny outside of here. Otherwise, admit you have no Faith and accept what that means……..
We’ll never be rid of those damn Baby Boomers telling us how great it was at Woodstock and decifit-spending our grandkids into the poorhouse.
the birthrate will go way down, fast
Yeah, that’ll teach ‘em… unfortunately, for us.
Wrong verb tense; it is going down already.
eightieth year
this Thanksgiving
a flock of
obama buzzards
circling above
One needs to distinguish between maximum and average life expectancy. The average is affected by infant and maternal mortality, death in wars, and infectious diseases. The maximum lifespan hasn’t actually changed very much. We have quite credible reports of people who lives to ca. 100 in antiquity.
Note that babies are completely useless as well. It takes many years for children to become productive members of society. One could also argue that the frail, disabled, or even stupid are a burden as well.
From an ethical point of view, we expend resources to help the weak not only for their sake but for our own, for if we do not take care of those weaker or less fortunate than ourselves, we destroy our moral nature. As Plato reminds us in the Gorgias, that is the worst thing we can do, for when we suffer injustice only our external situation is worsened but if we commit injustice we corrupt our souls.
Dont forget, eugenics never goes out of style.
And if that be not sufficient reason to have mercy upon the weak, then consider too that none of us can be sure that we will not be crippled someday, even someday soon. Therefore, let us care for the weak, lest we should be abandoned to death when we ourselves have become weak.
How many modern “jobs” held by those who are not yet “old” can be defended as an obvious productive benefit to society? Advertisers working to get people to buy stuff they don’t really need — how does that benefit society? Poets living on grants and family trust funds while writing stuff no one reads — how does that benefit society? Factories producing birth control devices while the birth rate falls below replacement value — how does that benefit society? Hollywood working hard to entice the public into wasting time watching movies, time that could be better spent making stuff — how does that benefit society? Politicians and pollsters working hard to trick people while hiding or shading the truth about what they intend to do — how does that benefit society?
I think intellectuals who start thinking this way are going to find the finger pointing at them more quickly than they can possibly imagine. After all, we may need one smart guy to tell us all what to do but do we really need two…
And what about cancer? Much has been made on the “war on cancer” over the years. That “race for a cure” and all that. Well, what happens if cancer IS cured? There are lots of different types of cancer and not all of them will be cured at the same time. But what if many of them are cured by, say, 2050. Then what? There will be an explosion of people not only surviving, but also living longer too. What effects will that have not only on the humnan body, but on the population in general as more and more people get older and older, live longer, but are also having far fewer kids?
We will be faced with not only an aging society, but a really old society, espcially if the demographics in the world continue on their downward trend of a shrinking population in the industrialized world, especially in places like Europe and Japan, which are having hardly any kids. It will look like a strange world, where everybody is getting real old and youth is becoming exceedingly rare. Will we become extinct simply because life grew too long and too easy and kids became too inconvenient to too many people? Only time will tell, and it’s running out.
It’ll be all Catholics, Mormons and Muslims. Should be interesting.
How does the ruling class save itself from the debt it’s fabricating?
Eliminate those it owes the most money to- the old-
and replace them by importing somewhat stupid foregners loyal to the Party, not the country. In power forever.
That’s the way machine politics has always worked: recruit the ignorant newcomers and make them dependent on the machine for favors. I moved out of Chicago because I hated it. Now the Chicago machine has taken over the whole US.
Also, immigrants tend to be younger AND not accustomed to getting much health care. Younger people don’t need as much health care, as a rule, and those that do, often don’t realize that they need it until it’s too late. So they end up being added to the list of dead voters, so no worries for our corruptocrats.
Socialized medicine, like any other part of socialism, is inherently unsustainable. Keeping it going for any length of time requires a lot of dead bodies. Death panels are an inevitable part of the picture – and it may even affect the people who can afford and are willing to pay their own way.
The “elderly” are not a burden to society–the greedy, exploitative 1% are.
Perhaps it is true in Dalrymple’s Britain that rising life expectancy is creating unique challenges, but that is only because his country has a compassionate health care system. Here in capitalist America life expectancy continues to fall and infant mortality continues to rise as the forces of capitalist greed continue to exclude more and more people from basic human needs. In America, only the 1% have health care available for free to all Britons and other Europeans.
The issue of unplugging Granny is so obviously phony it is hardly worth discussing. If you object to death panels, then all we need to do is raise taxes on the rich sufficiently high to pay for comprehensive health care for all. Even in Britain, if the NHS is short of resources all that needs to be done is raise taxes on the greedy Essex men who have been plundering the Mother Country of her resources ever since the reforms of the greedy Milk Snatcher. Then the issues of end-of-life care as well as all other issues of limited health care would cease to exist.
