A modest proposal on my part.

Today we have (apparently) too many elders and (definitely) nothing like a sufficient number of hospital beds. But what do we have an abundance of? Ice floes! That’s right, thanks to anthropogenic climate change, the polar icecaps north and south are shedding zillions of these every week. There are more than enough (well, for domestic use, at least, and until next month’s butcher’s bill) to accommodate the surplus population of Wrinkled Americans. Load ’em up with seniors and tow them out to sea. Beds: abundant. Economy: booming. Polar bears: well-fed.Win-win, I say.

cordially,

And of course our elderly should volunteer for the floes, but in our dynamic late-capitalist society we need to be prepared to offer incentives in case they hesitate to do the right thing: rather the way the NKVD offered incentives for Red Army punishment battalions to clear minefields.

cordially,