Baby Boomers

KingsX

Senior Member
Location
Texas
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There have been many articles about the number of baby boomers turning 65 [the usual count given is 10,000 per day.] And most of the discussion today is how Social Security and Medicare will be negatively affected by the huge number of baby boomers joining the ranks.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2010/12/29/baby-boomers-retire/


Conversely, I was curious how many baby boomers are now dying [a statistic that will have an equally huge financial, cultural and racial impact in the future.] I've discovered there isn't near as much information related to that issue.


I did find this 2017 .gov info:

" The aging population of the United States is propelling the nation toward a milestone: A historic increase in the number of deaths every year.

Deaths are projected to reach more than 3.6 million in 2037, 1 million more than in 2015. As the nation’s baby boom cohort ages (the youngest are 53 this year), the number and percentage of people who die will increase dramatically every year, peaking in 2055 before leveling off gradually.

The nation as a whole is aging, but not every area of the country or every racial and ethnic group is graying at the same rate.

...

... As the older population dies, the racial and ethnic makeup of the younger population will play a larger role in shaping the demographic profile of the population. In most areas, the impact is minor year to year, but over time these patterns will bring about substantial changes. With the highest median age of all racial and ethnic groups (43.3), the non-Hispanic White alone population is the only group projected to experience natural decrease in the near future."

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2017/10/aging-boomers-deaths.html



I also found this interesting 2012 article:


Baby Boomers will be mostly gone in 20 years


" It's time to start planning about what to do when we Baby Boomers die off.

That may seem distant, but it is not.

For the past 20 years, the conversation has been about what society will do when the Baby Boom generation hits retirement age -- and that day is here. Each day, more than 10,000 of that generation reaches 65, and our systems are straining to keep up.

One of the biggest new career fields is health care, and much of that has to do with Baby Boomers progressively needing more health care. Corporations, hospitals, clinics and other health care providers are scrambling to find enough people to do the jobs that need doing.

Some are calling it a Silver Tsunami.

With expanding life spans, these people will need care for quite some time, but these times will not last. The sad truth is that most Baby Boomers have not planned for retirement beyond paying their social security tax, so they will not have the big bucks to pay for more than basic health care, even with Medicare.

Twenty years from now, the Baby Boom generation will be dying off rapidly. Yes, it will happen somewhat gradually, but not too gradually. What will happen to the health care industry then? Will health care employees have plans for other careers?

For that matter, what will many employees in any number of fields do?

With the demise of a huge portion of the population, less housing will be needed, less food will be needed and there will be fewer jobs for meeting Baby Boomer needs and desires. "


more at link

http://www.fortmorgantimes.com/ci_20010202
 

I imagine that the statistics will differ in countries which have universal health care.


I imagine those baby boomers will be dying sooner.

I recently read news articles how in England government doctors can now withhold food and liquid from brain-damaged patients without needing court orders. In other words, dehydrating and starving them to death.

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I imagine those baby boomers will be dying sooner.

I recently read news articles how in England government doctors can now withhold food and liquid from brain-damaged patients without needing court orders. In other words, dehydrating and starving them to death.

This news came this week, it only hit the
newspapers yesterday and it applies to
long term coma patients who are presumed
to be brain dead.

I haven't read the full details yet, but I
don't agree with it anyway, why develope
modern medicine methods devised by Doctors,
then allow a judge to cancel it for political
and financial reasons.

Same goes for assisted suicide, in Belgium
the numbers have increased dramatically,
I see this as getting rid of old people who
are no longer productive.

Mike.
 
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The British Supreme Court ruled that doctors can end a patient’s life support and withhold food and liquids without his or her consent and without a court hearing and this will include patients who are not in a coma but in a "minimally conscious state."

http://brainfoundation.org.au/disorders/minimally-conscious-state


No matter what the reason, withholding food and liquid until a human being dies a week or two later of dehydration and starvation is barbaric.

People used to shoot injured horses to be "humane"... but they prefer to murder disabled humans in a most horrific way.
 
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The British Supreme Court ruled that doctors can end a patient’s life support and withhold food and liquids without his or her consent and without a court hearing and this will include patients who are not in a coma but in a "minimally conscious state."

http://brainfoundation.org.au/disorders/minimally-conscious-state


No matter what the reason, withholding food and liquid until a human being dies a week or two later of dehydration and starvation is barbaric.

People used to shoot injured horses to be "humane"... but they prefer to murder disabled humans in a most horrific way.

Do you have a link to the court case to which you refer? Is it the Charlie Gard case? The link posted above only explains the minimally conscious state.
 
Currently, Canadians life expectancy exceeds that of Americans by three years. Our infant mortality is considerably lower also. Much of this discrepancy is attributed to the diffences in availability of quality health care for all sections of society. There are countries whose universal health care is of a higher quality than Canada’s, and their longevity and infant mortality rates reflect this.
 
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Ironic that a topic about baby boomers' death rate statistics would morph into UK government approval of doctors killing patients via withholding food and liquids [which results in a long horrible dehydration/starvation death.] Makes one wonder if that is government's final solution to the baby boomer generation "problem."
 
So what do you do - always keep people with no realistic chance of having any meaningful recovery 'alive' by machine? You can't actively kill them, the only thing you can do is to withdraw life support. Sure the disinterested party can stand on their piece of moral high ground and condemn this as horrific, but is it cruel to someone who is effectively dead already?
 
So what do you do - always keep people with no realistic chance of having any meaningful recovery 'alive' by machine?