A compassionate society must place the elderly and their need for health care above the greed of the billionaires in the boardrooms!
I submit that it is not the extremely wealthy, or the extremely productive, that you lump into the “1%”, who are the greedy, exploitative parasites.
I submit that it is the people like you, who feel entitled to a share of what others own, who are guilty of greed and exploitation, and that those among you who game the system by taking welfare when you can work harder, claiming disability when you are able bodied, filing lawsuits when someone looks cross-eyed at you, screaming for ever more excessive union benefits and wages even when it bankrupts your employer, refusing to purchase health insurance when it is available and affordable because the emergency room is down the street and they have to treat you, are the worst offenders.
Most of the elderly being discussed on this page have paid their dues, and yours, too, in the decades which precede us. They paid taxes, paid into the Ponzi scheme bill of goods sold to us, as an “income retirement security act”, thinking that everything they paid in would be like their own money, put away for their old age.
What, pray tell, have you or that unwashed, ignorant, unlawful “99%” done except be perennial students and parasites, whining at how unjust it is that you are expected to work for your own existence when some people have just been so lucky to be rich?
How dare you?
I know, right? Sandra Fluke’s 1% fiance won’t even cough up the cash for her contraceptives, so WE have to! How lame is that?
And the two of them are married now. She’s now Mrs. Mutterperl. The Mutterperls are a wealthy progressive family. You like that? “Wealthy Progressives?” That is permissible, whereas wealthy conservative is not.
I’m more likely to label a 25 year old urban welfare queen with 4 kids, that has never paid a penny in income tax and is already on every assistance program possible as a burden, than a retiree who’s in failing health. Unfortunately, no one’s proposing withholding life prolonging services from these burdens.
Defib ready… Wait, I see a EBT card in her purse. Checking records. Section 8, WIC, EIC. No work history… Ok, pack it up. We’re outta here.
if the government wasn’t meddling in the health care then the burden wont not be anything like it presently is.
like education medical care is prohibitively costly precisely because of government involvement.
True! Virtually everything government “touches” costs more than it would in a true free market. The public school system is very expensive based upon the “results” that it produces. Without prescription laws most people would only see a doctor once every few years and those with chronic diseases such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, even diabetes would be able to purchase medicine to treat their conditions without first paying a “rent seeking doctor” for his or her “permission” to do so. So without “government” as “protector” of the professional “rent seekers”, things would cost considerably “less” than they do now. Hundreds of billions of dollars would be saved, and put to better uses than is the case now.
If we could buy medicines without prescription there would be a definite difference in outcomes between intelligent, reward postponing type people and unintelligent, immediate rewards type people. Can you imagine how many would be gulping painkillers and anti-anxiety pills if they could just buy them, regardless of whether or not it shortened their lives?
But would that be a feature or a bug?
First let me say I haven’t read all the comments. Please forgive me if I’m repeating. I understand what you’re saying about not being productive to society but you’ve spent your productive years contributing and now it’s your time to enjoy life and contribute in other ways, charity activities i.e. volunteering and helping out with family obligations.
But the other issue I can see is what about all the non-productive young trolls that lay about all day having baby after baby that also becomes a burden on society. What do they contribute? Shouldn’t they (adults and children) be eliminated? Where’s their contribution to society? After all, money is money, right? I think clearly as American Society moves ever farther and farther away from being a Christian and Jewish society, this will become more and more of an issue. This really reared it’s ugly head during the Obama Administration (Obamacare) as me thinks he and his ilk are really posers when they claim they are christians and jews and I think they don’t really care about the American People. I need to add that most of the politicians in Washington D.C. only care about their own corrupt and selfish selves, including the RHINO republicans.
Fascinating, but what’s the big picture? In theory, old farts and survivors of all stripes will consume and spend less, partly from choice, mainly from necessity. So the net result should be less strain on global economies during a time of allegedly finite resources and rising environmental damage — balanced against a rising trans-generational sense of entitlement and growing medical needs.
A net plus? Don’t bet the farm — more likely a blueprint for chaos to be played out against a background of crumbling institutions around the globe. No, not Soylent Green but the race, as always, will be to the swift.
Bring out your dead!
It also makes it easier to figure out who the king and his lords are.
But I am not dead yet! Here, let me fix that.
Is President Yomama counted among the elderly? He certainly is a burden on society.
Unwanted babies, people with disabilities, old people: they sure ain’t cool.
Challenge is not the elderly, but a nation of pre-diabetic, obese, beer chugging, dope smoking thirty something live at homes , who thanks to Obamacare will drain the system even faster.
