The epidemic of the old people

B

Balder1

Registered Senior Member
One citizen out of five is a senior citizen in the United States today, according to some article in Newsweek, and in twenty years the ratio is expected to be 1:3, and 1:2 over in Japan.

Right now the struggling Social Security is a controversial issue, and more and more of our economy is going to supporting these retired old people. We are using our young immigrants and kids to support these longer and longer-living old people, who require gobs of medicine just to keep their failing bodies alive for a few more years.

So what do we do, when everyone starts living to two hundred, and there are more old, retired people than young people? Or, if these people stay in their old jobs, where do the young people go for work?

I think that this dilemna is going to be one of the hugest things in the next century. We are going to have to decide what to do about the old people as immortality draws into reach. Do we start euthanizing the oldest to allow new blood in, or will some group of people eventually reach immortallity and control the world from then on?

So far, I haven't been able to think of a really workable, desirable solution to this problem, and there is plenty about it to debate.
 
We should stop trying to increase the length of time people live and direct our efforts at improving the quality of life.

Quality over quantity.
 
How about limiting how many kids we have to one or less? Not in a China-enforced sort of way, but in an Earth's carrying-capacity sort of way. The more people realize just how limited the resources are available out there, perhaps the more they'll realize it's not in the planet's (read: our) best interest to keep pumping out 3-4 kids per couple.

It's like that snake that's eating its own tail (for the life of me I <i>still</i> don't know what that's called): Because there are so many elderly people as compared with 50 years ago, the world is under the delusion that we need to keep churning out youngins to compensate for the drain to the economy. In reality, it's a lot closer to what <b>one-raven</b> posited.

I could be wrong on this, but I'm guessing the main reason why humanity was so used to cranking out kids by the cartload was because of the agrarian nature of life long ago. In underdeveloped nations, it makes sense to have tons of children because they are necessary to help out on the farm, perform chores, and serve as marriage dowry to others. But elsewhere, having a lot of kids doesn't really make much sense. Especially if those kids spend most of their time away from the people that had them in the first place (e.g., nannies, day-care).

Sorry if this degenerated, but I felt to address the topic post (good one, btw), I needed to look at the root of the issue.

Much thanks!

prag
 
Well, for one thing, there is a limit, and we've come close to reaching it. Can't remember quite what it's called, but theres a sequence of DNA responsible for the length of life one could live, before just 'dying'. And I'm being really loose with the science here, but you get my drift.


The only solution is to carefully adjust immigration policies and natural population growth through different measures like incentives and stuff like that. That's really the only way to stabilize the population. Of course, you can't forget infrastracture and thats the huge problem. How would we support the newly settled immigrants without going deeply into debt? It costs lots of money to build new infrastructure. Just take a look at Calgary. We're drowning in immigration and can't keep up. BUT - we have one of the youngest populations in North America, so it'll all balance out.

I wouldn't worry about it.
 
Well I think that the first step is to thank homosexuals for not breeding! hehe, and then after that, I say we just keep raising the life expectancy as much as we can, and I don't know, have a really big war or something. Maybe we should colonize the oceans, or mars or something, with a little luck we'll be able to do that in the next few hundred years.
 
The elderly should be euthanized (I don’t think that’s actually how you spell it, but even MS word seems unable to help me on this one) and scientists should study their remains to determine what nutrients can be extracted for beneficial consumption by the young.
 
How about limiting how many kids we have to one or less?
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That is one of the solutions we can look at, but there are many disadvantages that would come from it. These old people are usually old, world-weary, and slowly decaying. They are not usually productive, hard-working, ambitious young people bubbling with new ideas and concepts. Without the kids, the creative flow of ideas would decrease and eventually stagnate.

Well, for one thing, there is a limit, and we've come close to reaching it.
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I'm very confident that we'll be able to circumvent that limit in less than a hundred years. I guess I can't back that up, but I have a feeling we'll be able to extend life indefinitely sometime in the future. If it's genetic, we can genetically change it.

The only solution is to carefully adjust immigration policies and natural population growth through different measures like incentives and stuff like that. That's really the only way to stabilize the population.
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We'd still have the problem of lots of old people, and that number would still be growing fast. We spend about 20%(maybe more) of our federal budget on Social Security, and we still can't support all of these retired, lazy old guys. And this problem will just get worse and worse.

I wouldn't worry about it.
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Sometime we've got to face it.

The elderly should be euthanized
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That's the logical solution, but it's impossible when the older people hold more and more power, and don't want to die. I'm not going to let anyone euthanize me when I'm old. I want to live forever, or at least a hundred years or so.

So, I guess there are three solutions:

1.Cut down on the children as life expectancy goes up, thereby forcing the older, retired people to fill more jobs and work harder. Are we going to let a select group of old people rule the world for as long as they can?

2.Cut down on the old people. It's unlikely that we would ever euthanize all the old people, but I guess someday we may deprive them of long life involuntarily. Is that the same thing?

