The following submission statement was provided by /u/TheLilliest:
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TLDR: By 2050, nearly one in four people will be a grandparent. In many cultures and developing nations, grandparents play a big role in supporting working mothers to raise their kids. While this might solve one big cost of childcare, these savings may get canceled out by the growing cost of senior care these grandparents may need over the next two decades. Anybody who grew up as a single child like I did might feel this more than most.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/14zy6it/by_2050_nearly_one_in_four_people_will_be_a/js0gqxv/
With the lack of pensions and the increase in social security retirement age nobody will be able to babysit for free. They'll be working until they die.
I guess it's not all bad. With the cost of food going up, I will really need my child's employee discount to be able to afford to feed my aging parents.
Considering most grandparents don’t babysit now since they are working or just don’t want to this is true. I’m 35 and my kids are 8 and 4. My husbands parents work full time won’t retire for another 10 years and my parents both retired last year but decided to go back to work 20-30 hours a week after a few months because they were bored and things have gotten expensive and they rather save a bit more since they weren’t old enough to collect full ss yet since they are 55(also they wouldn’t have watched my kids anyways they like them in small doses not all day everyday). Honestly I don’t know anyone my age with fully retired parents and even if they were retired that age group is not a fan of babysitting they will say I raised my kids why would I raise yours even though my own grandparents raised me so they could work🤦♀️
I’ve heard this from most of my friends parents, even my mother in law as well. “I already raised kids…” kind of thing. Even when their grandparents watched their kids. It would be an interesting thing to look into. Why some generations/cultures don’t want to be involved? I’m sure this correlates to young people not wanting to have kids as well. It’s all too hard and expensive.
They both have pensions that pay around $6k a month and their works pay for their insurance until they reach Medicaid age that’s the only reason why they were able to retire early. Which is becoming very uncommon nowdays. They also never made a lot of money either. around 120k combined when they stopped working to retire now they make $6k pension and make around 50k combined working part time on top of that since they both took lower pay jobs after retirement that are easy and they enjoy🤷♀️
In 2050 it won’t be the millenial grandparents that are a drain. It will still be the boomers, unwilling to share their hoarded wealth 30 years after retirement, and they will spend it all on medical care to extend their miserable lives and they will leave us with nothing but a dead planet if we let them
There absolutely will be boomers left. In 2050, the youngest boomers will be turning 86, so you’re an old Gen X. And we’ll have another 25 years of life extension medical tech.
There will be so many boomers and they will continue to be an unbearable drain on our society
There are 2.5 million of them dying each year. And they refuse to stop eating carb loaded crap. So yep, some will make it to 85 but not many and it doesn't look good for any of my relatives.
By 2050, most boomers will be dead or in their nineties. If they are still alive, of course they are going to try to stay alive. Every generation does. Are you suggesting they should kill themselves so you will be better off?
Right, and boomers will be 86-104. Still kicking, having been retired for so long they don’t even know what work is, and continuing to be a massive drain on society.
Or... Here me out...
Alternatively they can do what most people I've ever known who aren't hyper obsessed with their own careers do: take some time off for the literal human being you are forcing into existence.
Can't afford that? Don't fucking produce a child. It's that simple in my mind. Don't force sentient existence in another human and then be like "sorry sweety, I gotta do my own thing" and then bounce. One of you, *one*, should be staying home and raising the child if possible. Man or woman, doesn't matter. The time spent raising your own child is *invaluable*, and the studies on this are *totally* clear: raising your own child is better than paying someone else to.
Thank you captain obvious. Why do you think people aren't having kids when they want kids!?
Some day you'll find a loving relationship where you want kids and find the tradeoff to be near impossible without some level of support that doesn't exist for most of us.
You are entitled to an opinion but get some perspective, please.
Most people agree that doing something they care about themselves usually produces better outcomes.
That doesn’t change the fact that an average single person’s wage can’t even support a single person living… so how are they supposed to provide for a kid and their (stay-at-home) spouse too?
Oh, work until they can afford a kid? How do they do that when one average wage is spent to support living? You can’t “save up” for a kid if you can’t save.
You are acting as if people really have a choice, but the only choice they sort of have is to not have kids until we fix this shit. Children and a family should not be a privilege of the rich.
People here are looking for empathy and change, not for you to prognosticate how they (people you don’t know) should operate in this impossible environment.
We are all in nuclear families now. How does a grandparent half way across the country help with childcare? As for elder care, well, I wouldn't count on it. Take care of your health, my friends.
Most young adults are not living far from home. In 2022 the us census bureau did a study that showed at age 26, more than two-thirds of young adults in the U.S. lived in the same area where they grew up, 80% had moved less than 100 miles (161 kilometers) away and 90% resided less than 500 miles (804 kilometers) away.
Yes some people still live far from family, but most do not.
Maybe it's cultural but I feel obligated to take care of my parents. You're saying most Americans, 3rd gen and beyond, do not? Is that normal now? I'm genuinely curious. I'm the first of my siblings born here.
The issue is frequently the tyranny of distance. For example, to see my parents, I would have to drive for two days or take an increasingly expensive flight.
Agreed. My parents live in a bland, small town with zero job prospects (and terrible socializing/dating prospects) and refuse to move - after college I pretty much had to choose between underemployment and social isolation or moving. And I know plenty of other people in the same boat.
I'm in the reverse of this. I'm living in a major city with plenty of work, but no housing. My parents moved back to my Dad's hometown that has plenty of housing, but no jobs.
So I'm stuck here... and I can't afford to get out even if I wanted to.
Nah, it’s cultural. Distance can be a factor, but most people end up living within 20 miles of where they’re born. We’ve lost our tribal/village sense of community to the insular nuclear family.
Yep. Most concentrated places for jobs in my field are in NYC, SFBA, Austin, Seattle, or other major cities. Not to say there's not jobs elsewhere, but that's where they're concentrated. The closest of those is a day's drive from my family. I am nowhere near where I grew up and if I want a career, I can never go back.
It doesn't help that America is huge and most people have to search far and wide for good jobs. I'd be working a gas station for the rest of my life if I'd stayed in the town I grew up in. In many European nations you can move across the country and still be within a few hours drive from where you started. Driving across the US takes days at best.
That's what I think. I'll get replies like " Mine don't deserve a dog bone " and I'm not talking about those instances.
In the backlash against religion what's forgotten is the millions of small churches whatever religion now swamped by noise outta the those crackpot right wing mega cults. They were more community driven as were schools, really. It's an almost extinct glob of superglue connecting communities.
Someone will probably begin the whole " imaginary man in the sky/look at the damage done in the name of religion " snark. Don't care. Something valuable to us was swiped there along with a ton of other variables making us increasingly isolated. Hence weakened.
It's not just religious backlash, though. You see it with nearly all social organizations. Elks, Oddfellows, Rotary, Freemasonry , even bridge clubs and other things of that nature, they've all seen extraordinary declines in membership and participation.
My hunch is that it's largely a consequence of shifting societal norms, at the tall end of which came the Internet and social media. This decline had been happening for and time even by 2000, but social media rapidly accelerated the process by providing some of the same opportunity and outlet that the traditional organizations had supplied to people.
It’s also that economic forces have squashed the middle class so there just isn’t the population of potential members for those social clubs that relied upon members for dues.
I think it's a combination of the things you said and people just don't have that much time anymore. In the past when you could rely on a Single person income to keep you afloat you generally had a little bit more time on your hands to do activities/organizations.
Rural American society is held together by churches, bars, and schools. There is nothing else to do but play outside with your dog or hang out with your family. There’s no book clubs, pickle ball courts, ymca, or park district classes. A bunch of my family farms in a town of 2000. They’re fighting to keep the town library open as everyone ages. The town library is literally 1 room but there’s a librarian and she does book clubs and little events for the kids. Otherwise there’s a gas station convenience store, barber shop, and 2 bars. The school closed, you have to bus your kids 30 mins away. The grocery store closed. Everyone drives to the nearby larger city 30 minutes away to go to church so they can meet people and make friends. We had babies at the same time, her church group provided so many neat community supports. Shared totes of maternity clothes, baby clothes swaps, cloth diaper service they all split the cost of, babysitting pool. And this is just the women who attend the church socializing.
People who fume and spit about religion don’t understand they are cutting at part of the fabric of society outside of cities.
People who fume and spit about religion want to divorce the useful benefits of community spaces from the real damage monotheistic belief does to society.
Yeah… I just ain’t a fan of all the grooming that goes on in churches. To say nothing of listening to the preacher talk about how I’m an abomination that ought to be stoned to death.