I am a 62 year old vegetarian , no booze, no tobacco guy who runs a vigorous four miles daily. Sure, i see people my age in walkers, but I see bloated thirty somethings in almost as bad shape. Not to happy having my taxes raised to pay for the bad habits of the kids.
As to productivity, I have a succesful business I still run, providing great jobs to a lot of folks. Interestingly, while we have a few younger employees, my most productive folks range in age from 45-75. Very hard to find anyone 35 and under who has tne vaguist idea of a work ethic.
The real burden on society, if you want to use that cliche, rests not so much on us “old folks”, but on the vasr majority of marginal producers who reside in the under 35 crowd. I can still outrun and outwork 99% of them.
Yeah, but just TRY to get a good (not part time) job if you’re over 55. No matter how hard you work once you get in the door.
The place where I work says that they will have no full-time openings for the foreseeable future, and when they let a full-time employee go, they do not replace the employee.
The majority of medical costs incurred for each individual will occur statistically in the last six year’s of a person’s life REGARDLESS of the age at which one dies. If a child dies before age six — well that’s obvious. But other than for people who simply “keel over dead” from something with no chance at resuscitation, more medical resources are brought to bear in the final battle, which may last hours, days, or a few years, no matter what age one happens to have at the moment. There may be a statistically significant number of people out there who battle cancer or some other foe at great expense, and then go on to live for ten, twenty, or thirty years, naturally. But it is inherent in the way we live and battle death that the greatest expense occurs in fighting what turns out to be the final battle.
I have just spent 10 agonizing days watching my 95 year old father being kept in pain and being starved and dehydrated to death because of an infection (injected by a series of ‘mistakes’ made by personnel in a nursing home and the hospital) that was likely curable, but, which was not treated because he was ‘old’. It was heart wrenching to witness.
Who judges what is ‘productivity’? From my perspective, even a 95 year old can be very ‘productive’ and useful in society. My father, until mere weeks before his demise, made people happy, kept people busy, was a linchpin in maintaining the sense of ‘family’, was a role model for us youngun’s (I am nearly 63), entertained people with his wit and intelligence and knowledge. I call that very productive. He paid money into society for his own care and to help others, right to the end. He WAS productive, even in his nineties!
All efforts should have been made to keep him alive, just as should be done for anyone else at any age. They were not – the doctors threw up their hands within mere hours, withdrew everything that could keep him alive, or help him fight the infection on his own. The family was ‘snowed’ with their ‘opinions’, not with real data to support their actions and, under duress, and because we didn’t know what else to do but believe what we were told, had to go along with their decisions. We were told he would definitely live only a few hours. He lived over 10 days. His body was stronger than anyone might have thought – and his will to live was evident until about the 8th day. We watched helplessly because what else could we do.
Frankly, seeing the way this all played out, I would say there was a good chance he would have cost the ‘system’ less in the long run if he had recovered and later died from some condition (like a heart attack) that caused a faster exit. Failing that however, once it became clear that he would definitely die (things do become irreversible if right decisions are not made in those first few hours), it would have been smarter and more merciful for everyone had that extra bit of morphine been administered (which, of course, was NOT allowed – it was only permitted that we all suffer!)
The question is a profound mistake, as is presupposes some legitimacy to the consideration of “productivity”.
It doesn’t matter who defines it, or how it’s defined.
Productivity has NOTHING to do with the value of human life.
The minute we start arguing about its definition we have lost the battle.
“As Life Expectancy Increases Will the Elderly Become a Greater ‘Burden on Society’?”
The simple answer is yes!
The newer generations demand everything life has to offer upfront and to heck with the needs of getting old. They live in excess with great debt and never “own” anything or have any savings for when they get older. Those who think they have great retirements coming in the future have another thing coming. The good retirements of the past will not be the same in the future.
The ever increasing poverty class and those well into the middle class in America will be a continuing and serious american liablity as they age into the coming future.
This is largely a self inflicted social problem that future generations will have to bear the economic consequences for. The children and grandchildren of the Greatest Generation have totally screwed America up!
“Eighty really is the new seventy, seventy the new sixty, and so forth.”
Boy oh boy, has this author ever been brainwashed by the Boomer generation with its pathological fear of normal aging! REALITY CHECK: 80 is STILL 80, 70 is STILL 70, 60 is STILL 60, and no amount of wishful thinking will ever change that!
