Sort of like the last days of Númenor.
Jn
Over-Population
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Voronwë the Faithful
- At the intersection of here and now
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Wait, that's not fair. Just as a civilized society rightly takes care of its poor, it takes care of its elders, too - just because you are too old to work doesn't mean you should be written off as 'dying'!
I know lots of retired people who are not 'dying.'
And even if the elderly do have lots of health problems and need drugs and such, they are still, well, people. They aren't all sitting in hospitals on respirators, either - a lot of them are home with family.
Also, I was surprised by the 20% estimate. What is the loophole? Becaue I was under the impression that if you had a high income, the tax rate was nearer 50%.
Númenor (and later Gondor) decayed because it spent money on its dead - and that is an entirely different thing. Lavish funerals and tombs are not the same as health care and social security!
I know lots of retired people who are not 'dying.'
And even if the elderly do have lots of health problems and need drugs and such, they are still, well, people. They aren't all sitting in hospitals on respirators, either - a lot of them are home with family.
Also, I was surprised by the 20% estimate. What is the loophole? Becaue I was under the impression that if you had a high income, the tax rate was nearer 50%.
Númenor (and later Gondor) decayed because it spent money on its dead - and that is an entirely different thing. Lavish funerals and tombs are not the same as health care and social security!
Númenor (and later Gondor) decayed because it spent money on its dead - and that is an entirely different thing. Lavish funerals and tombs are not the same as health care and social security!
You should see some of the people in the nursing home where my Mom now lives. I don't object to merciful care but to have an MD charge $10 a toe to the government each month to cut the toenails of 50 vegetables ... that's not mercy, that's porkbarrelling, that's fraud.
What do you call a society that gives unlimited everything to its elderly and nothing to its children?
Jn
You should see some of the people in the nursing home where my Mom now lives. I don't object to merciful care but to have an MD charge $10 a toe to the government each month to cut the toenails of 50 vegetables ... that's not mercy, that's porkbarrelling, that's fraud.
What do you call a society that gives unlimited everything to its elderly and nothing to its children?
Jn
A fool's paradise is a wise man's hell.
A short-lived democracy. 
Jn
eta: Seriously, I did a thumbnail calculation of how many generations it would take to repay through tax revenues the cost of the medical care that my Dad received from the government during the last three+ years of his life. The bill came to two million dollars. Subtracting his own contributions to social security and his medicare co-pay, all adjusted for inflation of course, and assuming that everyone in the family always gets at least a college degree and has at least the same earning power as their parents, and assuming that tax rates don't change, and everyone works throughout working lifetime and reproduces at replacement rates so that two generations are in the workforce all the time, and incomes rise with the cost of living and so forth ....
Nine generations to pay so that my Dad could sit in bed for a little while longer and watch TV.
Did I love my Dad and sign every resusitation order handed to me? Yes.
Was I glad for those extra three years? Yes.
Can a society sustain itself economically when nine generations are required to pay the bills of one? No.
Jn
eta: Seriously, I did a thumbnail calculation of how many generations it would take to repay through tax revenues the cost of the medical care that my Dad received from the government during the last three+ years of his life. The bill came to two million dollars. Subtracting his own contributions to social security and his medicare co-pay, all adjusted for inflation of course, and assuming that everyone in the family always gets at least a college degree and has at least the same earning power as their parents, and assuming that tax rates don't change, and everyone works throughout working lifetime and reproduces at replacement rates so that two generations are in the workforce all the time, and incomes rise with the cost of living and so forth ....
Nine generations to pay so that my Dad could sit in bed for a little while longer and watch TV.
Did I love my Dad and sign every resusitation order handed to me? Yes.
Was I glad for those extra three years? Yes.
Can a society sustain itself economically when nine generations are required to pay the bills of one? No.
A fool's paradise is a wise man's hell.
A short-lived democracy.
Heh, yeah.
Well, but isn't it the voters who more or less demand the current allocation? The elderly make up a larger voting block than children ...
I don't object to the Númenor analogy, though I don't agree that it's really valid. Nevertheless I believe thinking about this anology brings us around to the important questions. What do we think is important? Mercy? Comfort? Not dying? Is there a philosophical choice here between preservation and change?
Economists have this unfortunate habit of pointing out resources are finite, that we may have some tough choices when it comes to allocation.
Heh, yeah.
Well, but isn't it the voters who more or less demand the current allocation? The elderly make up a larger voting block than children ...
I don't object to the Númenor analogy, though I don't agree that it's really valid. Nevertheless I believe thinking about this anology brings us around to the important questions. What do we think is important? Mercy? Comfort? Not dying? Is there a philosophical choice here between preservation and change?
