5 Reasons Growing Old In 2010's Is A Total Nightmare

It's not that there are suddenly packs of roving grandmas mugging people in the streets -- it's that we're living longer, so there are more elderly everything. In 2015, old people accounted for 10 percent of America's prison population, a 400 percent jump compared to 1993. As long as people continue aging and doing crimes, that type of growth is unsustainable. So what can we do about it? One idea is to transfer them to special geriatric units, but that would cost a lot of money in itself. Also, many of the old prisoners are against that, because they would lose their "informal caregivers" within the prison population. Like, maybe Skull-Kicker Pete saved Dicey Carlos from getting shanked 15 years ago, and now Carlos pre-chews his food for him.

Another approach is to release prisoners who are too old and frail to be a threat to society, but the process is such a bureaucratic nightmare that inmates keep dying off before they see freedom. One inmate, a drug dealer serving a life sentence, was passed up for the "compassionate release" program, despite being in a near-vegetative state. Then you have cases like the 83-year-old sex offender who was released to a nursing home because he was deemed "too sick to hurt anyone again," only for him to go and molest a 95-year-old woman and grope a hospital worker.

Speaking of sex offenders, what do we do with those jerks? They rarely end up with loving families tending to their every need in their waning days, for some reason, so they go to nursing homes and such. Problem is, there are no federal regulations dictating how long-term care facilities should handle sex offenders, so lots of nursing homes don't bother notifying other residents that the new arrival can't go near any playgrounds. How about creating nursing homes just for sex offenders, then? Well, Oklahoma actually passed a bill to create such a place. That was in 2008. Not one single bid to construct it was submitted.

Welp, any bets for which state will be first to pass "Put them in a hole" legislation? We got $50 on Texas.

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Of course, these guardians did more than scam old people all day. They also scammed disabled ones. Take Kristina Berger, a 52-year-old Nevada resident suffering from extreme bipolar disorder who had recently lost her mother/caretaker. No worries, the county appointed her a legal guardian. Over the course of five years, this guardian proceeded to drain around $495,000 from Berger's estate. Meanwhile, Berger lived on $250 a week. This would probably still be going on if a bank investigator hadn't noticed suspicious activity on the guardian's account (she was sucking various wards dry) and flagged it. Yes, legal guardians can make bank employees look like saints.

Obviously, many guardians are perfectly fine human beings, but states like Nevada might want to take greater precautions to ensure vulnerable people aren't taken advantage of. Like, maybe make them take two courses instead of one. Just a thought.

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The only recourse is arbitration, such as in a credit card disagreement, but rather than disputing some dubious Alibaba purchases, you're arguing about, say, whether your granny got punched by a nurse or not. To give you an idea of how scummy these places can be, the abused nun's nursing home argued that her abrasion marks came not from rape but from masturbation (despite the presence of semen). Not only was the nursing home not found at fault, but the nun's family was stuck with the arbitration bill.

According to Time, an estimated 90 percent of large nursing home chains in America have clauses like this one. And if you don't want to sign? You're welcome to go live in a dumpster, for all they care. In 2016, the Obama administration introduced a new rule to prevent nursing homes from forcing pre-dispute agreements on senior citizens, but Obama's successor has been working diligently to undo it. Which isn't surprising, since this is the same administration that appointed a man who evicted an old woman over a payment error of 27 cents to head the Treasury. Boy, we're starting to get the impression these guys are up to no good.

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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.

Then there's the irony of seniors serving seniors. Maine needs temporary workers in the summer for its cruise season, so workampers come to serve their wealthy demographic counterparts, waiting tables, driving tour buses, and cleaning the messes in their respective toilets. Which might help explain our next entry ...

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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.

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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