I used to buy into the whole executive-woman party line that my 30s would be the best decade of my life. As it turned out, my 30s were professionally heady but personally DISASTROUS, and I spent way too much of my early 40s recovering from it. My 50s, much to my surprise, are turning out to be my happiest decade (even though my least productive so far in career terms). But I don’t kid myself that my 50s are my new 30s! 30-somethings don’t have arthritis, or dental implants, or grandchildren — all fo which are kind of a pain in the ass but everso endurable as the EARNED battle scars of a life lived enthusiastically if not always wisely
Uploaded on Jul 25, 2009
Bureaucrats and politicians, not families, will control health care choices and decisions. The horror stories of long waits and denied treatment in countries with government health care systems cannot be denied. Government health care doesnt work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJb-TrmJl80&feature=player_embedded
“Young and elderly and infirm, go to the left; healthy and fit to the right.”
Americans, indeed Western nations, refuse to deal with the realities of 1) technical advances in medicine that manage to keep marginal, non-productive people alive at great expense, and 2) the badly out of whack match of services promised with the increasing life expectancy. We’re well on the way to becoming a nursing home with a military, and in the not too distant future, at the rate Obama is gutting the military, we’ll be just a nursing home. The only rational solution to this set of problems is sacrificing traditional American economic power in favor of vastly increased personal savings so that individuals save for their own futures and work as long as possible. Pensions and paid retirement as concepts will have to virtually disappear. Citizens can’t spend and spend in support of the economy during all their productive years, then essentially go on state welfare in their 50s when their need for expensive care is greatest until they die in their 90s.
A couple of things that will keep longevity lower than “they” say:
Obamacare
GMO foods
Mandatory Vaccines
No cash
These same items will deplete our youth as well.
It occurred to me only yesterday (before seeing this essay) that we might be better off if each person under the age of 18 took it upon herself to kill someone over 70. Otherwise, the tax burden on the young to support the elderly will be intolerable.
I think the inverse to this philosophy is more cost effective.
If you haven’t spent that much of your life contributing, there isn’t that much to lose.
The monetary gain from euthanizing the unproductive elderly and sick would be quite staggering. It would also solve many of our current debt problems. We would also lose our humanity. It is a Faustian bargain at best.
Humans were the first animals to care for their elders – even after death. It forever set us apart in this world. I don’t see much promise in turning our society into a very efficient ant hill. It sort of takes all the meaning out of life.
Your irrational beliefs are unenlightened, unscientific, and reactionary.
Ergo, you are now a burden on society.
See how well that works?
Nice answer back in return of this query with firm arguments and describing everything about that.
The elders have been destroying the economy since medicare became law. Naturally it didn’t look like that was what they were doing. The sociopathic policy looked like kindness itself when it was passed. Weren’t elders eating cat food instead of human food because they couldn’t affoard both their medical care and life’s necessities? How many stories did you hear/see about some senior bent over a dumpster or garbage can, scrounging for food in alleys?
If FDR realized in 1937 that SS was a fiscal disaster in the making if it wasn’t changed then, how much of a genius did it take to discern that medicare was absolutely insane?
Why do insurance companies crawl over each others corpses to get the subscriptions of a company with a large number of unionized employees or government workers?
It sure as hell isn’t for philanthropy or guilt.
There’s always been ample cash to make several millionaires out of the administration of the most fortunate companies.
The politicians in Washington have always wanted to get their hands on some of this cash, and now they have.
It was the insurance lobby that convinced (bribed) enough low intelligence and gullible politicians that they could “save” the government revenue by requiring Medicare at retirement age. (Spread the poverty).
Now, it’s the politicians in Washington that determine how much is to be spent on any medical procedure or prescription for the retirement age individual, while these very politicians are exempt from the medical care THEY administer.
They have enough cash and influence to care for their own; They couldn’t care less about the lemmings.
So…more Boomer scapegoating…from a conservative Boomer.
You dislike the liberal propaganda machine, but you buy into their propaganda…and spread it for them.
…and you wonder why you keep losing the big elections and the big policy decisions?
The answer to this article, is yes, most definitely.
After all; The Obama Regime is creating a generation of parasites that are certain to become a burden on whatever society they inhabit.
They’re entitled, don’t you know? It’s U.S. Code.
It doesn’t require an increased life expectancy, though that is a useful smokescreen.
All that’s required is a gradual change of terminology, which has already begun.
He who owns the language, owns the thoughts. He who owns the thoughts owns the battlefield.
Definitely; As the Democrat Party segues the American People into more defined classes, it’s obvious who will rule.
Doesn’t it seem like the U.S. is going backward?
It’s true that we use a disproportionate amount of medical resources in our last six years of life.
The trouble begins when you try to identify when those six years begin.
I expect that some time in the future, the government will realize this dilemma, and realize how unfair it is, wasting all that medical effort on people who are just going to die anyway. And of course, there will be a great shortage of medical effort.
