Old People Should Hurry Up and Die - says the New Japanese Finance Minister

by fulltimestudent 52 Replies latest social current

• 

  sammielee24

  You are very naive Was..

  Do you realize that there are millions of kids who would love to head on out to a program distributing flyers but that those kids are forced to stay at home to raise their siblings because they have NO choice? Do you really not understand that it isn't just a color issue but a real life issue. There are kids who are drugged by 8 years old because thats what is around them - their choices are determined by their environment.

  Do you know how many kids want to just make it to school alive or use school as a safe haven? They don't have choices that are their own - they are owned by others and by their environment.

  Where you come from has everything to do with where you go. There are many people who go where they are taught they should by the experiences they have. Opportunity does not come often enough for the poor and they are put down at every turn. Poor neighborhoods. Poor school districts. Poor clothes. Poor social abilities. Poor food. Poor support systems.

  It's nice to say it's more important where you are going - I've seen a whole whack of people who made decisions based on all they knew and all they knew was from their life experience. I've seen a great many make choices within the only life they ever knew and from the outside, anyone can point and say 'look, you made a choice'...sometimes for them the choice is a or b but both are going to trap them. That's reality. There are millions of kids who never make it to school because they can't - lack of food, lack of clothes, lack of sleep, fear - that is the life for many a child and their decisions in life are applied to relieve those fears or inadequaties sometimes just to survive - choice and taking the time to make a decision about life is a lot easier when you are wrm, well fed, safe and loved. Millions of kids don't have that. They survive. This is not specific to one pregnant girl or one color - it is within all segments of society. sammieswife
• 

  wasblind

  I am very aware of the problems out there. But hopelessnes is not an answer

  for these kids.

  There are two kinds of people in the world, the ones who do somethin' and the ones who make up

  excuses not too. and they come in all races

  Sammie, I have been put down on the basis of race alone, I know what it is to fight

  to prove myself

  I have to go fix lunch but this is whaT I have to ask

  I understand your argument when it comes to children. What is your argument for these

  same kids when they become adults ??????

  .

  .
• 

  fulltimestudent

  Aso, Murdoch and Lamm, all raise the 'cost' of sustaining the life of elderly people. But none address the question of what could be considered as a reasonable amount to spend on overcoming a health problem experienced by an elderly person.

  Is there a reasonable sum to spend on preserving the life of an elderly person ?

  Should there be an upper limit of expense for say a 90 y.o. ?
• 

  Sulla

  Interesting. All this time I thought I was the right-wing, fuck-tha-poor, make-better-choices hardass. Looks like I'm an ol' softie compared to wasblind.

  Sulla: I'm trying to understand your position. As you note above, these girls are under tremendous economic and societal pressures. Do you then want to deny them abortion and force an unwanted child upon them? Or are you simply pointing out that the problem is complex and solutions earlier than abortion are necessary?

  Justitia Themis, I am indeed pointing out that the situation is complex. In a lot of these cases, there are "choices" made only in the broadest and least meaningful sense of the word. The girl in the Times article who had her first abortion at 15 and was back at 17 for another, and who couldn't predict whether she would use birth control in the future can hardly be said to be making an informed choice about anything important in her life.

  That said, the problem of what to do with a useless and inconvenient person seems to bring us full circle to the original post.
• 

  Justitia Themis

  That said, the problem of what to do with a useless and inconvenient person seems to bring us full circle to the original post.

  Ah...I see your point Sulla, though I disagree that the issues are the same. The aborted zygote/fetus/infant has the mere potentiality of being a full-fledged member of society, but it will need care for years afterward birth to achieve such.

  The question of the elderly is what do we do with full-fledged member of society? Do we offer them the extra-ordinary medical treatments that Westerners have come to expect?

  I can tell you today in my Bioethics class--and in every policy-making discussion in the civilized world--we discussed the following: Just how do we tell "we the people" that we no longer will pay $1,000 daily to feed grandma while she dies?
• 

  Sulla

  I'm certain that you can see some of the problems with your position, Justitia Themis. I can agree with you that the aborted were, immediately prior to the abortion, merely potential members of society. But I would simply note that the point that Japanese fellow was making is that the old folks are not really members of society, either, which is why they outta up and die.

  The idea of killing those who are not full-fledged members of society is more than a little troublesome, as various events in the moderna age have demonstrated -- or so I supposed.
• 

  Justitia Themis

  Conflating abortion with the Minister’s position muddles two separate issues.

  Elderly persons have (hopefully) contributed to society so the question becomes one of how much end-of-life care are they owed in return for their prior contributions. It is not a question of whether they are presently contributing. Instead, it is a resource question with moral underpinnings

  Fetuses/infants have contributed nothing to society, so the question is one of pure ethics. How much respect should they be accorded, and when? This is a moral question, and resources are only tangentially linked.

  I want to clarify that supporting infanticide is not my position, but I used it to illustrate the burden/contribution dichotomy.

  However, Michael Tooley wrote a very persuasive and now famous article, In Defense of Abortion and Infanticide, that argued the following: individuals cannot have a right to life unless it “possesses the concept of a continuing self or mental substance.” Fetuses do not have any such concept, so they do not have a right to life. That fact that they may someday come to have the requisite concept does not itself make it seriously wrong to destroy them. Thus abortion and even infanticide shortly after birth must be viewed as morally acceptable.