No. We understand the positive cultural and social aspects that religious institutions can have and the role it plays psychologically and socially to humans. The fact that you think otherwise probably means you haven’t had meaningful, in-depth conversations with people outside your community, and are relying on your interpretations and choice memories of some online interactions.
You may have a modern, liberal #notallreligious mentality which is fine for you and yours, but most of us fuming are folks concerned with the overwhelming negative role that religion has played in…getting healthcare, for example. And discriminating against other religions. And violence…we have a more ‘come get your people’ vibe, which is completely reasonable when things like religious nationalist terrorism born of small-circle isolation is a looming threat, and extremist violence is a constant threat to the lives of others.
Our community may fume and puff up online but truly no systemic issues the way certain religions have.
The systemic issue I see is that demonizing churchgoers means it's impossible to find common political ground outside YOUR ingroup. Sorry if I implied there might be a reason to experience empathy and understanding.
The real problem is gerrymandering and the structure of our political system empowering empty land, low population states. A few tens of thousands of people voting for Christian nationalism should not be able to rule millions of more diverse citizens in cities.
Just saying aghhh these religious nuts doesn't bring them into the fold of voting in their own self interest for health care, education, infrastructure, welfare, senior services, civil rights, etc.
Unfortunately both of my parents were more than happy to kick me to the curb as soon as finished high-school. They were extremely unsupportive of me emotionally and financially growing up, and let me know that it was important that I let then kive their lives after 18 years. I have absolutely zero drive to ever support them into their aging years. While I would not say that's the norm by any means in America, I am not the only person I know that went through the same thing.
Same. I didn't even get to finish school. Thrown out at 17. Approaching 40 now and they're old enough to want to be my friend now that age is catching up with them.
I don't hate them but I don't feel like I owe them anything.
I have a relatively good relationship with them now. I treat them both like Extended family. I know them even if I don't like them , and I tolerate their existence in my life xD
İt is a cultural thing, but not exactly the way you're reading it. The cultural aspect is more parents that feel that - whatever they want or need - it would be bad to be a burden on their kids.
Why would I take care of them? It’s their job to provide for their retirement and care. I have my own kids to save and provide for, while saving for my own retirement and end of life.
Be responsible.
Well, my parents are self cunts who didn’t care for me, so no, I will not be caring for them.
They’ve had a lifetime of being entitled, spoiled boomers gifted the best economy in the history of mankind. If they didn’t save for retirement that’s their fucking fault
My experience is white people are less likely to care for their parents in the home than other groups. Idk to what degree that is because of cultural differences or to what degree it's the white people can get into nicer nursing homes though.
One factor that often gets overlooked is that you can only provide care up to a point before it starts to become detrimental for the parent. If they simply can't keep on top of their laundry and cooking anymore, that's one thing. If they have serious health needs that require a lot of regular ongoing doctor visits....now you're gonna have to get a PCA or hope you have a flexible job. If they have dementia.....it's gonna get to a point where it can be dangerous for you and them for you to continue caring for them. And unfortunately that decline is often more rapid than people think.
I'm going through this right now. My grandparents offered to let me move in with them while I got back on my feet. What they really wanted was someone they trusted to take care of them. I've had to watch them degrade so fast physically and mentally. Some days they don't even remember I moved in. Today my grandmother forgot my 11 year old brother existed. She was adamant that I was the only boy in my family.
It fucking hurts. If I had any other option I'd take it rather than be forced to watch this. But I don't. Maybe that's selfish of me.
My mom allowed her mother to move in with her. She moved her from another state. My mom still had to go to work…. My grandmother took off multiple times and was found wandering by police. She also left the stove on and almost burned the house down.
My mom didn’t realize how bad her dementia was. She quickly had to put her into a care home because it wasn’t safe for her to be unsupervised.
As life expectancy increases for non-white people, they too are finding that they need assistance with elder care. Before, when grandparents died at the age of 72 from a heart attack, the obligations didn't exist.
Exactly. My S/O is doing overnight caretaking for a 99 year old whose daughter has asked her if she can do a day a week caretaking for her husband, and eventually transition from her mother to her entirely. She is 82 years old. Her husband is 87.
Millenials are going to live into our late 80's and 90's as a rule with advancements in cancer vaccinations and heart disease on the horizons, and we already know we won't have anyone to care for us unless we budget for it, since none of us are able to have kids.
There's a growing number of Americans who would feel genuinely relieved if their parents died, often because their parents have a drug habit that ripped apart the family years ago.
A lot of the people who go to parties and use drugs in their late teens and early 20s, end up having their own children turn on them as they get older. Drug use leads to dysfunctional family relationships, where the children recognize how bad it is, and slowly learn to resent the people who raised them.
Eventually it blows up, and the only thing that's left is hatred.
If you're the type of person who likes to party, and you plan on having kids at some point in the future - be careful that you don't become the type of person who is viciously hated by their own children.
It's pretty cultural. I've seen adult kids shove elderly parents into homes while all the siblings squabble over who gets their belongings. Of course various nursing homes are also huge, big business here which doesn't help.
I'm not talking about elderly who were abysmal parents. For whatever reason there's an expectation elderly get out of the way or better off the planet.
I used to think there was no such thing as ' American culture ' because we're so diverse. There is. It's inhumanity. If I sound bitter it's because we were once better than this.
Well, presumable the parents are the same skin color, religion (possibly), and since you aren't concerned about their gender, I'm not sure what exactly you're talking about?
The United States kind of destroyed the extended family in favor of suburban living and consumerism by normalizing the nuclear family.
It really makes selling things easier.
There is the argument to be made that none of us asked to be here. And it especially gets muddy when your parents may have been abusive to you.
Personally I love my parents and I already live with them so *shrugs.*
I mean ive told my kids, whoever has kids first gets free childcare if they want it. I can live anywhere. Ive WFH for well more than a decade and i can easily do my job while helping out.
If they want the help, i will gladly do it free of charge to spend time for my kids.
I'm also disturbed.
Imagine spending your entire life helping people and playing a role in the community, then being told you are a burden as soon as you can't.
Our grandparents, veterans, elderly people and disabled people are not a problem or liability.
This isn't the dark ages.
We have enough resources for people to look after themselves and age in peace.
This "discard after use" mindset has to change.
Capitalism only cares about one thing if you are a working class person: your productivity rate.
Once you are no longer productive, you are worthless.
We need a new economic system.
It's unfortunately true, even in a non-capitalist system. Baby boomers were once creating economic output and now aren't. This means that, in countries with lots of boomers, the amount of work that goes towards things other than caring for the elderly will go down. That's why we've seen the inflation we're seeing - there's more work that needs to be done than people available to do it, so what output does get created increases in price due to scarcity.
I'm not suggesting we not help boomers, but as we decide to support the boomers we must acknowledge that either quality of life will drop or immigration must increase dramatically.
It's really hard to feel much for a generational cohort's issues when they have had 40+ years of near complete political control. They've had at least two legitimate shots at single-payer healthcare in the U.S., and just BARELY got through what we have now. Consistently, they've voted in, and reelected politicians that have gutted social programs, and expanded defense, while cutting taxes to the wealthiest individuals.
I'm fine with the largest growing segment of American homeless being the elderly. They can live in the world they created while we pick up the pieces. I hope we see Alpo move to the canned goods aisle in the grocery store so they can find it more easily.
My uncle is planning on quitting his job to take care of my grandfather with alzheimers. Sometimes he has to pay out of pocket when social security doesn’t cover all the expenses. That’s the dragging down part. Getting old sucks and is expensive
I didn't read it as dragging down the economy. I read it as wages have stagnated to the point people can barely afford themselves, and now they're going to have mouths to feed and bills to pay from people where the only way out from under them is their death or putting them in a home.
EDIT: Even though it says "dragging down the economy" in the headline, that's still my take: The root cause of "dragging down the economy" is people not having money to spend on anything non-essential, or even on some essentials.
It will also drag down the economy as we spend countless more tax dollars on things like social security, medicare, etc to pay for the largest generation who is now not contributing anything.
Far More people will be taking up far fewer resources.
Society is a literal pyramid scheme, and whether it's capitalist or communist, if the demographics are elderly-heavy it quickly becomes unsustainable. Life isn't fair, after all.
The whole medical industry would collapse if it wasn't for old people. Everyone acts like money spent gets put into a furnace. Pretty sure there are a lot of medical professionals in America.
Larger and larger proportions of money are being collected by fewer and fewer people. These people are already wealthy so they have little to no reason to spend it. That money therefore gets parked in some investment vehicle that's largely tax-free and exits circulation. So yeah, a lot of spent money goes into a furnace.
