On Feb 10, 3:59*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Thu, 9 Feb 2012 13:38:44 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:





But realistically, that is likely to mean the elderly being moved to a
place away from their families, communities, and culture. The fact
that you could suggest the idea as being a "pragmatic" solution to the
problem, fails to appreciate that part of the problem with 'care' is
that is has a psychological component that is quite distinct from
catering to biological needs.

Realistically, we could hook the elderly up to a machine, by inserting
a feeding tube and urethral and rectal catheters, with an overhead
nozzle providing occasional showers of soapy water and disinfectant,
and on the face of it this would be high-quality and effficient
biological care, and yet there seems to be something missing...

Lots of people have difficult problems to overcome, and I do
not accept that the only solution available is to take more and more
money from the taxpayers.

Indeed, but potentially that means more radical and fundamental
reorganisations of society.

It is more an attitude of mind and expectations than a reorganisation
of society. *A married couple in the UK are perfectly prepared to
sacrifice their life to some extent in order to raise children. *In
other countries thare is *exactly* the same attitude and expectation
regarding the care of parents in their old age. *A couple will marry
and sacrifice much of their time to caring for their children.
Following that, an elderly relative will move in and they will devote
more time to caring for that relative. *And finally they will
themselves become old and frail, and move in with a son or daughter.
It is something that is taken as a given and normal sequence of events
in any average life. *Sending a parent to a care home is as unusual as
it is to send a child to a care home in the UK.

But to return to what I was just saying about child daycare, the whole
point of elderly care homes is to wring out labour from the process of
caring, freeing that labour up (women's labour, in particular) for
consumption in the market economy - and also, to some extent,
alleviating the psychological burden of care, so that other burdens
created by the market economy can be successfully carried without
mental breakdown.

Whereas society will suffer directly from the poor treatment of
children, the only limit to how badly the elderly can be treated is
younger people's own fear of being treated in that way at the end of
their lives. There will probably be more demand for euthanasia in due
course, but the certainty of suffering and premature death at the end
of life, is only likely to make people more concerned with their
immediate circumstances rather than planning for the future, which is
adverse for the stability of any society, but also adverse for any
ruling class which is trying to tell people "suffer now and you'll be
rewarded later". People aren't going to peacefuly tolerate 20 years of
austerity, if that 20 years represents the best years of their lives,
after which they will be on the slab.



It is my strong belief that the change in attitude has arisen
*because* the state decided to step in and take over responsibility
for that care. *I have said before and I say it again - countries that
have little or no social benefits system have far closer-knit and
caring communities, which in turn means less anti-social behaviour at
all levels.

But it is the question of which came first. The need for care homes,
arose once women were expected to pursue life outside of domestic
labour, and also as the demands of socialising middle class children
have increased. For a family that is already at the redline with two
employed earners, two children, and a big mortgage, it is laughable to
expect them to suddenly unwind that lifestyle when granny unforseeably
takes a bad turn.




*State handouts, unless carefully restricted to only those
very few who genuinely have no other recourse, create a huge social
problem by taking away individual responsibility (and therefore making
people irresposible).

The reality is that the state is simply straining to compensate for
the problems being created by the free markets, and as the markets
increasingly force people into unhappy and unnatural modes of living
and constantly encourages parasitic competition in every aspect of
life, so too the state spends increasing sums of money compensating
for it where otherwise the threads by which society is hanging would
otherwise snap.

Given the existing demands of the economy, sending women back to the
kitchen would cause a massive undersupply of labour, and a spike in
workers' wages at the expense of profit. The same is true of
immigration. And if the state returned to the post-war policies of
full employment, which would reduce the unemployment benefit bill,
that would cause a spike in workers' wages and a return of a muscular
working class who are not amenable to the interests of private profit.



One reform that sounds very drastic, but which I feel would end up
with many benefits in the long run would be to disallow any benefits
whatsoever to people who have a close family member who would be
capable of supporting them, and to make it *obligitory* for people
with the means to support any close relation who is currently in
receipt of state benefits.

That would certainly ease the tax burden on the rich. I'm not sure it
would necessarily yield higher-quality care for the elderly, or
benefits for the economy with so many workers being taken out of
employment at short notice by the need to provide care. Nor
ideologically would it help the rich, to start promoting the idea that
people stand or fall as a collective family, rather than as
individuals.



*Not only will it ease the tax burden, but
anyone being forced to live with and be supported by a
brother/sister/uncle is likely to be far more motivated to become
independent than someone being housed and fed by the government. *They
are certainly unlikely to get away with lazing about all day and
squandering money on booze!

Indeed, but so too those family members are also less likely to
sanction criminal behaviour amongst those unemployed family members,
if that reduces the financial strain on the family.

And this also subtly presupposes the existence of the imaginary class
of people who are simply too lazy to work - I know only one person
with even remotely that kind of attitude, and he has emotional
problems such that he could probably never turn a profit for an
employer in a competitive market, and his attitude of 'I should not
have to work' is probably a defensive position rather than an honest
preference, and indeed his family and partners (as well as the
taxpayer) have subsidised him to a great extent all of his life, but
the only realistic alternative would be for the state to give him
supported work of a kind which it was willing to accept an overall
economic loss on each unit of labour rendered!

The remainder of those I know who are unemployed, are effectively
unemployable in the current market conditions, and none of them are
averse to work per se - one of them (who is in his late 30s and has
been unemployed most of his life and has mental health problems -
probably as a result of his circumstances) was almost harassing me for
work last year or so, whilst I had to maintain that I had no work to
offer (and that I wasn't running a business anymore).

Even if I had had work to offer, I can't see what use he could
possibly have been to me, having never had any reason (or economic
means) to develop skills, or any opprortunity to develop economically
useful skills en passant through the ordinary course life. Even in
terms of crude manual labour, decades of being on the dole had not
left him with the physical or mental stamina of a navvy, and the poor
rates of pay offered by the market would hardly have been much
incentive or reward to him anyway.