A financial study cited by CNN says that many Americans should plan on working until age 80 in order to afford their retirement. “Because of the growing gap between actual savings and savings goals, many Americans are scrapping the idea of a concrete retirement age altogether and are instead working as long as it takes in order to save up enough to live comfortably in retirement.” Some said that working into the later years was psychologically rewarding.
On the bright side, a lot of people are actually choosing to work longer, the survey showed. About 45% of Americans between 25 and 39 and a quarter of people ages 40 to 59 say they will work in retirement because they want to (though 42% of Americans say they will work in a position that requires “less responsibility.”)
And some people may even work well past 80 years old. Robyn Sekula, from New Albany, Ind., is 40 years old and hopes to work for the rest of her life at her job as a media consultant.
Advertisement“I don’t know that I will ever want to retire, unless my health dictates that I must,” said Sekula. “I love what I do.”
Who cares about the pipe and slippers when there’s another day at the office to look forward to? But besides making a virtue out of a necessity the harsh reality is that there isn’t enough money for most people to retire on. Social Security is broke. The Congressional Budget Office examined the different ways in which the problem could be fixed and came up with five basic options.
- Increases in the Social Security payroll tax,
- Reductions in people’s initial benefits,
- Increases in benefits for low earners,
- Increases in the full retirement age, and
- Reductions in the cost-of-living adjustments that are applied to continuing benefits
Well here’s another solution to the retirement age problem from the days of ancient Rome.
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $3.99, print $9.99
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I think retirement is a scam and I plan to work until I can’t. I guess that’s retirement of a sort. It’s also the original idea of retirement, for which all these social programs were designed to provide. Retirement wasn’t meant to be 20 years of relative leisure.
Great news for new grads!
A no-growth economy. Boomers can’t or won’t leave their jobs. Millenials can’t begin careers.
One apt observation:
Marketwatch: “Younger workers who expected promotions when the boomers cleared out are going to have to stew in their own juices. With this job market, looking for a better opportunity elsewhere is not in the cards. Which means that Gen X-ers are going to have to listen to baby boomers doing what they do best — talk about themselves.”
Depending on one’s line of employment and state of health, continued employment or self-employment is not a bad thing. Is 65 the new 45? Could be!
PointMan…
65 is the new 50.
The REAL killer is that the microchip has entirely destroyed ramming speed — now it’s DRAMming speed.
———-
Robotics are certain to leave the factory and reach the farm. I expect that this super-revolution will start in Japan.
This will be compounded by high intensity agriculture on a scale previously undreamt.
By that I mean that high value foods will be grown under modified atmospheres — permitting double output.
“I don’t know that I will ever want to retire, unless my health dictates that I must,” said Sekula. “I love what I do.”
@1 “I think retirement is a scam and I plan to work until I can’t.”
@3 “Depending on one’s line of employment and state of health, continued employment or self-employment is not a bad thing. Is 65 the new 45?
And then the day comes when you hit the wall. It only took one day. I really loved my work and was very good at it. I recognized the wall because I had been there before. First time was Junior year engineering math. Differential equations. Wall. No engineering PhD in my future, so practical real world work. Then there was the notion that I could start my own construction firm. Slow economy and family security made the timing wrong.
Then one day I just couldn’t explain one more time how a Federal Construction Contract worked to an under qualified MBE subcontractor who was hired to fill a quota…I mean goal.
I realized that I like my wife’s companionship best…didn’t need any more ‘prestige’ (LOL)and even though I had planned 4 or 5 more years to meet or exceed financial goals…I could not wait that long….So, some gen xer did just fine…and I consult with old firm and a few others for fun and profit…and grandchild spoilage.
Never say never.
Makes sense to me. The average life expectancy in the US is 79 years of age. You will start receiving your SS benefits when you turn 80. That takes care of half of the problem. The most important thing however is to see to it that there are enough Mexicans to take all of the jobs, pitting the young against the old. If grandpa had any decency he’d go commando on every government office he came across. The new retirement plan is likely to involve a final act of defiance with your helpings of Soylent Green. The secret is in the people.
Aardvark @ 2 said:
“A no-growth economy. Boomers can’t or won’t leave their jobs. Millenials can’t begin careers.”
Social Security and Medicare will implode in a few years. Many people (majority of Americans?) unwisely assumed that Uncle Sam would take care of their retirement (Don’t you love socialism?). There are going to be many Baby Boomers spending their golden years flipping burgers at McDonalds or selling toilets at Home Depot. Eventually the Millenials will say “Times Up!” and hand the Baby Boomers just enough bus fare for a one way trip to the euthanasia center (you can watch pretty nature movies there and listen to Beethoven’s 6th Symphony).
I’ll spend the bus fare on a Big Mac, sneak off to my hiding place and try to live another day.
This totally ignores the fact that the “balance” in the social security account does not exist, so even keeping benefits where they are while we zero that account over the next twenty years would be a huge strain, if nothing got worse.
Unfortunately things did get worse as of 2008 (actually more like 1968 but the lid came off with the financial meltdown), so things are going to be a lot tougher than simply resolving the original ponzi scheme. OTOH, we now have Bernankecare that simply prints what we need. If and when this money is used for subsistence living like most social security PERHAPS it is (nearly) non-inflationary and can be sustained for years or even indefinitely.
Ignoring these two blue-whale sized macroeconomic details, the microeconomics of social security are not all that bad – or at least were not all that bad as of 2006. Raising the eligibility age by a year or two, increasing the tax by a few tenths and raising the limit on which it applies, cutting the benefits to upper-income households, and maybe slightly reducing the payments on average beyond that, would extend the original 2037 (or whatever it was) estimate for the account balance by another twenty years or more, which is essentially beyond the event horizon for whatever we’re doing now.
HOWEVER this is all pretty minor, since the Medicare accounts are ten times larger and have even fewer resources to draw on. So, cutting Medicare 10% would pay for all of social security!?! And we may have to cut Medicare by more like 50% because we simply run out of funds. So, we may have a comfortable social security account, until we need major medical, and then buh-bye. Or at least that seems to be what the numbers say.
–
… assuming that some teleomere-preserving drug doesn’t pop up tomorrow and extend the average lifetime by another twenty years, even if that increased the ability to work by the same twenty years (as seems unlikely) it might be horribly disruptive.
Josh…
We’ve beaten this to death at the BC already….
The SS Trust Fund does exist…
It’s part of the $ 15,000,000,000,000 US Treasury debt figure. Even at this late hour the cash flow from FICA receipts PLUS interest income on US Treasury debt held by the Fund exceeds outlays.
Such a positive flow is about to go into reverse.
It is ESSENTIAL that the retirement age be lifted – -pretty much planet wide.
We’re simply living too long — and using up plenty of medical services during the long goodbye.
——-
None of the other options kicked around by Congress have the remotest possibility of averting financial collapse.
Every day of delay makes the necessary adjustment all the more brutal. The math was perfectly illustrated decades ago when Spock explained to all why it was necessary to deflect an asteroid sooner than later.