You are not paying attention. This has nothing to do with being kept alive by "machine." These people are not on heart or breathing machines. But they are being given liquids and food. Many of them are semi-aware [not in a coma] and the UK government now allows them to be dehydrated and starved to death without a court order [a horrible death that sometimes takes weeks.] If you see nothing wrong with that, maybe that should be our new mode of execution for capital criminals.
 
I think that you are being a bit sensationalist and ignoring the fact that doctors and family will still have to make very hard, drawn out decisions - possibly over months or years. You would think that the government had handed out a licence to kill! This is NOT a government issue - it simply means that at the end of the day, a court ruling is not required. I think also that the use of words like 'barbaric' is insulting to the medical profession. Don't you think that all necessary measures are taken to prevent suffering?

Out of interest, what is the position in the USA. Does it vary by state? Are all patients kept 'alive' irrespective of medical advice or patient and relatives wishes? Do you have to pay for long term care in this sort of case?
 
I think that you are being a bit sensationalist and ignoring the fact that doctors and family will still have to make very hard, drawn out decisions - possibly over months or years. You would think that the government had handed out a licence to kill! This is NOT a government issue - it simply means that at the end of the day, a court ruling is not required. I think also that the use of words like 'barbaric' is insulting to the medical profession. Don't you think that all necessary measures are taken to prevent suffering?

Out of interest, what is the position in the USA. Does it vary by state? Are all patients kept 'alive' irrespective of medical advice or patient and relatives wishes? Do you have to pay for long term care in this sort of case?

A few years ago my dear mother, who was in her 90s and had vascular dementia, suffered a massive stroke which rendered her unconscious. It fell to me to enforce her Advanced Directive, to make the extraordinarily difficult decision of removing IVs, not have a feeding tube inserted, to put her in end-of-life round-the-clock hospice care (which included keeping her deeply unconscious with morphine).

My siblings all agreed with my decision. The bottom line was that even before the big stroke she had little quality of life. All her life she'd been quite modest and meticulous, but for the previous year her body had deteriorated to the point that she was in diapers and in all other ways unable to care for her physical self. She couldn't hold a meaningful conversation, couldn't remember important life details (like how many children she had), and was for all intents and purposes no longer the woman she would recognize or want to be. Mostly she was sitting around waiting to die.

In the unlikely event that the doctors could have intervened to provide some semblance of consciousness she would have been in considerably worse condition - mentally and physically - than before the stroke. It would have been pure selfishness to keep her alive with fluids and a feeding tube. Furthermore, once those medical interventions are in place it is very difficult to have them withdrawn.

I don't disagree with England's court decision.
 
I read an article a couple of months ago that showed the number of New Millennial babies far exceeds the number of Baby Boomer babies.

Now what?
 
The US, AND global populations will only continue to grow. Today, we are over 320 million in the US, and over 7.5 billion, globally. Current projections are for 450 million in the US, by 2050, and 9 billion globally by mid-century. A few years ago, the UN released a study whereby they concluded that the Maximum Sustainable human population would be somewhere around 5 billion....we are Well past that point, with no signs of a slowdown. As automation and robotics continue to take more and more jobs, increased Poverty is certainly going to occur. Combine Technology, and Climate Change...with this unchecked population growth, and there is no doubt that those living 50+ years from now will be faced with problems we can only imagine.

Many years ago, I read a study written by a group of academics who met in Switzerland and projected the future. Their conclusion was that sometime in the latter half of this century, there will be One More major war. This war will Not be nation vs. nation, but rather the Haves vs. Have Nots. Basically, it will boil down to if the Haves run out of bullets before the Have Nots run out of bodies. If the Haves win, the global population will be reduced by half, or more, and the survivors will unite under a common government and language, and mankind will begin a serious exploration of the Universe. If the Have Nots win, society will collapse, and return to the conditions of the Dark Ages.

As time passes, I tend to agree with this ominous prediction.
 
The US, AND global populations will only continue to grow. Today, we are over 320 million in the US, and over 7.5 billion, globally. Current projections are for 450 million in the US, by 2050, and 9 billion globally by mid-century. A few years ago, the UN released a study whereby they concluded that the Maximum Sustainable human population would be somewhere around 5 billion....we are Well past that point, with no signs of a slowdown. As automation and robotics continue to take more and more jobs, increased Poverty is certainly going to occur. Combine Technology, and Climate Change...with this unchecked population growth, and there is no doubt that those living 50+ years from now will be faced with problems we can only imagine.

Many years ago, I read a study written by a group of academics who met in Switzerland and projected the future. Their conclusion was that sometime in the latter half of this century, there will be One More major war. This war will Not be nation vs. nation, but rather the Haves vs. Have Nots. Basically, it will boil down to if the Haves run out of bullets before the Have Nots run out of bodies. If the Haves win, the global population will be reduced by half, or more, and the survivors will unite under a common government and language, and mankind will begin a serious exploration of the Universe. If the Have Nots win, society will collapse, and return to the conditions of the Dark Ages.

As time passes, I tend to agree with this ominous prediction.

Presuming that the terrible prediction above comes to fruition, under either case there would soon be a divide between a new set of Haves and Have Nots. Some would install themselves as overlords and others would soon find themselves responsible for cleaning their houses - or space ship factories, as the case may be.

If war doesn't thin human ranks, nature certainly will. Plagues and viruses can be all but unstoppable in large population centers. It is only through tremendous luck that we haven't suffered massive worldwide pandemics in the past hundred years. The closer we live to each other and the more we travel to far flung places, the greater the opportunity for these microscopic biological meanies to proliferate. That SARS didn't take out millions is nothing short of a miracle.
 


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