January 9, 2007
WE'RE KILLING THEM FOR THEIR OWN GOOD:
Families told elderly care crisis looming (David Brindle, January 10, 2007, Guardian)
Families face a growing burden of care for elderly and disabled relatives and most people will have to pay for their own support services in old age as the state's role shrinks, the government's care watchdog will warn today.A fundamental shift in responsibility is taking place as councils respond to spiralling demand by concentrating resources on fewer people with greater needs, the Commission for Social Care Inspection will say in a report.
Dame Denise Platt, who chairs the commission, is expected to say that older people in much of England can anticipate no help from the state until their needs are judged "critical".
Expect folks who think children too big a burden to adopt an ethos of "life not worth living" so fast your pickelhauben will spin. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 9, 2007 5:33 PM
I don't have a heck of a lot of sympathy for them. Hayek and Von Mises and others told people and told people to not become dependent on the government. These folks ignored the warning --- and comon sense -- and figured that "the government" would take care of them for free. Yeah, like the government has its own pot of money to buy goodies with.
They figured that they'd just pass the bills onto their children, and then didn't bother to have children.
Posted by: ray at January 9, 2007 10:32 PM"no help from the state"
Does that mean that the solution to the social security problem is simply not paying out benefits? Or just euthanasia at 68 (with the state keeping all the payroll taxes, of course)?
Posted by: ratbert at January 9, 2007 11:59 PMratbert: that's where we're headed.
Posted by: Mike Morley at January 10, 2007 6:14 AMCongratulations on a great closing remark. Excellent. "Pickelhauben" is plural, however.
On a graver note, this story is why the "culture war" has such high stakes. Culture is a seamless robe. The definition of marriage is related to childbearing, which is related to the right to life, which is related to euthanasia, which is related to the extirmination of the inconvenient.
Posted by: Lou Gots at January 10, 2007 7:14 AMCulture is dependent on our relationships with others. Secularism/rationalism is about the self.