The former Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, will present a bill to the House of Lords next week which would introduce a system similar to that in place in the US state of Oregon.

It would allow doctors to provide a fatal dose of drugs to patients judged to have less than six months to live....The bill, which will be tabled on May 15, is based on the conclusions of Lord Falconer’s Commission on Assisted Dying, a group of peers and academics which held hearings in the style of a royal commission.

The Commission was dismissed by critics, including the Church of England, as a “self appointed” group of euthanasia supporters.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • Psychology • Suicide • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Research published as part of David Cameron’s plan to measure the nation’s “happiness” indicates that almost seven million members of the baby-boomer generation and above admit feeling lonely.

Among people over 80, the proportion rises to almost half, including a large minority who admit they feel lonely much of the time.

But campaign groups warned that the study suggests that the generation now approaching retirement will prove to be a “loneliness time bomb”.

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While the fight to preserve life is often centered on abortion and capital punishment, the future Pope Francis also warned against a more subtle form of disregard for human dignity: what he called "covert euthanasia."

"In this consumerist, hedonist and narcissistic society, we are accustomed to the idea that there are people that are disposable," among them, the elderly, then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio said in a recently published book.

Citing examples of intentional neglect, the future pope said: "I believe that today there is covert euthanasia: Our social security pays up until a certain amount of treatment and then says 'May God help you.'"

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To retirees, the offers can sound like the answer to every money worry: convert tomorrow’s pension checks into today’s hard cash.

But these offers, known as pension advances, are having devastating financial consequences for a growing number of older Americans, threatening their retirement savings and plunging them further into debt. The advances, federal and state authorities say, are not advances at all, but carefully disguised loans that require borrowers to sign over all or part of their monthly pension checks. They carry interest rates that are often many times higher than those on credit cards.

In lean economic times, people with public pensions — military veterans, teachers, firefighters, police officers and others — are being courted particularly aggressively by pension-advance companies, which operate largely outside of state and federal banking regulations, but are now drawing scrutiny from Congress and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

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Sunday mornings at Wayman AME Church in Minneapolis brings a faithful crowd. But it’s quite likely no one there has said as many prayers as Noah Smith. It’s not just because he’s a preacher, it’s because he’s had more time to worship – over a century in fact.

At 105, Smith is still hard at work, preaching at Wayman.

“My life is so busy with church and things now. I don’t even get to read the paper sometimes,” said Smith.

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There is a great graphic here and some comment there.

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Watch it all (a little over 13 1/2 minutes) or if you need to (second best) read it all.

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One month after the Coalition’s ‘mid-term review’ sidestepped a pledge to cap social care funding, it appears the Government are finally willing to show their hand.
Today's announcement will impose a limit of £75,000 on the amount that individuals will have to pay towards their own care – after which point, the state will cover further costs.
Demos analysis shows a cap set at that level is miserly, helping only 16% of older people.
However, there remains another significant problem - one that risks further alienating the kind of middle class families already reeling from having their child benefit cut and marriage tax break postponed. The scheme contains a hidden penalty for couples, and for their children.

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Nearly 70 years later, Chaney is among the dwindling number of South Carolinians who fought in World War II. And at 87, he may be among the oldest to receive post-traumatic stress disorder benefits for it.

After decades of nightmares and sessions with doctors, Chaney last year was approved based on his World War II experiences that, according to some of the paperwork involved, included much more than spanning Europe’s rivers and streams.

“My unit was involved in the release of prisoners of war at the Buchenwald concentration camp,” he said in one account his family provided to the Department of Veterans Affairs. “The prisoners looked like walking skeletons and some died while I was there. We used big earth moving machines to dig massive graves.”

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The CBO forecast finds a persistent mismatch between tax revenue and spending over the coming decade. As the economy improves, tax revenue should rise to 19 percent of GDP for the period from 2015 through 2023, up from 15.8 percent in 2012, the report said. But federal spending, after an early-decade dip, will start rising persistently faster than revenues.

"After 2017, if current laws remain in place, outlays will start growing again as a percentage of GDP," the CBO said. "The aging of the population, increasing health care costs, and a significant expansion of eligibility for federal subsidies for health insurance will substantially boost spending for Social Security and for major health care programs relative to the size of the economy."

The CBO's current-law "baseline" calls for spending to reach about 23 percent of GDP in 2023 and, more worrisome, to be "on an upward trajectory."

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Update: An IBD article is also available on this, entitled "CBO Report Shows We're Still Headed Toward A Fiscal Cliff" and it may be found there.

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...the Labor Department’s latest jobs snapshot and other recent data reports present a strong case for crowning baby boomers as the greatest victims of the recession and its grim aftermath.

These Americans in their 50s and early 60s — those near retirement age who do not yet have access to Medicare and Social Security — have lost the most earnings power of any age group, with their household incomes 10 percent below what they made when the recovery began three years ago, according to Sentier Research, a data analysis company.

Their retirement savings and home values fell sharply at the worst possible time: just before they needed to cash out. They are supporting both aged parents and unemployed young-adult children, earning them the inauspicious nickname “Generation Squeeze.”

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The finances of the US’s multi-employer pension schemes have deteriorated so quickly over the past year that the body that insures them will almost certainly run out of cash in 20 years, according to a new report.

The chances of the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation – the publicly created but privately funded body that insures the nation’s occupational pension schemes – going bust went from 1 in 3 at the end of 2011 to more than 9 in 10 by the end of 2012, a report prepared for the PBGC and released on Tuesday said.

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Single and retired, with no family nearby, 64-year-old Lorna Grenadier knows she'll need a better support system if she wants to grow old in her apartment in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, D.C., where she has lived for 40 years. So she's added community organizing to her list of interests and is helping create a service network she hopes will enable her and others like her to remain in their own homes as they age.

For the past 18 months, Grenadier has been working with other volunteers to research and launch the Foggy Bottom West End Village network. The group aims to provide paying members ($600 a year for singles; $900 for households) a range of services, including transportation and connections to vetted local businesses, as well as serve as a contact point for emergencies. Some of the annual fee will also cover social activities for members.

"It’s also about providing peace of mind," says Grenadier -- a sort of insurance policy should someone need help. In a survey of potential members in the her area, 75 percent said they were interested in the concept, though just 50 percent said they would need the services today.

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I looked it up and found that, according to the Centers for Disease Control, learning problems, attention-deficit disorders, autism and related disorders, and developmental delays increased about 17 percent between 1997 and 2008. One in six American children was reported as having a developmental disability between 2006 and 2008. That’s about 1.8 million more children than a decade earlier.

Soon, I learned that medical researchers, sociologists, and demographers were more worried about the proliferation of older parents than my friends and I were. They talked to me at length about a vicious cycle of declining fertility, especially in the industrialized world, and also about the damage caused by assisted-reproductive technologies (ART) that are commonly used on people past their peak childbearing years. This past May, an article in the New England Journal of Medicine found that 8.3 percent of children born with the help of ART had defects, whereas, of those born without it, only 5.8 percent had defects.

A phrase I heard repeatedly during these conversations was “natural experiment.” As in, we’re conducting a vast empirical study upon an unthinkably large population...

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When South Korean widow Yoon Sook-hee, 62, died after a bout of pneumonia in mid-January, she joined a growing number of old people in this Asian country who die alone and was cremated only thanks to the charity of people who never knew her.

