Every developed country faces a deeply uncomfortable problem: People are getting older. This means a fiscal crisis sometime in the coming decades, because it results in more dependents on the welfare state and fewer taxpayers. Equally, it means a cultural crisis, because the habits of mutual dependence and reverence for age are being eaten away by the culture of Now. Simply put, we don’t know what to do with the dependent and unproductive people in our midst.
No wonder some people are mulling the obvious solution. Writing for the leading magazine of the British left, The New Statesman, the commentator Oli Dugmore recently observed: “All over the country our elders sit in cell blocks bathed in the stupefying light and sound of Bargain Hunt, Location, Location, Location, Tipping Point, unvisited by relatives who are preoccupied by the rhythm of their lives, or perhaps unable to summon the courage to witness the degeneration of the once totemic figures of their lives, their mum and dad.” His answer: “Let them die.”
That exhortation was a reference to the assisted suicide bill, which Parliament voted on for the last time on Friday. The legislation, Dugmore said, would not only rid us of those awkward inhabitants of care homes but would drive down “the pensions bill, the NHS bill and the care bill.” Everyone wins except, perhaps, the people receiving a dose of lethal drugs. But then it was their choice. Or maybe it wasn’t exactly, but never mind.