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I'm probably in the minority here but I often think about preventative care like exercise and eating healthy now as insurance against a future where I'd be stuck in a nursing home in my final years.
Not in the minority at all. Problem is that it's hard to get your rear in gear for something so far away in many people's lives.
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wouldn't that lead to a lot of job losses in the nursing homes / facilities sectors?
Yeah. It isn't worth people making bad decisions to support other people's jobs. A key part of what makes a job a job is the worker, in some sense, creating more value for others than the personal cost to themselves. If people are better off doing something for themselves, then it is a net win if they do. The nursing home employees can go and do something else.
"in some sense" really means in a collective sense. Not everyone falls into the safety net, but those that do certainly could exceed, in expenses, what they paid into the system. That's OK and totally fair.
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This is why people call it a pyramid scheme. The breakdown of single-earner families means kids and seniors get institutional care. And there isn’t enough money to socialize care as good as your family.
> The breakdown of single-earner families means kids and seniors get institutional care. And there isn’t enough money to socialize care as good as your family. I guess we'd save a lot of money if we just had family structures more like people in asian countries.
Obviously, some people will need school and care that family can't give, and I'm not against paying for it.
But these policies encourage assets to be wasted so that you can get in the safety net.
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The freedom to work for a boss that sees her as just another disposable "human resource" instead of working for a family that sees her as it's essential heart.
The financial freedom to leave an abusive spouse or family, as well.
When my wife (46) and I found out that she was terminally ill, I promised her that I'd never let her end up in a Nursing/Hospice home. She'll get care at home. When the time comes, she'll die at home, too. Myself, our adult daughter, and close friends have all banded together to make sure that she never ends up in a home. We reaffirmed this after Covid hit. If she goes into a hospice care facility, I'll never see her…
What about that 100% dependent elders that are not terminally ill?
What about single childs that on their late 60s that have to take care of two persons in their 90s?
What about families that don't live from tech money and can't afford to hire a personal caretaker?
Who will caretake the caretaker parents?
(...)
This is still an unadressed problem disguised with cheap morals. Then, when a radical answer appears (euthanasia), everybody pretends not to see.
I'm probably in the minority here but I often think about preventative care like exercise and eating healthy now as insurance against a future where I'd be stuck in a nursing home in my final years.
Smoking and drinking a lot are probably the best ways to avoid nursing homes. Living a long time isn't all it's cracked up to be. Personally, dying at 70 seems about ideal to me. Of course maybe I'll change my mind if/once I reach 70.
My dad is in his seventies, and just built an addition on the house alone, by hand in his free time while working a full-time job. From pouring the slab, to framing, to roofing, to electrical just because he was bored.
I think there's a lot to be said for arriving at your seventies still being the kind of person who goes, 'I'm bored, I need to go and build something with my hands.' There's obviously a lot of luck involved in not having any major health complications, but fortune favors the prepared.
Being relentlessly active and curious is a really, really big deal as you age and it's so easy to fall in the trap of retiring, and sitting on the couch with a beer watching Fox news.
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Women gained freedom, aka ability to earn income.
The freedom to work for a boss that sees her as just another disposable "human resource" instead of working for a family that sees her as it's essential heart.
I certainly would’ve resented it too.