The baby boomers are finding out right about now that it isn't about money. Old parents turn out not to be a problem that can be solved just by throwing money at it. We all wanted it to turn out that way, but guess what, it isn't. And it isn't gonna be.
My mother requires the around the clock attention of a human being. How much money do you think has to be thrown to make that happen if some share of it isn't done by family? How much management do you think it takes to keep it happening?
Does all of that feed into net productivity? No, it doesn't. Now, forward twenty years to when there are three times as many octogenarians in the US as there are today, with no significant growth in the age groups that will be caring for them. What do you think is going to happen to net productivity?
We can make it look good by adding 'elder care' as a segment of the economy, just like we can change the appearance of vast economic growth we got from bringing the female half of the population into the workplace by retroactively adding 'home care and child rearing' into the economy of earlier times. But the bottom line is that a whole lot of the productive energy of the people is going to be going into a sump that is of no direct benefit to them, and that makes all things harder.
Yeppy, Japan has it far worse due to their longevity and low birth rate. There was a massive move to limit populations in many countries. I can remember whole books on it trying to persuade people to have smaller families.
As medical costs soared, for as you say we threw money at it, instead of getting people to exercise and eat right, we now have a very unhealthy generation with genuine issues not only of elder care but dementia.
In previous generations before WW2, then it was the norm for several generations to live within a home, pass down the home to the successive generation, and grandma and grandpa were babysitters in their retirement and ultimately cared for at home.
In WW2, since all the guys entered the war, there wasn't sufficient personnel to keep the factories going. Rosie the Riveter was fabricated by intentional marketing campaigns that women entering the workforce was patriotic. When it came time for the soldiers to come, then it was considered patriotic for a woman to give up her job for a returning vet.
It really created a ton of problems. If you consider that one income families still had a lot more net worth, and that ultimately our purchasing power is lower by comparison with two incomes, then we've lost ground. That's not a stike at Feminism that had to happen, but nothing exists in a vaccum. It meant childcare and now elder care as the result of paying someone to care for your aging loved ones who no longer lived in the same multigenerational home.
Consider the strong economic aspects of being free and clear with no mortgage and only maintenance costs for your home versus the average American practice of moving every seven years, which was common until a few years ago. With compound interest mortgages, by only paying the regular house payment for seven years, only a dribble of principal was removed on the mortgage. It was a giant ripoff, and sanctioned by the government through the income tax deduction.
Today I wonder about this generation. I was married with a mortgage by the time I was 25, a really nice place with an acre of land. What do they have other than a basement bedroom and that humilation post-college? What hope is there in working as a waiter for tips (sometimes which are subtracted against minimum wage to add insult to injury)? By that time, I had a great job with healthcare and benefits and it was cheap and paid for just about everything.
Life today is terribly regressive. I can see why people are apathetic.
