The New Old Age | Hacker News Reader

The New Old Age

thewalrus.ca

59 pointslxm42 comments

My father retired from the fire department at fifty-three and has been collecting a gold-plated pension for twenty years already, and will probably get ten more years. Assuming my mother outlives him, she will collect ninety percent of his benefits until she dies, possibly ten years further.

The pension plan includes full health benefits including dental. The monthly payout is periodically adjusted for inflation.

How can retirement funds survive people working for thirty years and collecting benefits for forty?

I'll say this - if you have yet to decide a career - pick firefighting! Firefighters still have insane retirement plans almost everywhere, although some are being converted to 401k as reality sets in. Maybe a very small percentage of tech workers will have full lifetime compensation anywhere near what firefighters will have.

I talked to someone working in a crime lab a while ago. She makes 100k+ and will be able to retire at 50 with 80% of income. Pretty sweet gig!

For bonus points these people typically take on an "act two" career while continuing to pile up the pension benefits.

Great example of this - spoke last year to a retired San Jose cop who now works as head of security for a San Jose school district.

Public employees have thought strategically about retirement. Tech workers haven't. In twenty years this will be a big deal, particularly for techies in expensive metros who never even got as far as building up equity in a home.

>Public employees have thought strategically about retirement

Public sector employees have unions, which thought strategically about retirement. Tech workers don't, by and large, because we are too smart to fall for the union meme and will all retire early by virtue of our elite skills, not some kind of sinecure.

Blue collar private industry workers once had solid pension plans as well, which died along with union membership. The reason that public sector unions survive is because their membership is paid by property taxes, and don't directly affect a corporate bottom line. The likes of the firefighter and police unions are also protected by the general "patriotism" umbrella, even the most conservative anti-labor constituency will avoid criticizing public safety workers.

Techies tend to fare comparatively better than their peers early on - most programmers in SF aged 27 are probably out-earning their peers from college. From this stems the notion that techies do not need organization.

We'll see what happens in twenty years - my guess is programmer wages will be severely depressed by the older generation that can't stop working and will accept a lower "survival" wage.

"We'll see what happens in twenty years - my guess is programmer wages will be severely depressed by the older generation that can't stop working and will accept a lower "survival" wage. "

It will be interesting. You already have that weird curve where people start pretty high, climb some more for the next 10 years and then either stagnate or often go down in salary. I don't know of any other profession where you often make less the more experience you have.

Well, it is not everywhere as good as this.

But I would add, that compared to a tech workers, firefighters risk their life at work. And exposition to toxic gases, etc. But I assume that the pension compensation might be from a time when protection equipmemt was less sophisticated..

Don't forget that fire departments (like police and military) have a lot of administrative positions that never encounter a dangerous situation and still get the same pensions.

Firefighters who become officers earn higher pay in supervisory roles, so their pensions are even better than non-officers who will tend to encounter the most danger.

Pizza delivery workers risk their lives more than firefighters:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_m...

Well, I guess nobody ever said, life is fair ...

But it would be actually nice, if we can arrange things a bit more adequately..

I don’t know if it’s true everywhere, but since firefighters work on call, they are usually on a days-on/days-off schedule. It’s not at all uncommon for them to have a side-hustle working as a tradesman on their days off, and there’s no reason that couldn’t include programming.

Retirement age is increasing, pensions are becoming more rare. Only organizations with overpowerful unions (public transit and police in various places) have these absurd pensions.

If the elderly are active, they might have to go back to work as pensions become insolvent under the weight of unexpected life expectancy changes.

On the flip side, this would have a devastating impact on the young while the elderly are transitioning back to work, as the sudden glut of experienced workers would depress wages and demand for inexperienced younger hands.

Yes, a career as a firefighter is a great one, only if you can get into it somehow. Those in the know already know this and actively try to channel their sons/nephews/friends into firefighting jobs.

1. Los Angeles Times recently did some reporting on Los Angeles Fire Department. Turns out many of the new hires are sons/nephews/friends of active firefighters. And application process included no public access, like no online application process. So when this was fist reported, LAFD did do online application process, but it was available only for an hour or so. Again, you couldn't have known this unless you had insider connection.

And I heard through friend of friend with connections in LA City. There are Los Angeles Firefighters who collect Disability Pay ON TOP of regular pay after going through some major fire incident. They can claim trauma of the major fire is hardship enough so while they work regular hours and collect regular pay, they can also receive Disability pay.

2. And then there's articles like this:

"Battling treacherous office chairs and aching backs, aging cops and firefighters miss years of work and collect twice the pay"

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-drop-20180203-...

excerpt

When Capt. Tia Morris turned 50, after about three decades in the Los Angeles Police Department, she became eligible to retire with nearly 90% of her salary.