3.Continue as we are, and deport the excess people to other planets or something in the far distant future.

Most of my original post was focusing on the economic disadvantages of having so many old, retired people surviving and not contributing after that. Is Social Security just?
 
Instead of paying years and years of social security benefits, why not provide everyone with a brand-spanking new Corvette and a condo in Sun City at age sixty-five.

The cost would be minimal in comparison to ongoing social security payments and the isolation from younger folks would keep the collateral damage to a minimum.

The subsequent elderly attrition rate would be astronomical.

Problem solved!

(Vote for me in the forthcomig election)
 
Here it goes... it goes to show you that one stops being a human being in the mind of another person if you are an inconvenience or significant burdon of some kind. I have seen this in may subjects, like the poor, the unborn, the disabled. We see here people advocating the euthenization of the elderly so they can live their own lives unencumbered. In addition to that, let us not forget the societal impact of age becomming a crime punishable by execution. People approaching retirement ages will of course, resist. How are you going to enforce this? Will you resort to the use of police and military actions, breaking into the homes of people providing care for their elderly loved ones? Most everyone has a grandma, grandpa, and parents somewhere. There are those who have no problems defending their loved ones with lethal force. How will you pacify that resistance? Will you resort to standing armies if they organize?

The idea of working out some kind of retirement system to replace Social Security has merit.
 
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Originally posted by pragmathen
How about limiting how many kids we have to one or less? Not in a China-enforced sort of way, but in an Earth's carrying-capacity sort of way. The more people realize just how limited the resources are available out there, perhaps the more they'll realize it's not in the planet's (read: our) best interest to keep pumping out 3-4 kids per couple.
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What will you do with the people who continue to have children?
 
Quality over quanity seems better to us now, but for those who reach the lofty ages will see things differently. Time is different for everyone. People in their final moments often wish for but one more day, while people in their childhood wish for their days to go by so that they will become adults. The old look to the young and vice versa. I think the wisest of men would look to the present. And in a sense, quality should be more important but that isn't to say an extra 10 or 20 years shouldn't be attained through science, because it'd be great. And by the time we do reach near "immortality", we'll have the proper methods of getting resources, whether it be from space or wherever.

Wow, haven't posted in a while.
 
We could feed them drugs to increase their body's strength, ie. a 40 year old is like a 20 year old but they will only live till 60 :D
 
And by the time we do reach near "immortality", we'll have the proper methods of getting resources, whether it be from space or wherever
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I think we're reaching immortallity very quickly(as in my lifetime) and I'm absolutely sure that we aren't just going to have all the resources we need.

There's no real solution to this problem. If we have the ability to be immortal, should we take it, or will we have to be euthanized?

If we told everyone that as long as they didn't have kids, they could be immortal, would that be a good thing?

Right now we have more and more retired people who don't contribute to the economy, and we can't expect this problem to dissapear. We're going to have to deal with these people sometime, as Social Security drains more and more money.
 
If we told everyone that as long as they didn't have kids, they could be immortal, would that be a good thing?
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Their are those who would rather die and have children instead. It is an instinct buried so deeply into the existance of our species I don't think it will be easily surmountable accept perhaps.

Right now we have more and more retired people who don't contribute to the economy, and we can't expect this problem to dissapear. We're going to have to deal with these people sometime, as Social Security drains more and more money.
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Do you mean deal with them, or deal with how inefficient Social Security is? The idea behind Social Security was to purely be a retirement fund, but as the Government expanded it came to be used to give benefits for people with disabilities, children who's parents had died, ect. In other words, it was used for too many things it was flat out not intended for and the money dried up. It might have survived the times it had been raided for emergncy short-term funding, but in the long-run it was devastating. Typical of short-sighted politics perhaps.

The question is how do we replace this failed system? Can the Government be trusted again, or should we roll up our sleves and take care of our elders ourselves?
 
IT's easy to say that the elderly shoudl be euthanized, When your in highschool or in your 20's. But what about when your 70? It's monsterous and sick when you talk about old people that way , that their unimportant and lazy.Most of them worked all thier life. Dont they deserve a break? I bet alot of you here are lazy and shiftless. Posting on this forum proves how hard working you are. What i thought you were really efficent? Fun and pleasure is not efficent. It is sick how you describe the efficency of Euthanizing Elderly people. Whats next, euthanizing people in 3rd world countries so we can be comfterable?
 
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100 years ago, an elderly member of your family lived in the home with their children. At least in my family, this was the case as our family papers and diaries from that time show. For such a system to work however, marrages had to workable or at least stuck by, and children had to love their parents. In our society of 50% divorce rate, many baby-boomers not having had children, and many families have less than two children, this may not occur.

This system would only work with families which assigned value to their parents, and parents who had interpersonal and emotionally close relationships with their children. This can and will happen, I assure you. Their are those who love their parents and will care for them, as I am very sure I will.

So now the question is, where do others go?
 
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