The
Too High Cost of Aging Badly.
By: Dr. William Wong,
ND, PhD.
As a
Baby Boomer I see one great nation-crushing-crisis
coming to America. This crisis can bankrupt
the Republic and, I believe, is a greater
danger than any external enemy! (This
is not to belittle the real threat from
our open and secret external enemies
many of whom call themselves our Allies.
But that's for another commentary). As
great as that external danger presently
is, there is no doubt in my mind that
once America's largest generation, the
Baby Boomer's come fully into retirement
age, the Social Security and Medicare
system will collapse and that this collapse
will have grave consequences for our
country! The smoke and mirrors used by
politicians to show that the medical
welfare / pension system is financially
sound will collapse for one very simple
reason; there will be more folks feeding
from the Social Security / Medicare trough
than feeding money into it! It's just
that simple. To maintain the current
level of hand outs for the boomer generation
would mean we would need to tax the Ex
and Digital generation into oblivion
which would, as in the socialist countries
of Western Europe, stunt economic growth,
business incentive, the upward mobility
of young workers and delete funds from
programs needed for everything from helping
children to defending the country. At
current spending levels, with the smaller
generations now collecting benefits,
entitlement programs, i.e.: Social Security
and Medicare, take up 60 cents of every
US tax dollar collected! (In contrast
defense spending has never been more
than 14% of the Federal Budget even at
the height of WWII, and at current levels
of spending is less than 10%). When the
boomer's all come into the system, 60%
of the Federal Budget won't be enough
to keep them in benefits.
Sweden had several consecutive years
of zero economic growth due to their
social welfare system, Germany is having
to pare down their socialized medical
system to keep from going broke and
currently France is having large scale
protests and labor strikes because
the government wants to trim retirement
benefits to keep the economy from collapsing.
All of Europe, with their low birth
rates, are having to import guest workers
by the millions to both keep their
industries working and to pay money
into the pension funds to pay seniors
currently on the dole. The importation
of workers will only stem the tide
of economic decline temporarily and
IS costing Europe their culture, but
that again is for a different commentary.
In the
70's and 80's the Boomer's complained, "Get
the old off of our backs," as one
weekly news magazine reported. The Ex'ers
and D generations will scream even louder
than the Boomers did about the cost of
maintaining seniors because it will cost
them much more of their income in taxes
than it did the Boomers when they were
paying for their parents generation benefits.
My ire
gets raised when politicians, in efforts
to buy votes, promise and deliver higher
and higher levels of benefits without
a thought as to how those will be paid
for by the younger generations of workers
or the consequences of the cost of higher
benefits to those workers, to productivity,
to the economy and the nation as a whole.
Seniors seem oblivious to the damage
they are inflecting on the country they
helped build and defend. Or could it
be that the politicians just haven't
told them how bad things are because
leveling with them would cost them the
votes of the Grey Panthers?
There
are three things my generation can
do to keep from being a burden both
to their own children and to the country:
-
See Social Security
and Medicare for what they are,
senior welfare and accept that
we will take less in medical and
pension benefits than our parents
did. Some of us may want to be
independent of it entirely. Benefits
should be graded according to income,
with the truly needy receiving
the full benefits and those of
better means less. Overall the
Boomers have been the most successful
generation America has ever produced
and as such fewer of us need as
much help as our parents and grandparents
did.
-
Practice anti-aging
and preventative maintenance to
avoid the debilitating and catastrophic
diseases and chronic conditions
our parents came down with that
demanded so much in medical attention
and tax dollars. Many of us have
seen how badly our parents have
faired health wise and how horribly
they've died at the hands of allopathic
medicine and we don't want to go
that way! Over all, the Boomers
are looking younger, healthier
and are fitter than our parents
were at the same age so we have
a decent start. But, since fitness
and health decline rapidly after
50, that edge can quickly deteriorate
if we don't care for ourselves
and avoid medical fads.
What are medical fads? Here are
two examples 1) The low cholesterol
diet. In 30 years lowering cholesterol
has done nothing to lower the numbers
of patients who suffer strokes
and heart disease. But it has had
sweeping unintended consequences.
Sixty to seventy % of our brains
are cholesterol, everything we
think with, remember with and use
to signal movement and speech with
is a fat. We have nothing to show
for 30 years of the low cholesterol
diet except for a monumental increase
in Alzheimer's, a disease where
there is a wasting of the fatty
portions of the brain. Prior to
the mid '70's med students were
taught that they would likely never
see an Alzheimer's case in their
practice lifetimes as there were
only 4 cases per one million people.
That can't be said now! Fad # 2
An aspirin a day. Producing renal
failure, liver toxicity, even heart
attack and stroke via withdrawal
(see the article on aspirin in
the archived section of www.drwong.us),
this fad is quickly proving wrong
as aspirin is also now associated
with higher rates of pancreatic
cancer and diabetes.
-
Lose our fear
of dying. Up to 60% of seniors
Medicare costs are incurred in
the last 3 weeks of life usually
attempting to stop the impossible.
As one Canadian doctor put it once
during an interview "You Americans
just don't ever expect to die"?
We Yanks have a culture where even
though we may profess a belief
in an Almighty and an afterlife,
there is a great doubt that it
really exists and a great fear
of what lies on the other side
of physical life. Religious belief
and all the stories of near death
experiences aside we still hold
onto life thinking that physical
existence, no matter how painful
and miserable, is preferable to
not being here! Even when death
is inevitable, we fear it's coming
instead of preparing ourselves
for a peaceful transition. With
something as inevitable as death,
does it not make sense to study
how one can go through this "change
of address" without the stress,
without worry and without the fear
that makes us and our loved ones
claw onto any hope of continuing
our existence no matter how dysfunctional
and miserable?
This
will sound corny given today's mores
but here goes: It is our patriotic duty
to cost our society as little as possible
so that our children and grandchildren,
the younger generations who will have
the job of building and maintaining their
families and society, can live the American
dream even as we did. In order to not
be a drain on the public pension and
medical support system we need to be
healthier than previous generations and
much more preventive in our outlook so
we don't come down with as many, complicated,
serious, or as large a number of ills
as our parents did. It's time also for
a change in outlook, of thinking that
the country owes us an existence; it
owes most of us nothing. America only
owes its Veterans and sadly those who
never put their "asses" on
the line defending the country often
receive more in support and benefits
than those who did!
Whether
we have reaped the fruit of the American
life and its opportunities or allowed
the dream to be just that by not striving,
our time is coming to an end. We should
now get ready to quietly step out of
the way and not scuttle the American
dream for future generations.
It's
coming time for the ME generation to
stop thinking about "me" and
start living the words of Jack Kennedy
when he said the oft quoted but seldom
followed phrase:"Ask not what your
country can do for you, ask what you
can do for your country". |
