Some Good News About Aging Populations

[WIP]

According to psychologist - Elizabeth Midlarsky, older people who have raised their families and have personal finances in order, start shifting focus to larger, wider concerns....I hope she's right! Every other factor in modern life: growing gaps in wealth and income, fights for available natural resources, consumerism and advertising induced hedonism, is pushing in the other direction....that would also explain all the crap now about Ayn Rand....who provides a thin veneer of moral justification for selfishness.

As long as people have sufficient health and finances to meet their daily needs, they do seem to behave more altruistically as they grow older. Our research indicates that older adults (65 years plus) express the need to help others both for social reasons (they prefer to be engaged with others) and for altruistic reasons (they really want to be of help to others), and are willing to expend their own resources (time, money, effort) to do so.

http://www.scienceandreligiontoday.com/2011/06/08/do-we-become-more-altruistic-as-we-get-older-and-have-less-of-our-own-life-to-protect/

[Guest American Woman]

As long as people have sufficient health and finances to meet their daily needs, they do seem to behave more altruistically as they grow older.

This may be a factor in the future, as social security payments/retirement funds don't seem to be there the way they used to; at least that seems to be the forecast.

It makes sense, though, that people who no longer have the expense and concern of raising their children or buying houses or paying off student loans etc. would be in a better position to start shifting their focus to wider concerns. I don't see how that would be "good news," though - as people have been getting older since the beginning of time; seems to me it means that things will just remain as they've always been.

Having said that, many young people are concerned about those who are less privileged and many volunteer their time helping those in need - in our countries and abroad. They may not have the money to make donations that older people with their finances in order do, but they are giving of their time - and that's very important too.

[Oleg Bach]

The only thing good about aging is that if you are in a good frame of mind...and body - You can still have sex...and that's the only thing good about it.

[WIP]

As long as people have sufficient health and finances to meet their daily needs, they do seem to behave more altruistically as they grow older.

This may be a factor in the future, as social security payments/retirement funds don't seem to be there the way they used to; at least that seems to be the forecast.

Yes, when I was young, my grandfather lived with us until he died in 1965. Back then, the Canada Pension Plan may have been started...I've never looked up the details...but I do know that whatever money he had coming in was not enough for him to live on his own after he got too old to work the farm....his land was too worthless to return much money, since farms on the Gaspe were all being abandoned at the time, and is still not worth much of anything....too long of a detour to make the point that my grandfather, like most elderly before the CPP were living on the edge of starvation if they didn't have family members supporting them. And, looking towards a future of diminishing returns, elderly altruism would certainly take a hit.

It makes sense, though, that people who no longer have the expense and concern of raising their children or buying houses or paying off student loans etc. would be in a better position to start shifting their focus to wider concerns. I don't see how that would be "good news," though - as people have been getting older since the beginning of time; seems to me it means that things will just remain as they've always been.

I guess the difference now is one of demographics -- since we hear endlessly about the costs of an aging population....much of which could be alleviated if people maintained healthier lifestyles, but that's another issue...the stories mentioned on the Science and Religion website show that there is another side to the accepted wisdom that most people inevitably become more conservative and rightwing as they get older. I have understood the source of my own change in outlook as something that occurred because of moving out of an all-white upper middleclass suburb to an ethnically and racially mixed lower middle class neighbourhood...but, maybe just getting older played a significant role in the desire to re-evaluate my thinking on a lot of issues.

Having said that, many young people are concerned about those who are less privileged and many volunteer their time helping those in need - in our countries and abroad. They may not have the money to make donations that older people with their finances in order do, but they are giving of their time - and that's very important too.

I was very idealistic and did a lot of volunteer work when I was young too, but for a few decades I didn't think of many things beyond personal or family concerns. The problem today is that we are facing a future of rising food prices, gas prices, stagnant wages; so there are a lot of external factors to influence people to become more selfish and xenophobic, and less concerned about social responsibility or the environment.

[eyeball]

The problem today is that we are facing a future of rising food prices, gas prices, stagnant wages; so there are a lot of external factors to influence people to become more selfish and xenophobic, and less concerned about social responsibility or the environment.

