[Bloomberg] Steady improvements in American life expectancy have stalled, and more Americans are dying at younger ages. But for companies straining under the burden of their pension obligations, the distressing trend could have a grim upside: If people don’t end up living as long as they were projected to just a few years ago, their employers ultimately won’t have to pay them as much in pension and other lifelong retirement benefits.
In 2015, the American death rate--the age-adjusted share of Americans dying--rose slightly for the first time since 1999. And over the last two years, at least 12 large companies, from Verizon to General Motors, have said recent slips in mortality improvement have led them to reduce their estimates for how much they could owe retirees by upward of a combined $9.7 billion, according to a Bloomberg analysis of company filings. "Revised assumptions indicating a shortened longevity," for instance, led Lockheed Martin to adjust its estimated retirement obligations downward by a total of about $1.6 billion for 2015 and 2016, it said in its most recent annual report.
Mortality trends are only a small piece of the calculation companies make when estimating what they’ll owe retirees, and indeed, other factors actually led Lockheed’s pension obligations to rise last year. Variables such as asset returns, salary levels, and health care costs can cause big swings in what companies expect to pay retirees. The fact that people are dying slightly younger won't cure corporate America’s pension woes--but the fact that companies are taking it into account shows just how serious the shift in America’s mortality trends is.
#1
Front-End and Back-End upside gains: The Federal Government can leverage additional borrowing through anticipated long-term Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid savings.
#2
But are the people who are dying younger ones who are covered by pension plans? Or are company pension plans just using the statistics to lower the apparent underfunding of their plans?
#6
I am seeing a tremendous increase in deaths of young and old due to meth. I called it planned parenthood for adults. A local rescue unit revived a young man 9 times with Narcan. Some saying next call to show up late. They have a Narcan nasal spray now.
#7
I called it planned parenthood for adults. Some devoutly Catholic nurses I worked with decades ago called it "4th term abortions" - referring to people who had hopelessly messed up their own lives & were always on the verge of dying due to this. The nurses were not in favor of abortion, it was just black humor in the hospital.
Posted by: chris ||
08/08/2017 11:59 Comments ||
Top||
#9
Curious if the data has been skewed by the influx of foreign nationals who come here with lesser health conditions due to their country of origin healthcare systems. Bet the data would change if you factor out foreign born/raised. Another gift of illegal immigration, data that appears to support more healthcare spending and regulation! The old system wasn't broken, just abused by freeloaders.
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/08/2017 13:39 Comments ||
Top||
#11
Steady improvements in American life expectancy have stalled, and more Americans are dying at younger ages
Women used to die about the same time as males. Then patriarchal medicine in the 20th Century reduced both the childhood death rates and birthing complications leading to death. Tack on the introduction of Social Security to provide support in old age, and the female life expectancy took off. Then feminism decided they wanted to be males, just with different plumbing. Now those jobs are taking a toll on females as they always took on males.
#12
#8 thank you for the correction. Krokodil is another making inroads fast. Like those that huff aerosol paint fumes they have no desire to get away from it. One young man in prison said after Krokodil use I will be dead in a couple of months. If he was released he would go right back using.
#13
I associated the disfigurement to meth. The facial sores etcetera. Not that up to date with this stuff but it invades everything. Workers on a break out of the building many bathroom trips and so on.
This paper documents a marked increase in the all-cause mortality of middle-aged white non-Hispanic men and women in the United States between 1999 and 2013. This change reversed decades of progress in mortality and was unique to the United States; no other rich country saw a similar turnaround. The midlife mortality reversal was confined to white non-Hispanics; black non-Hispanics and Hispanics at midlife, and those aged 65 and above in every racial and ethnic group, continued to see mortality rates fall. This increase for whites was largely accounted for by increasing death rates from drug and alcohol poisonings, suicide, and chronic liver diseases and cirrhosis. Although all education groups saw increases in mortality from suicide and poisonings, and an overall increase in external cause mortality, those with less education saw the most marked increases. Rising midlife mortality rates of white non-Hispanics were paralleled by increases in midlife morbidity. Self-reported declines in health, mental health, and ability to conduct activities of daily living, and increases in chronic pain and inability to work, as well as clinically measured deteriorations in liver function, all point to growing distress in this population.
[Bloomberg] Jake Yanoviak is hunting for houses. On a weekday afternoon in North Philadelphia, the 23-year-old painter cruises along on his bike, its black paint obscured under stickers from breweries and rock bands. He turns onto a side street, where he spots a few elderly neighbors, standing on adjoining porches. He parks, leans on one handlebar and makes his pitch.