But like many cops and firefighters in her position, the decision to keep working was a financial no-brainer, thanks to a program that allowed her to nearly double her pay by keeping her salary while also collecting her pension.

A month after Morris entered the program, her husband, a detective, joined too. Their combined income for four years in the Deferred Retirement Option Plan was just shy of $2 million, city payroll records show.

But the city didn’t benefit much from the Morrises’ experience: They both filed claims for carpal tunnel syndrome and other cumulative ailments about halfway through the program. She spent nearly two years on disability and sick leave; he missed more than two years, according to a Times analysis of city payroll data.

We are all screwed, except for those on PUBLIC pensions.

> How can retirement funds survive people working for thirty years and collecting benefits for forty?

One part of the answer is productivity. (https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/gdp-per-hour-worked.htm)

You need more production to fulfil the needs of the non-working elders. You can achieve that by increasing the number of workers (producers), or by increasing the amount produced by unit (productivity). But then the problem is how to distribute the result.

This was Stephen Hawkins position when he stated that we should be more frightened of capitalism than robots. https://www.cnet.com/news/stephen-hawking-says-we-should-be-...

In a very efficient and automated world distributing wealth is a bigger problem than creating it.

The fact that most pension funds are projected to be insolvent and have been in need of constant replenishment, it should be clear that money is being pulled out much faster than it is being put in.

That doesn't mean productivity isn't working...it just means the unions negotiate faster and better than the gains can be delivered.

Firefighters also risk their lives on their job and face health risks that relatively few people are willing to take on, to protect their communities.

I think it is not right at all to treat this like just another job. The social value of firefighters is unquestionably high and vital. Not sure this can be said about everybody else who takes home cozy pensions.

In most suburban communities, firefighters' main risk is obesity from sitting around the fire station eating all day. In my town of 80K people there are an average of 2-3 structure fires a year for the 120 strong fire department to deal with. The majority of their calls are EMS calls.

> face health risks that relatively few people are willing to take on

My perception of this (not a firefighter, just have a few friends that are), is that you need to know someone, usually close family, to even have a shot at getting in. Have had other friends give up after years pursuing fire jobs, because it is difficult to break into. Those who made it in had parents in the FD.

As a Canadian (and Walrus print subscriber to boot!) this article shines a bit of a bit-too-positive hue to the realties that we're starting to deal with. Unlike our American counterparts, and thanks to the technocratic leadership of the Chretien, Martin, Harper, and Trudeau Jr governments many long term decisions were made that are going to soften the blow, but the reality is we're going from a one-to-five retiree to worker ratio to a two-to-three. Harper was great for our net-debt to GDP / and hospital expansion and the Liberals before him made sure that the CPP was fully funded on an actuarial basis and fixed our credit rating, but it's still going to be a brutal couple decades financially.

Honestly the worst part isn't even the way it's hitting / going to hit our healthcare / welfare[0] systems. The worst part is that due to the mental effects of aging our electorate is getting dumber just when it needs to be smart.

Against their own interests as a demographic, boomers voted in Doug Ford in Ontario, the brother of former crack mayor of Toronto Rob Ford, and his plan is to "find efficiencies" and bring back "buck a beer" whilst lowering taxes.

I'm starting to think that democracy needs to be adjusted either for mental capacity, or for expected longevity. I wasn't able to vote when I was ten even though I was taking college courses nights, weekends, and summers. I was fine with it. I'd be fine losing the right to vote at 80 or 85.

It's just a second childhood. When I'm that age I can trust that my family won't vote to take away my social assistance.

[0] Many seniors and soon-to-be seniors get on disability or qualify for OAS, or qualify for other healthcare or housing programs not actuarially balanced for demographic distortions.

Edit:

Never before have I made a comment that seems to oscillate so wildly with upvotes and downvotes.

> due to the mental effects of aging our electorate is getting dumber

Youth is well known for wise decisions ...

Sadly, 3pt14159 has a point:

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2015/02/aging-brains.aspx

(though peak age in that graph is quite a bit higher than others you see floating around).

Most of the research I've seen shows that mental capacity is strongest in the 30s where the decreases in fluid intelligence are minor compared to the 20s and the gains in crystallized intelligence are measurable. It falls off a cliff in your 80s.

But I really don't need a guy in a lab coat to tell me about mental capacity and age. I'm old enough to have seen first hand what happens even to very intelligent people.