Once a country where filial duty and a strong Confucian tradition saw parents revered, modern day South Korea, with a population of 50 million, has grown economically richer, but family ties have fragmented. Nowadays 1.2 million elderly South Koreans, just over 20 percent of the elderly population, live - and increasingly die - alone.

Yoon's former husband, whom she divorced 40 years ago, relinquished responsibility after being contacted by the hospital and told of her death. Her only son was unreachable as he had long broken off all contact with his parents.

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We agree with Obama that it will take a combination of tax increases and spending cuts to put the government's fiscal house in order. Republicans swallowed hard and accepted an increase in tax rates for the highest incomes to start the year. It's the Democrats' turn to recognize that federal benefit programs, and particularly healthcare entitlements such as Medicare and Medicaid, are on an unsustainable path despite the savings from the 2010 healthcare law.

Obama should lead a Democratic push for reforms that preserve these programs for those who need them, while also reducing the deficit and stopping the federal debt from growing faster than the economy. He's in the best position to lead on this issue, able to provide political cover for Democrats concerned that their constituents won't put up with changes to the status quo, while showing Republicans that there are ways to save money without abandoning the government's commitment to the elderly and poor. To create an opening for the rest of his agenda, he needs to step up to that role.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The U.S. Government • Budget • Medicare • Social Security • The National Deficit • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Public debt as a percentage of gross domestic product was around 38 percent in 1965. It is around 74 percent now. Debt could approach a ruinous 90 percent of G.D.P. in a decade and a cataclysmic 247 percent of G.D.P. 30 years from now, according to the Congressional Budget Office and JPMorgan.

By 2025, entitlement spending and debt payments are projected to suck up all federal revenue. Obligations to the elderly are already squeezing programs for the young and the needy. Those obligations will lead to gigantic living standard declines for future generations. According to the International Monetary Fund, meeting America’s long-term obligations will require an immediate and permanent 35 percent increase in all taxes and a 35 percent cut in all benefits....

[The final 'solution didn't] involve a single hard decision. It did little to control spending. It abandoned all of the entitlement reform ideas that have been thrown around.

Whom should we blame for this? Again, we should not blame Obama and Boehner. In their different ways, they and a number of other people in the Congress are trying to find a politically palatable way to deal with these hard issues. They got what conditions allowed.

Ultimately, we should blame the American voters. The average Medicare couple pays $109,000 into the program and gets $343,000 in benefits out, according to the Urban Institute. This is $234,000 in free money. Many voters have decided they like spending a lot on themselves and pushing costs onto their children and grandchildren. They have decided they like borrowing up to $1 trillion a year for tax credits, disability payments, defense contracts and the rest. They have found that the original Keynesian rationale for these deficits provides a perfect cover for permanent deficit-living. They have made it clear that they will destroy any politician who tries to stop them from cost-shifting in this way.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • History • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Taxes • The U.S. Government • Medicare • Social Security • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

The Congressional Budget Office projects that over the next decade Social Security's annual cash deficit will rise by nearly $100 billion, reaching $155 billion a year. The cost of servicing the extra public debt tied to cashing in $1 trillion worth of Social Security's intragovernmental IOUs over the 10 years would add $40 billion to the deficit in 2022 alone, an IBD analysis finds.

Overall, Social Security would account for nearly $200 billion in annual deficits or nearly 20% of the $1 trillion-plus deficit that would occur under current policies, including fiscal-cliff tax hikes.

Then, over the following decade, the retirement program's impact on deficits would really balloon.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • History • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The U.S. Government • Budget • Social Security • The National Deficit • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Watch it all--very heartwarming.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Charities/Non-Profit Organizations • Marriage & Family • * General Interest • Natural Disasters: Earthquakes, Tornadoes, Hurricanes, etc.

Earlier this year, The Guardian reported about Bonnie Ware, a palliative nurse, who had spent 12 years documenting the last words and dying regrets of those under her care (which eventually resulted in a book). Ware said that people at the end of their lives have “phenomenal clarity of vision,” and therefore we should consider what we might learn from their wisdom.

Ware listed the top 5 regrets (most commonly mentioned) of those on their deathbed. At the end of each regret listed by Bonnie Ware, I share a prayerful reflection about this upcoming New Year.

Read it all prayerfully and carefully.

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...social care is in crisis. There are now around 800,000 older people who desperately need social care but who get no help at all.

It is of deep concern to me that pensioners who have more than £23,500 have to pay for their social care costs in full. Many older people who have saved hard, but are by no means wealthy, see their hard earned savings disappear in a matter of months.
Each year around 20,000 older people have to sell their homes to pay for care, one in two people have to pay £20,000 in care costs. One in ten people pay more than £100,000. That is a national scandal. We should all have the peace of mind that that we will be cared for in the right way when our bodies start to fail.

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Bishop Lawrence and his family are requesting prayer for the Bishop's mother, Bertha Ann Lawrence, who is gravely ill. We are also asking for traveling mercies for the Lawrences as they travel to be with her.

Almighty God, look on this your servant, Bertha,
lying in great weakness and comfort her with the promise of life everlasting,
given in the resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: South Carolina • * Christian Life / Church Life • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Children • Health & Medicine • Marriage & Family

Nowadays we do everything later, be it prancing shamelessly across a stage in front of thousands, à la Sir Michael Jagger, or conquering Mount Everest for a second time, like 73-year-old Tamae Watanabe. As we live longer, humanity is increasingly refusing to sit back, put its feet up and settle for a quiet old age.
Nowhere is this phenomenon of age aping youth more noticeable than in the field of divorce. So-called ''silver separation’’, the parting of couples in their sixties after as many as 40 years of marriage, is on the rise, bucking the general downward trend in divorce.
The actress Diana Quick was 61 when she separated from her actor partner, Bill Nighy, after 27 years. As she said in an interview with the Telegraph this week: “There are far more couples splitting up in their sixties now and one reason is that they can. Economically, they have more independence.”

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KIM LAWTON, correspondent: Three years ago, Anne Stine was a busy mother with three young children and a husband who was on the road a lot. Then her 87-year-old father, a very independent World War II veteran who lived about an hour away, suffered a stroke.

ANNE STINE: And what I found was a man who was no longer independent. He was confused and worried and starting to bark orders. So it was a very emotional time for him, and it was a scary time for both of us.

LAWTON: Her dad, who lived alone, needed a lot of care, and the issues surrounding his care were overwhelming....

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Baby Boomers were the first generation to enjoy the concept of being a teenager, and also the first of the last century to enjoy a prolonged period of national prosperity in which they were encouraged to “have it all”, with widespread home ownership, increasing numbers taking holidays abroad and enjoying the burgeoning consumer economy.

That group of post-war babies are now approaching older age, relinquishing the habits of working life and finding themselves with decades still to live in which they might stay fit and healthy or become increasingly dependent on 
help and care from those around them. They – and all of us – are mostly in the dark about when we might crumble physically or mentally.

For many who are retired or 
who are facing retirement soon, the huge questions of how long their health will last, who will care from them and how they finance their care are a colossal and persistent worry....

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Over the years, the amount of money spent on adult social care initially stagnated and then decreased. It cannot be right that at a time when the numbers of older and disabled people are growing, there is a smaller pot of money to share amongst the growing need.