So I predict that in order to resolve this problem, the government will do what it has always done: unable to scientifically establish the “six years to go” point in a person’s life, any more than they can scientifically establish “mature enough to have full rights as an adult citizen”, they will simply mandate when that age occurs.
“Citizen! Congratulations upon attaining the age of Seventy Five! As per the Health Care Prioritization Act of 2021, this concludes your period of National Health Care coverage. Thanks to your patriotic support, medical care that would otherwise be wasted in the last six years of your life can now be provided to higher priority persons. A waiver can be requested. Please refer to the waiver application form enclosed. For your convenience and to assure timely and fair processing of your waiver request, please submit your waiver application in the same envelope as your contribution to the Democratic National Committee.”
Commanding an older warship presents certain challenges that don’t confront the commander of a brand-new vessel – no doubt about it.
Yet if one is an older commanding officer with an older ship, certain not-insignificant advantages also accrue, and they are vital to sustaining the integrity of a society and a culture and – it becomes increasingly clear – a productive Economy capable of sustaining a polity of 300-million plus.
The West over the past 40 Biblical years has found the aging Citizenry (which today now includes the Boomers – who woulda thunk it?!!?) to be a multiple burden to the establishment of the Brave Transgressive Creative New Order: not only do these folks remember the Old Culture, but they also remember the Old Economy (productive, industrial, sweaty, macho and patriarchal though it may have been, it did p-r-o-d-u-c-e stuff that could be traded and sold). Thus, I think, the urgency accompanying the campaign to deconstruct both the Old Culture and the Old Economy and – in fine revolutionary fashion – to reduce and eliminate as expeditiously as possible the cultural, social, and political influence of the ‘old’ (which would include reducing them to penury aggravated by intensifying focus on their physical ills and complaints).
The ‘old’, I would say, need to robustly make themselves aware of a) just how frakked the current state of affairs is (culturally and socially and politically and economically) and b) just how much vital wisdom they possess: to be ‘youthy’ has a lot of valuable characteristics, but prudence, skeptical inquiry, and an overall sense of balance and perspective (which comes from having seen a whole lotta water flow under history’s bridge) are not among them.Just the opposite.
Like certain baseball pitchers of yore, the ‘old’ may have to step up to the bat in order to save their own game. And everybody else’s. Not just to get themselves a piece of the pie (such as it remains) but in order to save the pie itself.
All this verbiage when only one thing need be said, “Shame on you seniors who worked fingers to the bone for ingrates prepared to thank you with extermination.
You do realize, that without an aged and infirm group of people to care for, immigrants and other unskilled workers will have no livelihood?
That oughta bump the unemployment figure up another 10% to 15%.
The sickly elderly should be referred to as “geriatric medical pioneers.” They are the ones who join with medical treatment as it gropes to advance life. If any do not qualify for an experimental treatment or a new treatment which is still very expensive, they should be referred to as “Martyrs to Socialism.”
Disliking death of friends and kin comes with the DNA.
As long as crops are turned into fuel, money is not an issue.
In regard to what ‘Jeanniiie’ said, I am reminded of a comment by Stalin. When Lady Astor cornered him and said ‘When are you going to stop killing people?’ the old monster looked her in the eye and said with complete honesty “The undesirable classes never liquidate themselves.”
I’ve spent a fair amount of time in nursing homes and similar facilities lately. There are a lot of people who are barely alive and need extensive care. The number is growing, both absolutely and as a proportion of the population (due to declining birth rates).
We all know that Social Security and similar old age pension systems are demographically unsustainable. So is Medicare. Even raising the age of eligibility won’t help much.
Medicalized euthanasia is going to become routine. It will be the primary cause of death in another 20 years.
As long as physicians and hospitals and nursing homes and the rest of the “medical-industrial complex”, aided by the “pro-life” extremists, have a financial interest in keeping the elderly and infirm alive by well past their natural expiration dates, they will do so.
The most extreme case of which I am aware is that of Terri Schiavo, who effectively died in 1990 but was kept in a vegetative state until 2005. The medical profession and the legal profession and the political classes reaped untold benefits, and society and Terri benefited not at all. If the funds expended on this nonsense had been spent on childhood immunizations the human life-years saved would have been greater by several orders of magnitude.
Shel Silverstein, in the voice of the Old Dogs, said it best: “You’re still gonna die!” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdEoputkE98 Get a grip!
” soylent green “
I have been a productive member of society until about a year ago and I think I have been more productive than most of the celebrities. However, if heaven is populated by all the Bible Thumpers, I’m not sure I would want to go there.