At 10:46 25/09/2003 -0400, you wrote:
At a recent meeting on e-government a Member of Parliament was asked what might be the first question to be discussed on a protracted, deliberative but binding online referendum. Her response: Raising the retirement/pension age.
So it is very much on the minds of Paliamentarians.
arthur
Yes, retirement ages are already due to changed in the coming years in this country (I've forgotten by how much and when). Unfortunately, this extension of working lives will only marginally slow down the decreasing worker/dependency ratio. The really big costs concern the health care that occurs in the last 6-9 months of life. (I've forgotten what these are, but something like 30-50% of *all* health costs.) Because of advancements in control of disease, this period simply occurs later in life and in no way can the costs be reduced if old people are to be looked after in a decent way.
I am quite sure that neglect and cruelty in local goverment-supported nursing homes (whose elderly residents are mainly working class) will increase enormously in the coming years. The burden being placed on under-paid, unqualified nursing care assistants doing intolerable jobs -- including trying to look after a highish proportion of old people who are ga-ga -- is far too great to be expected to continue for much longer.* In the meantime, the middle classes are supporting voluntary euthanasia and pressing hard for legislation. (I am a member of the VE Society.) Whether this is passed in the next few years or not, I believe that euthanasia will increase significantly among the middle class (with the help of doctors who are becoming more open about what they have been doing for decades) and, of course, suicide. My father (working class) did so when he became too much of a burden, and I am already planning to do the same even though it may be a few years away yet. Fortunately he kept his marbles, and I hope I do, too, so I can finally wrap up my affairs tidily.
*There are some interesting early indications of this. There have been a few reports in the papers and regional TV of some old people having to live and sleep in their invalid chairs and are never bathed. The reason? The nurses/care assistants say that they are putting their own health in danger in trying to lift the old people from their chairs to put them to bed or to bathe them. So far, once these incidents have been publicised, the local government social services made sure that something was done. But this is an early sign that the most horrendous treatment is going to be carried out increasingly in the coming years -- but very "good" reasons being given for doing so if and when they are (infrequently) exposed.
From what I've read from anthropological studies, all pre-industrial societies practised some sort of euthanasia or mercy-killing when their old folk lost their marbles or became too much of a burden. Only 200 years ago in northern Scandinavia, if farming families didn't have enough food stored for all of them to survive the winter, they would club their oldest family member at a ceremonial site, all members of the family holding the club.
Exactly the same situation is now facing western society. Increasingly, we are not able to pay enough taxes to support all old people decently. Insidious ways will gradually develop (as are already occurring, I'm quite sure) of polishing-off the ga-ga or just the extremely dependent old. Life is already too stressful for most middle-aged and young adults for them to pay for the increasing numbers of the old.
I would suggest that, in about a generation's time (when the energy costs of modern civilisation will be enormous), unless someone has saved for their old age or unless they have children who will look after them, then state pensions and health care will be so minimal that it will amount to a pretty quick death if serious illness affects them.
Another significant indication of what's to come is that a recent poll over here is suggesting that some young adults (in their 30s!) are already thinking in terms of what they will have to save in order to help their parents in old age. This is very worthy and much to be admired but it should never have come to this. Most people in the past 50 years have become so dependent on a welfare state that is going to look after them that they simply haven't taken responsibility for themselves. People are clamorous about their "rights" these days, but never about their responsibilities. The whole western welfare system (in Europe, anyway, where it is far more developed than over the water perhaps) is breaking down. It simply can't be afforded.
We've had cheap oil for long enough to be indoctrinated to believe in an unreality about life and survival.
Keith
-----Original Message----- From: Keith Hudson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, September 25, 2003 2:41 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Futurework] 103. Western society is collapsing
The rapidly declining fertility rates in Western Europe, and other white nations such as Canada, are unquestionably going to mean the collapse of anything resembling a welfare state within a generation, and anything resembling fairly unified national cultures within two or three. The reason for this is that national health care schemes and old age pensions for the poor are paid for on an ongoing basis by the working population and there are fewer and fewer workers per old age person from year to year.
etc.
Keith Hudson, 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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