There was a time, long ago, when the elderly offered wisdom and the world embraced it. The weathered and weary offered young children a strange mirror: that one day they too shall wither and wrinkle. But it was such a silly idea that the children laughed. And when children laugh everyone else does too.
But then the world shifted on its axis and productivity became the scale by which everything is weighed. The elderly were pushed aside like Christmas wrappings torn open by children eager to obtain their shiny gifts.
The journey of our lives is both beautiful and sad. The last chapters can be filled with both luxurious glee as well as leaden heartbreak. Throughout we must keep our heads held high, as frankly there's no other way.
One would expect that governments would side with the elderly, as the cold logic of economics makes it obvious that older taxpayers paid the most over time. And what's due is due.
Yet politicians are the products of polls and marketers whose job it is to get them re-elected. And spending money on nonproductive assets (older folks) is an issue that's swept under the rug faster than you can say Roomba.
The general public loves seniors only if their names are Warren Buffett or his partner Charlie Munger. Billionaires who excelled at capitalizing on productivity and profits.
Or perhaps if you're a senior celebrity like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Martha Stewart. Being handsome beyond your years AND famous helps sustain a modest degree of the public's attention.
But realistically the importance of becoming a senior member of society is something that, plain and simple, can only be understood as societal mass denial, at least for Western cultures.
To illustrate this phenomenon we only need to look at the current status of elderly care in the country with the highest amount of GNP (gross national product) on the planet, the USA.
"Medicaid, the federal-state program, covers long-term care, usually in a nursing home, but only for the poor. Middle-class people must exhaust their assets to qualify, forcing them to sell much of their property and to empty their bank accounts. If they go into a nursing home, they are permitted to keep a pittance of their retirement income: $50 or less a month in a majority of states. And spouses can hold onto only a modest amount of income and assets, often leaving their children and grandchildren to shoulder some of the financial burden." (Source: NYTimes)
If a senior's monthly income must be reduced to $50 USD or less in order for that person to be placed in a nursing facility, what sort of "care" is this? And the spouse must also be bled dry?
Even George Orwell and Franz Kafka in their happiest moments would be aghast.
And what about private care? "Half of the nation’s assisted-living facilities cost at least $54,000 a year."
If the average social security payout is $1,550 per month we get $18,600 annually. To make up the difference we need $35,400. At a 4% ROI (return on investment) you would need $885,000 to obtain $35,400 in earnings.
In other words a senior must be rich or poor. There's no middle ground.
The only option for a middle class senior is to escape America or any first-world country that doesn't have comprehensive socialized medicine (including nursing home care).
Of course none of this comes as a surprise. But it is brutal and incredibly unfair nevertheless.
The best we can hope for is to find a country where seniors are still respected. Where the values of society have not been stripped of all sense, trivialized by the core of productivity -- the transaction.
We must do better than this.
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Until the for profit assisted living industry is held accountable for the manner in which its government funds are used the current situation will not change. There is no incentive for normalized warehousing of seniors in long term care to change.
Thank you Neill for expressing what is a huge, painful gap in American life. So many segments are disaffected with government policies - and I find that a lot of them feel disempowered, too old to do this or that. A lot of that anger is misplaced. American society will marginalize you in a heartbeat. There are alternatives to thinking and living. Thanks for standing up and shining a light into this sad part of America. Looking forward to visiting you in Bali.