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The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

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Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#61

Post by philipallstar »

rco8786 wrote: post #48
ryandrake wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Retirees are more likely than not to have built up at least a small pension or 401(k)[USA]: money sitting there earning interest and capital gains. You don't think the Aging Industry is going to just sit around and not try to grab as much of it as they can? They are going to do their best to ensure the system is set up to let them harvest those accounts dry.

Yea again, that's not different than anyone else with any other amount of money. For profit corporations are designed from the ground up to separate us from our money (or "milk" if you will). In reading the article, it doesn't seem to me that anyone is being taken advantage of any more than all of us are when we walk into a shopping mall, open amazon.com, or buy a home.

Indeed, and not when you do work in exchange for 100% profit.

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#62

Post by rangestransform »

jezzamon wrote: post #46

Retirement villages seem particularly impacted by Baumol's cost disease. Combine that with aging societies and the general neglect often given to elderly people, I'm not optimistic about us being able to provide a reasonable quality of life for our elders in the future...

Anything that has less productivity increase than the most productive sector of the economy is subject to cost disease to some degree

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#63

Post by SirFatty »

dheera wrote: post #7
SirFatty wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just toggle the JavaScript off...

I tried this but I found a lot of vile websites these days load the actual article with JS

I have a chrome extension that allows me to toggle on/off as needed. I'm not advocating leaving it off, that breaks a lot of sites.

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#64

Post by rkomorn »

nemomarx wrote: post #54
oersted wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do agree with the spirit of your point, but there's an easy counterargument: How do you know that the next month worth of articles from the publisher you are subscribed to is worth the fee before seeing it? There is a such a thing as building trust in a brand, this is not a barrier to micropayments.

I think you could argue that a subscription model is basically trying to make you not think about that. Look at gyms and how they want you to forget to come in a little bit and not evaluate it month by month Asking up front has the issue that you then have to think about money every time you open an article - a lot of friction

But I think that's the problem: people don't look at subscriptions for news the same way as they look at a gym, for example.

People understand you gotta pay to go to the gym. News, on the other hand, you can get for free (give or take ads and tracking).

The gym question is "am I gonna use this?" The news question is "do I need this?" or "is this sufficiently better than the alternatives to justify the cost?"

Edit: and to touch on the "per-article" aspect, odds are that people might spend let's say ~$2/month with a publisher through article reads, but not $5/month for a subscription.

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#65

Post by stetrain »

joules77 wrote: post #55
leoqa wrote: post #43

I’m not particularly sympathetic to retirement home narratives that paint each person as a lonely, incompetent senior wasting away. I witnessed first hand how my mother spent her adulthood partying instead of providing and now it’s become a critical issue for our family to provide for her. Ultimately I don’t expect my children (or staff-journalist) to project pity on me for my circumstances. I run a weekly route with…

Retirement is a stupid concept. One of my Grandfathers just stopped taking medication and going to the docs. And died quite peacefully within a couple years of retiring. Death and decay is just natural and quick. While my other grandfather has been kept alive 30-35 years post retirement popping a tray full of pills everyday, having gone through dozens of surgeries and has had hopeless quality of life post retirement.…

Perhaps it's the idea that we all must work full time with 10 days of annual leave until we reach the point of needing pills and medical assistance to live comfortably that is the issue.

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#66

Post by intended »

foobarian wrote: post #19
John23832 wrote: post #10

Under capitialism, why would anyone think that this is anything but expected. These living communities are meant to house you, until you die, for a price. You have saved up money to pay for that service until you die. Why would they leave money on the table? Why would they spend any extra on someone who's "going to die anyway". Someone who is barely ambulatory; who has few outside connections. It's the horrible resul…

> Why would they leave money on the table? Because if they don't, the customer will go to the competition who does.

There are exceptions to this rule, and I am sure you are aware that all industries do not have the same ability to change providers, like say telecom.

You are NOT going to be changing houses and care homes very regularly past a certain age.

The animal that you pilot, will simply not have the capability to power through the change, remember every item, keep on top of documents, bills and more. You will not necessarily have friends and family to help you through this.

Going to court is unpleasant, since it will mean you are going to spend the rest of your life fighting. You may count on the fact that some portion of people will be fighters, and willing to sue, but thats statistic is of little comfort if you are the one fighting.

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#67

Post by nemomarx »

rkomorn wrote: post #42
Workaccount2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality is that most people just want stuff free. They say stuff like they whitelist, or donate (it certainly brings lots os social praise) but if you have ever been on the other side, you know that virtually nobody does this.

There's also a very real factor that we now consume from dozens if not hundreds of sources per month. The overhead, as a consumer, of managing any of this as actual subscriptions, transactions, or membership to some (likely multiple) sort of ecosystem would be substantial, even beyond just the money aspect.

It opens up room for bundling maybe? People want to pay one subscription for everything whenever possible, like Netflix originally vs now. If you could pay 10 a month for a major newspaper + YouTube + some other tech sites that could be pretty attractive. (or whatever combinations - news and sports, porn and tech, IDK)

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#68

Post by leoqa »

notmyjob wrote: post #51
leoqa wrote: post #43

I’m not particularly sympathetic to retirement home narratives that paint each person as a lonely, incompetent senior wasting away. I witnessed first hand how my mother spent her adulthood partying instead of providing and now it’s become a critical issue for our family to provide for her. Ultimately I don’t expect my children (or staff-journalist) to project pity on me for my circumstances. I run a weekly route with…

The problem with LTC insurance is it’s likely to go belly up and you are at the end of the day dealing with an insurer whose business model involves denying valid claims. All of that is assuming you can actually get LTC insurance. Good luck if you are over 50. It’s like the private form of social security, a Ponzi that’s approaching its moment of truth.

You’re probably correct (I’m 30 and don’t have a policy) but I can’t think of any financial instrument that would guarantee skilled nursing ($4-8k/month in MCoL) for 10-20 years. No one in the bottom 90% of American earners can afford that drawdown even if they saved considerably.

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#69

Post by accrual »

dheera wrote: post #7
SirFatty wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just toggle the JavaScript off...

I tried this but I found a lot of vile websites these days load the actual article with JS

Yeah, I've noticed too. A surprising amount of the web works fine with most scripts blocked, but if I open an article and it's a blank page, chances are I'm just clicking back.
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