The Column: An economics professor's breathtaking proposal
Feeling old? Forgotten? Dispensable?
Do not read on.
Shocking news ahead.
Those of us in the drag-on-society demographic suddenly have cause for concern that goes beyond the usual orthopedic, gastro and cardiovascular.
To lessen the hardships imposed by older folks on the general public, a Yale University professor offers what we might call a breathtaking proposal.
Remember, you’ve been warned. Here is a last chance to head for the exit before we arrive at the eureka moment. Amuse yourself otherwise. Mix the morning Metamucil. Try touching your toes. Replace the hearing-aid batteries.
Keep in mind, however, that Professor Yusuke Narita, assistant professor of economics, may be watching every move.
According to a story on the front page of The New York Times and widely noted elsewhere, Narita, 37, has struck upon a solution to the knotty problem of what to do with dear old Grandma and Pop-Pop when they stubbornly insist on surviving.
“In the end, isn’t it mass suicide . . . ?” Narita asks.
Zowie.
Why didn’t we think of this before?
You have all these aggravating old people enjoying pensions and expecting Social Security when they could show a little initiative and just get lost.
No wonder young Narita is on edge.
Oh, yes, the professor says he was talking only about his native Japan (big deal, ideas like this could spread), and complains the remarks were, of course, “taken out of context,” as the Times reports, but, really, you can’t pull a George Santos here and say, oops, heh-heh, never mind.
My immediate response to the Narita austerity plan was captured nicely by a Twitter post: “Might be an idea he starts with himself as an example.”
But let’s show some Golden Age grace and leave the callow academic to contend with the stir he caused while we assess his breakthrough proposal.
First, it’s really not such an original idea. Remember the 1973 movie “Soylent Green”?
In a dystopian society short on food, extraneous citizens are persuaded to sail into the eternal sunset amid beautiful images and soothing music and subsequently are turned into the equivalent of granola bars. An elderly Edward G. Robinson looked positively blissful on the way out.
Viewing the movie in my early 30s, I do not recall being distressed. Now I find it deeply offensive that Hollywood once imagined me as someone’s afternoon snack.
We get the idea, don’t we?
Old people have had their chance. Time to make way economically and culturally for the next generation. Who hasn’t had a thought along those lines at some point in life?
As a teenager, I plastered my little bedroom in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, with pictures of ’50s doo-wop stars.
I built a Knight-Kit amplifier and a big box to hold three speakers — woofer, tweeter, midrange. On a Garrard turntable, I played the latest 78s, carried home like treasures from Colony Records on Broadway in Manhattan.
Full volume, the system could empty Staten Island.
“A wop bop a loo bop a lop bam boom,” hollered Little Richard.
“Ooo-wah, ooo-wah, ooo-ooo-wah, ooo-wah,” cried Frankie Lymon.
“Doo-wop-n-diddy, doo-wop-n-diddy, doo-wop-n-diddy-do,” proclaimed the Mello Kings.
Calling out from the kitchen was my father, weary after a shift delivering Bond Bread in distant Park Slope.
“What do you call this?” he asked, incredulous today as the day before. “These are words? This is music?”
“Rock ’n’ roll, Dad, c’mon,” I’d shout over the racket. “It’s not Rudy Vallee, anymore.”
“Ach,” he’d say in defeat.
Generations are apt to clash on music and everything else. But they teach each other, also.
My father was ahead of his time in some ways. Blue-collar guy, eighth-grade education, but kept house when my mother went back to work. Dad dusted and cooked, sometimes in one of Mom’s flowered aprons, and seemed happy doing it. I watched him as he grew older, steadfast and true, and I try now to remember his diligence and good-heartedness.
Do you put a price on lessons like that?
I’d like to believe Professor Narita knows the answer — that maybe his scary alternative for seniors amounted only to an “abstract metaphor,” as he claims.
Let’s take the lad at his word. No hard feelings. All is forgiven. Just don’t put him in charge of the Office for the Aging.
