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It's also draining working people of wealth. We have all these tax breaks to keep old people owning their homes while they get free care, while working families
by coryrc 3y ago
It's also draining working people of wealth. We have all these tax breaks to keep old people owning their homes while they get free care, while working families pay all their earnings to landlords and our taxes go to elderly care instead of public services.
- anonporridge 3y agoTax burden is somewhat tangential to real root of the problem on working people. The deeper problem is that pushing so many resources towards old, retired people means that a huge chunk of the economy and jobs are forced to orient towards elder care. To be darkly blunt, elder care is a deeply depressing kind of work, especially when it's for strangers rather than family. A society with an increasing percentage of the population as old people who don't do anything interesting is an increasingly depressing society for young people to live in. It really seems like a downward death spiral.
- scarface_74 3y agoAnd this is why most cultures have multigenerational housing. Yes it’s worse for economic growth and mobility.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lapcat 3y ago> A society with an increasing percentage of the population as old people who don't do anything interesting is an increasingly depressing society for young people to live in. It doesn't have to be this way, and the "solution" isn't a baby boom or Logan's Run. There are a lot of older people who are capable of working, but society presents many barriers to this: 1. Age discrimination; 2. Employers overworking employees; 3. Lack of flexibility in working conditions (part-time, work-from-home, etc.); 4. Lack of educational and job training resources for older people Society tends to push the majority of people toward retirement, both because it wants older people out of the workforce and also because working life tends to suck for the workers (hence the desire to retire ASAP). But a lot of retirees are actually bored and would welcome becoming useful again, if society provided better opportunities for them. Instead of "work hard until you retire", we could all perhaps "work easy until you die". Older people are forced to make the choice between working hard and retiring, but younger people are presented with similarly bad choices, for example, working hard or spending time raising your children.
- jewayne 3y agoWould it make you happy to know that our life expectancy has been going DOWN since before the pandemic?
- anonporridge 3y agoLife expectancy is a broke metric. Healthspan is woke. Living decades longer in a state of in incapacity and pain in a nursing home, lucky if anyone cares to visit once a year, is hell on earth.
- SoftTalker 3y agoYeah I think Einstein had it figured out.
- delfinom 3y agoLife expectancy decreasing to the younger of society offing themselves with drug overdoses....
- Spivak 3y agoYou. Will. Be. Old. Care for society's elderly is literally the charge of the young and abled. You will eventually reap those benefits after having paid your keep. If you wouldn't say it's silly how much of society's expenses and taxes go toward child care and education another population that can't work to support themselves, then you're really just saying you don't care about old people because their "value" is already spent. This isn't even really an uncommon view, people will just openly say this about anyone with a disability that needs accommodation rather than saying it's our job to help them. God rugged individualism is such a cancer on society.
- Der_Einzige 3y agoBased anti-natalists will also tell you to not have kids.
- SoftTalker 3y agoSeniors paid all their working life for their Medicare. I’m more talking about private insurers and care providers who circle like wolves around a sheep.
- coryrc 3y agoThey paid for less for far fewer people. You can't store labor in a vault. They didn't save or make any investments worth giving them a cut. They demand no expense speed in their government-funded care while cutting services young people use (child care, college, k-12 education, etc).