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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32883 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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I watched this 90 minute documentary called "The Bubble" yesterday, and thought people might find it as interesting (and depressing) as I did:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Jp0nqJ1yrrg

Ignore the clickbait/signalling subtitle that Vice have given it- the documentary is much more nuanced and balanced. And the last 40 minutes is just discussion with the director.

It's about a massive retirement community for upper-middle/middle-middle Americans in Florida called "The Villages". The documentary itself is beautifully shot, and does a pretty good job of being balanced and showing the different perspectives of the competing interests.

But what I found much more interesting than the plot of "wealthy capitalists push out rural locals" (although that is interesting) was what it had to say (implicitly) about aging societies in the West and the world we've created over the last 70 years.

The Villages are essentially a permanent vacation town of 150,000 or so old people (I think, wikipedia seems to suggest a smaller number). There are some absolutely bizarre and surreal scenes of 80 year olds getting drunk at parties, doing karaoke, dancing and so on.

I think the first two things that it made me think of were Wall-E and the Culture novels by Iain M Banks. Not that these people are particularly fat (in fact they're all rather active and healthy), but the decadent nature of it all. In the Culture, there is a post-scaracity and immortal society where people have to come up with how to occupy themselves when all meaning is lost. I suppose it's a bit like a college town, but there was something deeply depressing and unnerving that I found watching these people who are supposed to be the elders of our society essentially abdicating any responsibility. There's a narrative that reaches its climax towards the end about the nature of retirement and just deserts, where some of the interviewees admit that they don't really care all that much for their children, or the problems of the world ("that'll be a problem for the 40 year olds").

And whilst I'm sure that it takes two to tango on these matters (children don't look after their parents in the same way), there was a deep sense of meaningless and doom that I found watching these people who essentially shouldn't (in historical terms) be alive, confronted with their own lack of place in society, move away to die.

I could absolutely see this becoming more and more common as the numbers of elderly retirees continues to become unsustainably large. And I think there is probably something to be said about the unrealistic expectations we all have about how life is supposed to work. The idea that you work for 40 years and then stop and do nothing for the last 15-20, spending all your accumulated wealth (which in this case gets sucked out by the service economy and healthcare costs), or in perhaps more welfare minded countries, by the taxpayer, is a historical anomaly. At some point we're going to have to come to terms with the fact that people will have to keep working much longer (or maybe that they ought to want to work longer).

If historically there was always only a very small number of people that lived long enough to stop working at all, then their place in society was guaranteed to be one of respect, carrying on wisdom and experience from the past. But now we have a glut of people who are basically useless (there's only so many wise story tellers you can support) who decide that now is the correct place (the only place) in life to have fun and play golf all day. It is almost tragic- that these people built up all this wealth and pension money and so on just for it to be spent on activities they can barely take part in due to their age, and for all that wealth and work of a life time to get spent on margaritas, property tax and health (death) care costs.

There is also an environmental/industrialisation angle (the ideal of ruralised life in Florida and the reality of ersatz parades and lawns).

Give it a watch- the Austrian director does do a good job in my view of not over playing the liberal angle on stuff, and the general themes are very thought provoking.

I actually watched this all the way through. I enjoyed it - very interesting film.

Initially, I was disposed to think the filmmaker was pushing a particular narrative. All the emphasis on guns, Trump supporters, delusional old people pretending they are still young and hot, seemed intended to paint everyone in The Villages as a white MAGA boomer - you know, those people. Surely not everyone in The Villages is a Republican (we get to see one scene of an anti-Trump protester waving a sign and being heckled by the Trump supporters), and I'm sure not all of them are partying decadently and ignoring their grandchildren, which is clearly the message being conveyed by the film.

After seeing the director interviewed after the film, I think she really was mostly focusing on things that fascinated her as a non-American. Obviously as a European she was fixated on all the guns, and she admits that she's politically on the other end of the spectrum from the Trump supporters, and yet she seems to have respected them. (They mention that everyone who appears in the film got to see the final cut and apparently no one felt they were being portrayed unfairly.) There is a bit of naive "European leftist meets American Republicans and discovers they aren't actually troglodytes," but in the end I don't think she set out with the intention of doing a "People of Walmart"-style mockumentary. But by her own admission, she did select the most interesting "characters."