What we're facing on the environmental or ecological side will one day probably be refered to by historians as The Bottleneck. The classic example of an ecological bottleneck, a shrinking waterhole, indicates that the animals that rely on it only get meaner and probably more fearful as it shrinks. It'll be no different for exactly the same reasons in our economy...given we simply no longer have the planet for the taking that we once had.

the stories mentioned on the Science and Religion website show that there is another side to the accepted wisdom that most people inevitably become more conservative and rightwing as they get older.

The real problem I see for society and our prospects of making it through the economic and social bottleneck is how fear and conservatism, which already go together like peas and carrots, will feed-back and amplify things like environmental irresponsibility.

Imagine a world with a runaway climate that's also burdened with runaway conservatism.

Edited June 12, 2011 by eyeball

[TimG]

Elizabeth Midlarsky, older people who have raised their families and have personal finances in order, start shifting focus to larger, wider concerns

Environmentalism has always been the play thing of the idle rich. It follows that some wealthy retirees with time on their hands would turn to various pursuits including "social responsibility" or "environment".

Of course, the holy-than-thou airs get stripped away the second someone starts taking about entitlement reform that would affect their pocket book. Woe betide the politician that points out that our health care and pension systems are unsustainable. Grey power will put him back in his place. The only kind of "sustainbility" that matters to these people is the type where others are forced to make sacrifices.

You then have the awkward problem that many retirees depend on corporate profits for their income and are more than happy to colelect the higher dividends that result companies cut costs.

In short, I don't think much will change. That is good and bad.

[WIP]

Environmentalism has always been the play thing of the idle rich. It follows that some wealthy retirees with time on their hands would turn to various pursuits including "social responsibility" or "environment".

Of course, the holy-than-thou airs get stripped away the second someone starts taking about entitlement reform that would affect their pocket book. Woe betide the politician that points out that our health care and pension systems are unsustainable. Grey power will put him back in his place. The only kind of "sustainbility" that matters to these people is the type where others are forced to make sacrifices.

You then have the awkward problem that many retirees depend on corporate profits for their income and are more than happy to colelect the higher dividends that result companies cut costs.

In short, I don't think much will change. That is good and bad.

So, all of your gnashing and wailing against doing something about climate change pretty much boils down to libertarian dogma! The only reason why health care and pension plans are in jeopardy is because of the screwed up priorities that put ceo's and hedge fund managers' profits ahead of average people.....we know where most of the money is going, so don't try to pretend that our debt-based finance banking system is for the benefit of retirees!

[WIP]

What we're facing on the environmental or ecological side will one day probably be refered to by historians as The Bottleneck. The classic example of an ecological bottleneck, a shrinking waterhole, indicates that the animals that rely on it only get meaner and probably more fearful as it shrinks. It'll be no different for exactly the same reasons in our economy...given we simply no longer have the planet for the taking that we once had.

If future generations survive, it will be called a bottleneck! For what it's worth, the last really serious bottleneck happened 50 to 70,000 years ago, when the human population crashed to as few as 2000 survivors....that might have been the end of us, and we would have been none the wiser! There's nothing to go on so far to indicate which way this story will play out in the future. The present trends aren't encouraging.

The real problem I see for society and our prospects of making it through the economic and social bottleneck is how fear and conservatism, which already go together like peas and carrots, will feed-back and amplify things like environmental irresponsibility.

Imagine a world with a runaway climate that's also burdened with runaway conservatism.

I was thinking something similar when I read "Climate Wars" by Gwynn Dyer, a couple of years ago. The present wars and foreign policy moves in the U.S., have to be understood as part of a policy of competing with China for the remaining reserves of oil and other mineral resources, before they make any logical sense.

One thing for sure, running out of oil is not reducing carbon output, since the prevailing strategy is to just to use more energy to get at the remaining oil and cook tar sand deposits for their oil content.

[TimG]

The only reason why health care and pension plans are in jeopardy is because of the screwed up priorities that put...

In other words, like most climate alarmists, you are completely ignorant of economics and live in a fantasy world where the only people that would be hurt by the policies you promote are the big bad faceless meanies on wall street. It is an naive and idiotic position to take.

The roots of the current crisis rest with democratic politicians in the US who pressured banks to lend to people who could not afford it. Of course, the banks were partners in this scam but it is dishonest to ignore the critical role that advocates for "social justice" had.

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/06/07/fanniegate-gamechanger-for-the-gop/

It is gripping reading as well, and its explanations are clear enough that readers without any background in finance will have no trouble following the plot. The villains? An unholy alliance between Wall Street, the Democratic establishment, community organizing groups like ACORN and La Raza, and politicians like Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi and Henry Cisneros.