More older people are now having to face spiralling care costs just to be able to live with dignity. The generation that saved for their old age, and paid their dues, now often see all that they worked for is sucked into a vortex of social care costs.

My concern is that even when people give up all their life’s assets, achieved after a lifetime of hard work and diligence, there is no guarantee even that the quality of care they receive is assured.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • Archbishop of York John Sentamu • * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • Religion & Culture • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

The older Americans get, the more likely they are to suffer cognitive decline. Roughly 14 per cent of people over 71 have some level of dementia, according to the National Institutes of Health, a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. For those in their 90s, the rate rises to 37.4 per cent.

Many older folks have spent a lifetime managing their finances and take pride in it. They may hold onto their checkbooks and brokerage statements more tightly than they do their car keys.

Take the parents of John M. Smartt Jr., a Knoxville, Tennessee certified public accountant and investment adviser, who have been married for almost 70 years. Just last week they finally agreed to merge their separate checking accounts and allow Mr. Smartt to write checks for them.

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A major study published by the United Nations has warned that the growing numbers of the elderly presented significant challenges to welfare, pension and health care systems in both developing and developed nations.

And it bemoans the fact that skills and knowledge that older people have acquired are going to waste in societies rather than being used to their full.

"We must commit to ending the widespread mismanagement of ageing," said Richard Blewitt, chief executive of HelpAge International, which collaborated on the report, Ageing in the 21st Century.

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When Jeanne Majors, 63, took an early retirement in December 2005, she assumed that she would pick up a part-time job and be in good financial shape. She didn't know that her future would quickly fall apart.

Majors, who is single and lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., learned the hard way about the retirement obstacles that most women face today. When the economy slid into the recession, she lost her part-time job and could not find another.

"They wanted somebody young," Majors says. "Or if I was a man, somebody would have hired me at my age. I'm not sorry that I retired, but things didn't turn out the way I wanted it to. Everything went bust."

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Women • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Personal Finance • Pensions • Stock Market • The Banking System/Sector • The U.S. Government • Medicare • Social Security

Americans live 3½ years less than citizens of the five top-ranked countries - Japan, Hong Kong, Iceland, Switzerland and Australia.

The story of American life expectancy is an alarming expression of its larger story. The US is delivering the full benefits of prosperity and modernity in an increasingly narrow way.

It was long known that richer Americans improved their life expectancy at a greater rate than poor Americans, but lifespans lengthened for all. Today, advantaged Americans live longer while the disadvantaged live shorter. That is the real import of the new findings. It is about inequality, in the most basic manifestation - the number of days of life.

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Would an expansion of Medicaid under the federal health-care law help or hinder South Carolina’s finances? Depends who you ask.

Strains of disagreement are building against the backdrop of a campaign by Gov. Nikki Haley’s administration to build opposition to an expansion.

Generally opposed by Republicans and favored by Democrats, the debate over whether to expand the Medicaid program in the states is set to play out in many statehouses across the country. That’s because a June Supreme Court ruling made the extension of coverage optional.

In the Palmetto State, advocates for the expansion contend Haley’s administration is emphasizing the costs and underselling offsetting economic benefits of an expansion.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • Poverty • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • The U.S. Government • Budget • Politics in General • State Government • * South Carolina

More than seven out of ten MPs refuse to back calls to legalise assisted suicide, according to a new survey released last week....

The poll comes just a week after two newly appointed junior health ministers, Anna Soubry and Norman Lamb, suggested that assisted suicide should be decriminalised and just before the Liberal Democrat Conference where some MPs are expected to push for a change in the law.

It found that just 29% of MPs back moves to introduce assisted suicide, while 59% were opposed and 12% were undecided.

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According to Statistics Canada, “grey divorce” has been steadily growing among those 55 and over, with rates expected to increase as more people continue to age.

While marriage remains the predominant family structure in Canada, it only represents 67 per cent of Canadian families, down from 70.5 per cent a decade ago — and 91.6 per cent in 1961, before the advent of the Divorce Act, Statistics Canada reported Wednesday in its latest batch of 2011 census data.

And for the first time, the number of common-law families in Canada outstripped the number of single-parent families in 2011, another sign of the declining popularity of matrimony.

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Opposition is not uniform. A few denominations, like the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, with about 22,000 members in Massachusetts, officially support the concept. The Unitarians and other mainline Protestant denominations typically do not take positions on specific state proposals.

And, in an age when many ecclesiastical hierarchies are weakening, in a country where many people are used to filtering religious beliefs through personal and secular lenses, ­individual clergy and congregants do not necessarily follow the lead of church officials.

The national Episcopal Church, for example, officially opposes physician-assisted suicide. But the Rev. Daphne B. Noyes, a deacon at the Church of the Advent in Boston and a hospital chaplain, said her work with dying people and their families has led her to ­believe the option should be available under rigorously limited circumstances that ensure that participation by all parties is voluntary and deliberate.

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My father's health took a major turn for the worse and so we have been scurrying around working on getting him a place to stay. He will be in a skilled nursing facility in the greater Charleston area, and he arrives tomorrow. To say this represents a major change would be an understatement.

Please pray for us and especially for my Dad, Stuart, who turns 80 next month as we all seek to adapt, adjust and let God bless us in the midst of it all--KSH.

Filed under: * By Kendall • Harmon Family • * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Children • Health & Medicine • Marriage & Family • * South Carolina

Hogewey's 152 residents – never, warns Van Zuthem, "patients" – have all been classified by the Dutch NHS as suffering from severe or extreme dementia. Averaging 83 years of age, they are cared for by 250-odd full- and part-time staff (most of them qualified healthcare workers, the rest given special training), plus local volunteers. They live, six or seven to a house, plus one or two carers, in 23 different homes. Residents have their own spacious bedroom, but share the kitchen, lounge and dining room.

Two core principles governed Hogewey's award-winning design and inform the care that's given here, says Van Zuthem. First, it aims to relieve the anxiety, confusion and often considerable anger that people with dementia can feel by providing an environment that is safe, familiar and human; an almost-normal home where people are surrounded by things they recognise and by other people with backgrounds, interests and values similar to their own. Second, "maximising the quality of people's lives. Keeping everyone active. Focusing on everything they can still do, rather than everything they can't. Because when you have dementia, you're ill, but there may really not be much else wrong with you."

So Hogewey has 25 clubs, from folksong to baking, literature to bingo, painting to cycling.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Europe • The Netherlands

Since 1900, the life expectancy of Americans has jumped to just shy of 80 from 47 years. This surge comes mostly from improved hygiene and nutrition, but also from new discoveries and interventions: everything from antibiotics and heart bypass surgery to cancer drugs that target and neutralize the impact of specific genetic mutations.

Now scientists studying the intricacies of DNA and other molecular bio-dynamics may be poised to offer even more dramatic boosts to longevity. This comes not from setting out explicitly to conquer aging, which remains controversial in mainstream science, but from researchers developing new drugs and therapies for such maladies of growing old as heart disease and diabetes.

“Aging is the major risk factor for most diseases,” says Felipe Sierra, director of the Division of Aging Biology at the National Institute on Aging. “The National Institutes of Health fund research into understanding the diseases of aging, not life extension, though this could be a side effect.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • Psychology • Religion & Culture • Science & Technology • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

South Carolina's pension fund investments have generated far less over the past year than hoped, but officials say there's no cause for alarm.