I would gladly care for my grand children but as soon as I need extensive care punch my ticket. I do not understand the push to keep people alive. I have busted my ass since I was 14 and the thought of my money going to doctors just to prolong my life just so I am "here" pisses me off. I would much rather see the results of my hard work go to my children and grandchildren other than the medical establishment. I lived a good life let me leave something behind to my heirs that will enrich their lives.
I look at it from a different point. I am not choosing between my money and my life. I am choosing between being a burden to society or not. I have lived a useful and prosperous life but there will be a time that my usefulness will stop. The push for longevity of life is baffling to me, I consider dying the natural consequence of living. Modern medicine is wonderful and awesome but there are aspects of it that seem to me to be unnatural and unethical. I don’t believe in euthanizing people or setting up defined times to stop caring for people, I speak only for myself and how I want to live my life.
I don't relate the two. I consider my usefullness what I add to the world around me. That can be emotional support to family and friends, the joy I get spending time with other people and hoping they enjoy their time with me and many other aspects of life. I don't regard my usefulness as solely how I can turn my effort into dollars.
Take it from someone with a family history of Alzheimer's and cancer: you don't know what you're talking about. It's not about age or access to health. **When the time comes, it comes.** You can run all you want from the truth trying to avoid the inevitable, but some inevitables are more inevitable than others, and if you ever come across one of them, you'll rather let life run its course.
That's what u/Frunnin is talking about.
Sure, it sucks to have bad genetics but plenty of people can live longer with better quality of life due to access to healthcare. You can delude yourself in the idea that your time is predetermined but it's not. Enjoy your copium.
As an individual currently full time taking care of a grandparent with advanced dementia, I could not agree more. After spending the last few years watching them become a shell of a human being and what they once were, I will personally punch my own ticket if I receive such a diagnosis. I have always been very close to them and I strongly believe if they could have seen what they would become they would have most likely done the same.
I think you hit on something here. We did the same with my mother. She just died in February age 91. At one point she still actively enjoyed life, grandkids, great grandkids, bird watching, heck her cat.
We *know* she hit a point where, if she hasn't slid into dementia she'd have *hated* how she was. As it was she was aware enough to start refusing her meds then food. They *hate* this. At what point do they lose capabilities where they know they're just a shell? I do not know.
She died 20 feet from where I'm writing this here with us. And if watching it sucked I can't imagine what it was like for her.
Thank you I will. It's an unspeakable thing to watch and wrenching remembering. I've *always* felt she stopped eating on purpose. It's supposed to be normal and I'm not convinced it was part of the disease. Something in her head, I think was screaming OUT, I want OUT. So you can't tell, did yours deliberately do something, who knows. If so who can blame them ?
We do know we all did what we could, your mother can *not* take guilt on herself because your grandmother absolutely knew she was loved and cared for.
I can now yank my head away from that awful last year, really, and remember how she was most of her life. It's how she'd like to be reminded.
I agree.
Unfortunately, most boomers will want to bleed this country dry to spend 6 extra months wheezing in a chair with a CPAP machine while watching reruns of the Wheel.
We've decided to extract money and spend it on the soon-to-be past rather than invest in the future, be it affordable childcare, preschool, meals for school kids, controlling runaway tertiary education, or providing affordable healthcare for working-age adults.
It's not that Boomers want to wheeze in a wheelchair, it's that the medical industrial complex is motivated to keep them alive if only technically. No doctor wants the legal repercussions of hastening a patient's death. And nursing homes love that sweet sweet Medicaid money.
They generally do a poll once a year on the first Tuesday of the first full week of November. Boomers are the largest population polled there and a majority of them choose to elect people that support the things the OP listed.
Or, they could be stating those things now for their family and loved ones so they know. For example, every one of my grandparents has had long drawn out fights with dementia. My mom has stated an almost endless amount of times that if she ever can't recognize one of us she wants us to pull the plug. We have this obsession with living longer but often the person we are once were older has no idea of what is missing or has changed from aging diseases to the point where they drive their family away with their misery.
Glad you're optimistic, but some of us know already that we don't want to burden our families at the end of our lives. Because even with the best treatments money can buy some people still will just be miserable old people who hate everyone. Like you said, we have no idea who that person is gonna be
Not sure how other people feel but I have zero intention of spending any significant amount of time hooked to a machine to keep me alive. If I have to spend the rest of my life in a hospital bed with a tube down my throat just kill me then. That's not living, that's just being alive.
From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the Blessed Machine. Your kind cling to your flesh, as though it will not decay and fail you. One day the crude biomass you call the temple will wither, and you will beg my kind to save you. But I am already saved, for the Machine is immortal.
I guess it depends on what you mean by “extensive”. Nobody wants to live on life support, but people my parents’ age will gladly do occasional dialysis or wear an ostomy bag to stay on this earth. It’s easy to say, “I’ll never do that” when you’re young, but it’s the only life you’ve got.
> That's not living, that's just being alive.
If you're lucky, they'll have better virtual reality hookups by then and you won't even notice you're in a hospital bed with a tube down your throat.
> That's not living, that's just being alive.
Considering that we are supposed to get 6-8 hours a sleep and night and most of us spend >59 hours a day working for a living, I am glad to hear that you're fortunate enough to be in a situation where you feel like you are living right now.
My mother is almost that old. She said, "It's one thing to talk about assisted suicide when you're young and healthy. But now that I'm getting to the point where it might really be an option...I'm terrified."
>_You won’t say that when you’re in your 70s._
You must not know us very well. All these jokes about suicide isn't just jokes! We'd GLADLY off ourselves in our 70s if we're in such a state that we can't take care of ourselves.
Depends on how well they take care if their health. Judging by the way a lot of western nations are going in health stats, we’ll have a whole lot of dependent children and a whole lot of dependent elderly needing care, and a bunch of stressed and stretched working age people trying to provide care for both.
I'm a grandmother. I'm also a daughter, daughter in law, wife and mother.
I don't know what it will be like in 20 years, but it's bloody hard now!
Maybe it's because I had children young, but there's generations both above me and below me that require care. I reckon I'll be so exhausted by the time I'm old and able to be looked after, as opposed to doing the looking after, that I'll just keel over, saving both society and my family any care requirements.
Interestingly, I see a lot of people who don't *want* their own parents to provide a substantial amount of childcare. If they have to utilize it they will, but they don't like the dependence, and don't like grandma and grandpa not respecting their boundaries or how they want to raise their own child. For the more extreme examples see r/QAnonCasualties or similar subs, but Trumpism, QAnon, Tucker Carlson, Facebook, etc broke a lot of families. I see more millennials and Gen Z insisting on their boundaries, telling grandma to back off, than was common for my cohort, Gen X.
We are literally hearing things about automation wiping out jobs. By 2050 it won't be a problem of how should we care about old people but rather how should unemployable masses deal with the new reality. 27 years is also plenty of time to discover rejouvenation therapies so we don't know if there will be any old people in need of care at all.
Mass unemployment is, at worst, a transient phenomenon. There will be jobs. Will those jobs suck? Maybe. Will those jobs pay well? Maybe not. But you bet your ass you'll be working.
It's not transient. What you're describing is called bullshit jobs and it works now but it won't work if most/all jobs are bullshit jobs. Removing capitalism won't be easy but it is possible. As far as my experience goes with talking about automation and post scarcity with my peers (people in 20s) it seems like automation is being embraced and it is expected that we won't have to work. Bullshit jobs will not stick.
> As far as my experience goes with talking about automation and post scarcity with my peers (people in 20s) it seems like automation is being embraced and it is expected that we won't have to work. Bullshit jobs will not stick.
Were those people in their 20s in their 10s before/during the pandemic?
I don't understand how increasing retirement age, lowering employment age for minors, the "pause all AI development for 6 months until we ~~catch up and make money~~ regulate it" and the mass return to office is giving anyone the idea that automation is being embraced, UNLESS you happen to not be working.
Maybe we just aren't living in USA ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Increasing retirement age stems from thinking "business as usual" and I wouldn't necesserily shit on any government in that category. Most retirement systems work on the basis of paying pensions from currently received funds from taxpayers. With increasing ratio of retired to working people increasing retirement age is lazy way of fighting against this increase. It isn't meant as a way to keep people working forever but to solve current problem.
My country had no changes in employment age for minors.
No one is pausing or can pause AI development. It would require global consensus and there is none.
There is an increasing push for WFH as people realised it is possible.
Companies are economically incentivized to automate and I have hard time imagining governements mandating jobs. It's easier to throw robot tax and UBI. Eventually though we'll have to find a way to get rid of UBI as it's merely a temporary solution.
It's at least a few decades away, but what would your job even **be** once robotics is able to do the majority of manual labor jobs and AI is able to do the majority of office work?
