In an article entitled “The Graying of America”, written by The Week, the writers point out information and their thoughts on America’s generation getting older. We’ll address some of these ideas here.

By 2035, the number of seniors who are 65 and older is projected to surpass the number of 18-year-olds. This means that the majority of Americans will be non-working. The workforce will dramatically change, and be composed of primarily.  The economy will be severely impacted, and possibly deal with another recession.

Americans are living longer, overall. The median age of Americans is steadily increasing, from 1970 was 28.1 years, and when it was measured again in 2016, the average age was 37.9. That is an age increase is 9.8 years over 46 years, about 0.21 years old, per year. Following this statistic, the median age of American’s will be 41.2 years old.

According to the article, American has a “dependency ratio”, the number of people who do not work and rely on the working class. In 2030, this number is projected to exceed 70%, meaning that 70% of Americans will not be working. This will have long-lasting effects on government benefit programs, like Medicare and Social Security, which is projected to exceed it’s $2.9 trillion reserves by 2035.

Healthcare is expected to change, in terms of funding. It is expected that the spending on healthcare is projected to rise by $4 trillion per year, by 2027. It’s also projected that there will be a serious worker shortage, of about 629,000 health care workers, and about 122,000 doctors.

There are also serious infrastructure issues that cities will have to address. It will be required for them to essentially overhaul their technology, require crosswalks to have a longer time, and be required to have more accessibility features. Many people will also become homebound and lonely, adding to the currently-coined “loneliness epidemic”.

You’re also probably silently thinking to yourself, “Derek, why should I care? That’s about 7.5 years from now”. You don’t have to, just act like it, or show it. According to Aristotle, while defining the parts of ethos, calls it “disinterested goodwill”. This has been referenced in Chapter 8 of Thank You For Arguing, a book written by Jay Heinrichs.  In other words, as defined by Heinrichs,  disinterested goodwill is defined as “showing to be ‘disinterested’– or free of any special interest”. In this instance, your interest would be not helping fix these issues. Now, you may be labeled as a generation-harming person, but you’ll soon have to convince them to help, going against what you originally stood for. This is displaying disinterested goodwill.

Although the year 2027 is long away from now, it is still important to take action now to make it easier for the older generation of this day and age, but also help those that will come soon after us.