Europe had no Mr. Spock and thusly is destined to be cratered.
Central Planning has done them in.
Ditto for Red China.
Of course, the Wan wants more of the poison for us: Chicago on the Potomac.
Josh @ 8 said:
“assuming that some teleomere-preserving drug doesn’t pop up tomorrow and extend the average lifetime by another twenty years, even if that increased the ability to work by the same twenty years (as seems unlikely) it might be horribly disruptive.”
Teleomere shortening is a built-in cancer defense mechanism (cancer cells are immortal because they reset their teleomeres). If I take a teleomere-preserving drug then I die from cancer.
Something I learned today is there maybe a near term cure for heart disease, refer to:
http://www.buffalo.edu/ubreporter/2011_11_17/canty_stem_cells
Remember that “retirement” was invented during the first Great Depression by FDR’s advisors who needed a way to get older workers out of scarce jobs so younger workers could take them. Before that time, folks didn’t retire, they just worked until they either couldn’t or didn’t have to anymore. The concept of retire at 65 worked OK at first because people didn’t live much longer than that (if they lived that long at all.)
But today, we have a conundrum. On the one hand, the powers-that-be might like to get older workers off the payroll in favor of younger ones because the latter cost less, both in terms of salary and medical insurance. But if older workers are forced to retire without the financial resources to do so, the younger ones will be stuck supporting them via high taxes to support entitlement payments.
The other problem for politicians is that older folks tend to vote more reliably than other groups and don’t take well to being pushed around.
e @ 10: I would argue that at the genetic level, death is a defense against cancer, as well as an expediter for evolution. Even if a teleomere-preservation drug did not actually cause cancer, I would expect with age we would see more cases of cancer. Enough room for some serious bioengineering for the next few centuries, probably. But we might still boost vigor and life by a decade or two, given other modern hygiene, nutritional and medical advances.
The heart stem-cell story is very exciting but I have to wonder about that, flooding the body with stem cells has much the same drawback as reseting teleomeres, it would seem to violate all sorts of differentiation controls the body normally obeys and since the body already has stem cells it’s unclear why adding more of them would fix anything. I await some confirmation on this one.
bof @ 11: Remember that “retirement” was invented during the first Great Depression by FDR’s advisors who needed a way to get older workers out of scarce jobs so younger workers could take them.
And here we go again!
Maybe the government should hand out free cigarettes, or require that we smoke them in order to receive social security? Let senior citizens dine free at the Cheesecake Factory as long as they finish at least one piece of cheesecake?
In Florida I have found the elderly fall into two groups.
1. Those who moved to Florida to retire, often only to discover that it is not the northeastern socialst welfare state they paid taxes to their entire lives. So they complain a lot.
2. Those who moved there when they were younger – they never actually “retire” in terms of quitting all work, but just work at paying jobs less and devote more time to their hobbies, which often produce some income.
I suppose we could addd a third category, those who retire on disability in their northeastern welfare state, and then move to Florida and continue working to some degree. But I have had no direct experience with them.
Comments about working into one’s seventies are often made by the young. However, the statistics of the Department of Labor show that people are not working longer. Instead, with the Obama economy, they retire early.
Things that need dealing:
-Social security fixed
As blert correctly points out, it’s still in there but it needs to be separated out. Do so, raise the retirement age to at least 70 post-haste and damn the whining that will occur. As B. O’fama points out, the notion of universal retirement at some given age is a construct of union thugs and the New Deal collectivists. The construct needs to be renovated. The taxpayers cannot bear all of the risk of changing conditions, that risk must, at minimum, be half shared by the beneficiaries.
Beyond that, make sure that everyone who goes on SS gets everything they put in plus their earned interest (if they live long enough to do so) and then means test when the point is reached that all their principle plus interest is gone. Those who cannot afford to live without their monthly checks continue to receive them in the same amount but the money comes out of welfare not SS (after all, that’s what it is at that point). Those who have enough money, pension income, and assets to live lose their SS checks right then and there. Any extra money that exists by virtue of people dying before they use up all their contributions and interest is used to run the program and pay the SS employees. Make the look back period for means testing the entire length of their stay on SS plus five years previous (like nursing homes with Medicaid) so that hiding of assets and other attempts to defraud the taxpayers are difficult or near impossible. These things done in combination may not be a forever fix but they may extend the program by many decades.
-Reckoning and rethinking of increased longevity/plunging birthrates
People are living almost one full generation longer than they did 100 years ago, on average. This isn’t a trifling thing, it is a change in our species of at least the same proportion as going from hunter/gatherer to agriculture or going from agriculture to industry/information. How will living longer affect the conomics of societies? Beyond the economics, how will it affect the ability to have a meaningful existence? How will institutions set up for a 65 year lifespan deal with an 85 year one?
But this isn’t occuring by itself. When combined with the (now proven) failure of women in general to choose to breed in sufficient numbers to sustain nations, civilizations, and perhaps the species due to readily available contraception, abandonment of religion, political correctness and disinformation about the “population bomb”, and pandering socialist governments which have taken over the role of husbands, fathers, and families, we have the existential crisis of our time.
No amount of jiggering later retirement will fix this problem. A resurgent pursuit of Judeo-Christian values, a recognition by both men and women that having kids isn’t a lark or a “choice” but a responsibility, and a vast diminishment of the government’s role in expanding welfare and abortion would certainly make a dent but as others present and past have pointed out here at BC, right now most “educated” women and not a few men will be loathe to go that way, for any of a numner of reasons much discussed on this forum.
The nation/civilization which will inherent the world will be the one where every female who is fertile enough to do so desires to and has three or more kids in a stable family, where both she and her husband understand the necessity to make the material sacrifices to do so, and this occurs in a culture where the family is more important than the state. I don’t have any ready answers as to how to do this but we must or we won’t be the nation that survives.
-Honestly crafting policy which acknowledges and deals with the decrease in CREATED wealth and productivity that collectivism/hyperregulation has caused
Because the number of people to whom wealth is transferred between generations is now decreasing, any given existing wealth is being funnelled into fewer hands. A piece of land left to four children results in each of those kids ending up with half the wealth they would have received than if there were only two and one quarter the amount if there were only one. Because following generations are now smaller than the ones before, existing wealth per capita ends up being larger as time goes by. In terms of lifestyle and living standard for many individuals this inherited existing wealth often more than offsets the lower productivity and diminished wealth creation that has been the result of collectivist societies. However, the diminishment in productivity from the growth towards peak government and other causes continues apace. Europe in particular has a problem with this, but no developed country is immune. Again, I’m not sure how to deal with this issue, because telling people who are inheriting plenty of money to have a good lifestyle that there is a terrible problem of productivity caused by hyperregulation and high taxation isn’t going to be an easy sell.
When you are 40 years old, you are in your peak earning years. However, time goes on in unexpected ways, like fading eyesight, memory glitches, poor reflexes, and being just plain tired. I know, consistent healthy living and exercise will slow all of that down (along with a good optometrist), but few at 80 years of age feel like they are 40. And there are plenty of younger people around who openly or not, encourage the old codger to mount the ice flow and just… disappear. Oh, I forgot, as we age, our immune systems weaken, thus nasties like cancer are more likely to appear..
