The Declining Population Will Make It Even Harder to Care for Elders

Increase taxes progressively to pay. It’s not hard, the wealthy will just be less wealthy as demographics compress over the next hundred years.

I hope what I'm about to say doesn't actually come true but I do fear over the last couple of decades that we are being set up for it. In the past, and unless developed countries, elder care has been around quantity of life and not always quality of life. There has been a steady cultural shift, and first world countries, around people's focus to be about quality of life and not quantity.

I do believe that there will be a cultural shift in the next decade or two that quality of life will be the primary driver and not quantity. This has started with, what I consider a number of good things, such as living wills. I don't think those are bad to make your wishes known on what should be done in the event of an emergency where you're not capable of expressing it. I do expect this will move forward onto other things. What to do when you've had a stroke and you're cognitively impaired. Then what to do when you're just tired of living.

I am a strong believer in people's independence and free choice. Even if that free choice is them wanting to unalive themselves. That's another interesting term that's become popular as of late, unalive instead of suicide. I also think that suicide shouldn't be something people do and it definitely shouldn't be something that a culture accepts as a whole even if it is liberal enough to allow the freedom of people to choose it. Because when a culture accepts that it devalues life overall. Caring for your elders in a society teaches compassion to the younger generations. It teaches that they have to sacrifice and be compassionate to those who are the weakest among them. Just because choices are available it doesn't mean that those are choices that should be done.

I hope this doesn't come to pass but I really believe that it is a strong possibility that it could. Especially as younger generations are taught to be more selfish and self-centered, parents feel like they want to be less of a burden to their children, it sets things up where this is a very real possibility. There's always the fear of the government death panels and so forth, I don't believe that would pass broad societal approval, but I do believe that a cultural shift where this is voluntary is a very real possibility.