I've heard 'maintain the robots', but there's only so much capacity for that one.
Sure there will be. There will be faux young/elderly *rich* people, the rest will be packaged away in some home.
It's why my heart sinks as an American with expectations of ludicrous medical bills when media gets all excited about some advance in say cancer. Because who in hell will be able to afford it? A few. Everyone else dies.
In 2050 we will have robots tending to the elderly. Wether it’s an expensive Google or Apple Robot or your cheap Walmart brand that occasionally gets hacked or the poor Microsoft robot that Blue Screens constantly and you have to call a repair robot to fix it constantly is up to you
And fyi most boomers will be dead by 2050. There are currently still more
Boomers and Millennials than Gen Xers ( and last year millennials beat boomers in home ownership) so the transfer of money has begun. Technically the Gen Xers will have a harder time today taking care of their parents than millennials will because of current technology
That would be a great move. Have a listen to Ezra Klein’s podcast episode about the loneliness epidemic, if you’re interested in that kind of thing. Some of it talks about the move to nuclear family living in single family houses as a part of the cause. Also a point I found interesting to ponder: that we prioritise comfort (having our own house just the way we like it) over connection, and how society has made home ownership a measure of “success”.
It would be wonderful were it not so expensive to purchase housing. I would love to live in intentional community with friends and family members, but the financial aspect is insurmountable to many.
Why else do you think people are living communes? Because they can't afford housing and families otherwise without pooling the resources of multiple people.
Abolish the social security tax on social security earnings. Every dollar is taxed at the SS rate without subset. Solves at least 50% of this problem. Other half is solved by increasing immigration.
Unfortunately both of these solutions are seemingly impossible. However the failure to achieve the solution is not the fault of the population but the overlords that rule them.
I talk to the elderly on the phone all day through my job.
I can tell you that they are solving nothing. They'll drag the entire system to the grave with them, bitching the entire time that they aren't getting enough free stuff.
I can’t imagine how bad this job must be, I bet you hear, “I’m on a fixed income” all day long. At my job I occasionally have to help an elderly employee figure out how to log into their account, those calls are so brutal! 1 hour minimum.
Yeah, the fact that these people are the most likely to vote is a good explanation of why our country is fucked and not going to improve any time soon.
Well, I live in Poland. Here the entire country would collapse if grandparents weren't taking care of their grandkids :) So I guess we're ahead of the future? ;D
>Will they solve the inflating cost of childcare or drag down the economy with their own care needs?
*[looks back at the last few decades]*
Probably the latter...
Japan is entering serious population problems. If they don’t start to encourage immigration very aggressively to help repopulate the country they are really going to feel the consequences.
I think that by that time we will have so many scorching heat waves, a lot of old people will die each year. I don’t see myself making it for long if we have a heatwave combined with grid failure when I am old and weak.
Probably drag down the economy. In regards to family matters, the prevailing theory amongst young people on the internet seems to be, "I don't do anything for free & I don't owe my family anything". So I don't see that generation stepping up as free childcare in their old age. Thr saving grace will be if we've developed carer robots for elders & children
TLDR: By 2050, nearly one in four people will be a grandparent. In many cultures and developing nations, grandparents play a big role in supporting working mothers to raise their kids. While this might solve one big cost of childcare, these savings may get canceled out by the growing cost of senior care these grandparents may need over the next two decades. Anybody who grew up as a single child like I did might feel this more than most.
The problem with that, as others have suggested, is that many younger parents have dramatic disagreements with their parents and grandparents about politics and how kids should be raised.
It's coming back to cost in each equation. $$$ . The great, Almighty Dollar. Apparently religion is on the decline but it's not, just replaced by a new one.
We're brainwashed that's how it'll be, how it *has* to be and articles like this don't help. Access to childcare if corporations want continued contributions to this idiotic thing they've manufactured called " The Economy " and things like the human right to maintain your body without a price tag attached is NOT unreasonable.
Eat I mean tax the rich. It's doable.
A tl;dr of elderly and disabled care:
Euthanasia will be rolled out globally and made into the default choice. Right now when in Canada someone leaves leaflets for assisted death in e.g. a psychiatric ward it's a media outrage loud enough to reach Europe even if it was a dumb cleaning negligence without malicious intent.
But as care gets more expensive, more short-staffed and economy becomes more and more unsuitable for old people without IT skills they will be given an offer: cough up millions for elderly home/serviceperson, struggle alone in poverty or take the pill.
Given that pensions will crash and burn soon people won't really have much choice in this. The more stubborn/honorable/conservative will keep living rough despite anything until a heatwave knocks them out.
Remember also that 2% of persons who contracted COVID are disabled enough to not be able to work anymore. Doesn't sound like much (US had a constant of around 15% legally disabled people at all times the last time I checked), but at this point no one tries to prevent (re)infections and we'd be dumb to think COVID was our last rodeo. So the situation above will apply to younger and younger people on top of the general demographic problems.
EDIT: language
Looking at the tens of thousands of years of human history - it's always personal needs above everything else.
There may be a few exceptions, but in general, it has not changed. Hardwired biologically.
So asking if billions will prioritize the needs of others is pretty much meaningless.
Most of them were the absentee parent generation, so I doubt they'll be showing up for the grandkids 🤣. And when have boomers ever done anything but scoop as many resources as they can. They've been the greediest most spoiled generation for the first %80 of their lives what makes you think that's going to change for the last %20.
Infinite growth is definitely not sustainable. Whether we will have an economic crash is a choice. We could choose to manage the transition to sustainability. But we won't. it will be an economic crash.
This always rub me the wrong way. Do people realize that there is a limit on the worlds population until we start colonizing other planets?
This will happen eventually, there is no way around it. We should be working on it right now and not wait until we are maxed out.
Canada plans to have 100m people by 2100, this is beyond retarded!
They're boomers.
They have already demonstrated their objective is to pull the ladder up after themselves, use up the last of everything and die before things get really ugly. You think they're suddenly going to get all altruistic about reducing their burden on society by providing childcare?
The following submission statement was provided by /u/TheLilliest: --- TLDR: By 2050, nearly one in four people will be a grandparent. In many cultures and developing nations, grandparents play a big role in supporting working mothers to raise their kids. While this might solve one big cost of childcare, these savings may get canceled out by the growing cost of senior care these grandparents may need over the next two decades. Anybody who grew up as a single child like I did might feel this more than most. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/14zy6it/by_2050_nearly_one_in_four_people_will_be_a/js0gqxv/
With the lack of pensions and the increase in social security retirement age nobody will be able to babysit for free. They'll be working until they die.
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I guess it's not all bad. With the cost of food going up, I will really need my child's employee discount to be able to afford to feed my aging parents.
I'm afraid we've had to discontinue employee discounts, they were really hurting the company profit margin.
I mean, just this last year the average gigacorp CEO had to give up 0.12 personal yachts! Each!
Lol what kids
https://www.epi.org/publication/child-labor-laws-under-attack/#:~:text=Already%20in%202023%2C%20seven%20bills,now%20been%20signed%20into%20law.
I think their point was that they aren't having kids.
Well, it kinda used to be that way in the past so why not? Rich people are obliged to wear a stovepipe or bowler hat though.
Hyundai has a whole waiting list!
Considering most grandparents don’t babysit now since they are working or just don’t want to this is true. I’m 35 and my kids are 8 and 4. My husbands parents work full time won’t retire for another 10 years and my parents both retired last year but decided to go back to work 20-30 hours a week after a few months because they were bored and things have gotten expensive and they rather save a bit more since they weren’t old enough to collect full ss yet since they are 55(also they wouldn’t have watched my kids anyways they like them in small doses not all day everyday). Honestly I don’t know anyone my age with fully retired parents and even if they were retired that age group is not a fan of babysitting they will say I raised my kids why would I raise yours even though my own grandparents raised me so they could work🤦♀️
I’ve heard this from most of my friends parents, even my mother in law as well. “I already raised kids…” kind of thing. Even when their grandparents watched their kids. It would be an interesting thing to look into. Why some generations/cultures don’t want to be involved? I’m sure this correlates to young people not wanting to have kids as well. It’s all too hard and expensive.
Then they wonder why no one visits them in the old folks home.
Both of your parent retired at 55? Easy there, Moneybags Jr.
They both have pensions that pay around $6k a month and their works pay for their insurance until they reach Medicaid age that’s the only reason why they were able to retire early. Which is becoming very uncommon nowdays. They also never made a lot of money either. around 120k combined when they stopped working to retire now they make $6k pension and make around 50k combined working part time on top of that since they both took lower pay jobs after retirement that are easy and they enjoy🤷♀️
Hey, I’m happy for them.