There is a sixth option; live with as child. And a seventh option. It will be increasingly exercised.
nmu @ 15: Those who cannot afford to live without their monthly checks continue to receive them in the same amount but the money comes out of welfare not SS.
That’s ideologically pure but financially all it means is that social security will draw even more heavily on the general tax fund. Since it’s already at 100% since there never was a “lockbox”, we gots trouble.
OTOH, is it federal government’s role to provide for all in their old age? Not the church, the kids, the city/state? Sigh. As I’ve said, short of Medicare, I believe we have the funds so this *can* be done at the federal level, with slight adjustments to our current numbers, however ideologically impure it all might be. Greece – the numbers don’t even begin to work, from what I read about it.
There was an editorial column today in the LAT, the columnist talking about his elderly parents and father now with a broken hip and the issues of dignity, care, funding, and death. Nothing new, really. Just that these are all distinct issues from social security, and much harder to address even if we had no money problems at all.
I’ll note one other thing, that a lot of assisted living retirement homes are suffering from the real estate meltdown, built facilities between 2002 and 2008, figuring retirees could sell their homes and move in at those price levels, and now those retirees cannot sell out at the high levels but the homes are stuck with the high cost basis. What happens is an already marginal living situation has to do with much less cash than anticipated. Sigh again.
There is a sixth option; live with a child. And a sevnth which will be increasingly exercised.
Josh @ 12,
I’m almost 58 and constantly having my nose rubbed in the fact that the human body was not intended to last more than 48 years. As far as nature is concerned, we’re supposed to live long enough to transfer our parenting knowledge over to our children as grandparents and then flop over dead. One of my pet theories is the reason why my hair is gray is to signal to predators out on the savannahs of Africa that I’m arthritic and an easy kill, i.e. the lion eats me instead of my children.
Everything begins to breakdown after 48 years, e.g. cartilage between joints (arthritis), the gums holding my teeth in, vision, hearing, blood chemistry, etc. Some aspects of aging are obviously programmed in but much of it is simply exceeding intended life expectancy, e.g. hardening of the lens in the eye. I strongly suspect that resetting the cell’s teleomeres would only impact some aspects of aging. If my teleomeres were reset, the lenses in my eyes would not suddenly unharden or 58 years of arteriosclerosis go away. I might add that I probably have extra long teleomeres. My grandmother is now 101 years old. Being a 101 years old is a very mixed blessing. If grandma gets cut, then she stays cut (her skin does not heal anymore because her teleomeres have zeroed out). I might add that she has a couple different cancers brewing in her but cancer is no big thing if you’re 101. Last year, she almost died because some common bacteria got out of control in her intestines that her nearly nonfunctional immune system couldn’t deal with (we had to use high octane antibiotics to save her). Last week, poor grandma got shingles and she’s a real mess now. I’m a bit unhappy with mother for not having grandma vaccinated against shingles. Extreme old age can be really unpleasant.
Retirement means that you can do other things. Most of which pay very little or nothing.
If you want to keep working that is fine. I no longer “work” for a living (ie: am retired), do not miss it, and now I donate my time for free, I guess that is a from of “giving back”.
Something one cannot do if working to the age of 80.
Folks can do what floats their boat but I just thought I would point this out.
China has the solution to SS and retirement benefits
Encourage smoking
BCG did a study showing that smoking generates huge tax revenues and cut costs
Smokers die fast and cheap
–unlike diabetes 2 where people linger on for decades costing millions before they finally die.
60% of Chinese doctors smoke–
China has a very cynical approach to finance and age control
–but China is very cynical and practical
25% of Americans are smokers–that is not enough
In Palo Alto CA less than 6% smoke and obesity rates are the lowest in the US-we will have to support the rest–good luck with that.
When Clinton was lying his @ss off on a daily basis, the NYT managed to come up with an article claiming that lying is often “therapeutic”. Now that we are all going to apparently die at work at age 80, the same media (as always favoring the sharing and caring side of the aisle) claims that working until old age is “psychologically rewarding” and finds some guy who likes it. Yet if there were a Republican in the White House, who doesn’t think this trend would be portrayed as the worst thing since Dachau. Anyone employing older workers would be an exploiter of the “working class” and a toxic polluter and friend of John Sandusky to boot.
15. no mo uro
said:
“Honestly crafting policy which acknowledges and deals with the decrease in CREATED wealth and productivity that collectivism/hyperregulation has caused”
No.
We do not need more government policy.
Simply letting people learn from their actions will solve the problem government has created.
Boomers had their savings taken from them in the name of Social Security. The boomer retiring this year will be fortunate if he sees his lifetime contributions returned; there is no hope of any interest income.
In hard numbers, a boomer who is 65 this year, will have contributed over $200,000 into Social Security and will have accumulated nearly $400,000 in other assets (home, IRA, 401K, etc).
His home will have depreciated nearly 30%, his IRA and 401K will have lost another 20 – 30% and he will watch with trepidation as his resources shrink ever more.
Now that the boomers who completed the construction of, and paid for the entirety of the interstate highway system, the space program, the computer revolution, medical advances, $200 cross country airfares are exhausted, they’re told to suck it up and get on with it.
The national budget this year exceeds $3 trillion; the social security office distributed forms to all contributors listing their lifetime earnings and the contributions they made into their numbered accounts. Does anybody actually expect those boomers to slink way in shame as public employees garner an ever larger share of that national budget?
Without government ‘assistance’, most boomers could have retired at 60 with far more resources than they now have available. There is more than enough money to pay the boomers the pitiful amount accurately accounted for and due to them. It just seems that that are others jumping the line at the paymasters office.
Langley-
Is that not a policy?
I am now 82 and still going strong, a fact I attribute to two things: faster horses and younger women.
Younger people will have to work til they’re 100 just to make up for the years stolen from them by millions of illegal immigrants.
Speaking of which, surprise, teen unemployment is at a record high in Great Britain thanks to a shadow immigrant economy which laughs at paying taxes or being citizens.
I am 59 looking at 60 next year.
’08 took 60% of the IRA/401k stash. The recession took the rest. The crash of ’08 was the biggest theft of assets ever experienced in the world. Then they took 30% to as high as 75% of time built equity in our houses. More theft.
Everyone in all seriousness acts as if ‘We can save the Republic’ just if…..
-we defeat Obama in ’12.
-we save Social Security by gutting the system.
-we revamp the tax structure.
-we reform (choose the buggaboo of the moment).
-etc.
The truth….
-the revolution was over in ’08. We now live in an Oligarchy. There is no difference between the DNC and the GoP structurally. It is all of the same stuff. Bad stuff at that = Power & Control. The rest of this is just chew toys for the masses.
-SS is a Ponzi scheme. Always was. Now Ponzi is taking his cut.
-there ain’t gonna be anything left to tax.