"Anybody on the block considering selling?" Yanoviak asks gently. "I’m not a developer, I’m not interested in renting to students. I’m just a kid trying to buy a house, fix it up and live in it."
"We’re not going no place," replies a 70-something woman, relaxing in fuzzy white pig slippers in the row house where she’s lived twice as long as Yanoviak has been alive. "All these houses are taken."
Like much of his generation, Yanoviak is desperate to get a piece of an increasingly scarce commodity: prime American real estate. Millennials are finding themselves out in the cold because building has slowed, and longer-living baby boomers are staying put, setting up a simmering conflict between the two biggest generations in U.S. history.
#1
We tried to talk my mother into moving in with one of us or into a retirement community. But she was independent and stubborn. She lived in the same house for 50 years until she died at 92. I must admit, if I can do the same I will.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
08/08/2017 10:20 Comments ||
Top||
#2
There are no stock market 'sure bets' but old folks home stocks Welltower Inc. (HCN) and Omega (OHI) have done amazingly well over the years. The cost of staying in these places is absolutely staggering. If you can somehow stay at home looking out the window or pecking away on the Burg, you (and your estate) can save a butt load.
#3
At 97 finally put my mom in an Escaton facility in Northern California outside Sacramento. She had her own room, en suite bath and a small kitchen although three meals a day in the dining hall were provided. 24/7 nurse on site and several attendants. $5200 a month.
#5
Another factor is that many of these young prospective buyers expect to go big or go home - the idea of starting by buying a condo or a small house or something in less than the optimal neighborhood with a plan to work their way up doesn't work for them. The boomers who want to stay where they are likely started out smaller yet the millenials think they deserve the boomers' homes.
#6
On a weekday afternoon in North Philadelphia, the 23-year-old painter cruises along on his bike, its black paint obscured under stickers from breweries and rock bands.
(Bet with self - it's a hipster style fixed-gear bike...)
(Takes a look at the picture in the article, notices the lack of handlebar shifts on the left handlebar...)
Why isn't this guy talking to a real estate agent? He's not that serious.
#7
Yes, Mrs. Warthog. Get into the market one way or another. When housing prices rise you can sell your small beginner house and use the profit for a down payment on a bigger house. It helps if you can put some sweat equity into that beginner house.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
08/08/2017 18:10 Comments ||
Top||
#8
Several years ago, mowing the vast acerage of Stately USN Manor, a california tagged F250 pulled up and asked to speak to the owner. Me being in paint/grass/oiled stained work pants and tshirt said I was. Mr f250 waddnt buying that but he did want to buy my house, offered me 2x what we paid; said no thanks and left him sitting at the curb while I made the next lap.... think I pizzed him off.
[American Thinker] If you are liberal and a faithful reader of The New York Times, you think that the Watergate campaign to take out President Nixon was America at its best. Imagine! A president covering up the criminal misdeeds of his underlings!
But the liberal knows that the Republican witch hunt of President Clinton was America at its worst. Here was a president that eliminated the deficit and produced the best economy in 50 years. And Republicans wanted to make it all about a blue dress.
Speaking as your average racist sexist homophobe, I’d say that the salient feature of both cooked-up scandals, no matter who was the villain and who was the innocent, was that the liberal ruling class got to impose its narrative. It wrote the history that that Nixon’s peccadillos were monstrous, but that Clinton’s were not. Pretty good gig if you can get it.
[American Thinker] Much has been written about Robert Mueller and his escalating witch hunt, his apparent intention to find some crime with which he can charge Donald Trump or one or more of those close to him. Lavrentiy Beria is often quoted: "Show me the man and I'll find you the crime." That is what Patrick Fitzgerald did to Scooter Libby even though he knew full well Libby was not guilty of revealing the name of Valerie Plame who was not even a covert officer. It was all a set-up, an effort to bring down Bush by any means necessary. It was an egregious violation of the law as meant to be adjudicated.
Mueller never should have been appointed as Special Counsel by Rod Rosentstein, the deputy AG, to investigate any Trump campaign "collusion" with Russia. Rosentstein knew very well that Mueller was close to Comey and put virtually no restrictions on the scope of the investigation, despite what he said on Fox News Sunday. This fact alone should make Rosenstein's judgment questionable. Mueller, long-time best pal of Comey, should never have accepted the job as Special Counsel in this case. He and Comey have a long history of working in concert for their own ends. But Mueller did accept the job. This fact alone tells us he is not an honest broker.
[Poynter] Frederick Lynch, a government professor of conservative bent at Claremont McKenna College, was speaking Sunday about his weekend New York Times op-ed that took aim at criticism of President Trump's policies on immigration and diversity. "Why Trump Supporters Distrust Immigration and Diversity" was distinctly contrarian to many elite media rebukes of Trump on the same topic.
