There has been some consternation that as the baby boom now starts to retire we are going to have some serious problems with social security and Medicare. My mother-in-law’s cousin just dropped from a heart attack. She was 66. I had one of those eureka moment when I heard. With all the “lets put our feet in the shoe x-ray machine to look at the bones”, and the “Try not to get too mosquito bit, why don’cha go play by the DDT truck” coupled with the “I heard if you scrape out the filaments from that and smoke them you get a real earthy kinda high” I figured the boomers will be quite kind enough to fix the impending social security crisis by dying before they can collect any. Their folks however look like they’ll be around for my lazy, entitled gen-x funeral.
I’m so sorry to hear about your relative’s sudden death. I hope that your mother-in-law is okay. I, um, congratulate you on your ability to perceive a socioeconomic silver lining here.
You know, I’ve never really seen a fly drop. Anybody see a fly just drop, mid-flight or something?
You have to tear off their wings first.
The baby boom is temporary. They will die off. The noise about the economic pressure from the boomers getting into Social Security is a short term problem. If we adjust our economic system to take care of that problem, in a few years it nwill slowly die off. Then we will have piles of money left over.
Too late, kid. I’m 63 and already collecting early Social Security. Twenty more months, and I’ll be on Medicare . . . and getting expensive knee replacements and a few other things I can’t afford now. And I have no intention of dying any time soon. I sincerely hope the boomers use it all up, so you’ll be left flat on your lazy, entitled gen-x ass.
Then you might want to stay away from the bug spray…
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
My father is 93 and going strong, and so is my father-in-law. I expect to outlast them. So don’t expect much from me - when I go, I’m going in silk Depends.
The baby boom lasted a good 20ish years, so it’ll take them a good 20ish years to die off, starting in . . . 10ish years. They’re not going away any time soon.
Not unless you help them on their way.
Very freakin’ funny, jerk :rolleyes:.
<grandma leaves the room>
I’ve sort of almost seen a bird drop mid flight. For some reason a non-vulture (and thus, light bird) was scavenging on the side of the road and we hit each other and it catapulted (birdapulted?) so high that I could not see it in my rear view mirror.
I kept looking for it and about ten seconds later it plummeted to the asphalt in my rear view. I’m sure it flew for a couple seconds, then just dropped dead. Unless I sent it several hundred feet in the air.
I know you probably intended this as just a bit of dark humor, but it may come to that. We may eventually reach the point where we will simply have to tell the elderly that the government is not going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep a terminally ill elderly patient alive for a few more weeks or months. Once it has been determined that no recovery is possible for a patient on Medicaid, all we will do is make the patient as comfortable as possible and wait for the end.
Sounds cold-blooded, I know. I certainly don’t like the idea of a doctor telling me that I won’t be receiving treats which might give me life for a little while longer. But realistically, how much money should the government spend on the terminally ill who have already lived their lives?
Yeah, and you hear a very tiny, high-pitched “oh no-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!” followed by a barely perceptible “splat.”
Yes, but I sprayed it with poison first.
Robin
I certainly dont want to get treated for hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars if I am reasonably terminal … and I NEVER want to be like Terry Schiavo, being kept alive as a head of cabbage.
If I am 65 and my liver goes out, save the transplant for someone who has a good 30 years ahead of them, not me [unless it is one of those type where you get a little part of someones liver instead of the whole thing and it grows in place. Then maybe several of us could benefiit]
It will not be a light switch ending. Boomers are dying now. I get a newsletter from my high school class. They include a page of croakees. Many have never received a dime from S.S. of medicare. They are fading away.
Did you think I was implying that all baby boomers had 10 years of invincibility left? And that 30 years is a “light switch ending”? There’s gonna be a bell curve of course.
And then we solve the foot shortage crisis. Everyone wins!
Well, for every one of you, I bet there’s one like my late grandfather - he died 2 weeks short of his 97th birthday, at home, in bed. He hated doctors with a passion, so in spite of the aftereffects of a shattered left leg from a car accident in his 30s which left him limping for the rest of his life (first with a cane, then a quad cane, then 2, then a walker, then a wheelchair, then just not getting out of bed for the last few years), he absolutely refused all medical care for the last 40+ years of his life, with one exception.
Eventually, in his mid-90s, he slipped and fell in the bathroom while trying to wash himself at the sink (which he apparently did by leaning his forehead against the mirror to support himselkf, so he could have at least one hand free). My aunt and grandmother and cousins begged him to go to the ER to get checked out, thinking he might have broken the “good” hip, but he refused for 2 weeks. Finally he gave up, and ended up in inpatient rehab for a couple of weeks.
That was basically the sum total of the medical care he received for the last 50 years of his life. He always worked (until his late 70s) and paid into the system. He hated doctors so badly that he wouldn’t even let the family hire a home health aide to help bathe him and do stuff that my 80-something-year-old grandmother couldn’t do anymore. He literally died in his bed on the day he finally allowed a home health agency to come evaluate him, because my poor grandmother just couldn’t take care of him herself anymore.
(And yes, I come from a long line of extraordinarily pigheaded people. My cousin Jim says we should have had the Smithsonian study his body, because given the extraordinarily poor way in which he took care of himself, there is no way in hell he should have lived that long.)