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Comment by iancmceachern | Hacker News Reader

Let's just take care of eachother like human beings

That will be a tough order with the projected demographic development, according to which elderly will soon outnumber working population.

Having a short look at the population pyramid of Germany makes this pretty clear:

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Population_Pyramid...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#/med...

If we get our shit together and tax the people with all the money at a rate that allows us to handle basic care for the vast majority of people without a lot of money, we can do this. Otherwise, we cannot.

What are you proposing the community does with the collected money to help the elderly?

Pay people living wages to take care of them.

My sister managed a high dollar retirement home and it was nearly impossible to keep people on staff because the pay was so pitiful and the work so difficult. The for profit business are tons of money, but they did it on the backs of their low level laborers.

What community? In a society of hundreds of millions of people, the social safety net needs to work to protect the wellbeing of everyone, not just those who are part of this or that community. There are already many programs at various levels of government that help the elderly, as well as many non-profits, and all of them need more money, so that's an easy place to start.

Here is a program in California that I am familiar with and is absolutely life-changing for elderly people who wish to remain independent (or cannot afford other options). If this program had more money, it could hire more and better workers at higher rates with better retention and serve more people. Low-hanging fruit. A 1% tax on investment income over $100k would fund it to the moon and back. Twice.

https://www.cdss.ca.gov/in-home-supportive-services

Great answer. I'm a big fan of wealth taxes.

For the record I was using the word community to mean old people, younger people and the government they vote in. In my country care of older people is organised by local councils (sadly not very efficiently)

That scheme is great but I do worry that the demographics mean there won't be enough carers to go around even when they are paid will.

Not a popular opinion here apparently. "Disruption" I guess. When VC tech touches on caring for people, the psychopathy becomes more evident.

It's not "an unpopular opinion", it's equivalent to "let's just all be friendly, we won't need a police", "let's just all promise to not access other people's email, we don't need passwords" etc: naive to a dangerous degree.

Elderly care is expensive. Resources are limited. Denying basic reality doesn't work.

I read no lies in this comment.

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