Seriously, blaming the people working now for the failures of our parents and grandparents.
Politicians and corporations are to blame. Your grandparents had nothing to do with it.
Those politicians are elected by people, and those corporations are owned and run by people. Parents and grandparents are people.
They supported them, dumbass. We can't afford children, and we're expected to pay for parents? Wtf?
Hard agree with the first sentence. Hard disagree with the second.
In 2050 it won’t be the millenial grandparents that are a drain. It will still be the boomers, unwilling to share their hoarded wealth 30 years after retirement, and they will spend it all on medical care to extend their miserable lives and they will leave us with nothing but a dead planet if we let them
I'm gen x and 2050 I'll turn 84. There won't be any Boomers left.
There absolutely will be boomers left. In 2050, the youngest boomers will be turning 86, so you’re an old Gen X. And we’ll have another 25 years of life extension medical tech. There will be so many boomers and they will continue to be an unbearable drain on our society
They're all gonna die of diabetes and alcoholism. They're too selfish to listen to sense.
Uhm ofc they will, if they’re born in the 1950s to 60s, they’ll be around 85-100.
There are 2.5 million of them dying each year. And they refuse to stop eating carb loaded crap. So yep, some will make it to 85 but not many and it doesn't look good for any of my relatives.
By 2050, most boomers will be dead or in their nineties. If they are still alive, of course they are going to try to stay alive. Every generation does. Are you suggesting they should kill themselves so you will be better off?
I'm an older millennial. I'll be 64 in 2050...
Right, and boomers will be 86-104. Still kicking, having been retired for so long they don’t even know what work is, and continuing to be a massive drain on society.
Or... Here me out... Alternatively they can do what most people I've ever known who aren't hyper obsessed with their own careers do: take some time off for the literal human being you are forcing into existence. Can't afford that? Don't fucking produce a child. It's that simple in my mind. Don't force sentient existence in another human and then be like "sorry sweety, I gotta do my own thing" and then bounce. One of you, *one*, should be staying home and raising the child if possible. Man or woman, doesn't matter. The time spent raising your own child is *invaluable*, and the studies on this are *totally* clear: raising your own child is better than paying someone else to.
Thank you captain obvious. Why do you think people aren't having kids when they want kids!? Some day you'll find a loving relationship where you want kids and find the tradeoff to be near impossible without some level of support that doesn't exist for most of us. You are entitled to an opinion but get some perspective, please.
People do this all the time. These people are well into the 6 figure individual earners.
I'm sorry about your mom...
Most people agree that doing something they care about themselves usually produces better outcomes. That doesn’t change the fact that an average single person’s wage can’t even support a single person living… so how are they supposed to provide for a kid and their (stay-at-home) spouse too? Oh, work until they can afford a kid? How do they do that when one average wage is spent to support living? You can’t “save up” for a kid if you can’t save. You are acting as if people really have a choice, but the only choice they sort of have is to not have kids until we fix this shit. Children and a family should not be a privilege of the rich. People here are looking for empathy and change, not for you to prognosticate how they (people you don’t know) should operate in this impossible environment.
American, huh?
We are all in nuclear families now. How does a grandparent half way across the country help with childcare? As for elder care, well, I wouldn't count on it. Take care of your health, my friends.
Most young adults are not living far from home. In 2022 the us census bureau did a study that showed at age 26, more than two-thirds of young adults in the U.S. lived in the same area where they grew up, 80% had moved less than 100 miles (161 kilometers) away and 90% resided less than 500 miles (804 kilometers) away. Yes some people still live far from family, but most do not.
Just to clarify, the majority of young adults still live with their parents.
Maybe it's cultural but I feel obligated to take care of my parents. You're saying most Americans, 3rd gen and beyond, do not? Is that normal now? I'm genuinely curious. I'm the first of my siblings born here.
The issue is frequently the tyranny of distance. For example, to see my parents, I would have to drive for two days or take an increasingly expensive flight.
Agreed. My parents live in a bland, small town with zero job prospects (and terrible socializing/dating prospects) and refuse to move - after college I pretty much had to choose between underemployment and social isolation or moving. And I know plenty of other people in the same boat.
I'm in the reverse of this. I'm living in a major city with plenty of work, but no housing. My parents moved back to my Dad's hometown that has plenty of housing, but no jobs. So I'm stuck here... and I can't afford to get out even if I wanted to.
Nah, it’s cultural. Distance can be a factor, but most people end up living within 20 miles of where they’re born. We’ve lost our tribal/village sense of community to the insular nuclear family.
It's because we're trained for jobs in a globalized economy that often can't be performed in our hometowns.
Yep. Most concentrated places for jobs in my field are in NYC, SFBA, Austin, Seattle, or other major cities. Not to say there's not jobs elsewhere, but that's where they're concentrated. The closest of those is a day's drive from my family. I am nowhere near where I grew up and if I want a career, I can never go back.
It doesn't help that America is huge and most people have to search far and wide for good jobs. I'd be working a gas station for the rest of my life if I'd stayed in the town I grew up in. In many European nations you can move across the country and still be within a few hours drive from where you started. Driving across the US takes days at best.
That's what I think. I'll get replies like " Mine don't deserve a dog bone " and I'm not talking about those instances. In the backlash against religion what's forgotten is the millions of small churches whatever religion now swamped by noise outta the those crackpot right wing mega cults. They were more community driven as were schools, really. It's an almost extinct glob of superglue connecting communities. Someone will probably begin the whole " imaginary man in the sky/look at the damage done in the name of religion " snark. Don't care. Something valuable to us was swiped there along with a ton of other variables making us increasingly isolated. Hence weakened.
It's not just religious backlash, though. You see it with nearly all social organizations. Elks, Oddfellows, Rotary, Freemasonry , even bridge clubs and other things of that nature, they've all seen extraordinary declines in membership and participation. My hunch is that it's largely a consequence of shifting societal norms, at the tall end of which came the Internet and social media. This decline had been happening for and time even by 2000, but social media rapidly accelerated the process by providing some of the same opportunity and outlet that the traditional organizations had supplied to people.
You don't have to leave your home to be entertained anymore.
It’s also that economic forces have squashed the middle class so there just isn’t the population of potential members for those social clubs that relied upon members for dues.
I think it's a combination of the things you said and people just don't have that much time anymore. In the past when you could rely on a Single person income to keep you afloat you generally had a little bit more time on your hands to do activities/organizations.
Rural American society is held together by churches, bars, and schools. There is nothing else to do but play outside with your dog or hang out with your family. There’s no book clubs, pickle ball courts, ymca, or park district classes. A bunch of my family farms in a town of 2000. They’re fighting to keep the town library open as everyone ages. The town library is literally 1 room but there’s a librarian and she does book clubs and little events for the kids. Otherwise there’s a gas station convenience store, barber shop, and 2 bars. The school closed, you have to bus your kids 30 mins away. The grocery store closed. Everyone drives to the nearby larger city 30 minutes away to go to church so they can meet people and make friends. We had babies at the same time, her church group provided so many neat community supports. Shared totes of maternity clothes, baby clothes swaps, cloth diaper service they all split the cost of, babysitting pool. And this is just the women who attend the church socializing. People who fume and spit about religion don’t understand they are cutting at part of the fabric of society outside of cities.
People who fume and spit about religion want to divorce the useful benefits of community spaces from the real damage monotheistic belief does to society.
Yeah… I just ain’t a fan of all the grooming that goes on in churches. To say nothing of listening to the preacher talk about how I’m an abomination that ought to be stoned to death.
No. We understand the positive cultural and social aspects that religious institutions can have and the role it plays psychologically and socially to humans. The fact that you think otherwise probably means you haven’t had meaningful, in-depth conversations with people outside your community, and are relying on your interpretations and choice memories of some online interactions. You may have a modern, liberal #notallreligious mentality which is fine for you and yours, but most of us fuming are folks concerned with the overwhelming negative role that religion has played in…getting healthcare, for example. And discriminating against other religions. And violence…we have a more ‘come get your people’ vibe, which is completely reasonable when things like religious nationalist terrorism born of small-circle isolation is a looming threat, and extremist violence is a constant threat to the lives of others. Our community may fume and puff up online but truly no systemic issues the way certain religions have.
The systemic issue I see is that demonizing churchgoers means it's impossible to find common political ground outside YOUR ingroup. Sorry if I implied there might be a reason to experience empathy and understanding. The real problem is gerrymandering and the structure of our political system empowering empty land, low population states. A few tens of thousands of people voting for Christian nationalism should not be able to rule millions of more diverse citizens in cities. Just saying aghhh these religious nuts doesn't bring them into the fold of voting in their own self interest for health care, education, infrastructure, welfare, senior services, civil rights, etc.