Feeling old? Forgotten? Dispensable?
Do not read on.
Shocking news ahead.
Those of us in the drag-on-society demographic suddenly have cause for concern that goes beyond the usual orthopedic, gastro and cardiovascular.
To lessen the hardships imposed by older folks on the general public, a Yale University professor offers what we might call a breathtaking proposal.
Remember, you’ve been warned. Here is a last chance to head for the exit before we arrive at the eureka moment. Amuse yourself otherwise. Mix the morning Metamucil. Try touching your toes. Replace the hearing-aid batteries.
Keep in mind, however, that Professor Yusuke Narita, assistant professor of economics, may be watching every move.
According to a story on the front page of The New York Times and widely noted elsewhere, Narita, 37, has struck upon a solution to the knotty problem of what to do with dear old Grandma and Pop-Pop when they stubbornly insist on surviving.
“In the end, isn’t it mass suicide . . . ?” Narita asks.
Zowie.
Why didn’t we think of this before?
You have all these aggravating old people enjoying pensions and expecting Social Security when they could show a little initiative and just get lost.
No wonder young Narita is on edge.
Oh, yes, the professor says he was talking only about his native Japan (big deal, ideas like this could spread), and complains the remarks were, of course, “taken out of context,” as the Times reports, but, really, you can’t pull a George Santos here and say, oops, heh-heh, never mind.
My immediate response to the Narita austerity plan was captured nicely by a Twitter post: “Might be an idea he starts with himself as an example.”
But let’s show some Golden Age grace and leave the callow academic to contend with the stir he caused while we assess his breakthrough proposal.
First, it’s really not such an original idea. Remember the 1973 movie “Soylent Green”?
In a dystopian society short on food, extraneous citizens are persuaded to sail into the eternal sunset amid beautiful images and soothing music and subsequently are turned into the equivalent of granola bars. An elderly Edward G. Robinson looked positively blissful on the way out.
Viewing the movie in my early 30s, I do not recall being distressed. Now I find it deeply offensive that Hollywood once imagined me as someone’s afternoon snack.
We get the idea, don’t we?
Old people have had their chance. Time to make way economically and culturally for the next generation. Who hasn’t had a thought along those lines at some point in life?
As a teenager, I plastered my little bedroom in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, with pictures of ’50s doo-wop stars.
I built a Knight-Kit amplifier and a big box to hold three speakers — woofer, tweeter, midrange. On a Garrard turntable, I played the latest 78s, carried home like treasures from Colony Records on Broadway in Manhattan.
Full volume, the system could empty Staten Island.
“A wop bop a loo bop a lop bam boom,” hollered Little Richard.
“Ooo-wah, ooo-wah, ooo-ooo-wah, ooo-wah,” cried Frankie Lymon.
“Doo-wop-n-diddy, doo-wop-n-diddy, doo-wop-n-diddy-do,” proclaimed the Mello Kings.
Calling out from the kitchen was my father, weary after a shift delivering Bond Bread in distant Park Slope.
“What do you call this?” he asked, incredulous today as the day before. “These are words? This is music?”
“Rock ’n’ roll, Dad, c’mon,” I’d shout over the racket. “It’s not Rudy Vallee, anymore.”
“Ach,” he’d say in defeat.
Generations are apt to clash on music and everything else. But they teach each other, also.
My father was ahead of his time in some ways. Blue-collar guy, eighth-grade education, but kept house when my mother went back to work. Dad dusted and cooked, sometimes in one of Mom’s flowered aprons, and seemed happy doing it. I watched him as he grew older, steadfast and true, and I try now to remember his diligence and good-heartedness.
Do you put a price on lessons like that?
I’d like to believe Professor Narita knows the answer — that maybe his scary alternative for seniors amounted only to an “abstract metaphor,” as he claims.
Let’s take the lad at his word. No hard feelings. All is forgiven. Just don’t put him in charge of the Office for the Aging.
