Time to Die

A Time to Die:

What to say about this article?

For the last decade or so, economists have been telling us that the baby boomers, who represent over one-quarter of our total population, are about to become the beneficiaries of the greatest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history.... Depending on how they crunch the numbers and what models of economic growth they use, the experts estimate that somewhere between $41 and $136 trillion will pass from one generation to another in the next fifty years. Yes, that’s trillion, a number that almost defies comprehension.

Seems like the Baby Boomers were the beneficiaries of the last great transfer of wealth, too -- the postwar boom that their fathers and mothers created, which allowed the young men and women of the late 1950s and the 1960s to begin adulthood among prosperity unheard of in human history. Having started their adult lives with unprecedented wealth built by their parents, the Baby Boom will now drain the coffers of their children and grandchildren to finance their retirement.

Not that it's anyone's fault. Nobody picks when to be born; we'll talk about picking when to die here in a bit, but not yet. First, we have to talk about the technology.

We've increased longetivity but not productivity -- a man is still done with work by seventy at the outside in most cases, but he might have another twenty years of eating to do. Any society has to feed a large mass of unproductive citizens as it is -- children. None, not even ours, can afford to feed most of its citizens for twenty years at the end of their lives as well.

What to do about it, though? Tell them to die?

“I love my parents, they’re good people, but you can’t help wondering: How long will they live? My mom’s only seventy-two and Dad’s seventy-six, which isn’t very old these days. If I have to take care of them, and I will, what happens to me and my family? What about my retirement? Who’s going to take care of that?”

The answer is: nobody. There’s Social Security, of course, but at best it promises a life at the bare subsistence level.

There's not even that, not really. When the Federal pensions come due at the same time as the Baby Boom demands on Social Security, the system will break.

Having seen the outer edge of it, I can tell you that the funds that are left at the end of life dry up fast. The government doesn't keep its promises. It doesn't keep them now to those due VA benefits; as the budget breaks later, it won't keep them at all. Then what? A family cares for its own, that's what.

The cost of individually caring for those who can't pay their way is high. What we need is to make old age livable enough that people can work and earn most of their days. Making life survivable is far simpler than leaving people productive, though -- the medicine required to keep the body from dying is simpler, though expensive.

That's for society. I want to talk to you men who are like me, who have the feeling about these things that I have. Until technology reaches that level, there is an ethical duty on us.

We've got to learn when to die, those of us who don't die naturally before we grow too old. Might be we should talk about that for a bit. It seems like a hard question. I don't hold with suicide as such, and many others don't as well. Yet no man would impoverish his children or his grandchildren just to keep himself alive a few more years.

So: How can a man die well? When is the right time? Until the technology catches up with us, we need to think about these things. Let us hear what you think.