With all the bickering about debt ceiling, Social Security, and Medicare, “We ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” This is just the little tip of a looming, ship-sinking iceberg. And we damn well better change course… fast.
We face a heretofore-demographic event that could/will have devastating national and global implications- and one very rarely covered by the mainstream media. An issue that very few talk about- and more often than not, don’t want to talk about.
“The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.” -Robert M. Hutchins
"We don't have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don't have insurance... We don't have a setting across this country where if you don’t have insurance, we just say to you, 'Tough luck, you're going to die when you have your heart attack… No, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it’s paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital.’”
-Mitt Romney, Presidential Campaign
Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members. –Pearl S. Buck
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During this oxymoronic, misguided, misinformed Information Age, greatly influenced by our increasing use of the newest consumer technologies- we are often victims of increased derision, distraction, and preoccupation with the spectacular and the inconsequential. The resulting effect being an ignorance and apathy towards the greater threats to our collective health and welfare.
Our country and indeed the world face major challenges that are often underreported and ignored. From guns to Gay Rights, from blatant bigotry to Right to Life- there is little doubt as to the topics that dominate our media, our minds, and our hearts. And not to deemphasize such issues, yet we might focus on concerns of greater consequence to all of us, challenges regarding the very tenants of our existence: Food, clothing, shelter, health, and our collective quality of life.
The most consequential yet underreported issues of this new age:
Global Warming:
The accelerating, doomful impact of Global Warming has quickly become a foregone conclusion. And regarding the modeling and forecasts so predicted by the very best of our climate scholars, we really don’t know what that conclusion might be. And yet one overriding concern is the ability to continue feeding our 7-billion+ inhabitants.
Global domination imposed on a newly emerging debtor class
by a worldwide banking plutocracy:
In the world of finance, we are witnessing a polarization of wages and wealth heretofore unseen in human history. With the marriage of technology and unrestrained, corrupt, worldwide banking practices, with the integration of hyper-speculation and the emergence of state sponsored capitalism, a new global model of the proverbial 99% is now emerging. We live in a perilous, poverty-bound time of both Inverted Totalitarianism and ‘Brave New World’- with an unprecedented, tech-driven ‘1984’ surveillance state added to the mix.
Here in the homeland, our own government remains loyal, much more so, to its true constituency: Big Money. And the insidious evolution of this oppressive, political-economic transition is now reaching fruition, revoking our bedrock concepts of bottom-up capitalism… and more important- Democracy.
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The heretofore-unprecedented demographic shift to massive aged and infirm populations:
In this age of ‘youth worship,’ so apparent through both rampant, youth-dominant target marketing and the new phenomenon of ‘connectedness,’ the aged are more often than not disconnected: The emergence of a growing yet forgotten hidden class (excluding television commercials for catheters, testosterone, facelifts, etc.).
Author Jared Diamond pontificates:
“In America . . . a ‘cult of youth’ and emphasis on the virtues of independence, individualism and self-reliance … make life hard on older people as they inevitably lose some of these traits. Then, there's America’s Protestant work ethic, “which holds that if you’re no longer working, you’ve lost the main value that society places on you.” Retirement also means losing social relationships, which, coupled with America’s high mobility, leaves many old people hundreds or even thousands of miles away from longtime friends and family. Modern literacy and its ties to technology are also putting the elderly at a disadvantage.”
The United Nation’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs points out:
- Population ageing is unprecedented, without parallel in human history-and the twenty-first century will witness even more rapid ageing than did the century just past.
- Population ageing is pervasive, a global phenomenon affecting every man, woman and child . . . Countries that started the process later will have less time to adjust.
- Population ageing is enduring: We will not return to the young populations that our ancestors knew.
- Population ageing has profound implications for many facets of human life.
Japan
Japan shows us the most dramatic example of this unprecedented phenomenon of ageing.
As of 2011, those 65 years and older were at a worldwide high of 23.3 percent of their total population, or 29.75 million people.
65+ years
1970 7.1% -of total population
1994 14.1%
2011 23.3% -approx. one in four persons being 65 or older
At the same time, the child population in Japan (0-14 years) was 13.1 percent of the total population, the lowest recorded percentage of that age group since the survey began.
In the early-1970s, social welfare comprised just 6% of Japan's total national income. In 1992, that portion jumped to 18%. By 2025, the cost is expected to rise to 27%. In the mid-1980s, reevaluating the burdens of healthcare and pensions on the government and the private sector, new policies were implemented in an attempt to control rising costs caused by this dramatic demographic shift.
A study released by the U.N. in 2000 found that between 2000 and 2050, Japan would need to admit 1 million immigrants annually or raise the retirement age to 77 in order to maintain its worker-to-retiree ratio.
Europe
Europe, like Japan, also confronts the daunting challenge of accommodating a rapidly aging population, and its possible catastrophic socio-economic consequences.
