4

It's Shockingly Easy For Legal Guardians To Take Over Senior Citizens' Lives And Ruin Them

Legal guardians exist in great part to make sure that elderly people don't have their finances plundered by unscrupulous individuals, like credit card companies or whoever sells them those wretched ceramic clown figurines. Unfortunately, that puts the guardians in a prime position to do the plundering themselves.

3

Millions Of Elderly Americans Don't Have The Right To Sue Their Nursing Homes, Even If There's Gross Negligence

Reading the fine print in contracts is a basic life skill none of us possess, but we imagine it's especially annoying when you can barely read normal-sized print. Unfortunately, nursing homes are using this universal character flaw to sneak some sinister stuff into their contracts, and it's about to get even harder to fight them on this (or on anything else, for that matter).

In 2011, an 87-year-old nun in Alabama was raped by an unknown man who apparently just walked into her nursing home room (there was no sign of forced entry). Afterward, she received no help or assistance from the staff. A pretty clear case of negligence, right? Nope, it wasn't a case of any sort, because the contract she signed when she arrived at the nursing home waived her right to sue them for any reason. The scary part is that they legally don't even have to tell you you're signing away your rights in the first place. It's called a pre-dispute binding arbitration, and it essentially means that if anything horrible happens to you in a nursing home, they can do whatever they want about it. Including nothing.

2

Seniors Are RV'ing Across The Country In Search Of Work

Nowadays, senior citizens in America might regale you with tales of the times when they'd travel across the country looking for any work they might find, be it mowing grass, cleaning homes, or picking beets in Minnesota. You know, the good ol' days of, uh, last week.

In 2000, four million American senior citizens had to work. Today it's nine million. The problem is that our lives aren't only getting longer; they're also getting more expensive. And since one in five Americans have no savings, a similar percentage need jobs. While some elders work to have something to do all day, the majority do it because, well, starving ain't fun. Few employers were paying into retirement funds, and as people didn't (often because they couldn't) save enough, a growing number are hitting the road as "workampers," buying RVs and traveling across the country in search of low-paying and temporary jobs with no benefits but immediate cash. It's like The Grapes Of Wrath, but in slow motion.

Where others see a modern tragedy, companies like Amazon and Walmart see a perfect opportunity for cheap seasonal labor. Seniors can park their RVs in the lots of Walmart stores where they work as greeters, while Amazon offers them short-term jobs during the Christmas packing rush. Yes, it's very possible that the Lego Avengers set you bought yourself last December was packed by an old guy called Gene who fought in Korea.

AmazonIncidentally, "CamperForce" sounds like the most pleasant X-Men spinoff ever.

1

Suicide Is Terrifyingly High Among The Elderly

Common sense says that old people should be almost impervious to suicide. They're wiser and more experienced than most of us, they're less likely to have an emotional meltdown because their girlfriend dumped them or their favorite band broke up, and perhaps more importantly, they've made it this far. Even if they absolutely hate life, they know they only have to stick around for a few more years before the Grim Reaper shows up on his own.

Unfortunately, that's not what the numbers say. In the United States, 12.4 per 100,000 people in general commit suicide, but for those over 65, that number jumps to 14.9. That's without counting all the elderly suicides that coroners "go to great lengths" to report as accidents, because this shit is existentially terrifying for everyone. To be fair, seniors in America make fewer suicide attempts than younger people, but they die more often. Why? It's less about them being frail and more about the fact that they're old-fashioned and favor guns as a method.

The TraceAre Millennials killing suicide?

Asia is where things get really dark for old people, or anyone who is a fan of them being alive. Elder suicides have exploded in places like South Korea (400 percent increase since 1990), Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China (over twice the national average). The irony is that this is happening in countries with increased wealth and economic growth, but that's probably not a coincidence. Societal changes mean that mass amounts of people have moved from rural areas to the cities, leaving their old folks back home all alone and depressed. China's former one-child policy hasn't helped, either. In America, if one of your kids is an ingrate who won't visit or call, at least you have, on average, 2.14 other children to rely on. In China, you're stuck with the one.

Then there's Japan, where old people don't have the highest suicide rate ... but only because its suicide rate for 35-64-year-olds is unusually high.

The EconomistWoo-hoo?

In this case, the rate is also tied to economic growth: Japanese people are working themselves to death, literally. That ... that's a thing? Please forgive us as we lazily don't think of a way to end this paragraph.

Chris Scott owns a bookstore in a small Midwestern town, like in Penthouse! She is a regular contributor to Prairie Dog Magazine. S.S.A. is also on TopBuzz. You can make Mike Bedard's grandparents very proud of him by following him on Twitter.

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For more, check out 8 Mind-Blowing Realities Of Our Future Full Of Old People and No Kids Or Minorities: 5 Realities Of A City For Old People.

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