I admit I felt the same discomfort and unease as many watching a bunch of old people partying like teenagers and rejecting any role as "family elder." But I think a lot of the negative reaction is a sort of instinctive revulsion that younger people feel watching old people trying to be sexy and partying when our image of them is grandma and grandpa bouncing grandkids on their knees. I don't think it's entirely fair to say it's all meaninglessness and hedonism. I mean, a life of eating out, drinking, and golfing sounds pretty empty to me, but they also talk about the fact that a lot of them are just taking up the hobbies they had to abandon when they were younger. They're taking belly dance classes, drumming classes, we see them playing games, a lot of them are doing athletic activites... is this meaningless hedonism? What should they be doing, bouncing grandkids on their knees? Living in an extended clan isn't for everyone, and it's a fair objection that grandma and grandpa don't necessarily want to spent their golden years providing free babysitting services.

I think one of them also made an excellent point, that by virtue of being able to afford the Villages, the biggest gift they are giving their children is not being dependent on them and not forcing their children to make all these decisions about how to take care of their parents.

The health expenditure is what gets me.

The drinking and hedonism is cheap, as you said college kids can afford it. Its the months of kemo, surgery, etc. that gets me.

Having just spent the better part of a year and half in and out of surgeries so that i could make the most of another 60 years... the idea that you'd suffer for a year or longer and fritter away the wealth of a life of work that you could use to set up your children and grand children, only to live infirmly another 5ish years... its madness.

I saw my grandfather decline for years and months, and how often he'd openly speak of wanting a car crash to get him...only to spend the last 6+ months in and out of hospitals, unable to even use the washroom himself

If I get that old and frail I hope I can make it to an iceflow.

Having just spent the better part of a year and half in and out of surgeries so that i could make the most of another 60 years

I figure long before that we'll be pouring one out after your next accident when we get the sequel no one wanted, 2Heads2Furious.

The warehousing of the infirm in nursing homes is a cultural insanity. Care homes full of people who barely know they're alive, attended to by strangers paid minimum wage so that their relatives can visit them on occasion and convince themselves that mom is doing ok. It's a collective inability to face reality, at a cost that could settle the college tuition problems, pay the debt, build housing for healthy people, plant the forests and clean the rivers.

It's gonna be Europe in 20 years. A continent-wide retirement home.

At some point we're going to have to come to terms with the fact that people will have to keep working much longer (or maybe that they ought to want to work longer).

Am I alone in feeling that this is already the case?

While I'm sure there is the occasional retirement community like the one depicted in the documentary, almost everyone I know in pensionable age keeps working to some extent if they're able.

Retiring and not working at all seemed like more of a thing for my grand parents generation (born in the ~1920s), but people realised that was kind of unfulfilling so they've transitioned into keeping working.

For most of the people I know this isn't a financial decision at all, they do it to get meaning and keep active. Doing karaoke and traveling is all fine and well but just doing it is kind of empty.

There’s a sense in which this is a consequence of the nuclear family model. When children grow up, they move away and create their own life away from their parents, and the now grandparents end up with very little familial social support. Once they finish working, they have no role in society. In other cultures, the grandparents play a large role helping their children with child rearing and maintaining the household. But nuclear families struggle to involve them in a way that’s sufficient or fulfilling for them. Thus they go off to create new social ties among their cohort.

This creates freedom and individualism for the young, but puts high burdens on working parents, and for the old it means that you’ve got only a shadow of the role that the grandparent generation traditionally had.

n other cultures, the grandparents play a large role helping their children with child rearing and maintaining the household. But nuclear families struggle to involve them in a way that’s sufficient or fulfilling for them.

I'd rather say the main factor in that case is delayed family formation. When that becomes the social norm, it means most people are too old and frail to help looking after their grandchildren by the time they have any.

And the flip side is that most grandparents are too old and frail to contribute much to the household by the time they have grandchildren.

There is also an environmental/industrialisation angle (the ideal of ruralised life in Florida and the reality of ersatz parades and lawns).

This is way apart from your point and so I’m sorry, but Florida has a really interesting dynamic, where conservationists and ranchers have teamed up against urban/suburban development.

Florida has a huge influx of people (1000/day, they say), and is a very hot market for developers. Ranchers tend to preserve Florida as at least it was since the Spanish arrived 500 years ago and started herding cattle there. The open spaces can still hold a lot of biodiversity and provide some important ecosystem services (especially regarding water filtration and runoff) for the population. Thus, ranchers and environmentalists have teamed up.

