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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

#111

Post by groggler »

mikestew wrote: post #100
groggler wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a nasty interpretation to assume a grandfather is other people and make it a straw man argument.. We could just as well ask: Are you volunteering yourself and your children for 30 years hooked up to tubes with partially effective pain medication?

Are you volunteering yourself and your children for 30 years hooked up to tubes with partially effective pain medication? No one spends 30 years hooked to tubes. Ask better questions, or at least dial back on the hyperbole if you'd like a reasonable discussion.

I don't think that is accurate.. but my point was the hyperbole of assuming the pathological case.

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

#112

Post by John23832 »

triceratops wrote: post #110
John23832 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes there is. Wringing the elderly for profit would not happen under any other economic system because Capitalism is the only economic system which puts profit as the central motivation. My understanding is the profit is purely a capitalistic idea. Feel free to prove me wrong.

Does that mean the elderly would be better cared for?

That is orthogonal to the point being made.

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

#113

Post by mrguyorama »

RajT88 wrote: post #71
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.

Everyone wants to grab whatever seniors have. I've seen it. Children and other family squabble over the assets even before they pass. You'll see neighbors talking senile/demented seniors into giving away their stuff, or selling it for a silly low price (like a truck for a dollar, or my one neighbor asking my other neighbor for a free fishing boat). Then there's the scam calls...

The current elder care industry is optimized to ensure neighbors and children will have nothing left to fight over.

Give it not too much longer, and someone somewhere will make it so debts will be inherited, and then we can all be milked even harder.

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

#114

Post by triceratops »

John23832 wrote: post #112
triceratops wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that mean the elderly would be better cared for?

That is orthogonal to the point being made.

Not necessarily. Without profit you're relying solely on intrinsic motivation to ensure good care. I won't deny it's a powerful motivator but how many people are passionate about eldercare? You might get fewer care centers overall.

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

#115

Post by mrguyorama »

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...

It's not Baumols cost disease, it's a completely captured audience.

You are getting older and can't take care of yourself. You worked hard your entire life so you have non-zero assets.

Your options are: Sign away everything you have and more to a company in the hope that they will take care of you according to the contract. Or die in your own filth or from tripping and falling in the tub.

Medicare doesn't take care of you until you are destitute, so your only option is to pay whatever a company is asking.

These companies charge $20k a month, but pay their actual laborers peanuts, like we are talking hourly wages that are barely competitive with good construction jobs despite requiring training and spending all day literally wiping down human shit. You will be lucky to have one employee taking care of 30 of you.

All that money is just fed back to shareholders. And building real-estate in the priciest parts of built up cities. Grandma literally can't leave the facility because she's got the dementia and the kids are all in another state so why even build the facility in the middle of a city with skyrocketing housing costs and real-estate prices? Because your clients will pay anything, and that will leave you with a great high value asset that a facility out in a cheaper area would not.

It's just a neat little system for ensuring all those savings and retirement accounts built up by the boomers will not be inherited, and instead will be captured by very very wealthy people.

What possible mechanism could there even be for downward pressure on prices in this system? What are you going to do, NOT need help in your old age?

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

#116

Post by jerlam »

ModernMech wrote: post #73
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.

That's the fun part about all of this. Boomers bought their houses for $30k in the 80s and today they're worth $3M. Sounds like they are set up comfortably for retirement and their millennial kids, who are pushing 40 and haven't been able to afford a house yet, are in for a nice inheritance. Wrong! Because while their house is worth $3M, it will be fully leveraged to pay for the cost of their deathcare. Mom and dad w…

Parents gotta transfer all their money to the kids, and then apply for government assistant because on paper, the parents have no money.

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

#117

Post by ryandrake »

ModernMech wrote: post #73
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.

That's the fun part about all of this. Boomers bought their houses for $30k in the 80s and today they're worth $3M. Sounds like they are set up comfortably for retirement and their millennial kids, who are pushing 40 and haven't been able to afford a house yet, are in for a nice inheritance. Wrong! Because while their house is worth $3M, it will be fully leveraged to pay for the cost of their deathcare. Mom and dad w…

Yea, reverse mortgages are yet another underhanded scheme to harvest what remains of the elderly's wealth. Some CEO somewhere said "Well, we've already found a way to drain their health savings, their retirement and pension... what else can we get our hands on?" and poof! The Reverse Mortgage! They're not going to stop until they make debt inheritable, so they can soak the next generation before they even retire.

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

#118

Post by ryandrake »

jerlam wrote: post #116
ModernMech wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the fun part about all of this. Boomers bought their houses for $30k in the 80s and today they're worth $3M. Sounds like they are set up comfortably for retirement and their millennial kids, who are pushing 40 and haven't been able to afford a house yet, are in for a nice inheritance. Wrong! Because while their house is worth $3M, it will be fully leveraged to pay for the cost of their deathcare. Mom and dad w…

Parents gotta transfer all their money to the kids, and then apply for government assistant because on paper, the parents have no money.

Look up Filial responsibility laws[1]. They're always looking for legal ways to sponge up that wealth.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filial_responsibility_laws

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

#119

Post by ModernMech »

ryandrake wrote: post #117
ModernMech wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the fun part about all of this. Boomers bought their houses for $30k in the 80s and today they're worth $3M. Sounds like they are set up comfortably for retirement and their millennial kids, who are pushing 40 and haven't been able to afford a house yet, are in for a nice inheritance. Wrong! Because while their house is worth $3M, it will be fully leveraged to pay for the cost of their deathcare. Mom and dad w…

Yea, reverse mortgages are yet another underhanded scheme to harvest what remains of the elderly's wealth. Some CEO somewhere said "Well, we've already found a way to drain their health savings, their retirement and pension... what else can we get our hands on?" and poof! The Reverse Mortgage! They're not going to stop until they make debt inheritable, so they can soak the next generation before they even retire.

Oh yeah, and then there's those commercials you see on the channels with a 55+ viewership. They're selling things like this: https://www.ovidlife.com

"Sell Your Life Insurance Policy. Turn your life insurance policy into an immediate cash payout" next to a picture of seniors vacationing on a yacht. Then they bring out Tom Selleck who looks in the camera and says "Would I lie to you? You can trust me!"

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

#120

Post by John23832 »

triceratops wrote: post #114
John23832 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is orthogonal to the point being made.

Not necessarily. Without profit you're relying solely on intrinsic motivation to ensure good care. I won't deny it's a powerful motivator but how many people are passionate about eldercare? You might get fewer care centers overall.

> Not necessarily. Without profit you're relying solely on intrinsic motivation to ensure good care. I won't deny it's a powerful motivator but how many people are passionate about eldercare? You might get fewer care centers overall.

The above is a bunch of non-sequitur nonsense.

The article is about how senior living facilities do everything they can to reduce cost/liabilities and to maximize profit. Did you actually read it or are you just posting contrary comments?

I responded to the article that under capitalism, of course these firms are going to maximize profits. Even when doing something that most of us would consider a humane responsibility like elder care.

You asked me why do I limit profit seeking in this manner to capitalism, seemingly not knowing that profit is a Capitalistic idea. And then you non sequitur into whether elders are taken care of under all economic systems and what motivates that.

THE POINT BEING MADE is that regardless of what the outcome of the situation is, elders being taken care of, elders not being taken care of, houses being painted red vs blue, etc, it is unsurprising that firms are seeking maximize profit. The question to be ask it is why they would not seek profit, under capitalism.

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