Economists have this unfortunate habit of pointing out resources are finite, that we may have some tough choices when it comes to allocation.
The elderly make up a larger voting block than children ...
Because children aren't allowed to vote. We've loaded the dice.
Economists have this unfortunate habit of pointing out resources are finite, that we may have some tough choices when it comes to allocation.
Yup, that's us in a nutshell.
Jn
Because children aren't allowed to vote. We've loaded the dice.
Economists have this unfortunate habit of pointing out resources are finite, that we may have some tough choices when it comes to allocation.
Yup, that's us in a nutshell.
Jn
A fool's paradise is a wise man's hell.
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Túrin Turambar
- Posts: 6157
- Joined: Sat Dec 03, 2005 9:37 am
- Location: Melbourne, Victoria
We have the same problem. There gets to a point where a family has enough children where the parents almost don’t need to work.Alatar wrote: Actually, the poor in Ireland have the largest families. Due to an incredibly stupid method of calculating support for lower income families many of those families are better off with more kids.
Ditto.VtF wrote:Jnyusa wrote: The elderly and the military consume about 80% of our federal budget.What an eye-opening statistic that is.
With regards to the two points above –
In Australia, no Government has managed to pull back welfare expenditure (welfare=pensions, unemployment benefits, child support, ect.). When the Howard Government came to power in 1996 it was at some 40% of the budget, and by 2002 it was at 44% of the budget despite the improving economy and despite the Government’s conservative economic position and attempts at welfare reform. This bothers me – soon half of the budget is going to be simple and pure redistribution of money. Worse, it is often redistributing to the same people. There are many families or individuals which are both paying tax and getting some sort of benefit. I don’t see how this is sustainable.
people usually look at that in isolation, what they forget is that 80% of budget is also generating a fare amount of employment, and those people who are employed also pay taxes, they consume and they are not on welfare, so in a sense it's a big chunck of money that's being reinvested in the economy. If you take a look at military expediture, then a lot of it these days go on kit, and the US almost always only buy's from US companies, something I know too well, so effectively by paying for the elderly and the military you are in fact a significant amount of the national income stays within the domestic market - and gives lots of people jobs.Jnyusa wrote:The elderly and the military consume about 80% of our federal budget.
too often stupid venal politicians regard the country like a corner shop let me give you a case.
During the latter part of the Thatcher junta our electricity industry was allowed to import coal from Poland on the grounds that it was cheaper, this resulted in the closure of local mines, which led to mass-unemployment and the devestation of communities, so we may have saved pennies on our electricity bills but the consequence was that we ended up paying pounds in additional tax on the welfare bill, the and that was not all, the consequence was in the communities many of the other business collapsed because the spending power of the former miners was greatly reduced, and this catastrophe was then magnified by having a generation of children growing up in poverty with fathers, brothers and uncles out of work, and their expectation of employment vastly reduced.
And whats the consequence now with the rush to gas in the late eighties and nineties we have effectively positioned ourselves so that we are now open to blackmail from Putin, and the strategic coal reserves, estimated at 100 + years are now not accesible because the pits were not mothballed and maintained but left to collapse and rot.
All because a few cretinous/greedy people belived that corner-shop monatrism and the free market was the way to manage a nation
Don't worry, Jny. According to the cyclical history model described in "The Fourth Turning" by Howe and Straus, the elderly will cease to be taken care of by the time I get old. It's happened before regularly in the US, and is due to happen again soon. What form this will take is, of course, unknown at this time but I'm sure it will involve old people being scorned, starving and medically ignored in the next ten years or twenty years.Jn wrote:Can a society sustain itself economically when nine generations are required to pay the bills of one? No.
people usually look at that in isolation, what they forget is that 80% of budget is also generating a fare amount of employment, and those people who are employed also pay taxes, they consume and they are not on welfare, so in a sense it's a big chunck of money that's being reinvested in the economy.
eborr, this is true. Everything that is spent within an economy is also earned within that economy, unless the government is buying things abroad. But we are not buying elderly health care abroad. That's being provided by workers here in our own country.
The place where we see this most typically mirepresented is in the cost of labor. The economy as a whole cannot improve its 'cost structure' by lowering wages - it is not possible to pay workers 'too much' in any macro sense - because worker incomes are the source of company revenues. Our ability to generate reinvestment and growth does not come from lowering wages but from increasing the productivity of each worker, and improved productivity is the only thing that can improve the standard of living for everyone.
But when expenditures go through the third party of the government there is a redistribution that takes place and this redistribution can have positive or negative effects on the economy as a whole.
