solowingpixy
the resident car guy
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User ID: 410
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
1d ago
It feels like we broke something that was working perfectly fine, and now we're trying to fix it with band-aids.
Low fertility and increased lifespan probably would've broken it on its own. Mass divorce and familial dysfunction just poured salt on the wound, transforming "part of life" into a potentially Sisyphean burden. What happens when it's not "sweet grandma" but a malingering, toxic trainwreck that the children have spent years doing their best to avoid?
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
1d ago
And for some reason young people seem completely oblivious as to how much of their taxes flow to the old, and suggesting you redistribute this somewhat triggers empathy and accusations of killing your sweet grandma.
People are irrational about it (mostly in the sense of being unaware that a mass-affluent elderly upper-middle class is very much a new thing) and old people are going to be the beneficiaries of a ton of idiotic slopulism as the median age marches ever higher, but boomer (and soon to be Gen X) luxury communism is an indirect subsidy to the working age who would otherwise be expected to care for/house their elderly/infirm relatives, an especially acute problem in an era of inverted population pyramids and increased lifespans. Imagine being an only child to parents who had you fairly old and both wind up dying of drawn out illnesses (This gets really fun if they're divorced and don't live near each other.) It would be hard to be a net loser in such a scenario as a Joe or Jane 30 to 40-something average taxpayer if the government is picking up the tab. Worse, while the old are collectively wealthy, that wealth is very unevenly distributed. For the under through lower-middle class Social Security/Medicare/Disability are the only reason most get to retire and maintain the polite fiction of being financially independent. For the upper-middle class, boomer luxury communism is a direct subsidy to expected inheritances.
Unfortunately, the expectation should be ever greater political pressure to increase welfare directed at the old.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
4d ago
Update on the motor pool:
The $500 Civic project has ground to a crawl, aside from replacing the battery (with Walmart's cheapest 51R) and confirming that the car does indeed run and drive, and the A/C works along with three of the four windows. The clutch pedal feels like shit (engagement is too low), but I'm confident that bleeding and adjusting the master cylinder will fix it. The old owner will be back in town this weekend at which point we'll do the needful with paperwork and see if he has to get a replacement title (The title exists and is legible but looks like a dog ate it.).
Speaking of titles, and actual work, I had to replace the starter on the other Civic. It was...not as bad a job as anticipated. I didn't have to pull the bumper, did have to pull the knock sensor, and did have spend $15 on washers to make the slightly different (case is thinner where it bolts to the engine) Amazon special fit the car, but at $60 from Amazon versus $80-$300 from Rock Auto and $325 from the parts store I can afford washers and the job was easy enough that I wouldn't hate myself if I had to do it again. I have a strong prospective buyer from this car, an old friend who fell in love with it (I let her drive it.) and is going to need a car in a few months.
The rational, but unwanted car may have a buyer (probably not, but I can probably sell the thing for five grand) if I choose to go all out and ditch all three for what I think I want (test drive pending).
What I think I want is a 10th gen Civic Si, preferably blue like this but I'd settle for silver, since I've seen one in person, thought it looked nice enough, and it looks like silver is easier to find than blue. Is it a Type R? No, but I don't have Type R money and these are allegedly easy enough to tune without much work as long as you're okay with settling for ~250HP before stuff starts breaking, and what the L15 lacks in top end power or K-series potential it makes up for with torque and gas mileage (My K24 Civic is fun but gets atrocious fuel mileage on premium by the standards of a Civic.).
The "why" is relatively simple. "Old" at the time of Medicare's passing meant the Lost Generation, which was A. generally quite poor thanks to having spent their prime earning years in the Great Depression and B. didn't live all that long (My great grandfather of that generation died at the age of 70. His son, my grandfather, lived to see 86.).
Meanwhile, aside from free public education (which is in fact a large socialization of childrearing, albeit one done for the purpose of producing productive adults) I don't think childcare was something specifically on the radar at the time (as opposed to poverty in general) in large part because the standards of childrearing were quite a bit lower at the time (Another interesting question: Which has been subject to more expectation inflation? Parenting or eldercare?).
In the long term, this has become a problem due to demographics, inflation of expectations (in terms of Social Security benefits, but most acutely healthcare expenditures), and the emergence of a mass affluent upper-middle class of elderly capable of lobbying on its own behalf that arguably didn't exist before, say, the Silent Generation's retirement.
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