- reform is not going to happen except at the point of the bayonet.
Look for death panels in the near future.
Look for political purity test also.
But it will be a “nice” liberal Fascism.
The GoP debates are distractions for the masses. If they were serious about turning things over and around they would not be playing by the MSM narrative. They would be telling the MSM .!.. U and going to do something else. They are just paying the Tranzis game of allowing themselves to be picked apart. If the country is really still that PO’ed then maybe, just maybe the GoP “vetted” candidate will get to hold the scepter for a time. But structurally there is not one whit of difference between the DNC & the GoP establishments. Nothing. Zero. Zip. Zilch.
The winning stock market strategy right now? Think it is gold? Silver? Derivatives? Foreign markets?
Here it is:
5 to 10 acres in a defensible place with an off the grid water source. Greenhouse. Fractional precious metals in .223, .40, .45, .22LR, etc. Some stock like chickens, a pig or two, beef on the hoof. Hunting skills. Stashed starches in enough quantity to live for at least two years. Heirloom seeds.
Get back to basics kids. The days of needing lots of business majors and marketeers is gone.
The morality of these large entitlements such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, ObamaCare, and public employee pensions, does yield to the reality that we can’t possibly pay for it all. We’re not alone, either, in that the social policies, demographic and finances in every major country are all screwed up, too. No consolation can be found being all brother countries in doom, too. It is instructive to ask why? How? Which sirens drew the whole of Western Civ and many others to gaze upon those looming rocks?
According to the Federal Reserve’s numbers from last year, in America we’re looking at $109 trillion in unfunded liabilities just meeting the currently anticipated needs. That figure includes only Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; it gets published each year; each year it goes up.
We’re a $14 trillion GDP economy atm, with a government sporting $15 trillion in accumulated debt and a current appetite for $1 trillion of new borrowing beyond revenues each year. In the face of this all this, the Super Congress, charged with reducing the deficit, is doing what every Congressional effort to trim the deficit has always done — trying to figure out how to SPEND MORE!
It is amazing anybody accepts a dollar as payment for anything. Or a Euro. Or a yen. Or a yuan. There’s nothing solvent backing any of them, we have entered an age of psychological supports. Since nobody really knows what the technical point of sovereign bankruptcy is, it is possible we’ve sailed passed it. Just haven’t found out yet.
A blow-up is coming unless radical changes are made, because the situation is untenable over time. I’ve lost faith those changes are possible; too many seem to be either in denial or on the take. I have arrived instead at the fervent hope that it all blows up tomorrow, or the next day. The worst thing that could happen is that they play this game of extend and pretend 5 more years, or 10, or 15, or 20. If the blow-up must come, may it come now before the years sap my vigor to handle what it means for my life. Let it come while my children are still young adult or pre-adult, to give them the best chance.
Besides, a blow-up may be required. Progressives, by definition, do not recognize the cyclical nature of every aspect of life, including one’s own life itself. Onward and upward is their only imagining, a continual “evolving” towards the perfect good. Would that it were so, but sometimes clinging to the status quo and to today’s governing paradigms is a disasterous course of action which only guarantees more and continued pain. The right course might just be to let the TBTF, the current prevailing power structures, the current crop of governing elite, the current philosophies, etc., die off so we can begin anew.
There is no need for age anymore.
In the past old people were useful for their experience. Young people kept them alive because the old folks knew where the best hunting grounds and wintering places were.
After Cities were built, it was the old people and their experience that chose when and where to plant the crops, How to build irrigation ditches, houses, grain storage, etc. The old provided the directions for tending the flocks, weaving new clothes, etc.
The old found the right clay to use for pots, the young dug it up and brought it to the potters. Technology was passed down by oral history. No need for that nowadays. History is on a chip and all you need to learn it is the ability to locate the on-off switch.
It has always been those in their prime that valued the experience stored in the minds of the elders. Teenagers know everything, they don’t need no stinking wisdom.
Data storage (First Books, now electrons) has pretty much eliminated the value of age. Old people are kept around out of habit. As far as working, that depends on ones skill set. My shelf life is up next April. I’m to old to hold a job, even if someone was foolish enough to hire me. My 1/4 mile walk took me over an hour today.
There is no way I could put in a work day, even as a Wall-Mart greeter.
Work IS competition. If you are too old to compete, you are to old to work.
“There is no need for age anymore.” And what need would there be of youth given a sufficiently advanced robotic economy?
Over the long term the real strategic threat to human existence is age. Tennyson was on the right track when he wrote “the old order gives way to the new lest one good custom should corrupt the world.” Garbage collection is a very important part of an information system’s health. Death is nature’s destructor to take human objects out of circulation when they go out of scope or finish their tasks.
Human life extension to 150, 200 and 300 years may be achievable within the 21st century. And who would be the initial adopters? Why people like Silvio Berlusconi and the alumni of Goldman Sachs. In the past we could always count on age to put an end to Hitler, Stalin, Genghis Khan. But what if the newer versions of these men could live for centuries? At least in the beginning humanity would be confronted with a race of powerful old men who are literal ones in millions.
All youth has on its side is vigor. And they need it. Imagine a world in which 60 year olds could inhabit 25 year old bodies? What chance would the real 25 year old have against a 60 year old person living in a quarter century body? None whatever.
Nature has arranged it so that youth and age even out for a time, with the older people able to compensate somewhat in experience for reduced bodily vigor. But if the young should lose their edge, the evil to which clever old and immortal men might attain unchecked by a human lifespan would be matched only by the good to which equally long lived, but moral beings might reach. We would live in the wizard versus demon world then.
Of course this all depends on whether human life extension is a feasible technology. But if it is, it will be a world where it will pay to be rich, old and very old, not all for the better. As for myself, I would like to lay me down to die to follow my fathers and friends. Wherever they have gone there would I go too. Fortunately I will probably have no choice.
Wow, Walt, you’re the man. 82. I hope to be mobile at that age, much less writing poems.
Wretchard-
Human lifespans have already almost doubled in the last century or so. We have already felt the effects. It’s changing society as we watch. And despite all those extra years we still worry about dying.
WTF will a person who does phyisical labor do?
Utterly unrealistic.
stoicheion @ 31 said:
“There is no need for age anymore. In the past old people were useful for their experience. Young people kept them alive because the old folks knew where the best hunting grounds and wintering places were. … Data storage (First Books, now electrons) has pretty much eliminated the value of age.”