Health care is overwhelmingly a service industry with the vast majority of its workers (nursing aides) being paid wages that are too low for self-support. The incomes disparity in this industry is enormous, and this does alter the consumption possibilities and investment possibilities of the economy as a whole in a negative way. Millitary expenditures are better than elderly care from this point of view because at least that is a manufacturing venture, and although the high wage R&D sector within this industry may not be larger than what we see in health care (I really don't know how medical research stacks up against military research in terms of employment levels), the non-professional worker in manufacturing is getting about three times as much per hour as the non-professional worker in health care.
And the service that is being provided is being provided to people who will never again contribute to growth or productivity. All other things being equal, e.g. take all those expenditures on elderly health care exactly as they are distributed now and use them instead for child welfare - health care, food, education, etc. even with low-paid labor - and the situation of the economy twenty years from now will be like the difference between Germany and Bangladesh.
We are currently headed for Bangladesh.
The awakening will not come from some clever realization that we are doing something foolish. Our politics in this matter is hidebound. The realization will come when the international money markets downgrade US government bonds and we suddenly find ourselves saddled with massive external debt and soaring interests rate. It will be too late at that point to 'fix' our investment position. We will be Brazil, we will be Bangladesh, unable to bootstrap ourselves out of the hole we dug.
We've been in a downslide since 1973 while failing to deal with the underlying causes. The end, when it finally comes, will come very fast.
I give it five years. When the people born in 1946 hit the social security system, and Bush's military deficits are still adding to the national debt instead of being repaid, that's when the end will come.
Jn
eborr, this is true. Everything that is spent within an economy is also earned within that economy, unless the government is buying things abroad. But we are not buying elderly health care abroad. That's being provided by workers here in our own country.
The place where we see this most typically mirepresented is in the cost of labor. The economy as a whole cannot improve its 'cost structure' by lowering wages - it is not possible to pay workers 'too much' in any macro sense - because worker incomes are the source of company revenues. Our ability to generate reinvestment and growth does not come from lowering wages but from increasing the productivity of each worker, and improved productivity is the only thing that can improve the standard of living for everyone.
But when expenditures go through the third party of the government there is a redistribution that takes place and this redistribution can have positive or negative effects on the economy as a whole.
Health care is overwhelmingly a service industry with the vast majority of its workers (nursing aides) being paid wages that are too low for self-support. The incomes disparity in this industry is enormous, and this does alter the consumption possibilities and investment possibilities of the economy as a whole in a negative way. Millitary expenditures are better than elderly care from this point of view because at least that is a manufacturing venture, and although the high wage R&D sector within this industry may not be larger than what we see in health care (I really don't know how medical research stacks up against military research in terms of employment levels), the non-professional worker in manufacturing is getting about three times as much per hour as the non-professional worker in health care.
And the service that is being provided is being provided to people who will never again contribute to growth or productivity. All other things being equal, e.g. take all those expenditures on elderly health care exactly as they are distributed now and use them instead for child welfare - health care, food, education, etc. even with low-paid labor - and the situation of the economy twenty years from now will be like the difference between Germany and Bangladesh.
We are currently headed for Bangladesh.
The awakening will not come from some clever realization that we are doing something foolish. Our politics in this matter is hidebound. The realization will come when the international money markets downgrade US government bonds and we suddenly find ourselves saddled with massive external debt and soaring interests rate. It will be too late at that point to 'fix' our investment position. We will be Brazil, we will be Bangladesh, unable to bootstrap ourselves out of the hole we dug.
We've been in a downslide since 1973 while failing to deal with the underlying causes. The end, when it finally comes, will come very fast.
I give it five years. When the people born in 1946 hit the social security system, and Bush's military deficits are still adding to the national debt instead of being repaid, that's when the end will come.
Jn
A fool's paradise is a wise man's hell.
What will happen then, Jn?
Higher taxes? Loss of care for the elderly? Or a combo? It is so hard to make the tough choices, and I don't think the elderly (who vote) will stand for a reduction in their benefits. So I suppose it will be higher taxes.
Maybe there is something good to come out of it--the U.S. will realize it no longer has the money to pour into sinkholes like Iraq.
Forseeing this coming, my husband and I have lived pretty lean to the bone to pay off all our debt, so we own our house and have no other debts (other than child care expenses). But we do have two college educations to finance and our own retirement to provide for (we still have a ways to go 
)
Higher taxes? Loss of care for the elderly? Or a combo? It is so hard to make the tough choices, and I don't think the elderly (who vote) will stand for a reduction in their benefits. So I suppose it will be higher taxes.
Maybe there is something good to come out of it--the U.S. will realize it no longer has the money to pour into sinkholes like Iraq.