Edited June 12, 2011 by TimG

[bloodyminded]

In other words, like most climate alarmists, you are completely ignorant of economics and live in a fantasy world where the only people that would be hurt by the policies you promote are the big bad faceless meanies on wall street. It is an naive and idiotic position to take.

The roots of the current crisis rest with democratic politicians in the US who pressured banks to lend to people who could not afford it. Of course, the banks were partners in this scam but it is dishonest to ignore the critical role that advocates for "social justice" had.

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/06/07/fanniegate-gamechanger-for-the-gop/

The villains? An unholy alliance between Wall Street, the Democratic establishment, community organizing groups like ACORN and La Raza, and politicians like Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi and Henry Cisneros.

Wow! Aside from the existence (we can presume) of an occasional Wall Street right-winger...not a Republican amongst the bunch! That's convenient interesting!

[eyeball]

In other words, like most climate alarmists, you are completely ignorant of economics and live in a fantasy world where the only people that would be hurt by the policies you promote are the big bad faceless meanies on wall street. It is an naive and idiotic position to take.

Speaking of economic fantasies, you can have a natural ecosystem without a human economy but you cannot have the opposite, an economy without an ecosystem, its just physically impossible. Cornucopians just don't get that do they?

The roots of the current crisis rest with democratic politicians in the US who pressured banks to lend to people who could not afford it. Of course, the banks were partners in this scam but it is dishonest to ignore the critical role that advocates for "social justice" had.

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/06/07/fanniegate-gamechanger-for-the-gop/

This is not a root cause, it's simply one more exacerbating event that's propelling us faster towards the inevitable.

[TimG]

Speaking of economic fantasies, you can have a natural ecosystem without a human economy but you cannot have the opposite, an economy without an ecosystem, its just physically impossible. Cornucopians just don't get that do they?

You are building an argument on a fallacy. Nature exists. It cannot be destroyed - only changed. It could change in ways that are bad for the economy or change in ways which are good for he economy. These changes are a concern but the judgment on whether they are bad or good is based entirely on the effect on the economy which implies there is only one reference point that matters: the economy.

[bush_cheney2004]

Speaking of economic fantasies, you can have a natural ecosystem without a human economy but you cannot have the opposite, an economy without an ecosystem, its just physically impossible. Cornucopians just don't get that do they?

Neither do commercial fisherman.

This is not a root cause, it's simply one more exacerbating event that's propelling us faster towards the inevitable.

Faster or slower....it is no matter. Humans are part of the "ecosystem".

[WIP]

In other words, like most climate alarmists, you are completely ignorant of economics and live in a fantasy world where the only people that would be hurt by the policies you promote are the big bad faceless meanies on wall street. It is an naive and idiotic position to take.

The roots of the current crisis rest with democratic politicians in the US who pressured banks to lend to people who could not afford it. Of course, the banks were partners in this scam but it is dishonest to ignore the critical role that advocates for "social justice" had.

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/06/07/fanniegate-gamechanger-for-the-gop/

It's mostly rightwing bullshit! I'm not going to claim to be a banking or finance expert, but from my limited research on the banking and real estate meltdown in the U.S., it can't all be blamed on Fannie and Freddie indiscriminately underwriting bad mortgages. And I heard Greta Morgenstern interviewed a couple of weeks ago on a podcast of one of the NPR shows -- even she doesn't claim that government pressure on Fannie (which came from the Bush Administration also) to place the expansion of home ownership above all other concerns, as the only reason for the meltdown. Without considering the problem of allowing banks to resell their mortgages to third parties as investments...and thereby cutting their own risks from bad loans, the issue cannot be fully grasped in any meaningful way....which is exactly what rightwing propagandists want anyway!

There is a fundamental, structural problem with capitalism itself that the right doesn't want to look at - unrestrained capitalism is not self-regulating! That is just a fictitious claim...sort of a faith-based argument that does not coincide with the facts, when we look at what the tax and regulation rules have been during boom and bust cycles. It's no mere coincidence that booms and busts were prominent as corporations gained more legal power during 19th century America, and leveled out after the period of reform that FDR instituted during the Depression. And lo and behold, look what happened in the 90's, when the Glass-Steagall Act that separated personal and commercial banking was repealed! Since then, it's back to the days of the Robber Barons and market bubbles and busts.