Our civilization’s situation would be less dire if this were true. When I was a young man, I spent 7 years in graduate school getting a doctors degree in aeronautical engineering. My folks paid for some of my education but the bulk of it was paid through NASA grants. Most of my colleagues went through a similar process and had their graduate training paid by the US government. After we received our training, a small percentage of us ended up working for the Space Program but the bulk of us went to work for the military industrial complex. Remember that prior to 1990, we were in a life-and-death struggle against the Soviet Union, i.e. the Cold War. Due to a miracle, we survived the Cold War but with its conclusion, much of the military industrial complex was scaled back. Fortunately, the Space Program survived. My guess is one of the unspoken reasons for continuing the Space Program was to preserve the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on aerospace (military) technology. Unfortunately most of the Ph.D. pipeline that originally created the aeronautical engineers was shutdown. Many university aerospace departments have disappeared or been merged into mechanical engineering. The few young guys coming out of university with aeronautical engineering degrees typically have only a masters degree. I had the privilege of working with the guys responsible the Space Shuttle, Apollo and ballistic missile programs of the 1950-1970s (they were the generation before mine). Most of what they knew was inside their heads, with a relatively small fraction of their total knowledge written down. Naturally, some basic knowledge was lost. For example, the formula for the heat shield material (AVCOAT 5026-39) used on the Apollo Command Module was lost and had to be reconstructed at considerable expense for the Constellation Program (canceled last year by Obama). Some key information about the inertial measurement unit of the Fire Flight 1 reentry vehicle used for developing the Apollo Command Module was inside the head of one guy. I called him up, he passed that information onto me and then a month later he died. Over my career, there has been multiple times where some old engineer told me something that wasn’t written down and then he retired or died. The U.S. federal government spent hundreds of billions of dollars developing reentry vehicle technology for the ballistic missile program and most of that information is now stored in the heads of fewer than 100 guys. One would think the survivors would all be paid fabulous salaries given the value of their knowledge. However chances are that most of us will be laid off or forced to retire within a few years.
wretchard # 32 said:
“In the past we could always count on age to put an end to Hitler, Stalin, Genghis Khan. But what if the newer versions of these men could live for centuries?”
A politician who I have great respect for is Lee Kuan Yew. He was the president/dictator of Singapore and arguably one of the most intelligent politicians who ever lived. Lee Kuan Yew due to old age was forced into retirement. However I am convinced that if he could have somehow retained his youth, he would have eventually become emperor of the world and probably brought about a golden age.
Walt @ 27: Which one gives you the wildest ride?
My suggestion for funding our way out:
15% tax on gross corporate income, said tax to be paid ahead of everything else including the payroll. Funds thus raised to be placed with contract banks who by law and contract can use them ONLY to support the current Social Security and Medicare system.
15% witholding from the gross amount of all paychecks. 5% to the General Fund and 10% to either the Social Security office which will run a genuine Group Retirement Annuity or to a private annuity of choice.
15% witholding on all dividends and interest to be paid at moment of disbursement by the paying agent. This money to the general fund.
Last but not least a 15% retail sales tax. This money also deposited with contract banks who by law and contract my use the money only to support the military, the DVA, the State Department and the intelligence agencies.
Final step: No bonds may be issued except to take delivery of goods or to capitalize corrective programs.
Final final step: Surplus funds will be used to go into the open market nd buy back previously issued bonds and/or to retire those coming due.
Yep, this is gonna hurt but it will work. This way every aspect of the Federal Government has its own source of revenue and will have to live withing the confines of said revenue.
I’ve read many articles lately that highlight the Boomers propensity for spending their retirement funds on themselves instead of leaving inheritance for their kids.
There are good money making opportunities to outsource the care of the elderly offshore to a network of assisted living with vacation tours. Kind of a Club Medicare, that would profit from the cheaper cost of living and medical care in a place like India.
Then again, I’ve always marked the decline of Western Civilization as being the switch from nurses uniform to scrubs, so maybe I am just trying to escape the unpleasantness of not being able to afford employing Nepalese maidens in whites to serve me cocoa in my old age.
Young or old, an inquiring mind owes it to itself to understand why organisms age. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_aging
I’m 55 and have been in the same business (several different employers) for 33 years. The benefit of age is the experience it brings. You’ve made lots of mistakes and hopefully learned from them. You’ve seen enough work place (so called) crises – angry clients, stupid clients,honest but stupid employee mistakes- that you don’t panic. One of the best values I give my current employer is talking younger managers (who are smart, work hard but worry too much) down from the ceiling. Robots are not going to replace human experience.
You know, these issues have been discussed by writers in our times. Tolkien’s story Akallabeth and Nancy Kress’s Beggars in Spain are two that come to mind first. Interesting that the more mainstream literati and such have dismissed these and others like them as writings for kids or kooks, yet they have great relevance to the issues of the day, greater than the writings of the bulk of the anointed, the Rigoberta Menchus and the Susan Sontags. Is it that the self appointed elite dislike these stories as entertainment, or is something deeper – it that the implications of Tolkien puncture the narrative and cause such fear that they do what they must to push them aside and avoid feeling uncomfortable?
35. Eggplant Cut me some slack. It’s a complex subject that I’m trying to cover with a couple of paragraphs on my first cup of coffee. I did my best. Did you perchance record the stuff you learned or does it exist only in your head?
NMU, my fav is the series by Elizabeth Moon. Start with “Once a Hero”. The core of the series is a society that has developed rejuvenation, which means the wealth and power ends up in the hands of a few.
I think something like that will eventually happen. After all, biologists can now extend the life span of a rat 3 times. IIRC, they are working on dogs or sheep or something. So it will take a while before we know. Then they experiment on humans, which if they go for the 3X factor will take over 2 centuries.
Now there’s a plot line. Civilization collapses leaving some of the ‘Experimental’ long-lifers trying to rebuild something from the ruins.
Space might be a good place for old people. Getting them there would be brutal but the factors that make them useless in gravity would be advantageous in space.
Eggy, it just occurred to me that what you are describing is a guild. almost. It looks and sounds like a guild. Guilds are powerful because they take a ‘trade secret’ and pass it down thru generations. Since it is the family ‘rice bowel’ it tends to stay a secret.
That is what makes certain State intelligence agencies so tough. Bureaucrats that have passed their job AND it’s secrets to their sons for generations. One of the reasons I ended up at NSA was my father was in the CIA. All the expensive background checks were already done. I would guess that between 25 and 50 percent of the workers at the FBI, CIA, etc. are 2nd generation. I know State is staffed by nepotism. It’s a matter of trust. No man can know another’s heart, but if his dad and grandfather were loyal ‘mericans it is a better bet that they are too. Not always, of course. No such thing as a sure thing.
The US Army tactical handbook from WW2 points out that if your attack is going really well, you’re probably walking into an ambush.
Military families tend to send children into the military also. That 4th generation army brat that joins the Air Farce and then hears “hey, wing wiper, bring me a beer” at the next 40 or 50 family reunions.
Makes sense to me. Of course I’ll work till I’m 80. How can I afford not to, with the burden of providing for a government worker who’s retiring at 55?
@Eggplant,
No, you won’t like Lee Kuan Yew. Very few on this blog will. He’s the ultimate technocrat, the cold pragmatic fascist. He respects democracy and the will of the people to a certain extent, but more often than not he regards the masses as fools. In hindsight, he was almost always right.
He probably thinks you, me, and virtually every commenter on this blog as idealistic idiots. Free will? Religion? Dignity? Hah! If we opposed his high-handedness (and he was pretty high handed, though he never put anybody to death), he would delight in beating us down, physically, mentally, psychologically. I always felt he subscribed to the chinese saying ‘Sheng1 Bu4 Ru2 Si3′ – a living hell worse than death, for his enemies. He wasn’t doing them any favors by not killing them.