Forseeing this coming, my husband and I have lived pretty lean to the bone to pay off all our debt, so we own our house and have no other debts (other than child care expenses). But we do have two college educations to finance
and our own retirement to provide for (we still have a ways to go )Higher taxes? Loss of care for the elderly? Or a combo?
A combo, I think, Ellie. It will have to be so. Taxes will rise and granny will, as a result, be dumped. It will not be possible for our children to survive otherwise.
Voting or not voting, I think that my generation will not find any politician running for office anywhere who is willing to do for us what we were willing to do for our parents. It just won't be an option on the ballot. And if there are not ten doctors jumping up everytime we sneeze and billing the government for it, as is the case right now, we simply will not live so long. Right now, the over-80 population is the fastest-growing population in the country. My prediction is that by the time I'm 70, over-70 will be the fastest-shrinking in the country.
The great irony of this is that one and only one generation enjoyed these benefits. When my grandmother turned 70, her age group was the poorest in the country. Social security was so low relative to the cost of living that the elderly had to eat cat food. When my parents turned 70, their age group was the wealthiest in the country! When I turn 70, we will again be the poorest. Economist Les Thurow wrote about this in The Zero Sum Game. Every generation lives partly off the investment of the previous and the labor of the next - this is always so to some extent. For the wealth of one generation to balloon to that extent while others decline, they had to rob at both ends.
A friend of mine in the psych department did some research on intergenerational attitudes and found that my parents' grandchildren (my children) are the only generation that hates their grandparents! Usually the identification skips a generation, you know, because alternate generations share that 'common problem' of the generation in the middle. But today's young adults have more sympathy for their parents than for their grandparents.
My stock broker and I have agreed that our parents' generation should have their name changed from The Greatest Generation to The Greediest Generation, and my generation should have its name changed from The Me Generation to the The Stupidest Generation.
Where did those other names come from? - we named them, and they named us, and that tells the whole story, I think.
These are generalizations, of course, and won't be true of every single person in that age group, but when we look back on this period in history, from 1950 to 2000, and look at how all the so-called social welfare programs were used to strip the poor of their assets, and how social security was used to strip the middle class of its income, and how the Vietnam war was used to kill off Black people and delay entry of grown children into the work force, we will conclude that the people who dominated those years were among the worst parasites in history.
Jn
A combo, I think, Ellie. It will have to be so. Taxes will rise and granny will, as a result, be dumped. It will not be possible for our children to survive otherwise.
Voting or not voting, I think that my generation will not find any politician running for office anywhere who is willing to do for us what we were willing to do for our parents. It just won't be an option on the ballot. And if there are not ten doctors jumping up everytime we sneeze and billing the government for it, as is the case right now, we simply will not live so long. Right now, the over-80 population is the fastest-growing population in the country. My prediction is that by the time I'm 70, over-70 will be the fastest-shrinking in the country.
The great irony of this is that one and only one generation enjoyed these benefits. When my grandmother turned 70, her age group was the poorest in the country. Social security was so low relative to the cost of living that the elderly had to eat cat food. When my parents turned 70, their age group was the wealthiest in the country! When I turn 70, we will again be the poorest. Economist Les Thurow wrote about this in The Zero Sum Game. Every generation lives partly off the investment of the previous and the labor of the next - this is always so to some extent. For the wealth of one generation to balloon to that extent while others decline, they had to rob at both ends.
A friend of mine in the psych department did some research on intergenerational attitudes and found that my parents' grandchildren (my children) are the only generation that hates their grandparents! Usually the identification skips a generation, you know, because alternate generations share that 'common problem' of the generation in the middle. But today's young adults have more sympathy for their parents than for their grandparents.
My stock broker and I have agreed that our parents' generation should have their name changed from The Greatest Generation to The Greediest Generation, and my generation should have its name changed from The Me Generation to the The Stupidest Generation.
Where did those other names come from? - we named them, and they named us, and that tells the whole story, I think.
These are generalizations, of course, and won't be true of every single person in that age group, but when we look back on this period in history, from 1950 to 2000, and look at how all the so-called social welfare programs were used to strip the poor of their assets, and how social security was used to strip the middle class of its income, and how the Vietnam war was used to kill off Black people and delay entry of grown children into the work force, we will conclude that the people who dominated those years were among the worst parasites in history.
Jn
A fool's paradise is a wise man's hell.
Jn, that was a very insightful post. Thank you!My stock broker and I have agreed that our parents' generation should have their name changed from The Greatest Generation to The Greediest Generation, and my generation should have its name changed from The Me Generation to the The Stupidest Generation.