The big problem that many analysts on the left see as key to present economic problems is based on the fact that the aggressive hedge fund managers and Wall Street bankers have run out of markets that were actually growing real economic activity, and started creating phony markets of derivative investments: collateralized debt obligations, mortgage-backed securities, and the unregulated investment insurance contracts called credit default swaps....which were primarily issued by AIG, and started the bank run that made Bush's Treasury Secretary - Henry Paulsen call for that 700 billion bank bailout that started the crash in these phony markets. AIG threatened bankruptcy if all of the CDS owners tried to cash in, and the cascading effect would have brought down this whole house of cards, and revealed just how phony modern currency and banking and investment really is.

[TimG]

Wow! Aside from the existence (we can presume) of an occasional Wall Street right-winger...not a Republican amongst the bunch! That's convenient interesting!

I am sure an examination into military spending would turn up Republican shenanigans. But the fact is the Democrats bear a large part of the blame for the mortgage fiasco because of their obsession with social engineering. Bush actually tried to but limits on Fanny back in 2004 but was blocked by a Democratic congress because it "deny Americans the opportunity to own their own home".

[TimG]

I'm not going to claim to be a banking or finance expert, but from my limited research on the banking and real estate meltdown in the U.S., it can't all be blamed on Fannie and Freddie indiscriminately underwriting bad mortgages.

Fannie and Freddie created the bomb. Wall street exploded it. No Fannie and Freddie (or at least one that had proper oversight) and there would have been no explosion.

[bloodyminded]

I am sure an examination into military spending would turn up Republican shenanigans. But the fact is the Democrats bear a large part of the blame for the mortgage fiasco because of their obsession with social engineering. Bush actually tried to but limits on Fanny back in 2004 but was blocked by a Democratic congress because it "deny Americans the opportunity to own their own home".

Well, if someone wishes to argue that the centre-right wing of the Business Party is more culpable in this than the farther-right wing of the Business Party, I have no reflexive objections to the idea.

But the notion that Republicans aren't interested in social engineering...I don't get that, at all.

[WIP]

Fannie and Freddie created the bomb. Wall street exploded it. No Fannie and Freddie (or at least one that had proper oversight) and there would have been no explosion.

It would have happened without either institution, because Alan Greenspan was able to push the dogma that derivative investments should exist in a completely unregulated market. Greenspan proved freemarket fundamentalism to be a false dogma.

[WIP]

But the notion that Republicans aren't interested in social engineering...I don't get that, at all.

They are hard at work creating an all-American fascism....and that's the most blatant form of social engineering that exists.

[bush_cheney2004]

They are hard at work creating an all-American fascism....and that's the most blatant form of social engineering that exists.

Even if this were true...so what? The Americans can choose to be "fascists"...no?

[Oleg Bach]

As BC mentioned, humans are part of the eco system...and are very much part of the natural world. They have one great defect though. It is the big human brain that is oh so clever but not clever enough...Complex and sophisticated enough to cause problems in the natural world but no quite bright enough to solve the problems they cause. It is a conundrum contained in the sad human condition we all endure.

[Oleg Bach]

Even if this were true...so what? The Americans can choose to be "fascists"...no?

You can be what ever you want in America - facism by definition is a one party system with no opposition - that is what America has and that is what we are gaining with the Harper majority. It is because money rules - who ever musters the most together controls the nation. All the theatrics contained in politics means nothing in the long run....try becoming prime minister or president if you are a common guy or girl pumping gas. It's not going to happen. So in truth we have been under dictatorial rule for a long time. The point being is that dictatorships must be managed by the people..which is done when the common guy pitches in and lends a hand....the advesarial judical system and political system really serve no purpose but game playing for the privledged.

[TimG]

They are hard at work creating an all-American fascism....and that's the most blatant form of social engineering that exists.

You have no idea what facism is. You just throw around the label to smear people you dislike. Edited June 13, 2011 by TimG

[Oleg Bach]

You have no idea what facism is. You just throw around the label to smear people you dislike.

Much like those that don't like to think use the "tin foil hat" retort.

[bush_cheney2004]

You have no idea what facism is. You just throw around the label to smear people you dislike.

...and inconsistent. FDR's brand of "fascism" apparently was OK.