Preliminary numbers from the state's Retirement System Investment Commission show a return on investments of 0.6 percent for the fiscal year ending June 30. The state assumes a 7.5 percent annual return when calculating what it needs to keep the system solvent long-term.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Credit Markets • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • Pensions • Stock Market • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • Politics in General • State Government

It's game on. But to understand the contest — and the associated scare tactics — it's best to first understand a few unpleasant facts that are not in dispute:

•The popular old-age health insurance plan is on a financially unsustainable course. Medicare's payroll tax and premiums that beneficiaries pay cover barely half the program's costs, and as Baby Boomers retire, things will get worse. The tab is projected to rise rapidly: 7.6% a year for the doctor-care part of Medicare and 8.8% for the program's prescription drug benefit, for example. The economy, a rough proxy for the nation's ability to afford this, is growing less than 2% a year, leaving a huge gap.
•There is no painless fix. Both presidential candidates have committed to detailed plans for curbing costs, and no matter who wins, beneficiaries will pay more or get less, likely both. People who say otherwise are deluding themselves. As economist Herb Stein famously said: Anything that can't go on forever won't.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • Middle Age • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Personal Finance • Taxes • The U.S. Government • Budget • Medicare • The National Deficit • Politics in General • Office of the President • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Fort Mill, South Carolina--The bocce ball court is busy. The swimming pool is crowded. Golf carts whiz down well-manicured trails. Couples walk briskly through sprawling neighborhoods of charming one-story houses.

"I'm very happy that we're here," says Dorothy "Dottie" Serran, 69, of the Carolina Lakes Sun City community she and husband Ralph, 70, moved to after retirement. "It's very nice. … You can do as much as you want or as little as you want."

Life is good for most of the nation's seniors, according to a recent poll of 2,250 older adults. Whether they move to "active adult" communities such as Sun City or grow old in the homes where they raised their children, they say they are pretty darn content.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Personal Finance

Quick Stats[:]

As of 2012-06 the civilian labor force was 155,163,000
As of 2012-06 there were 111,145,000 in the private workforce
As of 2012-06 there were 56,174,538 collecting some form of SS or disability benefit
Ratio of SS beneficiaries to private employment just passed the 50% mark (50.54%)

....As of May 2012, the outlays are $756.9 billion annualized. Fewer worker relatively speaking, support more and more recipients with exponentially growing payments. This is supposed to work?

Read it all from Mish's economics blog (another from the long queue of should-have-already-been-posted material).

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Middle Age • Psychology • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Credit Markets • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Taxes • The U.S. Government • Budget • Census/Census Data • Medicare • Social Security • The National Deficit • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • Senate • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Roy Johnson fell so far behind on his $1,000-per-month mortgage payments that last year he allowed the redbrick, three-bedroom ranch he had owned since 1963 to lapse into foreclosure.

“I couldn’t pay it any longer,” he said. “One day, I woke up and said, ‘Hell, I’m through with it. I’m walking away from the house.’ ”

That decision swept Mr. Johnson, 79, into a rapidly expanding demographic: older Americans who have lost their homes in the Great Recession. As he hauled his belongings by pickup truck from this Atlanta suburb and moved into his daughter’s basement, Mr. Johnson became one of the one and a half million Americans over the age of 50 who lost their houses to foreclosure between 2007 and 2011. Of those, the highest foreclosure rate was for homeowners over 75.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Housing/Real Estate Market • Personal Finance • The Banking System/Sector • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007--

This retirement oasis in the desert has long beckoned those who want to spin out their golden years playing golf and sitting by the pool in the arid sunshine.

But for Clare Keany, who turned 62 last fall and cannot find work, it feels more like a prison. Just a few miles from the gated estates of corporate chieftains and Hollywood stars, Ms. Keany lives in a tiny mobile home, barely getting by on little more than $1,082 a month from Social Security.

“I would rather be functioning and having a job somewhere,” said Ms. Keany, whose pixie haircut, trim build and crinkling smile suggest someone much younger than her years. “I really don’t enjoy living like this. I’ve got too much to do still.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • Social Security

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Do not miss this, especially the obstacles she herself has had to overcome in her own life.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Education • History • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military

Federal officials said Wednesday they had charged 107 people across the country in recent days for allegedly running a string of unrelated Medicare fraud schemes involving a total of $452 million in false claims....

Among those arrested were seven people in Baton Rouge, La., who were accused of recruiting elderly, mentally ill and drug-addicted patients from nursing homes and homeless shelters. The suspects allegedly signed up the recruits for mental-health services billed at $225 million over six years that never were given or were medically inappropriate, according to officials.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The U.S. Government • Medicare • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Government accounting for Social Security has devolved over time from deceptive to dishonest to desperate.

The latest Social Security Trustees report says that benefit promises are fully financed until 2033 and three-fourths financed after that. In short: no crisis.

Here's the truth, embedded between the lines: At the current payroll tax rate, Social Security would only bring in enough revenue to pay for 72% of all benefits through 2036.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The U.S. Government • Budget • Social Security • The National Deficit • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • Senate

Pope Benedict marks two milestones this week and while his health appears stable, signs of frailty have again prompted speculation over whether he will be the first pontiff in seven centuries to resign.

Benedict, one of the oldest popes in history, turns 85 on Monday, and on Thursday he marks the seventh anniversary of his election as successor to the immensely popular John Paul II.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

Dr. Mark Rosenberg, chairman of emergency medicine at St. Joseph’s, said he had consulted on more than 50 geriatric emergency rooms to be opened across the country, from Princeton, N.J., to California, overcoming initial resistance from doctors and nurses who saw assignments to the units as scut work.

“They thought it was a bedpan unit, focused on nursing home patients,” Dr. Rosenberg said. “When they finally realized this was the unit that gave better health care to their parents and grandparents, they jumped onboard.”

Hospitals also have strong financial incentives to focus on the elderly. People over 65 account for 15 percent to 20 percent of emergency room visits, hospital officials say, and that number is expected to grow as the population ages.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine

The burden of paying for college is wreaking havoc on the finances of an unexpected demographic: people 60 and over.

New research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows that Americans in that age bracket still owe about $36 billion in student loans, providing a rare window into the dynamics of student debt. More than 10 percent of those loans are delinquent. As a result, consumer advocates say, it is not uncommon for Social Security checks to be garnished or for debt collectors to harass borrowers in their 80s over student loans that are decades old.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Education • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Personal Finance

A respected Baptist academic has called upon churches to ensure they are a welcoming home for Britain's ageing population.

Dr Roy Kearsley, of South Wales Baptist College, admitted that ageing was a challenge for church, mission and pastoral care.

He said that recent headlines about poor levels of care for older people in Britain were "disturbing" and indicative of a "social and spiritual crisis".

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Baptists • * Theology • Pastoral Theology

Dr. Georgia Witkin, author of the new book, “The Modern Grandparent’s Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to the New Rules of Grandparenting,” (New American Library, $15)...[says that] the average age for a first-time grandparent is 48....Whether they work or not, grandparents are busy, active people. They’re shaking their bodies in Zumba classes, running marathons, biking from the suburbs into the city and back, and chatting with friends and family, far and near, on Facebook.