I've only met one person that made it to 90s with a mind I would call fully operable, and he was a well known and respected engineering researcher his whole life. Most get stuck in a pattern of thinking that they can't break out of. It's eery to observe the slide into it.

> very intelligent people.

Good points, but I'm just pointing out that wisdom and intelligence are not the same.

A wit once said he'd rather be governed by the first 400 names in the phone book than by the Harvard faculty ...

I completely agree that they're different and I really do prize the wisdom of others because I feel like its the weakest ability score on my character sheet, but unfortunately the world is getting so complicated that obvious solutions are ill-advised.

A wise person can see that Donald Trump is a villain because they understand his character. An intelligent person can see that his policies produce outcomes that are counter to their aims.

The trouble arises when you have someone that has good character; but is misguided technically. They want to, say, help the poor so they nationalize the farms or end trade agreements.

I've thought about offing myself at 60. I watched my dad get old, and life isn't really that fun anyway, so what is the point? To run the risk of outliving my kids or finances?

I think I'll just hit the eject button early.

>life isn't really that fun anyway

>think I'll just hit the eject button early

You should try sky diving

For what it’s worth, my grandparents told me that their 60s was one of the best period of their lives.

You won't feel that different at 60 than you do now.

The accumulated pension contributions are suppoused to prevent one from „offing” oneself, which works fine in e.g UK or Germany, but fails miserably in e.g. post-Communist countries where suicide rates for his age bracket soars.

If you practice a healthy lifestyle, 60 is not really that old. Some people do Ironmans in their seventies.

I watched my father die when he was 59, after a decade or so of bad health that meant he had to give up lots of his favourite hobbies.

I'm now 57. I have one or two minor health issues but (famous last words!) can still do most of the things I want to. I've also decided which side of the life-work balance I want to maximise (life, obviously) and have gone part time, with the support of my employer. So I don't make the mistake of putting things off until I retire, and then finding I don't have the capability to do them.

I decided that the next time someone asks me how old I am, I'm going to say positively 'almost 60' rather than 'late 50s' to show that I am still me and not planning to shuffle off this mortal coil just yet. Even if my feet are nailed to the perch, as it were. I'd change my mind for certain categories of disease, but there is no way I'd set an arbitrary limit.

whats the point of life?

To investigate what 'life' is!

what is this experience we all uniquely live everyday, each differently. We all want to expand our experience, we choose to do this through business, sex, religion, sports, drugs etc... but each one will never fulfill our appetite, and will always fall short of uniting us with a 'full' experience of the universe.

Its extremely painful for some people to realize that these paths eventually lead to unfulfilled promises. Most would call this a spiritual crisis, when all material desires and things in 'basic' life seem meaningless.

If you do actually have kids, please understand that such an action is extremely traumatic and leaves scars that never fully heal.

The present rate of increase of life expectancy at birth is 1 year every 5 years. The rate of increase of life expectancy at 65 is 1 year every 10 years. These are highly artificial measures, a metric of what will happen if technological progress freezes at its present point.

Technological progress will not freeze. Past increases in life expectancy due to slowing of aging (versus control over infectious disease to reduce early life mortality) have been incidental, not intentional. They arguably largely arise from that control over infectious disease. But the research and development community are now transitioning into a deliberate targeting of the mechanisms of aging. The difference will be night and day. Great discontinuities in the curve of life expectancy lie in the near future, upward leaps of five years here and ten years there as therapies that repair the root causes of aging become available. Senolytics will be the first of these - already something that the adventurous can get out there and try. There will be many more.

---------------------

I will be 85 somewhere in the mid 2050s. It seems like a mirage, an impossible thing, but the future eventually arrives regardless of whatever you or I might think about it. We all have a vision of what it is to be 85 today, informed by our interactions with elder family members, if nothing else. People at that age are greatly impacted by aging. They falter, their minds are often slowed. They are physically weak, in need of aid. Perhaps that is why we find it hard to put ourselves into that position; it isn't a pleasant topic to think about. Four decades out into the future may as well be a science fiction novel, a far away land, a tale told to children, for all the influence it has on our present considerations. There is no weight to it.

When I am 85, there have been next to no senescent cells in my body for going on thirty years. I bear only a small fraction of the inflammatory burden of older people of past generations. I paid for the products of companies descended from Oisin Biotechnologies and Unity Biotechnology, every few years wiping away the accumulation of senescent cells, each new approach more effective than the last. Eventually, I took one of the permanent gene therapy options, made possible by biochemical discrimination between short-term beneficial senescence and long-term harmful senescence, and then there was little need for ongoing treatments. Artificial DNA machinery floats in every cell, a backup for the normal mechanisms of apoptosis, triggered by lingering senescence.

