My thoughts today go along the lines of, how much can we afford to give to boomers for retirement? As in, how much time out of each person's life.
There is an IQ 80 person , or an autistic who needs constant care, or a person with cerebral palsy, and they do not have a family that can support them, how much "other people's time" can we afford to spend on them?
When Social inSecurity started there was more than 10 people to support each retiree. It will get close to 1 for 1 soon. One person with a good job will be supporting one retiree. (there aren't that many people with good jobs.)
We are asking of society, of each person, to support someone at a level better than they can afford for themselves.
Is this fair? Is this the right thing to do? And really, can we afford it?
People who need a lot of care
So, lets say we have a person who cannot take care of themselves. (for any number of reasons) They will need a person to take care of them the rest of their lives. Lets say they use up all the working hours of someone's time to take care of them.
Now, how many people do we need to pay for these two people to live? One person, giving half of their earnings as a minimum. Then that person and the care taker would be living the same level of existence. But, we also need someone to pay for the accommodations and the food for the invalid person. So, half of another working person's salary.
So, we have three people giving half of their working hours to keep someone else alive.
Yes, it is nice that we are spending this much on this person who needs constant care. But, is it worth the cost? And, how much can we afford?
People who need assisted living
Most of the assisted living centers are at capacity. And we haven't even gotten to the majority of boomers retiring. The biggest industry in the near future will be assisted living/retirement housing.
Right now, we don't have enough nurses to supply the facilities to house all this incoming demand. Even if we built more care facilities so that there was enough rooms available. We can't afford it at any price, because we just don't have enough nurses.
Elder care facilities are quite expensive. More than most young people pay on an apartment and food. Can the people working afford this? Should those being taken care of get more than those who are working?
The inequity
If we adjust the the 1970 minimum wage of $1.60/hour for inflation, the minimum wage today would be over $50/hour.
Few people are making $50 an hour today and we are asking them to support so much more. Is this appropriate?
Most hard working people could afford a house. And many bought a house. Today, a house is out of reach for most youth. Professional workers are having to wait til middle-age to buy their first home.
We have everything stacked against the youth, and we are still relying on youth to pay for the Social inSecurity.
It is gonna get bad. We don't have enough income to support the retiring boomers. We also don't have enough resources to provide assisted living for all who will need it.
And the wealth divide, the haves and the have nots are going to be at each other's throats. People who have never known a good living arrangement are going to be asked to pay for what the young can only wish for.
We don't have enough people with enough good jobs to afford this. And, even if we looked at as hours of labor, we still can't afford it. We really lack the resources. We don't have enough working people; we don't have enough care personnel; we don't have enough will to carry on this ponzi scheme.
So, the retiring boomers are going to have to seriously downsize. Not in houses, (as all of those aren't going to be worth anything) but in amenities, food, diaper changes. The infirm may be stacked gurney to gurney. Individual rooms a thing of the distant past.
I would really like us to work out a way to handle this. Because, if we don't, the youth are going to walk away and the elderly left to take care of themselves. They will have to, because the 30-somethings are living paycheck to paycheck, and soon the paycheck won't be enough for food.
All images in this post are my own original creations.