Age Obelisk

A population with healthy fertility has a certain demographic profile when graphed. This means that when the population is sorted by age and gender starting with the youngest, it produces a shape that looks like a pyramid. There are many children at the bottom, then progressively fewer young adults and middle-aged, and finally a small number of old people at the tip. The shape is important because it ensures that there will be enough children to replace the adults as they die and retire. They will also provide tax revenue and keep the economy stable through steady demand. What happens if fertility decreases? In that case, after a few generations, the age pyramid will gradually become narrow until more closely resembles an obelisk, that other peculiarity of ancient Egyptian architecture. This was the case in the time of Paul Malthus, who lived in the US around the year 2100. He was typical of his era in terms of education, social class, and personality. This is to say he was thoroughly demoralized about the conditions of his time.

Wages had not kept up with inflation, and thus the standard of living had steadily fallen since its peak around the year 2000. High immigration had gradually transformed the country into a low-trust society, and crime was now a serious problem in every city. Though the population had increased from 300 million to 400 million, the median age was much higher, and those on some form of government assistance represented the largest voting bloc by far. Reckless spending had eroded the value of the dollar to the point that it was no longer the world's reserve currency, nor the sole currency used for buying and selling oil. Malthus, like many other American workers, could not afford a car, and had to rely on public transportation. There were cheap places to live in the slums of the big cities, though they were unsuitable places to raise families because of the crime and pollution. Automation and artificial intelligence had replaced human workers in many industries, and so the economy was dominated by the government and the service sector. 

Malthus worked as a caregiver in a state-run nursing home. The government had been forced to construct an enormous number of such places to deal with the boom in the population of the elderly. The caregivers in these facilities had many responsibilities, not the least of which was to prevent their residents from running away or otherwise meeting some other misfortune through senility. One of the cheapest and smartest countermeasures to escape attempts was the fake bus stop in front of the nursing home. Whenever a resident wanted to leave, they'd sit at the bus stop for a few minutes, which was usually about how long it took for them to forget why they were sitting there. Then, they'd come back inside of their own accord without the staff needing to take any action. The other bemusing, if sordid problem was the frequency of venereal disease. Malthus read that basically everyone who's ever been sexually active is infected with something, but the symptoms often don't appear until immunity is weakened by age. The other explanation, of course, is that old people like to get when the getting is good. These explanations are not mutually exclusive, according to many doctors.

The elderly population was frequently targeted by all kinds of scams. It seemed there was an epidemic of grandchildren being kidnapped. The growth of AI had made the scams so much more convincing than in previous times. It was hard to blame people with varying degrees of dementia for falling prey to them. Among the aged who still live independently, the combination of their not-in-my-backyard tendencies plus their reluctance to downsize to smaller dwellings distorted the real estate market tremendously. Why sell a house when it looked that it would only ever increase in value? They saw it as much better to leave such valuable property to their heirs rather than sell on the fickle market. Speaking of that, the market had pivoted in a large way towards the needs and desires of the elderly. It got to the point that more diapers were being made for adults than for babies. Medicine likewise had shifted the production of all kinds of devices and pills to treat the maladies of old age. It was such a strange time to be alive, thought Malthus, yet there he was, in the thick of it, every day. 

Malthus would have been taking care of his own parents had they not already gone to their eternal reward. They were kind enough to leave him with a generous inheritance, which shielded him from the worst difficulties of the time. He felt guilty for not having children before his parents passed, as they had often expressed hope that he too would follow in their figurative footsteps. Alas, the culture had changed in many ways since the 1950s, and often not for the best. Religion in the US was in its second century of decline. All across the country, countless churches sat empty. Many were repurposed into bars, restaurants, and even communal living quarters since that was easier and cheaper than demolishing them to clear space for new buildings. In a similar way, the higher education bubble had burst, both from a lack of students and a lack of demand among the remainder. The dating scene was another hurdle to family formation, as single motherhood had become the norm. The growth of online dating combined with the decline of traditional courtship was merely the latest nail in the demographic coffin.  

Perhaps someday in the near future, the younger generations will realize the folly of their ways and the ways of their forbears. Every year, the age obelisk became more top heavy, and it was only a matter of time before it collapsed from its own weight. Malthus merely hoped to avoid the metaphorical wreckage and find a way to survive and be happy, just like all his ancestors before him.  He pondered a line from an old movie about how life finds a way.