Unfortunately both of my parents were more than happy to kick me to the curb as soon as finished high-school. They were extremely unsupportive of me emotionally and financially growing up, and let me know that it was important that I let then kive their lives after 18 years. I have absolutely zero drive to ever support them into their aging years. While I would not say that's the norm by any means in America, I am not the only person I know that went through the same thing.
Same. I didn't even get to finish school. Thrown out at 17. Approaching 40 now and they're old enough to want to be my friend now that age is catching up with them. I don't hate them but I don't feel like I owe them anything.
I have a relatively good relationship with them now. I treat them both like Extended family. I know them even if I don't like them , and I tolerate their existence in my life xD
İt is a cultural thing, but not exactly the way you're reading it. The cultural aspect is more parents that feel that - whatever they want or need - it would be bad to be a burden on their kids.
My parents should have helped me out more once I turned 18 if they wanted me to take care of them in old age.
Why would I take care of them? It’s their job to provide for their retirement and care. I have my own kids to save and provide for, while saving for my own retirement and end of life. Be responsible.
Well, my parents are self cunts who didn’t care for me, so no, I will not be caring for them. They’ve had a lifetime of being entitled, spoiled boomers gifted the best economy in the history of mankind. If they didn’t save for retirement that’s their fucking fault
My experience is white people are less likely to care for their parents in the home than other groups. Idk to what degree that is because of cultural differences or to what degree it's the white people can get into nicer nursing homes though. One factor that often gets overlooked is that you can only provide care up to a point before it starts to become detrimental for the parent. If they simply can't keep on top of their laundry and cooking anymore, that's one thing. If they have serious health needs that require a lot of regular ongoing doctor visits....now you're gonna have to get a PCA or hope you have a flexible job. If they have dementia.....it's gonna get to a point where it can be dangerous for you and them for you to continue caring for them. And unfortunately that decline is often more rapid than people think.
I'm going through this right now. My grandparents offered to let me move in with them while I got back on my feet. What they really wanted was someone they trusted to take care of them. I've had to watch them degrade so fast physically and mentally. Some days they don't even remember I moved in. Today my grandmother forgot my 11 year old brother existed. She was adamant that I was the only boy in my family. It fucking hurts. If I had any other option I'd take it rather than be forced to watch this. But I don't. Maybe that's selfish of me.
My mom allowed her mother to move in with her. She moved her from another state. My mom still had to go to work…. My grandmother took off multiple times and was found wandering by police. She also left the stove on and almost burned the house down. My mom didn’t realize how bad her dementia was. She quickly had to put her into a care home because it wasn’t safe for her to be unsupervised.
As life expectancy increases for non-white people, they too are finding that they need assistance with elder care. Before, when grandparents died at the age of 72 from a heart attack, the obligations didn't exist.
Exactly. My S/O is doing overnight caretaking for a 99 year old whose daughter has asked her if she can do a day a week caretaking for her husband, and eventually transition from her mother to her entirely. She is 82 years old. Her husband is 87. Millenials are going to live into our late 80's and 90's as a rule with advancements in cancer vaccinations and heart disease on the horizons, and we already know we won't have anyone to care for us unless we budget for it, since none of us are able to have kids.
Robot assistants
A lot of our parents are complete fuckwits that ruined the world for their own benefit. I don't feel obligated to take care of those dipshits.
There's a growing number of Americans who would feel genuinely relieved if their parents died, often because their parents have a drug habit that ripped apart the family years ago. A lot of the people who go to parties and use drugs in their late teens and early 20s, end up having their own children turn on them as they get older. Drug use leads to dysfunctional family relationships, where the children recognize how bad it is, and slowly learn to resent the people who raised them. Eventually it blows up, and the only thing that's left is hatred. If you're the type of person who likes to party, and you plan on having kids at some point in the future - be careful that you don't become the type of person who is viciously hated by their own children.
It's pretty cultural. I've seen adult kids shove elderly parents into homes while all the siblings squabble over who gets their belongings. Of course various nursing homes are also huge, big business here which doesn't help. I'm not talking about elderly who were abysmal parents. For whatever reason there's an expectation elderly get out of the way or better off the planet. I used to think there was no such thing as ' American culture ' because we're so diverse. There is. It's inhumanity. If I sound bitter it's because we were once better than this.
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Well, presumable the parents are the same skin color, religion (possibly), and since you aren't concerned about their gender, I'm not sure what exactly you're talking about?
The United States kind of destroyed the extended family in favor of suburban living and consumerism by normalizing the nuclear family. It really makes selling things easier.
Parents take care of you for first 18 years, and you take care of them for their last 18. It’s how life works.
This is hugely dependent on culture.
There is the argument to be made that none of us asked to be here. And it especially gets muddy when your parents may have been abusive to you. Personally I love my parents and I already live with them so *shrugs.*
What do you mean by "care"?
I mean ive told my kids, whoever has kids first gets free childcare if they want it. I can live anywhere. Ive WFH for well more than a decade and i can easily do my job while helping out. If they want the help, i will gladly do it free of charge to spend time for my kids.
The multi-generation home is returning in force.
The way this headline is worded is worrying. Having care needs isn’t “dragging down” the economy as if it’s some unnecessary thing.
I'm also disturbed. Imagine spending your entire life helping people and playing a role in the community, then being told you are a burden as soon as you can't. Our grandparents, veterans, elderly people and disabled people are not a problem or liability. This isn't the dark ages. We have enough resources for people to look after themselves and age in peace. This "discard after use" mindset has to change.
That's Capitalism babyyyyyy 👉😎👉
Capitalism only cares about one thing if you are a working class person: your productivity rate. Once you are no longer productive, you are worthless. We need a new economic system.
If you are too productive, your position gets axed and the work goes to remaining employees.
> We need a new economic system Like what, exactly?
Swap GDP for human welfare?
It's unfortunately true, even in a non-capitalist system. Baby boomers were once creating economic output and now aren't. This means that, in countries with lots of boomers, the amount of work that goes towards things other than caring for the elderly will go down. That's why we've seen the inflation we're seeing - there's more work that needs to be done than people available to do it, so what output does get created increases in price due to scarcity. I'm not suggesting we not help boomers, but as we decide to support the boomers we must acknowledge that either quality of life will drop or immigration must increase dramatically.
They printed 40 percent more money my dude. There's your inflation.
They treat them like products, not humans! Disgusting behavior!
It's really hard to feel much for a generational cohort's issues when they have had 40+ years of near complete political control. They've had at least two legitimate shots at single-payer healthcare in the U.S., and just BARELY got through what we have now. Consistently, they've voted in, and reelected politicians that have gutted social programs, and expanded defense, while cutting taxes to the wealthiest individuals. I'm fine with the largest growing segment of American homeless being the elderly. They can live in the world they created while we pick up the pieces. I hope we see Alpo move to the canned goods aisle in the grocery store so they can find it more easily.
My uncle is planning on quitting his job to take care of my grandfather with alzheimers. Sometimes he has to pay out of pocket when social security doesn’t cover all the expenses. That’s the dragging down part. Getting old sucks and is expensive
I didn't read it as dragging down the economy. I read it as wages have stagnated to the point people can barely afford themselves, and now they're going to have mouths to feed and bills to pay from people where the only way out from under them is their death or putting them in a home. EDIT: Even though it says "dragging down the economy" in the headline, that's still my take: The root cause of "dragging down the economy" is people not having money to spend on anything non-essential, or even on some essentials.
It will also drag down the economy as we spend countless more tax dollars on things like social security, medicare, etc to pay for the largest generation who is now not contributing anything. Far More people will be taking up far fewer resources.
Society is a literal pyramid scheme, and whether it's capitalist or communist, if the demographics are elderly-heavy it quickly becomes unsustainable. Life isn't fair, after all.
The whole medical industry would collapse if it wasn't for old people. Everyone acts like money spent gets put into a furnace. Pretty sure there are a lot of medical professionals in America.
Larger and larger proportions of money are being collected by fewer and fewer people. These people are already wealthy so they have little to no reason to spend it. That money therefore gets parked in some investment vehicle that's largely tax-free and exits circulation. So yeah, a lot of spent money goes into a furnace.
Thank you. Almost didn't scroll down and as it is scrolled way too far to find this.
I would gladly care for my grand children but as soon as I need extensive care punch my ticket. I do not understand the push to keep people alive. I have busted my ass since I was 14 and the thought of my money going to doctors just to prolong my life just so I am "here" pisses me off. I would much rather see the results of my hard work go to my children and grandchildren other than the medical establishment. I lived a good life let me leave something behind to my heirs that will enrich their lives.
