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In last week’s thread there was extensive discussion on the retirement home employee shortage in the US. It made me ask myself: is it fair to say that elderly care in the US and Western countries in general is based on the unstated rule that you as a frail and elderly person pretty much only deserve to have a quality of life worth a damn if you have loving, caring children and grandchildren living nearby, visiting you regularly and looking after you if needed? That is, whatever system of care that is set up is not designed and should not be designed to basically prop you up and coddle you otherwise? It may sound cynical or too far-fetched to say it out loud, but looking at this issue from the outside, it’d explain many things. I imagine this is a general rule most Boomers also take as given, as they grew up in an age when childlessness and family dissolution/dislocation was much less normal than today.
Outside of individuals who should be sentenced to life in prison, is there anyone not entitled to an upper-middle-class life, regardless of their life choices?
You need to define what "worth a damn" means. I haven't compiled what I usually see from leftists regarding what the elderly are entitled to, but once listed out, I'm guessing it's an upper-middle-class standard if you want to live in flyover country or a wealthy one if you want to live in an Alpha++ city.
For younger people, I see:
Considering that jobs are optional, it seems that everyone is entitled to the life of a trust fund kid.
This is caused by the transition from the left being the party of workers against bosses, to being the party of students against workers.
The western college experience is that you move out of your parents house to a 1-star resort where your immediate needs have no short term sticker price, and you can get a stipend to live off of. This is treated as an entitlement by the people doing it and it’s perfectly reasonable on an individual/class level to advocate for the thing to which you’re already entitled to become higher quality/bigger. And it’s also perfectly reasonable to lobby for the entitlement to not end.
I don’t know what the solution is, but it’s obviously wrong.
Workers in my experience both as a union member and rep are quite fond of not having to pay for healthcare, having more vacation, childcare availability, time to spend with their kids, adequate pay for better housing and lifestyle, shorter hours, and getting free education. They fight quite hard to try and get such benefits in their contracts. Go back to before the majority of the populace went to college and you'll still find social democratic, labor and socialist parties with such demands in their party platforms.
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