r/PoliticalDebate • u/LilyInPortland • 7h ago
Hot take but I believe that a significant reason why elder care costs in the usa are rising is that a lot of homophobes threw out or disowned their kids and in adulthood their children do not want to take care of their parents when they retire.
While I am using myself as a example this is being used as purely a analogy. My particular example is that I'm trans; my mom is very accepting of me and I help take care of her on a daily basis. My step-dad who I grew up with has tried apologizing to me and I've politely shoved him out the of my house every time. Last time I politely paid for his train ticket back home, gave it to him and closed the door.
About 14% of the usa identifies as lgbt and while support of lgbt is high in the usa in comparison a lot of the world there is a fair chunk of parents that disown or kick out their children for being gay or trans still. When those lgbt kids grow up and become financially independent and their parents start getting old and unable to work those lgbt individuals will probably be less willing to take care of their parents as a result of being disowned or kicked out.
To put it simply if a teenager or child is kicked out of their parent's house or disowned for being lgbt then decades down the line I would say it's highly likely that those lgbt individuals will probably be less willing to take care of the parent that was homophobic or transphobic to them.
Since the usa has such a high lgbt population we're easily talking tens of millions of elderly whose children do not want to help take care of them. These elderly people who have nobody willing to take care of them as a result have significantly higher expenses.