And some grandmothers, like Gregory of Southfield, Mich., are even abandoning the traditional moniker for names that better fit their personalities and lifestyles, such as Grand, GiGi or Nana.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Children • Marriage & Family • Middle Age • Psychology

Nineteen years after Anne Lamott gave birth to the child she wanted desperately enough to become a single mother, her son, Sam, called with the news that he and his 20-year-old on-again-off-again girlfriend were expecting. "They're both a little young, but who asked me?" Lamott writes, setting the self-deprecating tone for Some Assembly Required.

A sequel to Operating Instructions, Lamott's best-selling 1993 chronicle of the struggles and epiphanies of her first year of motherhood, Some Assembly Required addresses the exhaustion, exhilaration and stresses of her grandson Jax Jesse Lamott's first 12 months — from amusement at his "copious Newfoundland drool" to profound worries over his parents' rocky relationship. Her interest is in how this birth affects her — and Sam — to their very core. To get at this, she intersperses her journal entries with comments she elicits from her son in interviews and email exchanges.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Books • Children • Marriage & Family

By itself, Benedict's advanced age [of 85] probably would invite speculation about what comes next, even though there's no indication of a health crisis. This is, after all, a pontiff who departs next week for a six-day trip to Mexico and Cuba.

Yet it's not just a birthday that has people thinking about succession. There's also a mounting perception that for all of Benedict's brilliance as a teacher, something isn't working in the internal governance of the Vatican, and it's not likely to be fixed on his watch. The tawdry "Vatileaks" scandal is the most recent symptom of a series of maladies -- an inability to keep personal conflicts under control (the Boffo affair), to anticipate the foreseeable results of policy choices (the Holocaust-denying bishop debacle) and to tell even positive stories effectively (the pope's role in the sex abuse crisis).

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

At some point, the spectacle America is now calling a presidential campaign will turn away from comedy and start focusing on things that really matter—such as the "fiscal cliff" our federal government is rapidly approaching.

The what? A cliff is something from which you don't want to fall. But as I'll explain shortly, a number of decisions to kick the budgetary can down the road have conspired to place a remarkably large fiscal contraction on the calendar for January 2013—unless Congress takes action to avoid it.

Well, that gives Congress plenty of time, right? Yes. But if you're like me, the phrase "unless Congress takes action" sends a chill down your spine—especially since the cliff came about because of Congress's past inability to agree.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • History • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Taxes • The U.S. Government • Budget • Medicare • Social Security • The National Deficit • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Education

As Nicholas Eberstadt and Apoorva Shah of the American Enterprise Institute point out, over the past three decades, the Arab world has undergone a little noticed demographic implosion. Arab adults are having many fewer kids.

The speed of the change is breathtaking. A woman in Oman today has 5.6 fewer babies than a woman in Oman 30 years ago. Morocco, Syria and Saudi Arabia have seen fertility-rate declines of nearly 60 percent, and in Iran it’s more than 70 percent. These are among the fastest declines in recorded history.

The Iranian regime is aware of how the rapidly aging population and the lack of young people entering the work force could lead to long-term decline. But there’s not much they have been able to do about it. Maybe Iranians are pessimistic about the future. Maybe Iranian parents just want smaller families....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Children • Globalization • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • Science & Technology • Sexuality • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Politics in General • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

In a society that has become obsessed with youth, there is a growing trend of young women, many still in their 20s, taking dramatic and expensive measures to stop the signs of aging before they happen with non-surgical treatments.

Preventive Botox injections and costly thermage, a hot radio frequency treatment that tightens and lifts skin that is all the rage among celebrities, are the latest cosmetic procedures used to stop crows feet in their tracks.

Starting early is one of the top tips Dr. Debra Jaliman, a dermatologist on New York City's tony Fifth Avenue, offers in her new book, "Skin Rules." She often tells her young patients, if they ask, that the science is clear: Early engagement can stop the clock.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • Women • Young Adults

Ed Dobson is not afraid of dying. It’s the getting there that really scares him.

A former pastor, onetime Christian Right operative and an icon among religious leaders, Dobson has Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. When he was diagnosed, doctors gave him 3 to 5 years to live.

That was 11 years ago....

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • Religion & Culture • * Theology • Pastoral Theology

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • Women • * General Interest

Social Security’s disability program is a political quagmire — and a metaphor for why federal spending and budget deficits are so difficult to control. The numbers are too big; the details, too complicated; and the choices, when faced, too wrenching. President Obama’s new budget, estimated at $3.5 trillion or more, will raise all these problems. Experience suggests that little will be done to rein in long-term spending and deficits.

Social Security’s disability program opens a window on this larger paralysis. Created in 1956, more than two decades after Congress authorized Social Security, the program was initially seen as a natural complement to coverage for retirees. Through sickness or accident, some workers had to retire early. They, too, deserved protection. For many years, the costs were modest. But in recent decades, they have exploded....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • Budget • Social Security • The National Deficit

The essential question [the article explores is]: Is it ever justified for a spouse to divorce his or her mate when, via health or accident, that spouse suffers from dementia and/or some other similar condition or handicap?....

Year’s after Robert’s collapse, it is clear that he has stabilized in terms of his physical condition. He can talk. He remembers some things, but not others. His wife visits him frequently in his assisted-living home. There is no question that he is being taken care of, with loving attention.

Then a man from the wife’s past comes back into her life and that of her family. Eventually, they face the big question.

Page felt 30 again but was racked with guilt. “I believed my vows so strongly that they just kept ringing in my ears.”

She consulted her minister, who told her that by continuing to take care of Robert, she was still honoring those vows.

And that’s that. That’s all that we learn.

There is, in other words, no other religious content to the discussion....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Media • Psychology • Religion & Culture • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Since I’ve been chairing a national Presbyterian Church (USA) committee on the Nature of the Church for the 21st century, I’ve been gaining a different perspective on many of the larger trends of our denomination. One thing that has been difficult to realize (and equally difficult to communicate to the larger church) is the young clergy crisis.

Why would I call it a crisis? We’ve known for a long time about the startling decline of young clergy. The drop-out rates don't help (I can't find hard and fast stats on this... but some claim that about 70% of young clergy drop out within the first five years of ministry, usually because of lack of support or financial reasons). The average age of a pastor in the PCUSA is 53. And I’ve realized that the age of our leadership might be much higher.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Middle Age • Young Adults • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Lutheran • Methodist • Presbyterian • United Church of Christ • * Theology • Seminary / Theological Education

Pope Benedict XVI seems worn out.

People who have spent time with him recently say they found him weaker than they'd ever seen him, seemingly too tired to engage with what they were saying. He no longer meets individually with visiting bishops. A few weeks ago he started using a moving platform to spare him the long walk down St. Peter's Basilica.

Benedict turns 85 in the new year, so a slowdown is only natural. Expected. And given his age and continued rigorous work schedule, it's remarkable he does as much as he does and is in such good health overall: Just this past week he confirmed he would travel to Mexico and Cuba next spring.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

The federal government is understating the liability for its employee pension plans by $80-billion because it does not use “real world” investment returns in its calculation, a new report says.

A C.D. Howe Institute study has concluded the federal liability for pension plans now totals $227-billion, which is $80-billion more than the government reports in its Public Accounts.