I think about this issue myself. My father in law retired from a high post in the federal government in 1975 or thereabouts. He's still here, at 92, in very good health, having collected pension the entire time, of course indexed for inflation. My brother in law made a comment about how Dad was actually making more than him (i.e., Dad's pension was higher than his income--and this is after brother in law had worked for the federal government for 25 years). Soon, I think, Dad will have collected pension for longer than he worked for the government (he was a college professor for a while before his government service). That is a lot of pay for what he did!Similarly, my uncle retired from the FAA in the early 80s. Again, he is still around in very good health, with a nice pension. I'm happy for his nice retirement, and great health benefits, but one can see that this is just not sustainable, particularly in view of the demographics (the decline of the ratio of working adults to retired).
My husband gets annoyed at that "Greatest generation" thing too. This generation did not care about women's rights or civil rights for minorities. That took the "'me' generation", (irony intended).
My brother in law made a comment about how Dad was actually making more than him (i.e., Dad's pension was higher than his income--and this is after brother in law had worked for the federal government for 25 years).
Yes, that was true of my parents, too. When both were living their social security benefits + pension were higher than the combined salary of me and my husband.
My husband gets annoyed at that "Greatest generation" thing too. This generation did not care about women's rights or civil rights for minorities. That took the "'me' generation", (irony intended).
Yes, and the big secret of history is how many of them were closet Nazis. We had to be dragged kicking and screaming into WWII because the pro-Nazi sentiment was so high in the US. Thank God the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. That forced Hitler to declare war on us, and forced us to defend ourselves. I shudder to think what the world would look like today if not for Emperor Hirohito's imprudence.
Jn
Yes, that was true of my parents, too. When both were living their social security benefits + pension were higher than the combined salary of me and my husband.
My husband gets annoyed at that "Greatest generation" thing too. This generation did not care about women's rights or civil rights for minorities. That took the "'me' generation", (irony intended).
Yes, and the big secret of history is how many of them were closet Nazis. We had to be dragged kicking and screaming into WWII because the pro-Nazi sentiment was so high in the US. Thank God the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. That forced Hitler to declare war on us, and forced us to defend ourselves. I shudder to think what the world would look like today if not for Emperor Hirohito's imprudence.
Jn
A fool's paradise is a wise man's hell.
Watcher, a post of yours disappeared, and I think I may have done something to cause that. I sent you a PM about it.
It happened in such a weird way, that after asking the other Shirriffs how this could happen, we thought that possibly you deleted it yourself and I just didn't notice until after I had posted my reply? I take so long to compose my replies that I am looking at a very old screen sometimes when I hit submit. So I thought your post was still there when I submitted a reply, but possibly you had already removed it. In case that is so, I've removed my reply too, because I quoted at least one sentence from most of your paragraphs.
If the disappearance was my fault, I've saved my post with your quotes in it and will be glad to PM them to so that you can reconstruct your own post as much as possible. And I also sincerely apologize if this was something that I caused.
If you did delete the post yourself and don't want to post it again, please ignore this message.
Dave: sorry that I missed your comment earlier. Yes, it might be that interest payments are also needed to come all the way up to 80%. I'll have to check the 2005 numbers.
Jn
It happened in such a weird way, that after asking the other Shirriffs how this could happen, we thought that possibly you deleted it yourself and I just didn't notice until after I had posted my reply? I take so long to compose my replies that I am looking at a very old screen sometimes when I hit submit. So I thought your post was still there when I submitted a reply, but possibly you had already removed it. In case that is so, I've removed my reply too, because I quoted at least one sentence from most of your paragraphs.
If the disappearance was my fault, I've saved my post with your quotes in it and will be glad to PM them to so that you can reconstruct your own post as much as possible. And I also sincerely apologize if this was something that I caused.
If you did delete the post yourself and don't want to post it again, please ignore this message.
Dave: sorry that I missed your comment earlier. Yes, it might be that interest payments are also needed to come all the way up to 80%. I'll have to check the 2005 numbers.
Jn
A fool's paradise is a wise man's hell.
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Primula Baggins
- Living in hope
- Posts: 40005
- Joined: Mon Nov 21, 2005 1:43 am
- Location: Sailing the luminiferous aether
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I just finished a year that most people in their forties don't figure on. I was treated for cancer, and the (two) surgeries and the chemotherapy each cost probably $100,000. All but $200 (two years' $100 deductibles) was covered by insurance. (I should note that the big numbers are what was billed; insurance actually paid less than half of that.)
Here I am, alive, and probably alive for the long term. I can work again now, most likely for another 20 years until I retire.
Was it worth it?
Here I am, alive, and probably alive for the long term. I can work again now, most likely for another 20 years until I retire.
Was it worth it?
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King