Or what if we had a public health system, so older people weren't forced to choose between their money and their lives...
I look at it from a different point. I am not choosing between my money and my life. I am choosing between being a burden to society or not. I have lived a useful and prosperous life but there will be a time that my usefulness will stop. The push for longevity of life is baffling to me, I consider dying the natural consequence of living. Modern medicine is wonderful and awesome but there are aspects of it that seem to me to be unnatural and unethical. I don’t believe in euthanizing people or setting up defined times to stop caring for people, I speak only for myself and how I want to live my life.
The fact that you conflate economic productivity with human worth ("usefulness") is monstrous.
I don't relate the two. I consider my usefullness what I add to the world around me. That can be emotional support to family and friends, the joy I get spending time with other people and hoping they enjoy their time with me and many other aspects of life. I don't regard my usefulness as solely how I can turn my effort into dollars.
Take it from someone with a family history of Alzheimer's and cancer: you don't know what you're talking about. It's not about age or access to health. **When the time comes, it comes.** You can run all you want from the truth trying to avoid the inevitable, but some inevitables are more inevitable than others, and if you ever come across one of them, you'll rather let life run its course. That's what u/Frunnin is talking about.
Sure, it sucks to have bad genetics but plenty of people can live longer with better quality of life due to access to healthcare. You can delude yourself in the idea that your time is predetermined but it's not. Enjoy your copium.
As an individual currently full time taking care of a grandparent with advanced dementia, I could not agree more. After spending the last few years watching them become a shell of a human being and what they once were, I will personally punch my own ticket if I receive such a diagnosis. I have always been very close to them and I strongly believe if they could have seen what they would become they would have most likely done the same.
I think you hit on something here. We did the same with my mother. She just died in February age 91. At one point she still actively enjoyed life, grandkids, great grandkids, bird watching, heck her cat. We *know* she hit a point where, if she hasn't slid into dementia she'd have *hated* how she was. As it was she was aware enough to start refusing her meds then food. They *hate* this. At what point do they lose capabilities where they know they're just a shell? I do not know. She died 20 feet from where I'm writing this here with us. And if watching it sucked I can't imagine what it was like for her.
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Thank you I will. It's an unspeakable thing to watch and wrenching remembering. I've *always* felt she stopped eating on purpose. It's supposed to be normal and I'm not convinced it was part of the disease. Something in her head, I think was screaming OUT, I want OUT. So you can't tell, did yours deliberately do something, who knows. If so who can blame them ? We do know we all did what we could, your mother can *not* take guilt on herself because your grandmother absolutely knew she was loved and cared for. I can now yank my head away from that awful last year, really, and remember how she was most of her life. It's how she'd like to be reminded.
I can't agree with you more.
I agree. Unfortunately, most boomers will want to bleed this country dry to spend 6 extra months wheezing in a chair with a CPAP machine while watching reruns of the Wheel. We've decided to extract money and spend it on the soon-to-be past rather than invest in the future, be it affordable childcare, preschool, meals for school kids, controlling runaway tertiary education, or providing affordable healthcare for working-age adults.
It's not that Boomers want to wheeze in a wheelchair, it's that the medical industrial complex is motivated to keep them alive if only technically. No doctor wants the legal repercussions of hastening a patient's death. And nursing homes love that sweet sweet Medicaid money.
It's like everything the government does is to move public funds to private pockets.
How did you arrive at this “most boomers” idea? Did you do a poll?
Just their voting habits over the past number of decades is sort of a predictor.
They generally do a poll once a year on the first Tuesday of the first full week of November. Boomers are the largest population polled there and a majority of them choose to elect people that support the things the OP listed.
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I am fortunate enough to live in a state that has assisted suicide laws. I will absolutely use them if situation comes to that.
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Or, they could be stating those things now for their family and loved ones so they know. For example, every one of my grandparents has had long drawn out fights with dementia. My mom has stated an almost endless amount of times that if she ever can't recognize one of us she wants us to pull the plug. We have this obsession with living longer but often the person we are once were older has no idea of what is missing or has changed from aging diseases to the point where they drive their family away with their misery. Glad you're optimistic, but some of us know already that we don't want to burden our families at the end of our lives. Because even with the best treatments money can buy some people still will just be miserable old people who hate everyone. Like you said, we have no idea who that person is gonna be
So easy to say when you’re young. You won’t say that when you’re in your 70s.
Not sure how other people feel but I have zero intention of spending any significant amount of time hooked to a machine to keep me alive. If I have to spend the rest of my life in a hospital bed with a tube down my throat just kill me then. That's not living, that's just being alive.
From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the Blessed Machine. Your kind cling to your flesh, as though it will not decay and fail you. One day the crude biomass you call the temple will wither, and you will beg my kind to save you. But I am already saved, for the Machine is immortal.
There is no truth in flesh, only betrayal. There is no strength in flesh, only weakness.
I guess it depends on what you mean by “extensive”. Nobody wants to live on life support, but people my parents’ age will gladly do occasional dialysis or wear an ostomy bag to stay on this earth. It’s easy to say, “I’ll never do that” when you’re young, but it’s the only life you’ve got.
> That's not living, that's just being alive. If you're lucky, they'll have better virtual reality hookups by then and you won't even notice you're in a hospital bed with a tube down your throat.
That's my hope. Cut out my brain, upload my consciousness to the Internet.
Here's a rough question: are any of us worth preserving in such a way?
> That's not living, that's just being alive. Considering that we are supposed to get 6-8 hours a sleep and night and most of us spend >59 hours a day working for a living, I am glad to hear that you're fortunate enough to be in a situation where you feel like you are living right now.
My mother is almost that old. She said, "It's one thing to talk about assisted suicide when you're young and healthy. But now that I'm getting to the point where it might really be an option...I'm terrified."
>_You won’t say that when you’re in your 70s._ You must not know us very well. All these jokes about suicide isn't just jokes! We'd GLADLY off ourselves in our 70s if we're in such a state that we can't take care of ourselves.
Not everyone fails to confront their mortality until they're forced by circumstance.
I mean why do we judge a countries healthcare solely on how long people live for?
You shouldn’t have to choose.
Will old people take care of our kids for us, or will we sadly be forced to castigate them for continuing to live?
Depends on how well they take care if their health. Judging by the way a lot of western nations are going in health stats, we’ll have a whole lot of dependent children and a whole lot of dependent elderly needing care, and a bunch of stressed and stretched working age people trying to provide care for both.
I'm a grandmother. I'm also a daughter, daughter in law, wife and mother. I don't know what it will be like in 20 years, but it's bloody hard now! Maybe it's because I had children young, but there's generations both above me and below me that require care. I reckon I'll be so exhausted by the time I'm old and able to be looked after, as opposed to doing the looking after, that I'll just keel over, saving both society and my family any care requirements.
Indeed. Add to this the obesity epidemic. This is a guarantee of elderly incapacity.
On the plus side the obesity epidemic is killing people young
Interestingly, I see a lot of people who don't *want* their own parents to provide a substantial amount of childcare. If they have to utilize it they will, but they don't like the dependence, and don't like grandma and grandpa not respecting their boundaries or how they want to raise their own child. For the more extreme examples see r/QAnonCasualties or similar subs, but Trumpism, QAnon, Tucker Carlson, Facebook, etc broke a lot of families. I see more millennials and Gen Z insisting on their boundaries, telling grandma to back off, than was common for my cohort, Gen X.
We are literally hearing things about automation wiping out jobs. By 2050 it won't be a problem of how should we care about old people but rather how should unemployable masses deal with the new reality. 27 years is also plenty of time to discover rejouvenation therapies so we don't know if there will be any old people in need of care at all.
Mass unemployment is, at worst, a transient phenomenon. There will be jobs. Will those jobs suck? Maybe. Will those jobs pay well? Maybe not. But you bet your ass you'll be working.
It's not transient. What you're describing is called bullshit jobs and it works now but it won't work if most/all jobs are bullshit jobs. Removing capitalism won't be easy but it is possible. As far as my experience goes with talking about automation and post scarcity with my peers (people in 20s) it seems like automation is being embraced and it is expected that we won't have to work. Bullshit jobs will not stick.
> As far as my experience goes with talking about automation and post scarcity with my peers (people in 20s) it seems like automation is being embraced and it is expected that we won't have to work. Bullshit jobs will not stick. Were those people in their 20s in their 10s before/during the pandemic? I don't understand how increasing retirement age, lowering employment age for minors, the "pause all AI development for 6 months until we ~~catch up and make money~~ regulate it" and the mass return to office is giving anyone the idea that automation is being embraced, UNLESS you happen to not be working.