“Ottawa’s calculations do not reflect investment returns available in the real world,” says co-author William Robson, who is CEO of the C.D. Howe Institute.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • Pensions • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Canada

Writing an open letter to the Prime Minister and his fellow Taxpayers in England, the Archbishop has asked the Government to consider a new social covenant to protect the most vulnerable in society.

The Archbishop of York's said: “A failing of today’s society is to set the old over and against the young, in a state of mutual incomprehension. In fact, the old need the young and the young, the old. An integration of the generations is critical to a mutually supportive society. The value we are seen to place on their wisdom and the concern we show for their care are important litmus tests of whether we can build a caring as well as a confident society in the 21st century.”

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • Archbishop of York John Sentamu • * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

Q: What do you remember about the instant the bombs starting falling?

A: I was sitting on the side of my bunk putting my shoes on. All of a sudden I heard an explosion in the distance. I could hear people running up and down in the dark. I heard another explosion and the running got faster. Then a guy leaned down a hatch and yelled "The Japs are attacking."

Here is a Quiz before you read further: how long do you think it took him by his estimate to get word to his family that he was ok?

Take a guess and then check out the rest.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • History • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * South Carolina

[George] Hursey, originally from North Carolina, was 21 years old at the time of the Dec. 7 attack. Hursey and the 130 others in his unit - Battery G of the 64th Coast Artillery - jumped into action when the strikes began at 7:55 a.m.

“Nobody was scared,’’ he said. “We had a job to do. It’s what we were trained to do....’’

Hursey worries that national leaders have forgotten past events like Pearl Harbor, which he believes leads to events like the terrorist attacks of 2001.

“The worst thing that happened to this country is 9/11,’’ he said. “Soldiers are supposed to die, we get paid for it. There were so many people who weren’t supposed to die in those attacks.’’

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • History • Military / Armed Forces • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

We Americans fool ourselves if we ignore the parallels between Europe's problems and our own. It's reassuring to think them separate, and the fixation on the euro -- Europe's common currency -- buttresses that mindset. But Europe's turmoil is more than a currency crisis and was inevitable, in some form, even if the euro had never been created. It's ultimately a crisis of the welfare state, which has grown too large to be easily supported economically. People can't live with it -- and can't live without it. The American predicament is little different.

Government expansion was one of the 20th century's great transformations. Wealthy nations adopted programs for education, health care, unemployment insurance, old-age assistance, public housing and income redistribution. "Public spending for these activities had been almost nonexistent at the beginning of the 20th century," writes economist Vito Tanzi in his book "Government versus Markets."

The numbers -- to those who don't know them -- are astonishing. In 1870, all government spending was 7.3 percent of national income in the United States, 9.4 percent in Britain, 10 percent in Germany and 12.6 percent in France. By 2007, the figures were 36.6 percent for the United States, 44.6 percent for Britain, 43.9 percent for Germany and 52.6 percent for France. Military costs once dominated budgets; now, social spending does.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • History • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Credit Markets • Currency Markets • The U.S. Government • Budget • Medicare • Social Security • The National Deficit • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Europe

Evangelist Billy Graham was resting comfortably Wednesday night in an Asheville hospital after being admitted with a possible case of pneumonia.

A statement from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association said Graham was admitted Wednesday morning to Mission Hospital for respiratory problems. It's Graham's fifth hospital stay since 2007. In May, he spent five days at Mission, also for pneumonia.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals

Cy Pitman, bishop for the Anglican diocese for Eastern Newfoundland and Labrador, says he supports the parish's move.

"St. Michael's has a history of reaching out in areas where people are. And that's all about who we are as a church," he says.

When asked if the move has to do with a declining membership, Rose said while numbers have gone down over the years, it's more to do with an aging population and the changing demographics in the area than people not supporting the church.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church of Canada • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Canada

We are living longer than ever, but being indigenous, single or divorced or living outside a city increases your chance of an early death.

The latest life tables from the Bureau of Statistics show an Australian girl born today can expect to live until 84, and even longer if she survives her relatively dangerous first year. An indigenous Australian girl can expect 10 years less. A boy born today can expect 79 years; an indigenous boy 11 years less.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • Marriage & Family • Urban/City Life and Issues • * International News & Commentary • Australia / NZ

Committee members continued to meet on Capitol Hill to present legislation that could be voted on by the Congress to cut $1,200bn from the budget over 10 years.

But both sides had already begun to blame each other, with Republicans resisting tax rises in any form and Democrats demanding extra revenues be balanced against spending cuts on the grounds of fairness.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Personal Finance • Taxes • The U.S. Government • Budget • Medicare • Social Security • The National Deficit • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • Senate

ROBERT BENTLEY: My father never talked about it until he joined the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. We were in school. If we were studying World War II, you ask him a question about it, he said, read your history book. That was the only answer we got.

SWEENEY: I hear a lot of this from family members here, who say the survivors group gave their fathers and husbands a place where they could finally open up and begin to heal.

This group plans to continue to meet unofficially as the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors. Al Pomeroy is another of these sons. He says keeping the group going is a matter of respect.

Read or listen to it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Children • History • Marriage & Family • Military / Armed Forces • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military

They drive cars, but seldom new ones. They earn paychecks, but not big ones. Many own homes. Most pay taxes. Half are married, and nearly half live in the suburbs. None are poor, but many describe themselves as barely scraping by.

Down but not quite out, these Americans form a diverse group sometimes called “near poor” and sometimes simply overlooked — and a new count suggests they are far more numerous than previously understood.

When the Census Bureau this month released a new measure of poverty, meant to better count disposable income, it began altering the portrait of national need. Perhaps the most startling differences between the old measure and the new involves data the government has not yet published, showing 51 million people with incomes less than 50 percent above the poverty line. That number of Americans is 76 percent higher than the official account, published in September. All told, that places 100 million people — one in three Americans — either in poverty or in the fretful zone just above it.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Poverty • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Personal Finance • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • Census/Census Data • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

When asked your religion, you write "devout musician." Does that mean you pray to Angus Young?

It's not a frivolous answer. I'm essentially agnostic. I don't have a problem with God. I have a problem with religion. I've chosen to live my life without the certainties of religious faith. I think they're dangerous. Music is something that gives my life value and spiritual solace.

You're 60 and agnostic. Do you think about death?

Of course I do. Am I afraid of it? No, I'm intrigued by it. I'm not ready for it yet. But in many ways, acknowledging that sense of mortality enriches the life you have left. My dad and I had the same hands. I hadn't really noticed that until he was on his deathbed, and I mentioned it. And he said, "You used your hands better than I did." My dad was a milkman. And I realized that was probably the first compliment he'd ever paid me, and that was kind of devastating. I suppose I included it in this book because I wanted to assess whether in the 25 years since he died I used my hands well.

--The Musician Sting (Gordon Sumner) in the November 21, 2011,Time Magazine, page 64

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Music • Philosophy • Psychology • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

He's 96 and drives an Olds Cutlass. She's 90 and carries pre-cooked meals to the doors of those in need, stopping to chat as long as she can.

Together, they've put in more than 5,500 hours of volunteering.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Charities/Non-Profit Organizations • Dieting/Food/Nutrition • * South Carolina

The Pentagon's use of retired generals and admirals as paid advisers has virtually ceased, plummeting from 355 "senior mentors" in 2010 to four today, according to a report released by the Defense Department's inspector general.