35. Eggplant: Over my career, there has been multiple times where some old engineer told me something that wasn’t written down and then he retired or died. The U.S. federal government spent hundreds of billions of dollars developing reentry vehicle technology for the ballistic missile program and most of that information is now stored in the heads of fewer than 100 guys.
In the Navy these are called “tricks of the trade” and the emphasis has always been to capture this knowledge by encoding it in written procedures. This works great for the Intermediate Repair Activity where they just swap out modules, but when those modules land in the Depot and we crack ‘em open, it turns out there are so many failure modes, to fix them By The Book you would need stacks of flowcharts so high they would weigh more than the Obamacare bill. So it’s an art form, and you carry on by keeping the Depot funded and staffed with young folks who can be mentored by the grizzled short-timers. But now funding is going away. We are less than one deep, and attrition takes its inexorable toll. I feel like Roy Batty in Blade Runner, whose last words were, “All these moments in time will be lost, like tears in rain.”
Sam: The newly-arrived crew will stay at the Space Station for some four months and is expected to conduct 37 experiments during this time.
Among the experiments to be conducted is a measurement of how bad capitalism is raping Mother Gaia, and obtaining new metrics on NASA’s Prime Directive of outreach to Muslims.
Liu: The two “major accomplishments”, that of TPP and basing marines in Australia are superficial as to be meaningless.
I dunno, read the story of Henderson Field on Guadalcanal Island, where we based some Marines. Not so meaningless. It was the first check of the Imperial Japanese juggernaut on land.
blert @9
The SS Trust Fund does exist… It’s part of the $ 15,000,000,000,000 US Treasury debt figure. Even at this late hour the cash flow from FICA receipts PLUS interest income on US Treasury debt held by the Fund exceeds outlays.
Such a positive flow is about to go into reverse.
That’s misleading.
1. It’s true that the SS Trust Fund (SS debt) is part of the gross debt (debt to the public + intragovernmental debt), which now is about $15T, but this doesn’t mean that the Trust Fund “exists.” A debt and a fund are two different things, and “SS Trust Fund” is an accounting fiction. The Trust Fund is a claim on future non-SS taxes. You would never say that your debt or any part of it “existed” as a “fund,” if you meant that you could only pay it from future income.
2. The Trust Fund interest is not part of a “positive flow,” except as an accounting fiction. The interest is paid from non-SS taxes or borrowing from the public – ultimately from non-SS taxes.
3. If the interest on the Trust Fund is considered to be part of a positive flow, so should the principal, since neither of them exist, except as a claim on present or future non-SS taxes. So the “positive flow” is not “about to go into reverse,” except in terms of the fiction. In those terms, it will go negative when the Trust Fund is exhausted, but this, too, will be fictitious, because the Treasury has only “borrowed” the SS surpluses from itself (the Treasury), not from the workers; the workers never had a property right to it in the first place. Congress could cut SS benefits, effectively renouncing the Trust Fund debt, and there wouldn’t be a blessed thing any court would do about it.
I lived most of my working life in commission sales. I’ve retired, in a sense. I still do some work because it is fun, in a visceral sense, to do something and have a specific amount of money come in. Sort of like the upside of the Hunting Hypothesis (see Ardrey). Not sure when I’ll quit, since the extra money is above our retirement budget, leaving a few bucks in the pot for contingencies. And it’s not all that hard. Sort of payback for the life of commission sales which is hard.
@44 Swami. I live in Metro DC. Too many federal workers (especially GS-13 and above; 95k to 150k /yr) retire then go right back as ‘consultants’ or ‘personal service contractors’. This deal is one of the great Clinton/ Gore scams. If you remember Gore was supposed to reduce the size of government. He did this by removing large numbers of jobs…mostly useless jobs…then the agencies, not wanting to do more work…’funded’ short term personnel to fill the gaps. The retirees total income increased (generous retirement plus benefits) while raking in a good sized 1099 income. Usually a net increase of about 25% plus work weeks between 20 and 30 hours. Don’t you love it?
It would be interesting to lay all these people off. Then let each agency do with what is left. Then see which activities not done are least notice…and stop doing them forever.
Cowboy – “The right course might just be to let the TBTF, the current prevailing power structures, the current crop of governing elite, the current philosophies, etc., die off so we can begin anew.”
Unfortunately it is you that the eternal institutions of the progressive left intend to forget. Just one more generation out and even your own children will begin to forget what you stood for.
Eggplant reminds me that the fundamental difference with our new progressive masters is that nothing they possess is lasting but power itself. I have long supported military and space research because the hardware, feats, and knowledge that comes out of it has lasting value. A government that is predisposed to rule by decree will first subvert the democratic process by giving away the fruits of sustenance to the most people. To have the most psychological effect on people, it is important that these people be poor and ignorant, especially that they do not have command of the rulers language. Enter illegal immigration. Then finally, these people must be allowed to vote and we see while it is vital to the progressive dictatorship that voting be universal and uncontrolled. Especially that there shall be no voter ID. ID makes fraud too difficult.
I was perusing the course catalogue of the local college last night and saw that there were 10 separate courses offered under Chicano Studies. What benefit does this accrue to American society? An army of radicalized racists who chest beat under the auspices of my people? This is what our government does for America?
Eggplant – “However chances are that most of us will be laid off or forced to retire within a few years.”
New engineers out of school are a real bargain and as the swamp drains, there is only so much room for old alligators so the old are moved out and the young and enthusiastically naïve move in. Political correctness is never having to say “we are now more productive”. Political correctness has always been about power.
“But if the young should lose their edge, the evil to which clever old and immortal men might attain unchecked by a human lifespan would be matched only by the good to which equally long lived, but moral beings might reach. We would live in the wizard versus demon world then.”
Dracula vs Van Helsing, how the old tropes keep coming up again and again.
“You are very wise for a man who has lived only a single life!”
Lee Kwan Yew always struck me as an almost perfect real world counterpart to Havelock Vetinari, the (mostly) benevolent Patrician dictator in Terry Pratchett’s “Discworld” series. He maintained his power in the middle of a number of competing interest groups not through brute force, but by convincing them that all of their futures would be somewhat worse with him gone than they would be with him in control. And as long as that was perceived to be true, he had free reign to do what he wished. BUT he was very clever and cautious, and never pushed his luck.
That usually works out better in fiction than it does in the real world, but Lee Kwan Yew may have been the exception.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havelock_Vetinari
michael hoskins @49
The hiring back of retirees as consultants also exists in state and local government, although not so much very recently, I’d think. The cases I’ve seen are legitimate, in the sense that no current employee knows how to do the particular job in question, but of course one may ask why that’s the case.
As a society, we no longer can afford to have Welfare AND support retirees who are too old to work AND support loads of government employees who serve no productive function AND issue lots of grant money to academics to study the psychological effects of latent patriarchal attitudes.
