Who will take care of me when I am old?

My dad passed away at age 91. My mother turned 92 last week. She recently moved from an assisted living center in Portland to one in Bangor. A bit closer for convenience and with current gas prices, it seemed to make sense.

Generations ago, aging family members would have lived at home, with care given by family members. There also seemed to be a nice social piece here too.

This is not going to be a column about moving, although there were a few interesting moments in the move. This is a '500 word ' take on life and how it is changing.

Today everything seems to be political. Republican or Democrat, Liberal or Conservative. Tea Party or Libertarian or any other group out there fighting for lower taxes, health care reform, fighting for less government or in some cases, more government , they all have one thing in common. The younger you are today, the likelihood is that you will live longer in the future, longer than any previous generation. The current life expectancy is 77.5 years, give or take a couple a couple of months. That is up significantly from just fifty years ago. It is no wonder the sixty-five and up generation is fighting to lower taxes and hold on to precious retirement dollars. Those of us in that group have a pretty good understanding of the future, primarily because the future for us has arrived and we know how expensive it will be. But, do we have to make 'living longer' a political issue. Lets see, those born in even years can live to an age of …while those born in odd years......

As a result of living longer, people may be forced to work longer. Can you imagine getting up and going to work each day at age eighty. There are some mornings I can barely move now. At eighty? I know there are some eighty year olds who do work. But my guess is they do it because they want to, not because they have to. A little extra cash in the pocket is a good thing. But the future? Those dollars may have to pay the everyday bills.

I also assume that the younger generation, like those before them, are not preparing for those glorious days of retirement, a time when your income will come from social security and retirement accounts that might have been managed by a Bernie Madoff type or someone similar, seeking to insure his or her own retirement happiness.

Today, the 'kids' as they are often called, are buying houses, raising families, and paying for college educations as they should. They probably will not have the resources to take care of mom and dad. (Just an aside. When I went to college, the tuition rate was $4300 per year. Today that rate, at the same school, has grown to $21,800. Imagine forty years from now?)

A younger generation will have spent time texting and facebooking, avoiding most human face to face interaction. Social cues will become a thing of the past, just like hand writing, the telephone and library books. In the 'home' where they may live, paid by those retirement accounts and social security if you are one of the fortunate to still be in the system, they stare vacantly at those sitting across from them in the dining room, not knowing what to say except OMG or LOL.

So for the legislators out there, I propose the following: LD 100, An Act to Prevent People from Growing Old.. You can get anything passed!!