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I'm not convinced this really is a solvable problem.
Lifespan has increased without meaningfully increasing the amount of healthy years. Age of retirement can be raised a bit but we're starting to hit hard limits of what is possible (at least for the general population, some jobs can be done by some groups of elderly more reliably).
It isn't really a problem insurance or redistribution can solve because this is something that happens to everyone and welfare states are already stretched to the limit and running massive deficits. This is a demographic and biological problem, not a redistribute one.
A stop gap measure is probably increasing the retirement age where possible and cutting back on non-essential elderly entitlements but at some point we have to ask ourselves what we're doing here.
Let's say we treated this as savings instead and people got a an account of money at retirement that they can spend on healthcare, assisted living and pension; what do we do when that money runs out? That's the situation we're getting into societally, regardless of whether we have insurance based or socialised systems.
We have no treatment for aging so no-one is getting out of this alive, and that is something we as a modern society have to come to terms with. Our current attitude is more than a little childish, imo.
Hopefully AGI really comes and solves aging for us or this is going to get ugly.
We don't need to solve aging, we just need to automate enough work that good living standards can be maintained despite a shrinking and aging population. Like does it really matter if the seniors at a nursing home get their food cooked by a sweaty 16 year old vs a (possibly even higher and more consistent quality) automated cooking machine? Does it really matter if the medical treatment and analysis they get is done by (possibly even higher and more consistent quality) machines and not extensive human labor?
Not really.
In many sectors "build another machine" is already far more efficient than throwing another human laborer in (to the point some run lights out/near lights out), so birthrates and youth stop mattering for them as much. As we automate more and more, this will become increasingly true of the general economy.
That would be nice but I'll believe it when I see it.
I cleverly used examples that we already have (at least to some degree).
Automated food production? Already the case for many steps and products, both at the farms themselves, and in preparing/packaging/etc. Combine this with self driving trucks (self driving cars are already looking better than humans like with Waymo, probably not too long for the trucking industry to start getting more automated) and even stuff like drone deliveries from store to house, and maybe in 20-30 years there will barely be any humans involved in getting food from the fields to your home. Heck, you might not even be a part of that process, COVID has made grocery deliveries really cheap and I use them from time to time and that's with human drivers still not the drones yet.
Medical care? Ok sure a lot of it will remain human, patients will want a human doctor to talk to and a human nurse to look after them but automation is already here and getting better. In all sorts of ways even. Like I got a sleep study recently and all the devices they put on me could read my pulse, detect my breathing, etc without a human monitor. And an auto generated report from what I can tell! Yes a human was there to set it up and look over it, and an expert looked the results and the report but it was mostly technology.
Heck technology even makes a lot of things possible that wouldn't be before. Consider the sleep study again and how they had constant monitoring of my pulse and breathing and oxygen levels. A human doctor, even if they taped their end of a stethoscope to me and listened all night long wouldn't be able to record with nearly as much accuracy as the machine can.
Now of course, automation still has a long way to go. But given the miracles we have already achieved and the amazing standards of living we already get from it, I don't think we should be so doubtful.
Heck one of the only reasons why automation hasn't already solved the crisis is that our living standards keep ratcheting up to match the increase in productivity. Like we're at the point where internet is being considered a basic human right despite most not even having it ~30-40 years ago. Imagine going back to the 1980s and telling people the Internet will be considered a human right. Many would be like "whats the internet?". That's how much we've ratcheted.
You realise of course that even with these inventions we're falling further behind, as does the derivative and in some places even the second order derivative.
The scale of the improvements are not commensurate with the worsening dependency ratios.
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True. I have more faith in the Chinese having the will and the ingenuity to actually accomplish this but the current meta in the West is awash with so much inefficiency and stupidity that it cannot last without alterations.