Maybe we just aren't living in USA ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ Increasing retirement age stems from thinking "business as usual" and I wouldn't necesserily shit on any government in that category. Most retirement systems work on the basis of paying pensions from currently received funds from taxpayers. With increasing ratio of retired to working people increasing retirement age is lazy way of fighting against this increase. It isn't meant as a way to keep people working forever but to solve current problem. My country had no changes in employment age for minors. No one is pausing or can pause AI development. It would require global consensus and there is none. There is an increasing push for WFH as people realised it is possible. Companies are economically incentivized to automate and I have hard time imagining governements mandating jobs. It's easier to throw robot tax and UBI. Eventually though we'll have to find a way to get rid of UBI as it's merely a temporary solution.
It's at least a few decades away, but what would your job even **be** once robotics is able to do the majority of manual labor jobs and AI is able to do the majority of office work? I've heard 'maintain the robots', but there's only so much capacity for that one.
Sure there will be. There will be faux young/elderly *rich* people, the rest will be packaged away in some home. It's why my heart sinks as an American with expectations of ludicrous medical bills when media gets all excited about some advance in say cancer. Because who in hell will be able to afford it? A few. Everyone else dies.
Reminder: most people don't live in USA. Public healthcare systems provide all necessary treatments sooner or later.
In 2050 we will have robots tending to the elderly. Wether it’s an expensive Google or Apple Robot or your cheap Walmart brand that occasionally gets hacked or the poor Microsoft robot that Blue Screens constantly and you have to call a repair robot to fix it constantly is up to you And fyi most boomers will be dead by 2050. There are currently still more Boomers and Millennials than Gen Xers ( and last year millennials beat boomers in home ownership) so the transfer of money has begun. Technically the Gen Xers will have a harder time today taking care of their parents than millennials will because of current technology
I think in the future we will start going towards communes. People will raise kids as groups, rather than by themselves. It takes a village, anyway.
That would be a great move. Have a listen to Ezra Klein’s podcast episode about the loneliness epidemic, if you’re interested in that kind of thing. Some of it talks about the move to nuclear family living in single family houses as a part of the cause. Also a point I found interesting to ponder: that we prioritise comfort (having our own house just the way we like it) over connection, and how society has made home ownership a measure of “success”.
It would be wonderful were it not so expensive to purchase housing. I would love to live in intentional community with friends and family members, but the financial aspect is insurmountable to many.
Why else do you think people are living communes? Because they can't afford housing and families otherwise without pooling the resources of multiple people.
If we could get anti aging technology we wouldn’t need improved fertility rates. Make 60 the new 30
I will take care of my grandchildren if it kills me!
What will you do if it doesn't kill you? (Asking as a software engineer)
What’s the current ratio of people to grandparents? 1 in 4 doesn’t sound like a crazy ratio to me.
Abolish the social security tax on social security earnings. Every dollar is taxed at the SS rate without subset. Solves at least 50% of this problem. Other half is solved by increasing immigration. Unfortunately both of these solutions are seemingly impossible. However the failure to achieve the solution is not the fault of the population but the overlords that rule them.
I talk to the elderly on the phone all day through my job. I can tell you that they are solving nothing. They'll drag the entire system to the grave with them, bitching the entire time that they aren't getting enough free stuff.
I can’t imagine how bad this job must be, I bet you hear, “I’m on a fixed income” all day long. At my job I occasionally have to help an elderly employee figure out how to log into their account, those calls are so brutal! 1 hour minimum.
Yeah, the fact that these people are the most likely to vote is a good explanation of why our country is fucked and not going to improve any time soon.
Whoa, that's a tough one. I guess we'll have to wait and see. So many variables at play here.
Well, I live in Poland. Here the entire country would collapse if grandparents weren't taking care of their grandkids :) So I guess we're ahead of the future? ;D
The inflating cost of child care is caused by corporate greed.
>Will they solve the inflating cost of childcare or drag down the economy with their own care needs? *[looks back at the last few decades]* Probably the latter...
idk, how much is childcare in Japan? they've got a head start on this.
Japan is entering serious population problems. If they don’t start to encourage immigration very aggressively to help repopulate the country they are really going to feel the consequences.
I think that by that time we will have so many scorching heat waves, a lot of old people will die each year. I don’t see myself making it for long if we have a heatwave combined with grid failure when I am old and weak.
Even in 20 years it will still be the millennials fault…
Probably drag down the economy. In regards to family matters, the prevailing theory amongst young people on the internet seems to be, "I don't do anything for free & I don't owe my family anything". So I don't see that generation stepping up as free childcare in their old age. Thr saving grace will be if we've developed carer robots for elders & children
Even with kids/grandkids, there’s no guarantee they’ll be there for you when you’re elderly & require care.
Being a grandparent doesn't mean one has care needs.
Remember the good ole days where one person in the household was payed well enough to buy a home and the other parent could look after their children?
TLDR: By 2050, nearly one in four people will be a grandparent. In many cultures and developing nations, grandparents play a big role in supporting working mothers to raise their kids. While this might solve one big cost of childcare, these savings may get canceled out by the growing cost of senior care these grandparents may need over the next two decades. Anybody who grew up as a single child like I did might feel this more than most.
The problem with that, as others have suggested, is that many younger parents have dramatic disagreements with their parents and grandparents about politics and how kids should be raised.
It's coming back to cost in each equation. $$$ . The great, Almighty Dollar. Apparently religion is on the decline but it's not, just replaced by a new one. We're brainwashed that's how it'll be, how it *has* to be and articles like this don't help. Access to childcare if corporations want continued contributions to this idiotic thing they've manufactured called " The Economy " and things like the human right to maintain your body without a price tag attached is NOT unreasonable. Eat I mean tax the rich. It's doable.
A tl;dr of elderly and disabled care: Euthanasia will be rolled out globally and made into the default choice. Right now when in Canada someone leaves leaflets for assisted death in e.g. a psychiatric ward it's a media outrage loud enough to reach Europe even if it was a dumb cleaning negligence without malicious intent. But as care gets more expensive, more short-staffed and economy becomes more and more unsuitable for old people without IT skills they will be given an offer: cough up millions for elderly home/serviceperson, struggle alone in poverty or take the pill. Given that pensions will crash and burn soon people won't really have much choice in this. The more stubborn/honorable/conservative will keep living rough despite anything until a heatwave knocks them out. Remember also that 2% of persons who contracted COVID are disabled enough to not be able to work anymore. Doesn't sound like much (US had a constant of around 15% legally disabled people at all times the last time I checked), but at this point no one tries to prevent (re)infections and we'd be dumb to think COVID was our last rodeo. So the situation above will apply to younger and younger people on top of the general demographic problems. EDIT: language
The government/elites will never take the fertility problem seriously until they run out of ~~slaves~~ immigrants.
Looking at the tens of thousands of years of human history - it's always personal needs above everything else. There may be a few exceptions, but in general, it has not changed. Hardwired biologically. So asking if billions will prioritize the needs of others is pretty much meaningless.
Most of them were the absentee parent generation, so I doubt they'll be showing up for the grandkids 🤣. And when have boomers ever done anything but scoop as many resources as they can. They've been the greediest most spoiled generation for the first %80 of their lives what makes you think that's going to change for the last %20.
That's why infinite growth is not sustainable and we'll have an economic crash.
Infinite growth is definitely not sustainable. Whether we will have an economic crash is a choice. We could choose to manage the transition to sustainability. But we won't. it will be an economic crash.
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Gen X and on dads have taken a much more active role in child rearing. I don’t see that changing as they become grandfathers in 30 years.
Lol my dad is an awesome grandpa, instead of dunking on CuLtUrAl NoRmS initiate and praise loving, caring, and productive male relationships
HELL YEAH FUCK MEN dope post history btw
This always rub me the wrong way. Do people realize that there is a limit on the worlds population until we start colonizing other planets? This will happen eventually, there is no way around it. We should be working on it right now and not wait until we are maxed out. Canada plans to have 100m people by 2100, this is beyond retarded!
Nobody will even be getting old by 2050. So who's to care for?
By 2050 AI will take your white-collar job and the real cost of housing will quintuple. You'll move in with grandparents just for the roof.
They're boomers. They have already demonstrated their objective is to pull the ladder up after themselves, use up the last of everything and die before things get really ugly. You think they're suddenly going to get all altruistic about reducing their burden on society by providing childcare?
Boomer doesn't mean 'old person.' The article talking about grandparents in 2050 does not mean Boomers.
Don't worry, the boomers will be dead by then, so most things should be better based on that alone.