This unlikely association (tending to fall on opposite sides of heated debates elsewhere) formed a coalition that effectively advocated for a long time for the Florida Wildlife Corridor to be signed into law, which it finally was last year.

https://archive.ph/NbUu4

As a blue tribe biologist whose forays across the United States often lead into red tribe lands, Florida conservation issues were the place where I saw most blue-red cooperation of anywhere I’ve been. Working alongside cowboys and wealthy city conservatives buying ranches to hold them against development to be part of the FWC, a very bold conservation proposal (biggest conservation corridor in the country) made by blue tribe conservationists, negotiated with red tribe ranchers, and signed into law by a conservative government, it was an interesting dynamic.

An article on this:

https://www.yesmagazine.org/environment/2020/09/11/florida-ranch-habitat-conservation

Yeah this is talked about in the doc, mostly in regards to a) water usage and b) conflict between the two sets of people. Thanks for the extra detail.

I wonder to degree such cooperation is rare, even in cases where some blue-aligned and red-factions agree, due to one tribe thinking that granting the other a victory legitimizes an "enemy" which one doesn't think should be permitted to exist. A sort of Cordon sanitaire.

Also if such tendency is more common in red or Blue tribe.

Environmentalist groups tend to have a much wider focus than just conservation, e.g. the Sierra Club and Union advocacy, that excludes Red Tribe conservationists that would much rather work with Red Tribe conservation groups like Ducks Unlimited (who are a 800lb gorilla of domestic conservation because of this.)

Overall, it is white progressives, not right-wingers, who constitute the most intolerant group in America, and who are also far more likely to eschew contacts with political opponents than any group.

https://www.americansurveycenter.org/research/the-state-of-american-friendship-change-challenges-and-loss/#Losing_a_Friend_over_Politics

Data point of one, but when Texas was debating legalizing the use of poison for feral hog control, deep red triber hunting groups and fairly blue tribe environmental groups stood together on the losing side against it.

That sounds more like a classic Baptists-and-Bootleggers situation: the environmentalists were probably concerned about the impact the poison would have on the rest of the local biosphere/food-chain/w.e., and the hunters, as per that one meme about the AR-15, were fine just shooting the things to keep their numbers down (and get some food in the process).

Not that I'm criticizing this alliance, mind you, I think those are both defensible reasons to oppose that measure.

Fair enough that you’re sad about it, but: 1) These people are free to do whatever they want with their wealth, even if they just inherited it all. If you disagree, I would have to ask you why you don’t believe in property rights; 2) It seems you think you know better than they do what is best for them, or society, and I have to ask you why that is, especially considering you’re assuming that at least some of them have some sort of age-induced wisdom that younger folk like you (I’m assuming) don’t have? and most importantly 3) Have you not considered that this group is a small fraction of the elderly population, that tens of millions of others are doing something else with their retirement, suggesting that this sample might be nowhere close to representing the elderly population at large? Always look for the unseen.

  1. These people are free to do whatever they want with their wealth, even if they just inherited it all. If you disagree, I would have to ask you why you don’t believe in property rights

We have all sorts of social standards and parables about what one ought to do in various life circumstances. Sure, the grasshopper was free to fiddle and throw parties all summer instead of working and saving like the ant, but then he was also "free" to enjoy the cold and hunger of the harsh winter that his lack of foresight and restraint left nothing to tide him through.

The problem isn't that these old people don't have the right to live like this; it's that the OP worries that there will be societal effects downstream from this kind of thing not unlike the grasshopper's summertime partying.

I have no problem with the OP worrying; I’m saying that the worrying is not helpful and won’t, and shouldn’t, change anything. I think any societal effects are almost impossible to predict and regardless, will be miniscule compared to thousands of other societal problems.

  1. These people are free to do whatever they want with their wealth, even if they just inherited it all. If you disagree, I would have to ask you why you don’t believe in property rights

Believing in property rights doesn't obligate one to not criticise how people make use of their property the same way believing in free speech doesn't obligate one to not criticise what people say.

You are correct. I should have not been so hasty to interpret it that way. I retract my assumption.

Just to answer 3) now- this is one of the other main points on the documentary (I didn't want to get into the inequality angle on this post). In fact it was exactly that part that made me think of the idea of "off-worlding" or escaping. Those who can afford to just nope out.