I'm sure a better scalable approach to eldercare exists but the current trajectory seems ill equipped to arrive there
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Another aspect not many people talk about when discussing this issue is that the elderly are currently sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars of underused real estate. Downgrading from a 3 bedroom suburban home with a quarter acre of property to a 2 bedroom condo in a lower cost of living area can finance a hell of a lot of health care. The boomers need to sell their fucking houses and get some of that wealth working again. Social security and medicare payments should be halved for every spare bedroom in your home.
No, it really can't. You'd think so, but transaction costs are high, condo fees are high, and healthcare is hellaciously expensive.
Also ridiculous carveouts in the current pension system. Australia doesn't count the house you live in towards mean testing for public assistance, pension and healthcare so there's a lot of instances where elderly are deliberately sitting on premium real estate (that they don't maintain at all) solely to potentially give it as future inheritance.
I'm reminded of an elderly couple near me growing up where their kids lived an hour away since the suburb had massively appreciated who made their own retirements significantly worse (due to transit and rarely seeing grandkids) by refusing to leave their literally rotting home
Old age social security benefits in the US are not means tested. This is a weight-bearing component of the system -- it's funded by a special tax on all workers, and provided to all those who paid into it. That's what keeps it from just being considered plain old welfare, and what makes it the "third rail" of politics.
As for occupied houses literally rotting in Australia... isn't the country generally rather dry for that? Even in my wet area of the US, if you avoid being flooded from below and keep the roof from leaking, and don't set it on fire, the house will be OK structurally for a very long time.
Also, a couple holding onto a house to keep the health care system from getting it rather than their children goes against the narrative of greedy elders who don't care about their children.
If social security is so smart and inevitable due to self funding by everybody why are they struggling to fund It?
Most of the bits of Australia with significant human presence aren't desert. I just recall going into the local elderly couple's house when I was younger and their roof was being barely patched together due to mold which they didn't have funds to rectify despite the lot being worth about 2.5 million AUD due to location. The house was about 100 years old though.
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If they all start selling then prices will drop because people don't have the money to buy the real estate absent inherited real estate wealth.
Which solves another problem! Win/win!
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Ohno. Premium real estate drops a bit in pricing and transit issues get mitigated.
The point is that it isn't a good source of funding. Much of the value is illusory.
Not in that sense. There's a potential haircut but the great grey migration has to go buy somewhere else which is likely better adapted to their needs. You're confusing this with liquid companies
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Or to a 500-ft2 ADU in the backyard.
Seriously. Unleash the granny flats! Make multi-generational households great again!
Exactly. I've moved from a nuclear family society to a clannish one and the elderly tend to have better QOL through granny flats and staying inside the home
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The meaningful amount of healthy years has expanded hugely? 70 in 2026 isn't what it was in 1970 due to a combination of jobs being far less physically arduous and public health interventions. 65 was picked as a line when most people didn't get there, they were profoundly wrecked on average and there wasn't an expectation of 10 years of meandering cruises.
But yeah the retirement age needs to be a function of where the books can be balanced. If you were incapable of generating enough savings or children to get you there, moving it onto the public purse is ruinous
Not compared to the increase in lifespan. Where people used to die at 65 they now are inching close to 85 (84.1 in Sweden where i live), and few people even in light professions can work to 70, nevermind more than that. I'm not saying that they necessarily need active care at that point but neither are they fit to work, and consume increasing amounts of resources. I Grant you that we might be able to squeeze some work out of them but we can't just increase the retirement age either.
Of course there are exceptions like my wife's grandfather who worked into his mid 90s.
The average 70 year old these days is more fit to work at the typical job of 2026 than the average 65 year old was at the typical job in the early 1900s when public pensions were brought in and 65 was set as the interval for their payment. You are frankly insane if you think that, as a somewhat-young person, that the retirement age will be where it currently is when you're old enough to get there barring some huge luxury AI communism innovation in the meantime. The system is already buckling before the majority of boomers are even retired, medicine will likely continue to improve and unless there is an immediate reversal in the birthrate issue there won't be a large enough pyramid beneath you.
That is literally what I said in my first comment?
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