When I am 85, the senolytic DNA machinery are far from the only addition to my cells. I underwent a half dozen gene therapies over the years. I picked the most useful of the many more that were available, starting once the price fell into the affordable-but-painful range, after the initial frenzy of high-cost treatments subsided into business as usual. My cholesterol transport system is enhanced to attack atherosclerotic lesions, my muscle maintenance and neurogenesis operate at levels far above what was once a normal range for my age, and my mitochondria are both enhanced in operation and well-protected against damage by additional copies of mitochondrial genes backed up elsewhere in the cell. Some of these additions were rendered moot by later advances in medicine, but they get the job done.

When I am 85, my thymus is as active as that of a 10-year-old child. Gene and cell therapies were applied over the past few decades, and as a result my immune system is well gardened, in good shape. A combination of replacement hematopoietic stem cells, applied once a decade, the enhanced thymus, and periodic targeted destruction of problem immune cells keeps at bay most of the age-related decline in immune function, most of the growth in inflammation. The downside is that age-related autoimmunity has now become a whole lot more complex when it does occur, but even that can be dealt with by destroying and recreating the immune system. By the 2030s this was a day-long procedure with little accompanying risk, and the price fell thereafter.

When I am 85, atherosclerosis is curable, preventable, and reversable, and that has been the case for a few decades. There are five or six different viable approaches in the marketplace, all of which basically work. I used several of their predecessors back in the day, as well. Most people in the wealthier parts of the world have arteries nearly free from the buildup of fat and calcification. Cardiovascular disease with age now has a very different character, focused more failure of tissue maintenance and muscle strength and the remaining small portions of hypertension that are still problematic for some individuals. But that too can be effectively postponed through a variety of regenerative therapies.

When I am 85, there is an insignificant level of cross-linking in most of my tissues, as was the case since my early 60s. My skin has the old-young look of someone who went a fair way down the path before being rescued. Not that I care much about that - I'm much more interested in the state of my blood vessels, the degree to which they are stiff and dysfunctional. That is why removal of cross-links is valuable. That is the reason to keep on taking the yearly treatments of cross-link breakers, or undergo one of the permanent gene therapies to have your cells produce protective enzymes as needed.

When I am 85, I have a three decade patchwork history of treatments to partially clear this form of amyloid or that component of lipofuscin. Modified enzymes are delivered here, a gene therapy applied there. I will not suffer Alzheimer's disease. I will not suffer any of the common forms of amyloidosis that degrade heart muscle performance or disrupt function in other organs. The potential for such conditions is controlled, shut down with the removal of the protein aggregates that cause cellular dysfunction. There is such a breadth of molecular waste, however: while the important ones are addressed, plenty more remain. This is one of the continuing serious impacts to the health of older individuals, and a highly active area of research and development.

When I am 85, I am the experienced veteran of several potentially serious incidences of cancer, all of which were identified early and eradicated by a targeted therapy that produced minimal side-effects. The therapies evolve rapidly over the years: a bewildering range of hyper-efficient immunotherapies, as well as treatments that sabotage telomere lengthening or other commonalities shared by all cancer cells. They were outpatient procedures, simple and quick, with a few follow-up visits, so routine that they obscured the point that I would be dead several times over without them. The individual rejuvenation technologies I availed myself of over the years were narrowly focused, not perfect, and not available as early as I would have liked. Cancer is an inevitable side-effect of decades of a mix of greater tissue maintenance and unrepaired damage.

Do we know today what the state of health of a well-kept 85-year-old will be in the 2050s? No. It is next to impossible to say how the differences noted above will perform in the real world. They are all on the near horizon, however. The major causes of age-related death today will be largely controlled and cured in the 2050s, at least for those in wealthier regions. If you are in your 40s today, and fortunate enough to live in one of those wealthier region, then it is a given that you will not die from Alzheimer's disease. You will not suffer from other common age-related amyloidosis conditions. Atherosclerosis will be reliably controlled before it might kill you. Inflammatory conditions of aging will be a shadow of what they once were, because of senolytic therapies presently under development. Your immune system will be restored and bolstered. The stem cells in at least your bone marrow and muscles will be periodically augmented. The cross-links that cause stiffening of tissues will be removed. Scores of other issues in aging process, both large and small, will have useful solutions available in the broader medical marketplace. We will all live longer and in better health as a result, but no-one will be able to say for just how long until this all is tried.