Sorry, I didn’t understand your point. Could you paraphrase?

Focusing on the documentary village in particular.

The Villages are essentially a permanent vacation town of 150,000 or so old people (I think, wikipedia seems to suggest a smaller number). There are some absolutely bizarre and surreal scenes of 80 year olds getting drunk at parties, doing karaoke, dancing and so on.

I think the first two things that it made me think of were Wall-E and the Culture novels by Iain M Banks. Not that these people are particularly fat (in fact they're all rather active and healthy), but the decadent nature of it all.

Which part of it is decadent or distasteful to you in particular? Is it the unproductivity? The recreation? Why is it bizarre?

I suppose just mass and everyday consumption- it's difficult to explain without watching but they will eat out every single day, spend all day every day in dance classes, or golfing, and so on. Don't get me wrong, it looks like a great time (vacation!), but there is something about the specifically ersatz nature of the places they live, the entertainment they enjoy, and the constant nature of it being off-putting for me.

Also, it is pretty unnatural right, a community of just thousands of old people living together, a whole town/city full of them nearly. Society isn't really meant to function like that- people of all ages are usually mixed up (with obviously some peaks and troughs). It feels like a regression of a person, rather than a maturity, where at retirement you decide to basically go back to college.

Maybe that's completely unjustified from myself, and they all look happy, much happier than dying in a traditional nursing home. But it's less of me giving a moral judgement, even though it still gives me an uncanny valley kind of effect. If you're an ethical realist then don't take me as making a normative claim on this! It's definitely more of a visceral unease.

It would have to be super depressing living somewhere and going to funerals all the time.

I remember hearing this interview with an older woman, and she was like, "I'm finished with men! I fall in love with them, and them with me, and then we get married, and then they die! I can't take it any more!"

I don't think it comes across as any more uncanny than, as you mentioned, a college town, where the booze and sex flow freely, social life is overly preoccupied with the football team, and there's not much mixture of age demographics, only in this case it trends old instead of young.

I guess to me the issue is that it seems like there's no 'future' being built here, where there might be in a college town. These folks are, without literally admitting it, coming here to live until they die. Thus, the Villages can be seen as private equity sponging up the accumulated wealth of an entire generation at the very terminus of their lives, to be used for I-don't-know-what. Not their families, for sure.

That is surely their right, but its not the outcome I would choose if I had any control over it.

The question of what they would be doing otherwise is an open one. Is there anything for them to do? What responsibilities would they have if they were to maintain an active role in their society?

I know the feeling you mean, but, on the other hand, would have it been better if they'd just been spending more while they were still working, so had no savings, and now need to live frugally? You're basically punishing them (morally) for being financially prudent.

would have it been better if they'd just been spending more while they were still working, so had no savings, and now need to live frugally? You're basically punishing them (morally) for being financially prudent.

Definitely the point I'm aiming at.

I am fine with a person actually enjoying the fruits of their labors, I'm just wondering whether this is really what we would aim to end up for our twilight years. That is, concentrating a bunch of retirees together in a community that is insulated from the rest of the world and has, in my view, little to offer the next generation.

Although, I think there's something to be said for managing your finances such that you're able to make decent use and enjoyment of them throughout your life rather than either being destitute in old age or having so much accumulated wealth that you can only hope to spend it all before you die through years of partying into orgiastic decadent celebration of life.

It is almost tragic- that these people built up all this wealth and pension money and so on just for it to be spent on activities they can barely take part in due to their age, and for all that wealth and work of a life time to get spent on margaritas, property tax and health (death) care costs.

Well, yeah, it's tragic that humans age and die. Nonetheless, wrapping life up with margaritas and white teeth beats pretty much any historical alternative that I'm familiar with, particularly for someone that's already done an honorable amount of work and sent force productive children into the world.

To the extent that there's any better alternative, it might be having a bit more pacing to life, stopping work for awhile to enjoy things earlier in life if you have the surplus income and savings to do so. Realistically, this is only an option for a tiny minority of people and to suggest it for most people would put them in great financial peril. But sure, if someone is in a position to treat their work as a series of tours of duty, enjoying more of their accrued wealth while they still have their full youthful vigor, more power to them.

