The next forty years will look like absolute hell and the lack of proper services for the explosive number of diseases in the millennial cohort will directly contribute.

1. Milliennials by and large don’t have enough money to retire, and they are experiencing in striking numbers high rates of immunodeficiency and cancers. (I was personally diagnosed with cancer at 42. You know, the ultimate answer to life the universe and everything…) This will mean they will need more elder care and sooner… and they won’t really be able to afford it.

2. No Child Left Behind has properly fucked US education for the foreseeable future, and US education was abysmal before that already. The elderly are going to be being taken care of by adults who may be functionally illiterate and when you’re functionally illiterate, you can become anti-vax even if you got hired as caretaker for the elderly. (Not all will grow up to be functionally illiterate, but if we’re to take teachers at their word, the gap between the struggling kids and the smart kids is wider than ever. As in C students functionally don’t exist, only A students and F students, and the F students are the larger group who are being passed on to higher grades just to hit numbers.)

3. On top of education being gutted and there being a dangerous future of incapable people being put in these jobs because there’s no one else to do them: The collapse in birth rate because nobody can afford to have fucking kids will also make this problem worse as fewer and fewer workers will be available to take care of more and more elderly and infirm people.

4. Most of the places that take care of the elderly are being bought up at rapid pace by investment groups, private equity, hedge funds, and the like, and all they do is cut services, make things worse, and cause more suffering and death so they can wring more money out of people suffering at the end of their lives. How many of these businesses will even still exist in 20 years? Many of them are shutting down constantly because the numbers just don’t add up, or because the private equity group that bought it has finished hollowing it out and there’s simply no money left.

5. Because of all of this, we will see an absolute explosion of homelessness in the elderly.

6. You can bet your ass fuck-nothing will be done to prevent any of this. Especially if Trump wins in November, then we’re dealing with this process outright accelerating at a breakneck pace.

7. Oh and just for “fun” we can expect to see a lot more police violence against poverty-striken old people. “STOP RESISTING OLD MAN!”

EDIT: Oh yeah, and that’s not even counting climate change, finite amounts of topsoil left, potential pandemics, and the fact that most of the world doesn’t even have access to clean water. I try to keep an eye on neat, simple engineering projects from poor countries because we may need to rely on similar options soon enough ourselves.

EDIT II: Get involved in Mutual Aid Groups. We all have skills. No one is coming to save us. No government or political party or corporation. We have to save each other, and that will be very difficult to achieve. I forget the writer, but she said something like “No dictator is ever going to bring about the revolution. It will always have to come from the bottom organizing together.” The only thing we can do is help one another. It will not be easy or fair or entirely successful.

I’m a late gen-Xer (born in '80, so I’m more of a “Xennial”). I have a stable job, pension, matching 401k, no kids, no debt (paid off my car and student loans), make 6 figures, and I am STILL convinced that I will never be able to retire. I feel horrible for all those who are in a worse financial situation than me, but we are all really fucked in the next 20 years.

Good post, but we really need to get out of the generational thinking.

I know rich and poor boomers. I know rich and poor millenials, and gen X/Z.

It’s a class struggle. Always has been.

Stop making it a generational battle. That only serves to divide the working class.

Yes, there is racism, ageism, sexism. We should debate those things and improve, but we can’t let those things divide us politically.

And since I’m ranting, let me end with a solution. We need to find themes that help all of us.

So perhaps we should say: for example, everyone with less than $1M in wealth gets a $20K tax deduction.

Who could oppose that? It doesn’t benefit home owners vs. renters. It doesn’t benefit students vs. retirees. It doesn’t benefit city dwellers vs. rural. Or white vs. black.

But it does benefit the class who owns nothing and gives them a better chance to own something.

X’er here. I have what most would consider a good job, with good pay, and a good boss. I consider it a good job with good pay and a good boss. My spouse is unable to work, and we have two children. I’m currently seeking some skill or product I can develop without taking time away from my existing responsibilities such that I have a chance of not having to work until I die at my desk one day.

With no shade against millenials, this is the only time I’m grumpy about being forgotten in the generational sniping that goes on. All these articles (like OP) about this very valid angst from older millenials and I identify with it pretty much every time. I know I’m not the only X’er who does.

Thus millennial thinks we will all die in 10 years or so from climate related disasters and none of us will live to retirement age as things currently stand.

Lol!

No.

What a quaint question. I honestly wonder if I’ll live my full life and die with a dignity instead of how i suspect, with a fistfull of dirt and a pigs boot on my skull.