Nudging the death rate upwards would be quite easy, especially in a welfare state with a fully socialized medical system.

At the Gates of Vienna blog, Baron Bodissey writes,

The demographics of a population are controlled by two factors: the birth rate and the death rate. When either changes, the demographic balance shifts. Nudging the birthrate upwards is, as policy-makers have discovered, quite difficult. But nudging the death rate upwards would be quite easy, especially in a welfare state with a fully socialized medical system.

Do you think the policy wonks that manage socialized medical care haven’t noticed this alternative? I don’t — anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of statistics would be aware of it. But it’s not something that a clinician or social scientist would want to write about, nor would any medical journal want to publish about it.

Up until now, the planners have preferred a less draconian solution to the problem of the greying of the population. The plan has been to import new workers from among the teeming hordes in the “developing countries” to replace the aging whites whose taxes have hitherto propped up the system.

And that’s when the policy planners will start looking at the other side of the ineluctable demographic equation. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that they’re already looking at it — quietly and discreetly, behind closed doors. How could they not be looking at it?

Will we see a gradual reduction in the quality of medical care for the elderly? Bodissey points out that it is already happening in England.

Will we see widespread increase of officially-sanctioned euthanasia?

The Dutch lead the world in euthanasia policy. They have already moved beyond voluntary to involuntary euthanasia, in which doctors and the children of elderly patients make the decision to put the old folks down.

It’s all ostensibly for the good of the patients and their families, of course. Quality of life and so on.

But it’s really for the good of the state, which needs old people to die off more rapidly so that the system can be maintained.

The politicians want to stay in power, so the system must be held together. Since the state is responsible for the general welfare, the state decides who must die. For the greater good, mind you.

The old and infirm have to be cleared out to make room for all those “youths” from Senegal.

I don’t have to tell you that this isn’t going to end well.

The system will obviously break down at some point. It can’t sustain itself indefinitely. It’s been very resilient so far, and the technocrats have managed it very shrewdly. A little more baling wire and duct tape, and they just might be able to keep the wheezing old junker running for another decade or two.

Most of the Boomers will probably manage to shuffle off this mortal coil while still drawing a generous pension. The brunt of the geronticide will probably be borne by subsequent generations. Even when the retirement age gets pushed past 70, medical advances will be able keep those retired geezers alive for a much longer time.

Those who have been triaged in, that is. The lucky ones.

The obese, the smokers, those who eat the wrong things — they may not be so lucky. Later it will have to become a simple lottery…

If I were a member of Generation X, I’d be seriously considering an alternative means of support for my old age.

And I would be doing my best to stay out of the government-run “health care” system.

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