  Conversely, John Noonan, Jr. argues in An Almost Absolute Value in History that “personhood” begins at conception for it is at conception that the “new being received the genetic code, which determines his characteristics and makes him a self-evolving being.”
• 

  wasblind

  Good Mornin' Sammies wife

  Let me explain the environment I started my life in, I grew up in an abusive home

  My Dad would beat my mom as if she stole somethin'

  He use to tell her how rough she would have it without him ( The Hurdles )

  and in his last desparate attempt he even tried to scare us kids wit' it

  He had all kinds of excuses for my mom not leavin'. My mom answered

  those excuses by showin' him what she could do about those hurdles

  Yes I looked forward to goin' to school, cuz I didn't know what to expect at home

  Yes, I am blessed by the fact I had an adult to make the choice to get me out of that situation

  and I am aware that many kids have no one to make a good choice for them

  But the good thing is, the one thing they can look forward to ,

  is that one day they will grow up and have choices of their own

  I could sit here all day long and tell you about the times in my life where hoplessnes played a part

  I'm sure others have had times in their lives where it seemed hopeless too

  Trust, I had plenty of opportunity to use those times as an excuse

  not to press forward

  But the worst thing a person can do for themselves is to become reliant on excuses

  I bring reference to situations all the time. But to use them as an excuse not to

  at least try is the worst thing anyone could do for themselves

  Excuses tell people there is no hope

  Excuses tell people there is no use

  Excuses keep you co-dependent

  Yes, there are constance hurdles placed at the feet of the poor

  But the best remedy for an excuse is, what you try to do about it

  .
• 

  wasblind

  Interesting. All this time I thought I was the right-wing, fuck-tha-poor, make-better-choices hardass. Looks like I'm an ol' softie compared to wasblind._______Sulla

  I may look like a hard ass, but you look like some one who don't know nothin' about

  black folk other than what you read or see in the news.

  .
• 

  sammielee24

  I can tell you today in my Bioethics class--and in every policy-making discussion in the civilized world--we discussed the following: Just how do we tell "we the people" that we no longer will pay $1,000 daily to feed grandma while she dies? (JT)

  ---

  Well, I suppose that it would be in the same way we would be forced to cull the same human herd by telling people that their disabled child will no longer be fed, educated and housed. The cost of raising a disabled child, the cost of saving a premature baby in some cases is in the millions and with aftercare, sometimes for life, is a huge cost. Last figures I saw were that almost 50 million are classified in the USA as disabled, two thirds of those severe enough to use long term disability benefits. During this last economic depression, the numbers of people on disability pension jumped by approximately 7 million people.

  I used to work within the health care sector for challenged invidiuals - residential homes, day care, full time staffing, supplies, special education, specialists, doctors, transportation, administration - there is whole industry out there with budgets in the millions of dollars - so how does society tell all of them and their families 'we the people' will no longer pay for you to exist - since many of them require assistance to survive?

  If we deem grandma to be too costly to keep alive because she's past her 'due date', how do you justify the expense to the rest of the population in keeping disabled persons or babies alive that in many cases, don't have the potential that even old grandma had? Or still has.

  It's a slippery slope that I'm sure some would like to travel down - I wouldn't want to. Nobody can agree to allow voluntary assisted end of life programs - that might be a first step in the move before it gets to 'letting granny endure forced starvation'.

  sammieswife

  --

  No More Million Dollar Babies
  
  by James Leonard Park 1. THE MOST COST-EFFECTIVE WAYS TO USE HEALTH-CARE DOLLARS FOR BABIES.
  
  Caring for a premature baby in an incubator
  in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU)
  can cost $5,000 per day.
  Thus, 100 days in the NICU costs about half a million dollars.
  And if the premature infant needs surgery or other specialized treatments,
  the costs can easily mount to more than a million dollars.
  
  Instead of treating one premature infant to a million dollars of health-care,
  it might be wiser to spent $1,000 each on 1,000 other babies,
  giving their mothers prenatal care
  so that these babies will not need intensive care after birth.
  
  If the individual family had to pay the costs themselves,
  how many would impoverish themselves in order to save one premature infant?
  Is there a family that has sold everything they own — house, car, jewelry, stocks — to provide intensive care for an infant born too soon?
  
  Instead of spending all of these assets to save one newborn,
  most families would probably allow nature to take its course,
  resulting in the death of an infant that had little chance of surviving.
  They would grieve deeply for this loss.
  And then perhaps they would try for another baby,
  a child that will not have overwhelming medical problems as soon as it is born.
  
  But our present system of medical care automatically assumes
  that each premature infant should be saved no matter what the costs .
  
  How can we shift the money available for premature babies
  so that there will be fewer of them ?
  Preventing premature births is much more cost-effective
  than giving intensive care to babies born at a very low birth-weight and size.
  
  Insurance companies routinely pay to care for infants born before they were fully formed.
  And even mothers who have no health insurance
  have their premature infants routinely placed in the NICU.
  
  Emotionally it is difficult to let an individual baby go,
  especially when we have some technical capacity to save that premature baby.
  But health-care costs do matter.
  Would it do more good to apply that million dollars
  to perhaps 1,000 other newborn babies?
  Frequently, inexpensive health-care can make a dramatic difference.
  
  More healthy babies will result if we discover how to say "yes"
  to health-care for the one thousand expectant mothers
  who will have routine births and "no" to that one in a thousand
  who will give birth to an infant so early in its gestation
  that there is no way to save it from death
  without spending one million dollars before it will be ready to go home.
  
  In another cyber-sermon,
  I have set a limit for my own life-time medical care .
  I choose not to absorb more than one million dollars
  of the money available for my health-care:
  "Voluntary Rationing of Health-Care":