How do we deal with all of these old people?

Calpundit has an interesting post about what the graphs look like when we consider Social Security in the US (as opposed to Medicare - ISTR that Social Security is pensions, and Medicare is health insurance, at least to a first approximation; am I right? Sorry - it’s late, and I don’t have the will or inclination for in-depth Googling.)

That graph is fascinating to me. OK, so it’s got the usual bugbears of a) not labeling the Y axis (0% to 10% of what), and b) is mostly about projections, which are just a fancy way of saying guessing, but with numbers. Beyond these caveats, though, let’s look at what the line / model is actually saying.

The first thing is that it’s assuming that the US will not get involved in any major high-casualty wars or catastrophes. This is a pretty major departure; look at any pyramid of ages and spot the influence of major world wars. Note the dips at about the mid 1910s and early 1940s. That’s almost entirely to do with world wars; conversely, the overhand you see afterwards is people who weren’t going to breed during a world war, letting go, as it were. It’s scary; 10 years ago my history lessons were full of World War I and World War II. Now the guys from Ypres are almost all dead, and their war is going the way of the 1870 insurrection.

The second thing it’s saying is that no matter how many old folk there are, they’ll cost more / there’ll be more of them. The model clearly assumes there’s a boost of baby-boomers between 2020 and 2040, but otherwise assumes a gradual rise in cost - presumably something to do with people living longer?

And of course the really important question is: how usefully are people living longer? If everyone gets to live another 5 years, then sure, let’s extend the retirement age by 5 years. If it’s less clear-cut - some people still fail at 60-odd, other people, increasingly, are firing on all cylinders until they’re 90 - then let’s deal with that with laws.

Incidentally: if we’re an information economy, if we’re all about people being skilled and educated, then I’d like to see us cracking down with some disapproval on people who live until they’re 130, are compos mentis until they die from a heart attack, but don’t have children and don’t give anything back to the community. I’m not particularly interested in tax credits for people who are parents - anyone with working sexual organs can pull that one off - but people who are active _grand_parents deserve a lot of praise.