We either have to decide that the old folk who worked their whole lives to raise the current generations need to die, or we have to decide that the unproductive need to get productive private sector jobs if they want to keep eating.
As far as working until 80, I’m starting to hit the wall now. I get too tired to work extended hours. I guess when I’m too old and tired to keep working, I’ll have to shuffle off this mortal coil.
Dave@37: My suggestion for funding our way out:……Yep, this is gonna hurt but it will work.
Call it the 15×4 Plan. Not real peppy but workable.
Two points, both of which I’ve made before, so briefly:
1. The debt burden isn’t SS, which can be adjusted to realign benefits consistent with an aging demographic. The debt burden is Medicare/caid (excluding the cost of however we are describing USA military engagement in ME since 9/11.) Those who believe private sector health care was doing just fine need to review the premium escalation for old people during the last decade. (Without going “quant,” a big chunk of the problem is old people and personal habits (the diet-diabetes-obesity-heart disease links) both of which suggest Medicare/caid is a problem of The Commons, requiring a much different solution set than suggested by current policy debate.)
2. Tactics and logistics. I’ve seen any number of plans on this board alone as well as elsewhere that I would support. What I have not seen is a road map for execution. The “Super Committee” (recently demoted to The Pretty Good Committee) will likely punt, turning the debt into a 2012 campaign issue. God help us all if I have to listen to a year of Welfare!! Statist!! Entitlement!! ideological pornography masquerading as informed policy debate.
Execution is impaired by centralized gridlock delivered to us courtesy of unrestrained crony capitalism (as good a sound-bite descriptor as any) with a big old assist from Wall St (which is conspiratorially in bed with the lefty “goo-goo’s” according to the righty “ga-ga’s” who haven’t made a dime since FDR was elected.) The only avenues allowed by USA founding documents for weakening and ultimately reversing centralized gridlock are elections. From the Keystone XL debate, I think I have a pretty good understanding of the popularity of “slow but steady” as a tactical approach to institutional restructuring.
Jim@40: One of the best values I give my current employer is talking younger managers (who are smart, work hard but worry too much) down from the ceiling.
There ya go.
@52. Smoking Frog
Where the retired employee needs to be hired back because the knowledge of how to do the job is all in his head, I would look at this as a pre-planned scam.
The solution would be to demote or fire the supervisor who failed to ensure that the knowledge was not written down before the older guy retired, AND make it a policy that UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES may a retired government employee be hired back under any pretext. This is also one reason why companies insist that employees take their vacations — to see what happens when the employee is not around.
ybr @ 54: Those who believe private sector health care was doing just fine need to review the premium escalation for old people during the last decade.
Also the collapse of the ER system because it has to support so many uninsured, esp illegal aliens, even for basic medical care. That being the *legitimate* basis for Obamacare’s “mandate”s, though those are never going to hit the illegals.
–
The numbers
Just
Don’t
Work
for anything like current Medicare, BUT perhaps it can be patched by Bernankecare.
the only long-term solution as such is to restore economic growth, which is the basic Republican position on things, and even the Democrats sort of agree (although they think it is accomplished by taxation and government spending, which is ENTIRELY wrong).
we will have to have death panels, we already do have them, anyone over 65 who enters a hospital is bludgeoned into signing a DNR, and from what I hear, about half do. but I would not be surprised if twenty years from now, some kind of Happy Ending for the elderly becomes policy, an enhanced and accelerated hospice care. Cordwainer Smith in Norstrilia has such things – they HAVE medical immortality and eternal youth, but “they have found” it best to limit people to 1,000 years, and Norstrilia also has strict eugenics, and they put people to “death” by happy drugs and pleasure.
The Wobbly Guy @ 45 said:
“No, you won’t like Lee Kuan Yew. Very few on this blog will. He’s the ultimate technocrat, the cold pragmatic fascist. He respects democracy and the will of the people to a certain extent, but more often than not he regards the masses as fools. In hindsight, he was almost always right.”
I “like” kittens, the color azure, smiling infants, Bugs Bunny and Captain Kangaroo. I “respect” rattlesnakes, thermonuclear weapons, the M1 Garand, the A-10 Warthog and Lee Kwan Yew.
Supposedly, Deng Xiaoping after becoming the leader of China, realized that communism was a failed ideology and toured the world in the hope of finding a better political system for China. Legend has it that after visiting Singapore and speaking with Lee Kuan Yew, Deng Xiaoping realized that Singapore’s political system was the best model for China’s reemergence as a developed nation. I should mention that I also respect Deng Xiaoping.
32. wretchard
” But if the young should lose their edge, the evil to which clever old and immortal men might attain unchecked by a human lifespan would be matched only by the good to which equally long lived, but moral beings might reach. We would live in the wizard versus demon world then”
That is another great idea for a book, wretchard you really should think about devoting time to writing at least two or three more books
Josh@56:
The numbers
Just
Don’t
Work
…
No they don’t. The moral imperative of Universal Coverage can’t be financed without everyone enrolled in the risk pool – which means mandated coverage (an acknowledgement that killed HillaryCare.) It’s a very tough problem. I predict that SCOTUS will rule against the individual mandate, but for severability, which means ObamaCare stands – without the funding from the mandate.
The other ugly part is that “death panels” in whatever form have to be compared to the current alternative, which is long-term facility care, which is not winning any awards in this country. I’ll be in line for the Happy Pill.
I used to think this country was capable of much better, but lately I am not as sure. Could be I need to be lured down from the ceiling.
If you work as part of a small team, part of keeping the option of retiring open, even if you like working, is gradually offloading stuff you do to younger people, as a defensive part of their training in case of your leaving.
That at some point leaves you completely free to leave without much reason to stay, unless you have inadequate savings.
This thread makes one think about mortality. Learning that Walt the Magic Wordsmith is 82 really stopped me in my tracks. Even if a miracle happens and the status quo does not implode, this blog — and the world — will be a very different place in 10 or 20 years. Will new commentators arise to take the place of those of us who step gracefully into the twilight? Or will blogging itself become a lost art for a new generation who can only tweet?
The only constant in this world is change. And we have been given the gift of being present at the beginning, at the start of changes which will echo through the world for centuries. Almost makes one want to stay around and see how it all works out. Almost.
You do not have to have death panels. They only come into it when government gets in the business of rationing health care. Get the government out of health care and you’ll be surprised how quickly things improve. Tort reform to rein in the trial lawyers would go a long way, too. I’m not talking about simply going back before ObamaCare, the government’s heavy hand has been all over health care for decades.
As long as the government’s hand is in, though, we are naturally headed for death panels. The dynamics of this process are fully described in Hayek’s _Road To Serfdom_.
Boomers are screwed because social security IS a Ponzi schema – has always been. There is no money to pay out their promised benefits, and any hope of “fixing” that ended the day Obama rolled into office and the national debt took on a ballistic trajectory.