Fingers crossed! Certainly much more will be known about human biology and the mechanics of aging by then, given that what we know currently is mostly so recent (it's instructive to remember that the two of the guys remembered for discovering the nature of DNA, Watson and Crick, are still alive, and the latter is still an active researcher [1]. Molecular biology is that new.)

But- all your examples suppose not only advances in biomedical science, but also medical care aimed at correcting each of these problems. It adds up to a lot of drugs, therapies, or other interventions. In today's system, a well-off and health-conscious individual would receive that level of care as a matter of course- but today's system is a sprawling and highly dysfunctional apparatus already, and I don't feel entirely confident about how it will change in the face of future economic upheavals, political madness, climate-change-fueled social instability, etc etc etc.

The lifespan of humans is increasing, but the lifespan of social infrastructure such a the medical industry may be decreasing... which is especially problematic since the former depends on the latter.

[1] Rosalind Franklin, sadly, died of ovarian cancer at the young age of 37.

Nitpick: Watson is still alive, but Francis Crick is most certainly not here anymore.

Ack! Serves me right for googling without thinking. I suppose I saw the figures for a different Crick.

Want to help the elderly? Then help with the logistics needed to get current first generation well-characterized senolytic drugs into widespread use. The failing health of the elderly is the root of every challenge related to old age, and that failing health is driven by the fundamental causes of aging such as accumulation of senescent cells. To the degree that rejuvenation can be achieved with reliability and low cost, such as through these senolytic drugs, it should be a priority.

The dasatinib + quercetin combination for clearance of senescent cells is an excellent candidate on the basis of cost, evidence, and amount of information on these compounds, as well as a clear, low-cost, legal path for companies to bring it to patients. The eventual size of the market is every human being much over the age of 50.

1) Senescent cell accumulation is one of the root causes of aging, supported by decades of scientific evidence [1]. In lab mice, removal of senescent cells has partially reversed progression of osteoarthritis, lung disease, kidney disease, tauopathies such as Alzheimer’s disease, and a long and growing list of other age-related conditions.

2) A single treatment of dasatinib + quercetin clears a fraction of senescent cells in aged mice, leading to lasting improvement in health as a result [2]. Monthly treatment of dasatinib + quercetin starting in late old age reverses measures of age-related decline and extends life by 36% in mice [3].

3) Dasatinib is a generic chemotherapy drug, originally approved for the treatment of cancer in 2006 as Sprycel. Pharmacology and side-effects in humans are well characterized [4]. Quercetin is a widely used flavonoid supplement. Quercetin is not effective versus senescent cells when used on its own [5].

4) The non-profit Betterhumans is running human trials of dasatinib + quercetin, as is the Kogod Center at the Mayo Clinic.

5) Dasatinib costs less than US$100 per dose if obtained from manufacturers, deriving a human dose from the mouse studies. Perhaps US$200 per dose in the form of Sprycel via the pharmaceutical market. Quercetin costs less than a dollar per dose.

6) A drug approved by the FDA for one use can be prescribed by physicians for other uses, if in their professional judgment it is safe and effective. This is known as off-label use, and is commonplace for many medications.

[1]: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2002.tb02115.x

[2]: https://doi.org/10.1111/acel.12344

[3]: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-018-0092-9

[4]: https://doi.org/10.1124/dmd.107.018267

[5]: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190374

How many doses does a person need per year?

What does "partially reversed" mean?

What are the side effects?

Arguably one dose per year. Arguably several in close sequence, but still very intermittently, such as once a year. Senescent cells accumulate slowly, so there is no reason to dose frequently on an ongoing basis. Different mouse studies of dasatinib + quercetin used single doses or a few monthly doses in sequence. This is true of dasatinib, but varies for other chemotherapeutic senolytics. Bcl-2 inhibitor chemotherapeutics generally want a week or a few weeks of dosing, rather than a single dose, which is a compelling reason to avoid them until better versions come along. The FOXO4-DRI injected peptide was a single treatment of three doses over a week in mice. That again is probably once a year in humans until someone turns up with evidence to suggest otherwise.

Validation of the above educated guess, and some form of dose optimization, will arrive sometime after the introduction of good senescence assays that don't involve staining tissue samples, something that isn't viable for everyday human medicine.

As to what "partially reversed" means, the answer is "read the literature". It is all out there. Search PubMed for "senolytic". Use Sci-Hub to read papers. The comparison pictures of treated and untreated mice in papers that have them are particularly telling, but no substitute for the raw data on arthritis, cardiovascular function, inflammation, neural function, tissue elasticity, etc.

For side effects, a single dose dasatinib pharmacokinetics study in volunteers with lots of references to start you off: https://doi.org/10.1124/dmd.107.018267

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