In a 2006 report, IMF researchers Carone and Costello projected that the ratio of retirees to workers in Europe would soon fall from four workers to two workers per retiree. Brookings Institution analyst William Frey surveys that by 2050; Europe’s median age will increase from 37.7 years old in 2003 to 52.3 years old. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates a drop of 14% in the European Union’s workforce and a 7% decrease in consumers by 2030.
Further, the necessity of non-European migration to the E.U. becomes essential in preventing dramatic labor shortages, thereby increasing the prospect of major ethnic conflicts such as the 2005 civil unrest in France.
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The Homeland
With the onset of a rapid increase in our aged population, the mounting pressure in the U.S. is not only due to the elderly, yet the slowing growth of our working age population.
In a publication in the Oxford Journals, researchers Joshua Wiener and Jane Tilly write,
“Like the rest of the world, the U.S. is an ageing society. Between 2000 and 2050, the number of older people is projected to increase by 135% . . . Over this time period, the proportion of the population that is over the age of 65 will increase from 12.7% in 2000 to 20.3% in 2050. One catastrophic consequence will be the absence of an adequate worker population necessary to support public programs and fewer people to provide the services that older people need.”
In a report by Alexandra Cawthorne for American Progress, 2008:
“Seniors’ economic security will only increase in importance as the U.S. population ages. The nation’s health and social services resources will face unprecedented demand as 75 million people in the baby boomer generation reach retirement age—some with eroded savings and retirement accounts.”
As of 2008, 3.4 million of our 65 and older population lived below the poverty line. Barely meeting their most basic needs, millions more teetered just above our poverty line. Nearly a quarter of older Americans (22.4 percent) showed a family income that fell below 150% of the poverty line.
Cawthorne continues,
“If we had a better measure of poverty, the elderly poverty rate would be considerably higher. The current poverty measure gives no consideration to health care costs, among other problems. High medical bills for the elderly can greatly reduce the income available to meet their other needs.”
The US spending on medical care as a share of our GDP exceeds all other countries, partly due to higher technology services, but overwhelmingly due to exorbitant insurances.
Elderly women make up a higher percentage of the impoverished aged. Those 75 years and up are three times more likely to be living in poverty as same age range men.
A 2010 New York Times article indicated that only 11% of research funding to the National Institute of Health was earmarked for age research. Dr. David B. Reuben, chief of the geriatrics division of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the U.C.L.A., succinctly summarizes,
“In every area of aging . . . people just don’t realize how dire the situation is.”
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The tip of the iceberg:
In a Slate article by Jeff Wise, he points out that although there has been a high degree of fanfare regarding the world’s population reaching the 7 billion mark, a more significant and overlooked event is that the rate of population growth has actually slowed. A historically unprecedented demographic event, experts project that this decline will continue.
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And this will not be a ‘Children of Men’ moment, at least in regard to the world trying to birth just one lone baby . . .
But, unless the trend changes, nationally, we might see a scenario as follows:
The year is 2070. The national economy has never recovered from the dramatic decrease in consumption, the continued polarization of wealth, two wars, the bank ‘restructuring’ of 2007 and 2016, the dramatic economic collapse of 2033, and the high cost of global climate change and increasing pollution. After 2016, the country began a continued spiral downward towards a devastating, severe depression.
Presently, one in three of the total population are children of baby boomers, over 60 years of age, and most live in abject poverty:
Disabled from medical care, transportation, and more often than not, adequate foodstuffs and housing.
Due to unemployment, the depression, and other socio-economic factors, family members dedicated to the care of their elders are often unable to provide effective assistance. And then there are those relatives that are overwhelmed with distraction, derision, amusement, and apathy (reinforced by the continued innovation of consumer technologies), and care for their aged seniors is not a consideration.
Due to declining birthrates and ageing, the ratio of elderly-to-worker has dropped to 1.3, grossly inadequate to support essential programs for the aged through tax revenues.
Continued bickering by our politicians to control the debt ceiling for over half a century has also stifled any infusion of monies towards aged social welfare spending. Historians now look back at the period between 2008- 2015 as a time when an infusion of stimulus monies might have averted the subsequent malaise; a time when bold government planning and legislation might have prepared our economy for the devastating consequences of such a demographic shift.
Also, continued partisan resistance to radical revisions in immigration policy has disabled a positive boost to the elderly-to-worker ratio.
The cost of healthcare has continued to spiral, falsely attributed to advances in technology; yet actually due to pricing policies as dictated by the insurance industry.
The situation is bleak, worsening, and without solution.
Welcome to the Post Information Age.
Welcome to the accelerating decline of these United States.
Sources:
The Statistics Bureau and the Director-General for Policy Planning (Statistical Standards) of Japan
http://today.ucla.edu/...
http://www.un.org/...
http://www.stat.go.jp/...
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
http://www.americanprogress.org/...
http://www.nytimes.com/...
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/...
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http://www.slate.com/...