Young kids are screwed because they have to pay for a bankrupt social security. No, they’ll never see their own social security money, and in fact, their huge contributions will not pay for the “boomers” retirements. The boomer’s situation simply justifies the Government theft of another generations resources.
Boomers, of course, own the entire situation. True, FDR’s Ponzi scheme never balanced out on paper from day 1 (anymore than Obamacare did when all 57 states endorsed it). However, Boomer’s have heard about the problem for 50 years and did – nothing.
Well, actually, they did “worse than nothing”. Not only did they defund Social security through income transfers to other programs, and by creating a new welfare system out of a retirement system, but on top of that, they added about $12 Trillion of the current $15 trillion in debt on top of that. Imagine where American would be if some of the $Trillions Obama has used to simulate his favored ones had instead been used to reinvent Social Security!
And, finally, I’m screwed. My general health at age 55 pretty much leaves the question of working til age 80 in no doubt. I’ll be dead or an invalid first. I’ve been living from “check to check” under threat of personal and family catastrophe for 30 years. I’m tired, burned out, and just want to quit.
But I go on. It’s my duty to my wife, to my family, to my community and to my God. I soldier on.
The idea that “50″ is the new “80″, etc. is simply nuts. Longer life does NOT mean “effective” longer life. I’m nowhere near as mentally sharp at age 55 as I was at age 35. I have to work twice as hard to justify my consulting rate as the 30-something kids who grew up in the digital age, and who are REALLY, really smart.
I do not think US social security will be available at even 1/3 the rate of retirement payments of the past 60 or so years. It cannot be. The reserve has already been spent. America’s kids will NOT work over time to pay 70% of their income to a bankrupt social security system. The Republicans and Democrat politicians can “mandate” all they want, however, the people who ACTUALLY work for a living will not comply with the 50% SSI contributions it would take to keep Social Security’s commitments.
We have good kids in the current generation, and they’ll “do the right thing”, but they certainly won’t mortgage their future and their kids futures to do what the progressives tell them to do.
Our culture has come to disregard the spiritual, probably out of the efficacy of science. To me, the challenge of aging is integration into the spiritual.
One of the greatest features of evolution is death, without which there is no possibility of progress.
Many times an entrepreneur, and once a tycoon, I never worried about old age. Now. at 76, I am a pauper without the energy to struggle.
However blest with many amusements, not the least of which, the Belmont Club.
I, too, question whether it is possible to compose salient poetry at 82.
Cowboy@62: As long as the government’s hand is in, though, we are naturally headed for death panels.
I’m going to dig into this just a bit for a couple of reasons, the least important of which is that I voted *against* single-payer health care, which meant I wasn’t opposed to Obama the man (although I came to have some doubts) nor was I particularly in favor of McCain, the man. Rightly or wrongly, health care determined my vote in 2008.
The more relevant reason for digging in a bit is that the country needs some conservative backswing to correct for the excesses of progressive policies – although it remains fair to say that the current debt burden derived from an ideologically more diverse pool of obligations, including the very expensive ME military engagements over a decade, market-related corruption in the current health care delivery system, and the jobless and consumerless “recovery” of the 2008 financial collapse with, let’s just say, several critical assists from various Wall St actors of agnostic persuasion.
Nonetheless, multi-hued backstory notwithstanding, the country needs a conservative correction. The Republicans find themselves in an historically rare and ideal Moment of History to step up and shine, but instead we are treated to Rand Paul going pit bull on environmental regulations.
Fine, if that’s the way the Party leadership wants to go, wander in the wilderness for another ten, twenty years. The “radical pinko hippie Midwestern” fly-over demographic will try to remember to send you a care package.
The Medicare/caid issue. There is a large body of research that suggests market-oriented solutions will not significantly impact the cost of elderly care and treatment. It is a service that cannot be commoditized. Other large elements of the escalating health care cost curve can be commoditized, such as personal decisions relating to diet, nutrition, drug use etc. but not end-of-life issues, which must be removed from both State and market participation as much as possible. I do not know the exact answer.
But I do know that trial lawyers are but one component – and I have seen studies suggesting that the liability insurance, while large, is not compromising the delivery system as much as fraud and misaligned incentives.
I have posted this link on several occasions but here it is again. The cost of litigation is not even mentioned. Doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be researched, but I question the prioritization.
There is working until I stop at something that draws on my skills and talents and keeps me healthy in spirit.
There is slogging through tasks in a degrading environment in the forced company of people you would not voluntarily allow into your house. I may have to do the latter until I am 80. That will be hard.
Callay, callooh! Walt’s eight-two!
I’m exactly half that. Some people improve with age; I’m definitely not one of them. And longevity does not seem to be in my genetic code. Sometimes with topics like this, I wonder if that’s altogether a bad thing.
Nonetheless I disagree that the retirement part of the SS program is anything like a Ponzi scheme. Despite two decades or warnings about insolvency and not having counted on SS myself, despite not knowing anyone else my age who sincerely believes that SS will be there for us at age 67 or 70 or whatever it is, I believe it’s worth fixing and that raising the payroll tax cap would be an effective way to do it – if we’re going to do it.
All well and good for those 80 year olds who choose to and enjoy continuing to work and for whom it is a realistic possibility. However, the idea of it being even being feasible in large numbers is purely fantastical. While I have met some very sharp 80 year olds, they are still by in large quite physically frail. Not to mention that their driving is generally quite scary, so I can’t imagine how they’ll be getting to and from work everyday. Perhaps waiting outside rain, snow or sweltering heat for a bus or other public transport? Newp, can’t really picture that this would really get that many 80 year olds to work alive and well (or even on time, knowing the bus system in my area at least). There may not be enough personal savings and social security for folks to retire at the desired age, but whether or not people “need” to work at 80, the average 80 year old cannot carry on day to day tasks required of getting through the work day, even if they are healthy for their age and completely mentally acute. Don’t know what will happen, but people working until 80 en mass is not going to happen.
The hits just keep on coming …
More consulting trouble for Newt. Since 2003, a Gingrich-founded think tank has pulled in at least $37 million from the health-care industry—and has called for an insurance mandate reminiscent of President Obama’s. Wellpoint, Blue Cross Blue Shield, AstraZeneca, and other members of the Center for Health Transformation paid as much as $200,000 in yearly dues; in exchange, they got “direct Newt interaction,” or at least so promised the think tank’s promotional materials, the Washington Post reports. Gingrich ran the center until he left this year for the campaign trail.
Along with Obama-esque calls for centralized electronic health records whose data could be used to investigate a treatment’s usefulness, the center urged a system wherein “anyone who earns more than $50,000 a year must purchase health insurance or post a bond.” A rep for the center said the GOP hopeful was a “health care visionary” who supported extensive reform “before many of these concepts in health care became mainstream.” But the group’s “Insure All Americans” plan was apparently removed from its website yesterday, and in a recent campaign video, Gingrich says he is “completely opposed to the ObamaCare mandate on individuals.”
This fails to address the problem of those of us who retired to care for an ailing family member.
Nursing home insurance for long term care is a lot more expensive than paying me a small stipend each month…