Requirements to disclose their business ties, a cap on pay of $179,700 per year and limits on working for private firms were the reasons the generals and admirals gave for quitting the program, the report said.

Retired officers from several services told investigators they quit because they did not want to disclose their finances publicly. Others pointed to the pay of $86.10 per hour, with a maximum of $179,900, as too low.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Education • Psychology • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Like many middle-class American baby boomers, Linda Carmona-Sanchez is anxious about slipping into poverty and says whatever dreams she once had about retirement in her "golden years" have turned into nightmares.

"We don't value people here in this country, and we value you less if you're not healthy and strong," Carmona-Sanchez, 55, said.

"To me it would almost be a welcome blessing to know that I would die rather than to be old and have to live in poverty," she said.

Her anxiety is widespread....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Middle Age • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Personal Finance • Pensions

The aging of the human race has been faster than anyone could have imagined a few decades ago. Fertility rates have plunged globally; simultaneously, life spans have increased. The result is a re-contoured age graph: The pyramid, once with a tiny number of old folks at the peak and a broad foundation of children, is inverting. In wealthy countries, the graph already has a pronounced middle-age spread.

This is, in many respects, very good news. Longer life is a blessing of modern medicine and improvements in nutrition. Lower fertility rates have corresponded to more educational opportunities for women and greater prosperity for societies in general.

But the unexpectedly abrupt demographic transition has created economic upheaval. For the countries that hit the fertility brakes the hardest, the graying of society has become a full-blown crisis. They’re suddenly desperate for babies. They need more workers to provide goods and services to huge numbers of pensioners....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy

For most of its 75-year history, the program had paid its own way through a dedicated stream of payroll taxes, even generating huge surpluses for the past two decades. But in 2010, under the strain of a recession that caused tax revenue to plummet, the cost of benefits outstripped tax collections for the first time since the early 1980s.

Now, Social Security is sucking money out of the Treasury. This year, it will add a projected $46 billion to the nation’s budget problems, according to projections by system trustees. Replacing cash lost to a one-year payroll tax holiday will require an additional $105 billion. If the payroll tax break is expanded next year, as President Obama has proposed, Social Security will need an extra $267 billion to pay promised benefits.

But while talk about fixing the nation’s finances has grown more urgent, fixing Social Security has largely vanished from the conversation.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • Budget • Social Security • The National Deficit • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate

Surgery is surprisingly common in older people during the last year, month and even week of life, researchers reported Wednesday, a finding that is likely to stoke, but not resolve, the debate over whether medical care is overused and needlessly driving up medical costs.

The most comprehensive examination of operations performed on Medicare recipients in the final year of life found that nationally in 2008, nearly one recipient in three had surgery in the last year of life. Nearly one in five had surgery in the last month of life. Nearly one in 10 had surgery in the last week of life.

The very oldest patients were less likely to have surgery. Those who were 65 had a 38.4 percent chance of having surgery in the last year of life. For 80-year-olds, the chance was 35.3 percent, but the rates fell off more sharply from there, declining by a third by age 90.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • The U.S. Government • Medicare • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

Like their secular counterparts, many clergy who devoted their attention to less temporal matters than financial planning now find themselves amid shrinking church budgets and a poor economy being forced to work beyond traditional retirement ages.

It is an especially critical issue in smaller churches that still do not set aside money for clergy retirement. In a 2008 study of Church of Christ clergy in Texas, just a quarter of respondents said they had plans to fully retire.

But it is also a burden for larger, mainline Protestant denominations. As memberships shrink and many older clergy find it financially untenable to retire, even fewer younger clergy are able to find work.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • Stewardship • * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Credit Markets • Personal Finance • Pensions • Stock Market • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007--

The wealth of nations, the [Social Trends Institute] report says, is inextricably associated with the health of families. And, amongst other factors, the global retreat from marriage and from family has depressed economic growth and has deeply hurt two generations of children.

“Evidence drawn from Europe and North America indicates that children who are raised in an intact married home are more likely to excel in school and be active in the labour force as young adults,” the report says. “An abundant social-science literature, as well as common sense, supports the claim that children are more likely to flourish, and to become productive adults, when they are raised in stable, married-couple households.” Yet, with the global decline of these households, “the sustainability of humankind’s oldest organization, the family – the fount of fertility, nurturance and human capital – is now an open question.”

The report cites studies that indicate that American children who are raised outside of “an intact married home” are two to three times more likely to suffer serious social and psychological problems....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Children • Marriage & Family • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Personal Finance • Pensions • The U.S. Government • Social Security • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Canada

Retirement plans and living standards for nearly half a million South Carolinians are in the hands of state politicians.

On the line are cost-of-living increases, the number of years public employees must work before they earn retirement pay and future contribution rates, all of which stand to change as the state's top elected officials try to figure out a way to deal with the retirement system's $17 billion funding mess.

Risky investment strategies and too-generous retirement benefits over the years coupled with the recession have been blamed by fiscal watchdogs as the reason the state's pension plan has long-term stability problems.

Read it all from the front page of the local paper.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Credit Markets • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • Pensions • Stock Market • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • Politics in General • State Government • * South Carolina

An unsuspecting Oregon couple's ascendance to YouTube stardom happened by accident....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Blogging & the Internet • Marriage & Family • Science & Technology • * General Interest • Humor / Trivia

Guidelines proposed by the pro-euthanasia Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) call on doctors in the Netherlands to refer patients for euthanasia — even if they have moral or religious objections to the practice of killing patients.

The Dutch medical group released the proposal, “The Role of the Physician in the Voluntary Termination of Life,” a position paper saying, “Patients, too, often have difficulty telling a physician they have an authentic wish to die. Physicians, for their part, are under an obligation to take such requests seriously. This also means that if a physician cannot or does not wish to honour a patient’s request for euthanasia or assisted suicide he must give the patient a timely and clear explanation of why, and furthermore must then refer or transfer the patient to another physician in good time.”

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Europe • The Netherlands

Carol Willison has made lots of financial sacrifices for her two children over the years, including paying most of her older daughter's medical school tuition. But Willison's generosity has reached its limits.

Not only doesn't the 60-year-old Seattle woman plan to leave her daughters an inheritance when she dies, she's trying to spend every last dime on herself before she goes.

"My goal is when they carry me away in that box that my bank account is going to say zero," Willison said. "I'm going to spoil myself now."

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Children • Marriage & Family • Middle Age • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Personal Finance

While many Americans worry that the Social Security Administration won't have enough money left to pay their benefits when they retire, the agency is doling out millions of dollars to people who aren't even alive.

The Social Security inspector general estimates that the agency has made $40.3 million in erroneous payments to deceased beneficiaries -- even though the administration had already recorded their deaths in its records. The estimate is based on a sample tested during its most recent audit in January 2008, the watchdog agency said.

One man told CNNMoney that he notified Social Security four years ago that his mother had passed away, but he still can't get the agency to stop sending her checks every month.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The U.S. Government • Social Security

The number of people living to advanced old age is already on the rise. There are some 5.7 million Americans age 85 and older, amounting to about 1.8% of the population, according to the Census Bureau. That is projected to rise to 19 million, or 4.34% of the population, by 2050, based on current trends. The percentage of Americans 100 and older is projected to rise from 0.03% today to 0.14% of the population in 2050. That's a total of 601,000 centenarians.

