A Belgian businessman has a solution to the pensions crisis. It’s called euthanasia

Apr 13, 2024 by

By Michael Cook, Mercator.

The Titanic sank after it collided with an unseen iceberg. Western societies with low birthrates are steaming straight towards an iceberg in broad daylight. But they refuse to change course.

The problem is this. As birthrates drop, there are fewer and fewer productive workers and more and more unproductive elderly. The tax burden on the workers grows heavier and heavier. Pension funds will begin to run out of their reserves and benefits will shrink. The iceberg of a pensions crisis looms on the horizon in many countries. And there aren’t enough lifeboats.

Every economist knows this. Every politician should know this. But the Titanic steams ahead towards the iceberg.

Finally someone has proposed a way to avert disaster.

The president of Belgium’s biggest health care fund, Christian Mutualities (CM), wants to throw the elderly overboard. Luc Van Gorp told Belgian media earlier this week that people who are tired of life should be allowed to end it through euthanasia.

Like all other European countries and, indeed, the rest of the world apart from sub-Saharan Africa, Belgium faces a huge increase in its elderly. Over-80s will double by 2050, from around 640,000 today to 1.2 million. Financial pressure on healthcare, medication and nursing homes will increase.

More money is not the solution, says Van Gorp. “No matter how much you end up investing, it will still not be enough. There are simply not enough health workers to do the job,” he said. “Do we really need all those extra residential care centres? Just building up rooms without doing anything about the staff shortage is not a sustainable model. I miss the why-question in elderly care. Why do we do business the way we do them now? There is often no answer to this.”

Read here.

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