Beyond annoying – they simply refuse to die, those bloody silent geezers, the centenarian know-it-all/seen-it-all good-for-nothing financial millstones around our collective necks. And it’s not only them – the early post-war boomers seem to also be quite resilient to death. Bugger – they’ve had it too good for over 80 years and think they can go on like this forever.
Acerbic sarcasm aside, we have a problem and it’s big. In a nutshell – the scientific advances, including medicine, are a couple of miles ahead of our social, political, and even financial cognition and we have arrived to the point where it becomes unbearable – both on a personal and national socio-economic levels.
The “Silent Generation” born between the 2 WWs are still physically alive although in an increasingly decomposing manner, what with all the Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and such robbing them of their cognitive and motor functions. But hey, the Pharma is happy to conserve them in this state for decades, as we are amply witnessing now. Why should they care – business is booming (pardon the pun), and the cash till is going ka-ching, so all is swell. The Boomers are adding on that with their retirement – already activated or nascent. Combined, we are in an overall economic trap of a downward spiral in all aspects – the wealth is stuck in 2 previous generations’ pockets and is simply wasting away with them, instead of being passed on to their kids and grandkids (now those can be Gen Xs, Millennials -close to 40s themselves). The younger groups struggle under the financial burden of care for their parents and grandparents due to the tremendous costs of health care, house unaffordability, and more.
The ages-long mantra of “young paying for the old” has become completely obsolete with crashing birth rates all over the Western and Asian 1st world, bringing us to the inverted social pyramid of a thin layer of younger generations carrying the financial burden of the old on their ever-narrowing economic shoulders.
Some of the countries are tackling this issue in a rather ugly way – the modern-day Eskimo principle. Look at the Canadian MAID programme spreading like fire to Belgium and the Netherlands. This year they are considering lowering the age of consent to adult teens of 12. Madness doesn’t describe it.
However, is there another way to solve the problem without actively, albeit humanely, killing people? Can we broaden the shoulders, so to speak, of the working cohorts to alleviate the economic burden and financial burnout of nations?
The cornerstone issue is retirement. When pension ideas started to circulate, in late 19th century Europe, the average longevity hovered around 65. At 40, one was considered ‘middle-aged’, and at 60 – time to hang up the shoes and play with grandkids for a remaining couple of years. So paying for the last 5 years of an employee’s life, for them to live in financial dignity, seemed like a major social progress. And indeed that it was. However, only some 20+ later, better hygiene and penicillin kicked the concept of ‘longevity’ into a wholly different dimension. Add to it major breakthroughs in medicine and pharmacology, which accelerated the development of various medical treatments and drugs post-WW2, and all of a sudden, very few die of diabetes or hypertension toward the end of the 20th century.
So people live longer and healthier – and it’s irreversible, but what about work and welfare laws? Well, both are still stuck on the 19th-early 20th-century page. The work mode is still the same constrictive 09:00-17:00 conveyor belt (sadly, technology and corona haven’t managed to entirely break the concept), and retirement is still oscillating anywhere between 60 and 65. Governments that try to change the system by deferring retirement by some measly couple of years are faced with mass protests – welcome to France everyone.
Some 80 years on we are standing on an eroding cliff top, looking into the abyss. And it feels like we are starting to fall.
There must be an honest realisation that inclusiveness is dead – we simply have no money to pay for it anymore. Both employers and still working people (be it younger Boomers and Gen Xrs) must realise that the old concepts of work patterns and retirement are unsustainable in our day and age and MUST be altered. Tear up the old 09-17:00 in the office and allow people to work anywhere, any time, do courses to explain that prolonged work is good for mental health and active lifestyle, staving off cognitive and physical deterioration.
Automation and technology are supportive friends of this trend if applied smartly.
One thing is for sure – we cannot go on the way we’ve done until now.