But many scientists think that this is just the beginning; they are working furiously to make it possible for human beings to achieve Methuselah-like life spans. They are studying the aging process itself and experimenting with ways to slow it down by way of diet, drugs and genetic therapy. They are also working on new ways to replace worn-out organs—and even to help the body to rebuild itself. The gerontologist and scientific provocateur Aubrey de Grey claims that the first humans to live for 1,000 years may already have been born.

The idea of "conquering" aging has raised hopes, but it has also spurred a debate about whether people should actually aspire to live that long.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Science & Technology

A problematic new end-of-life medical form is rapidly gaining ascendency in U.S. healthcare. It is called the "POLST" document. (In my own state of Colorado, it's called a MOST document.) The acronym stands for Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment....

The POLST-type legislation removes the condition that a patient is terminally ill or diagnosed in a PVS before a refusal order is actionable. In other words, the new law permits any adult patient to refuse any treatment at any time for any reason in the event they lack decisional capacity; and health care professionals, directed by a doctor's medical order, ordinarily would be (and are) required to carry out the order. Although the law for strategic purposes is rhetorically formulated as bearing upon end-of-lifemedical decisions, it sets forth no requirement that a patient's refusal of life-support must be limited to end-of-life conditions.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

A 2010 survey found that as many as 48% of women and 23% of men said that they are interested in having cosmetic surgery.

Celebrities, like Heidi Montag, are now forthright about having had cosmetic surgery. Many other celebrities, both men and women, have been rumoured to have had cosmetic surgery. One website suggests which stars are desperately in need of plastic surgery.

The acceptability of plastic surgery is on the rise in every economic tier in American society. In fact, another survey done by the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery in 2010 showed that 48% of respondents making less than $25K per year approve of cosmetic surgery. As incomes rise, so do the approval ratings, with 62% of those making over $75K per year approving of cosmetic surgery....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • Science & Technology

Paul Trigili, an information technology professional in Las Vegas, is 65, has back problems and would like to retire at the end of the year. There's just one thing standing in his way: his house.

Trigili bought his home three years ago for $350,000. At the time, he thought it was a good deal, because the home originally was priced at $450,000. Today, it's valued at $184,000.

Trigili made a large down payment when he bought the home, so he doesn't owe more on his mortgage than the home is worth. But his plans to sell his home and use the proceeds for retirement income have been placed on indefinite hold.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Housing/Real Estate Market • Personal Finance • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007--

--​Nothing in the Congressional compromise reached over the weekend makes a significant dent in our $1.5 trillion deficit.
--In addition to an existing nearly $10 trillion of outstanding Treasury debt, the U.S. has a near unfathomable $66 trillion of future liabilities at “net present cost.”
--Aside from outright default, there are numerous ways a government can reduce its future liabilities. They include balancing the budget, unexpected inflation, currency depreciation and financial repression.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The U.S. Government • Budget • Medicare • Social Security • The National Deficit • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

If leadership is the capacity to take people where they need to go — whether or not they realize it or want it — then we’ve had almost no leadership in these weeks of frustrating and maddening debate over the budget and debt ceiling. There’s been an unspoken consensus among President Obama, congressional Democrats and Republicans not to discuss the central issue underlying the standoff. We’ve heard lots about “compromise” or its absence. We’ve had dueling budgets with differing mixes of spending cuts and tax increases. But we’ve heard almost nothing of the main problem that makes the budget so intractable.

It’s the elderly, stupid.

By now, it’s obvious that we need to rewrite the social contract that, over the past half-century, has transformed the federal government’s main task into transferring income from workers to retirees. In 1960, national defense was the government’s main job; it constituted 52 percent of federal outlays. In 2011 — even with two wars — it is 20 percent and falling. Meanwhile, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other retiree programs constitute roughly half of non-interest federal spending.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • History • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The U.S. Government • Budget • Medicare • Social Security • The National Deficit • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

More than one in six Americans who work a full- or part-time job also report assisting with care for an elderly or disabled family member, relative, or friend.

Caregivers in the U.S. are diverse, with between 13% and 22% of American workers across major socioeconomic and demographic groups reporting that they fulfill a caregiver role.

These findings are from more than 200,000 surveys of employed Americans collected from January 2010 through June 2011 as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • Marriage & Family • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

England is also the scene of a vigorous dispute over euthanasia. In June the BBC broadcast a documentary made by author Terry Pratchett. He suffers from Alzheimer's disease and has been campaigning for a change in the law regarding assisted suicide....

The program comes at a time when a privately sponsored commission -- the Commission on Assisted Dying -- is holding an inquiry into assisted suicide.
It is headed by a former lord chancellor, Lord Falconer. Funding comes from Terry Pratchett and businessman Bernard Lewis, the Guardian newspaper reported last Nov. 30.
Critics have pointed out that it is hardly likely to be impartial, given Pratchett's involvement as an active campaigner in favor of assisted suicide....

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Europe • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

While life expectancy in the US continues to improve, says the report by researchers at University of Washington in Seattle and Imperial College, London, it is not increasing as quickly as in other Western countries, so the gap is widening.

"The researchers suggest that the relatively low life expectancies in the US cannot be explained by the size of the nation, racial diversity, or economics," says the document, which ranks the US 38th in the world for life expectancy overall.

"Instead, the authors point to high rates of obesity, tobacco use and other preventable risk factors for an early death as the leading drivers of the gap between the US and other nations."

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Globalization • Health & Medicine • Science & Technology • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Overall, the proposal would cut Social Security benefits by $112 billion over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. It would cut government pensions and veterans’ benefits by $24 billion over the same time period if adopted for them.

Reaction from the president’s own party was swift Thursday, raising questions about whether Obama can keep Democrats on board if he agrees to cuts in Social Security. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said her caucus won’t support any package that includes Social Security cuts.

“Do not consider Social Security a piggy bank for giving tax cuts to the wealthiest people in our country,” Pelosi said. “We are not going to balance the budget on the backs of America’s seniors.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Credit Markets • Currency Markets • Euro • European Central Bank • The Banking System/Sector • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • Budget • Medicare • Social Security • The National Deficit • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Senate

The major advanced economies should not just be worried about Greece, it said, they should be worried about themselves. If the huge debt levels of the major economies prompt the world financial markets to wonder if those debts will be honoured, so that the markets take a set against sovereign debt in general, the majors, too, will be in big trouble.

But as the British economist Dr Diane Coyle reminds us in her new book, The Economics of Enough, it is worse than that.

We have known for years that the major advanced economies are facing immense pressure on their budgets from the ageing of their populations. They are committed to generous pension payments and healthcare spending for their retiring baby boomers at a time when, for many countries, their populations will be falling.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Personal Finance • Pensions • Taxes • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • England / UK • Europe • Greece

While most of the 76 million baby boomers are no longer caring for their children, more and more of them are playing the role of caretakerfor an older generation: their parents. But how ready are they for this role?

A new survey by Home Instead Senior Care, an in-home care company, shows that an alarming number of those caring for their aging parents are under-prepared.

Almost half of those surveyed by Home Instead said they couldn't name a single drug their parents took. Also, 34 percent said they don't know whether their parents have a safe deposit box, and 36 percent said they don't know where their parents' financial information is located.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Children • Health & Medicine • Marriage & Family • Middle Age