A fairly spot-on assessment of the near future.
There are a couple of other points that might merit a mention. For instance, some of us sixty-somethings saw the writing on the wall, and have been making provisions as time went on. This would include little things like when upgrading the bathroom, installing handrails to serve as towel racks, and making sure access to all parts of the house remain unimpeded.
But eventually time will catch up with all of us, and it's here that the elephant in the room (and in this article) needs addressing. I'm talking about an exit strategy. The author speaks of attitude changes, and less tolerance of accepted social norms. We are indeed more likely to demand personalised approaches to care rather than institutional ones, and that will come to include the right to go when and as we want to.
In addition to God saving the Queen, let's hope his/her representatives here on Earth have the good sense to read the writing on the wall and get out of our way when asked to.

While my dog's bitch is a geriatric punk I am not.

The problem as I see it; is the destiny of demography and how to address it!
And that simply can't be hitting a shrinking pool of taxpayers with ever more and more and more tax.
Even as those earning the biggest profits pay less and less and less! All while the GNP grows bigger and bigger and bigger!
Rightly, they will scream blue murder, and start advocating compulsory euthanasia!
Particularly as PRIVATE aged care operators, with their hands buried to the hilt in the taxpayer pocket, start making millions or billions!
Most of this is fixed by home-care and allowing the user to decide how to best spend any entitlement, rather than coast dwelling providers!
And health just has to be turned on its head and go to prevention, and from endless and increasingly expensive symptom management!
The rest of the rationale, is encapsulated in genuine tax reform and lower costing Publicly supplied energy.
The only way to grow the economy, tax receipts, much faster than the demands that are eventually placed on them!
One can't grow the economy or just jobs, by creating a inmates in charge of the asylum paradigm, that simply puts people out of business!
When one discovers one is just flogging a dead horse, it time to mount a different one!
Read my almost endless posts on GENUINE tax/energy reform, here on OLO!
End of story!
Rhrosty.

Eloquentely put Rhosty, if somewhat convoluted.
I agree in large part, and I wonder if it isn't time for government to retake the power industry, excuse that dirty word "nationalise".
Let's face it, since privatisation the Power sector has become a literal feeding frenzy, and the meat in the water is all of us, directly through exorbitant bills and indirectly through the savaging the sector is inflicting on the Public Purse?
There are very good arguments for public ownership of the basic public necessities like power and water etc and it is only greed and short-sightedness by successive governments that has inflicted poorly exercised and supervised privitisation on us.

There are hosts of Filipinos and Filipinas, all well-mannered, educated and eager to fly over to first-world countries to care for the elderly there.

In countries that allow it, they stay at granddad/grandma's home and happily and lovingly take care of all their needs for a very reasonable salary. In those countries, no new buildings are necessary and the tax-payer doesn't need to pay a cent for that.

And here?

Ross you do seemingly miss one point. All this money doesn't have to come from developers or government.

You rightly mention that this coming generation of oldies is quite wealthy, by normal peasant standards. I would expect the sale of their primary place of residence should fund the purchase of retirement housing, & a reasonable life style there after, even without counting any superannuation funding.

I do expect we will see a stop, or at least a reduction of tax payer funding of us oldies, enabling us to preserve all the assets we have accumulated to bequeath to our kids. We will I expect have to use some of our accumulated assets to fund our old age.

Most of us inherited little from our parents, why should our kids expect to do better.

Most oldies will only want fully independent retirement living for 10 to 15 years at most, so not only will their funds have paid for the building of the units, their moving to more serviced accommodation will provide some of the housing requirement for the next generation of retirees to acquire.

I started spending the kids inheritance about 10 years ago, & have been doing a pretty good job there I must say. Unfortunately I hate living out of suitcases, too much forced travel when younger, so I have not managed the huge expense of world travel, but I'm trying. There is certainly nothing graceful around here, other than the sports cars that is.

The thing that strikes me about the aging population crisis,
is that it is at least 15 to 20years in the future when they predict
it. A lot of those now in their 50s, 60s,70,s will be
dead by then.

It is actually the generation after the baby boomers that is going to really cause the problem because for what- ever reason,economic,the falling out of favour of marriage and wanting to live a full life without the cares and worries of too many children, which is perfectly understandable, the later baby boomers and the generation after them just don't have the same amount of children as the early baby boomers had after the war, when families of 4 were still common.
Also the early baby boomers had their children years earlier & few
went on to university.
Their children were ready to step into the work force as much as a decade earlier to compensate for the ranks of the aging who were leaving the work force.

This younger generation points the finger at us, but they should
have a better look at the prediction years for the crisis, it
is they who will be a burden on society.

With the aged being predicted to be 1 in 4 to the workers at that point, I wonder how many out of that 4 they will require for nursing jobs to look after them.

I laughed at the shock of some of the ones always pointing the
finger at those in their 60's and 70's now and calling them a burden when they realised that Abbott was talking about their generation instead. Hope they enjoy being a burden the way they always said the present aging contingent of the baby boomers were.
Cheery thoughts to all

Through voluntary work I encounter plenty of people over sixty, many well into their eighties and some in their nineties who are living independent lives in their own homes. It makes very good economic sense for government to let them be and provide the few services to support them in their own homes.

There are two flies in the ointment though:

-first, rapacious property development entrepreneurs who want their properties to gentrify inner city suburbs in particular and make squillions from the deal. They want the oldies dislodged from their homes of a lifetime; and

-secondly, State and especially local government who have different priorities to the federal government, and whose council rates, taxes and user pays are impacting severely on the elderly and quickly reducing previously self supporting retirees to become Centrelink clients as well.

It is as though the different layers of government are adversaries, each trying to scuttle as many policies of the other as possible and all vying to pluck the taxpayer goose to the max before the other gets a shot. In any event, politicians are in the grip of bureaucrats who have always found it to their advantage to dispute territory and duplicate what is provided already. Why do we have so many public servants? That is worth several PhD dissertations. Or just a few terse words from a frustrated taxpayer.

tbc..

contd.

Concerning council rates for example, it is easy to understand why the elderly become exasperated with ramped up council rates to assist developers to make larger profits, while the said developments and over-enthusiatic immigration by the federal government force up land values, adding 10-30% annual increases to council rates. How can self-supporting retirees afford those increases? Any complaints are met with the insult that they can always sell and buy into some developer's blue-board hot-box in a less satisfactory suburb built on a reclaimed bog.

There is much that all layers of government can do to keep the costs of the 'age burden' low by keeping people in the homes where they raised their family and everything is familiar to them. Small things like ensuring that road laws and road planning, town and city planning too, have as much regard for the over-60 as they do for those in the young prime of life. Remembering too that families with young children would have similar priorities in town and road planning.

There is no reason to suggest that the elderly will ever become a voting bloc. It is more than frivolous to suggest that they might be able to represent their own interests. What, people in their eighties?! It usually indicates that the person saying that the old can stand up for themselves is concerned lest government have a real minister for the aged, one that takes his/her job seriously.

Sure there is the occasional single interest protest, from age pensioners for example. However mature age voters will never get together to soar with the eagles and arrive at a different way of regarding old age and policy to suit. That is necessary but it will not happen. Any such suggestions in the past have always been stymied by short-sighted jealousy from age pensioners directed against 'well off'(?!) part- or fully self supporting retirees. Old political bigotry, the class war, is sadly carried to the grave.