I suppose that's the inevitable response if you start from the individualist perspective. What I meant is the tragedy in comparison to leaving the money to your children, giving them a better life, rather than frittering it away. It's easy for me to say this, nowhere near retirement, and god knows I'd probably do something similar myself if I was in that position. But it's clearly a bit weird that you work all your life, and then towards the end you say "I've done enough now, for my progeny, so I'll just spend the money on eeking out an extra year or two and alcohol and other hedonist expenditure." And I know it's asking a lot and perhaps holding people up to too high standards, especially given they've put a good shift in already, but to me that feels like something which is tragic, over and above staring into the face of your own mortality in an existential way.

A massive chunk of it goes on the Villages corporation itself (I realised I forgot to mention that, but it's basically a semi-private township). And a larger chunk goes on Healthcare- but then that's an argument about accurate allocation of resources I suppose and value for money.

What I meant is the tragedy in comparison to leaving the money to your children, giving them a better life, rather than frittering it away.

Counterpoint: if you raise your children right, then there should be little need to leave them much money, as they should be able to establish themselves well enough to not rely on mom and dad's eventual deaths to maintain their standard of living.

Raising kids involves making a huge up front investment in them, so it's not like they haven't received a lot of the benefits of your labors.

A massive chunk of it goes on the Villages corporation itself (I realised I forgot to mention that, but it's basically a semi-private township).

This is an extremely salient point.

Also, the US is a society that took individualism and atomization to the extreme. We have the tradition that your children leave and go build a separate life on their own.

Under this model, when you’re old, your children usually don’t have the time or frankly desire to come spend tons of time with you and help you out. They’ve got their own life to worry about.

It’s not like Mediterranean countries where the multigenerational family lives together, the nuclear family is about parents and their kids and everything else is peripheral.

Thus, retirees in the US find a social support network elsewhere.

The idea that you work for 40 years and then stop and do nothing for the last 15-20, spending all your accumulated wealth (which in this case gets sucked out by the service economy and healthcare costs), or in perhaps more welfare minded countries, by the taxpayer, is a historical anomaly. At some point we're going to have to come to terms with the fact that people will have to keep working much longer (or maybe that they ought to want to work longer).

It's an anomaly, but why should people have to keep working longer? Yes, in the past, most people worked until they were dead; why is this inferior to building up surplus so they can stop working for a while?

It is almost tragic- that these people built up all this wealth and pension money and so on just for it to be spent on activities they can barely take part in due to their age

They seem to be enjoying themselves regardless. And you know what else they can't do so well because of their age? Work! And unlike playing golf or whatever, work generally sucks; it's something you only do because someone's paying you for it. There's tragedy, sure; these people are all going to die, and relatively soon. But that's just the human condition. For them to grind out their last years in ever-less-efficient toil seems far worse.

At some point we're going to have to come to terms with the fact that people will have to keep working much longer (or maybe that they ought to want to work longer).

That's not feasible though. It was pointed out multiple times on the old subreddit, and it bears repeating here: for most people, modern medicine and healthcare can extend lifespans, but usually not healthspans as well. Simply put, you as the average citizen may live 10 years longer than your grandparents, but you won't be able to work 10 more years (i.e. live 10 years longer in good health).

Plus, one of the complaints we usually hear about the shitty current job market is that applicants routinely get turned down on grounds that they are "too old".

When people make the argument that "you can have a fulfilling life in good health as a pensioner if you take good care of yourself", who they actually have in mind are the minority of people who have rare, marketable skills high in demand, get into really cushy jobs after graduation accordingly, always keep their skill set updated, and cleverly use their connections to shift from one cushy position into another in the same sector, until they eventually retire at, say, 70. But again, this path isn't open for the majority of people.

The idea that you work for 40 years and then stop and do nothing for the last 15-20, spending all your accumulated wealth (which in this case gets sucked out by the service economy and healthcare costs), or in perhaps more welfare minded countries, by the taxpayer, is a historical anomaly. At some point we're going to have to come to terms with the fact that people will have to keep working much longer (or maybe that they ought to want to work longer).

Is this behavior actually unsustainable, though? A large group of people retiring for a long time is historically unusual, but so are many other things about today. The amount of work required to produce many necessities is historically unusual. The amount of workers we have now in service roles or in roles doing intellectual labor is extremely historically unusual.