It was very much in sync with long-standing Lynch views, best on display in his 1996 book "The Diversity Machine: The Drive to Change the ’White Male Workplace.’" In particular, his op-ed asked rhetorically whether Trump is pandering to racial fears -- the clear consensus among media -- or "addressing legitimate interest-group concerns."
He finds much of the press captive of a one-sided debate over what motivates Mr. Trump and his supporters. There's the stereotype of angry White voters driven by racism, resentment, declining economic or social status, irrational fears of economic or demographic change or all of the above, he put it to me.
"I think much of the press has been very (politically correct) on affirmative action/diversity, immigration and the White middle and working-class. They think there are no downsides to these policies. There's an elite, class bias."
The shock on many cable news hosts' and pundits' faces on Election Day -- not to mention elite newspapers, at least one of which hadn't thought to have a "How Trump Won" piece in the can just in case Trump did win -- was obvious. It was proof of being way out of touch. "
It was mildly ironic that Lynch's piece was soon supplanted, as far as online play, by an Emory University African-Studies professor's piece on "The Policies of White Resentment." It took exactly the tack that he finds wayward, namely finding "White resentment and White nationalism" as a central explanation of our current politics.
#2
Many of the reasons, voters voted for Trump. For me, the disenchantment of many Trump voters had to do with:
1. The elitism cited and their smarmy and smug attitudes towards the rest of us.
2. The destruction of culture by the left.
3. The destruction of religion by the left.
4. The rampant corruption that has been created by mostly by the Clinton and Obama administrations but not exclusive to these admins.
5. Attempts by the left to corrupt the votes of the American people--outright attempts at stealing elections through immigration and cheating schemes.
6. Creating phony charities to bilk the American public under the guise of doing good things to create slush funds for the political elites.
7. The last administration's weaponizing of the government against the American people.
8. Allowing unrestricted illegal immigration for the purposes of cheap labor and new votes.
9. The destruction of the DOJ and the FBI by Obama, the Clintons, and Holder, and Lynch.
10. The pitting of Americans against Americans by the left.
11. The people elected Trump because they thought he might have a chance of doing something about the mire in D.C.
12. Destruction of the middle class--lay it off on globalists if you want.
13. People just got tired of being forced to eat a load of crap from D.C.
14. Voters being sick and tired of the crap the main stream media dishes up ad nauseum--they are worst than Pravda or Hitler's Goebbels.
#4
Funny. The entire point of the country was equality and freedom. Not imposed equality, not rationed freedom. There should be no "elites," but try to tell the self anointed that.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
08/08/2017 9:13 Comments ||
Top||
#5
I call them the American Nobility. They don't have to follow 'common laws' the rest of us do. They want it so that only they can have firearms. etc...
#9
Trump is actually easy to explain in retrospect. Washington was picking winners and losers. The losers got fed up.
The media's role is actually two-fold. First, there is a revolving door between the Democratic party and the MSM. Second, everyone who isn't in on the racket has a potential path via the media. Join up, do your time, carry the Democrats' water and you may get your turn at the public trough.
#10
First, there is a revolving door between the Democratic party and the MSM. Second, everyone who isn't in on the racket has a potential path via the media. Join up, do your time, carry the Democrats' water and you may get your turn at the public trough.
It runs through both parties, and not just the media. Academia, professional organizations/unions, think-tanks, defense contractors, other corporations who either do business with the government or are affected by government regulation, et cetera.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Bloomberg] Steady improvements in American life expectancy have stalled, and more Americans are dying at younger ages. But for companies straining under the burden of their pension obligations, the distressing trend could have a grim upside: If people don’t end up living as long as they were projected to just a few years ago, their employers ultimately won’t have to pay them as much in pension and other lifelong retirement benefits.
[American Thinker] Much has been written about Robert Mueller and his escalating witch hunt, his apparent intention to find some crime with which he can charge Donald Trump or one or more of those close to him. Lavrentiy Beria is often quoted: "Show me the man and I'll find you the crime." That is what Patrick Fitzgerald did to Scooter Libby even though he knew full well Libby was not guilty of revealing the name of Valerie Plame who was not even a covert officer. It was all a set-up, an effort to bring down Bush by any means necessary. It was an egregious violation of the law as meant to be adjudicated. 
[Poynter] Frederick Lynch, a government professor of conservative bent at Claremont McKenna College, was speaking Sunday about his weekend New York Times op-ed that took aim at criticism of President Trump's policies on immigration and diversity. "Why Trump Supporters Distrust Immigration and Diversity" was distinctly contrarian to many elite media rebukes of Trump on the same topic.