While I share your disdain for the current model of retirement, I don't see the current model becoming unsustainable any time soon. The vast majority of modern economies seems to go towards making luxuries or money pits like healthcare, not the necessities for life. In these areas it is far more possible for quality to drop without disrupting the status quo.

Where and how do you see the current model breaking down?

The issue is more the healthcare system than retirement itself. Spending obscene amounts of money to tack on an extra year or two of life at the end, generally with awful quality, is what's really contributing to unsustainability.

Right, but doesn't that line up with it being basically fine for old folks to karaoke away their last vigorous years? The problem is shoveling money at pharmaceutical companies and hospitals to extend time in deathbeds.

I'm prettymuch in agreement about the karaoke period. Then again it raises the question of the amount of medication and care going into sustaining said karaoke period.

We should invest to keep people alive and healthy for the karaoke period IMO, but we do have an unfortunate aversion to death to where we keep people alive who are a shell of themselves through ever more invasive and difficult treatments. I’ve got a few ICU nurses in the family who always speak on this. It’s not the patients themselves who want this either, but usually the patients family who won’t accept anything less than keeping their loved one alive as long as possible.

Maybe you're right- I suppose the point where it begins to collapse is when demographics start to look like South Korea. The US will be fine for a long time (not as bad demographics issues, plus the petrodollar). But in for example, the UK, we're already nearly at breaking point with our social care system, and with inflation driven declining standards of living/property bubble, I don't see us having as good a time of it.

Then again, we don't have anything like the Villages, so perhaps there is a much shorter distance to fall.

Then again, we don't have anything like the Villages

England - really, northern Europe in general - outsources this to Spain and France. It very much is a thing.

But in for example, the UK, we're already nearly at breaking point with our social care system, and with inflation driven declining standards of living/property bubble, I don't see us having as good a time of it.

Is the crisis in the UK due to paying out pensions, or due to trying to give unrealistically good healthcare to every single person? I've heard a bunch about funding issues with public health in the UK but not much about funding issues with their pensions.

It's possible the UK will try to gut pensions to throw yet more money into the endless pit of healthcare, but the unsustainable element here isn't the part where we pay people a pension for 15-20 years after 40 years of work.

Well if the whispers coming out recently about public sector pensions are to be believed (extensive use of incredibly highly leveraged tools to try and deliver increasingly unrealistic inflation linked expectations) then pensions do seem to be an upcoming issue. But no, it is mostly due to healthcare costs. Not unrealistically good healthcare to everyone though, at this point it is nearing basic adequate healthcare to a subset of the population. The NHS is in a really, really bad shape at this point (Emergency response times are sky-high). But that's mostly just an allocation issue like you said.

Then again, we don't have anything like the Villages, so perhaps there is a much shorter distance to fall.

Arguably parts of Spain & Portugal were essentially the Villages pre-Brexit

Very good point- I'm not up to speed with what exactly the post Brexit settlement was in terms of healthcare transferability (vaguely recall it being an issue). Maybe with enough hot summers like we just had the south coast could become a domestic equivalent.

Germany is running into problems in the near future. I can't give you the hard numbers offhand, and even if I went looking for them I wouldn't trust my ability to interpret them correctly, but if the current discourse is to be believed then society is aging rapidly, health care quality is degrading steadily, we're importing doctors and nurses and caretakers from all over the world, health care is the single biggest expenditure in the federal budget even with most people seeing around 20% of their gross income going into health insurance, and then we could go into in how far it is accurate that the aging population is economically propped up by a dwindling supply of native skilled labor and culturally volatile unskilled immigrants.

If healthcare doubles in price do people start working longer to afford healthcare in their old age? Or do they just consume less of it and accept sacrifices to the quality of it?

I think the latter, which is why I put healthcare with luxury goods as an item where a decline in quality won't kill retirement.

Healthcare in particular is also not a great example of hitting limits on what is possible. I'm informed that in many western countries a large part of the scarcity is from strict limitations on how many people can head into the profession rather than from a lack of people who could do the work (after necessary training).

If this is the case then the issue is not that a large retirement population is unsustainable, but that a gross mismanagement of resources is occurring in healthcare.

This is Germany we're talking about. People will do what they're told. If they're told to work longer, they'll work longer unless they get a medical exemption, which at present most who want do manage to get. If quality goes down then they will indeed just accept that. What else would they do? Few people switch from public to private insurance, and the quality difference between the two isn't very pronounced to begin with.

So, you're right. A decline in health care quality will not kill retirement. In my opinion it's the increase in health care expenses that will sooner or later encourage a government to raise the retirement age in order to slow the decline in pension-provided purchasing power. Of course there's not much left to earn here; the nominal retirement age in Germany is at 67, compared to 62 in France. How much productivity can you squeeze out of septuagenarians? It's mostly a question of cutting expenses and leaving more for those who do draw a pension. So I say retirement will become more exclusive in Germany so it doesn't devolve into a joke pension that's insufficient to live off.

Germany also has an immensely expensive healthcare system.

IIRC correctly, people visited doctors on average more than any other OECD country. I'm also shocked by how common, e.g. MRI devices are in Munich. In BC in Canada there are a few mobile ones that services the entire interior, and there are often month long waits for elective scans (too long, IMO, by the way). Near Munich I was able to get an MRI for my knee the next day.

So, there's at least some fat to be cut.

(In a further out there way, I think there's an unserviced niche of 'low-level' medical care -- basically advanced first aid clinics, where I wish we could have 'associate doctors' trained in 1/3 the time (basically advanced nurses) in clinics, as I think they could handle many 'standard' issues that GPs do (including taking blood for tests and administering vaccines. But that's a whole 'nother area)

Where I am GPs would write a script for a blood test and you would go off to the clinic nurse or a pathology centre to get your blood taken. How many countries in the world have GPs that use consultation time for phlebotomy?

I mean it's hard to phrase it palatably, especially when the majority of democracies have huge, strong voting blocs of the elderly... but modern conceptions of state-funded retirement just don't really mesh with any economic or societal sensibility.

Retiring at 60 from a life of hard labor when you had a life expectancy of 70ish and end-of-life care was more palliative and less 'here is 98% of your lifetime healthcare spending in order to eke out another 6 months of nil life quality' combine it with the majority of jobs becoming increasingly vague laptop sinecures with little-to-no coherent output and the whole 'I earned my retirement on the public purse' thing is also getting odd.

Yes, one of the issues skirted around in the documentary is the nature of the boomers who live there. This was the hippy generation (of course, not all of them) who essentially built the world that they now inhabit (atomisation, make work etc etc). I suppose they don't have to live with the consequences.

The oldest boomers are 76. If the people living there are around 80 years old, they're mostly Silents.

Thanks for pointing this out- at the moment I'd imagine average age is closer to 70-75, but obviously 10 years ago that would mean mostly silents. The demographics data on the wiki page will probably get you an exact answer.

In Australia, the first pensions were introduced in 1900 for 65 year olds. It seems weird that the cutoff's only drifted by 2 years in the time since.

Gotta go to work soon, so haven't watched it, but short anecdote:

My grandparents lived in a retirement community in Florida called "The Village", probably not the same one, but somewhat similar. I recall it being a pretty sedate place, everyone drove golf carts, played Bingo and went to see screenings of classic movies. There was a nice 72-year old lady in the building who caught syphilis, so there was clearly some partying going on.

They had a good twenty-five years there, but once their health got bad, they moved back to cold, rainy Michigan to live with their children. Now they have an apartment attached to my parents house, which is usually filled with four generations of our little clan. If they hold out another five years or so, they might get to see great-great-grandchildren.

Are they happy now?

Always have been.

Good to hear!

At some point we're going to have to come to terms with the fact that people will have to keep working much longer (or maybe that they ought to want to work longer).

We are coming to terms with it, considering the retirement ages have been rising all across the Western world for the last decade or so. You can see a table of the planned current and future retirement ages various countries have been instituting here.

The most shocking thing I found in that table is that there are countries that have differing retirement ages for men versus women.

And for women it tends to be younger, even though they live longer in pretty much every country in the world (more male privilege!)

And the women retirement age tends to be lower which is completely backwards if you look at life expectancy.

And that the retirement age for woman, if different, is always earlier. Especially interesting given that women tend to live longer.

Sure, but I'm not sure the full scale of the problem has been faced up to (not as bad in the US as here in Europe, perhaps), nor the unpalatibility of it with people told all their lives "work hard, then retire".

One of the reasons the US’s pension crisis won’t be near as bad as in Europe is that we have a lot more room to raise taxes to fund it without hitting the middle or lower classes.

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