The Real Risk to Democracy: Rhetoric

Plus, the five age-related issues neither Harris nor Trump are addressing 

Ric Edelman: It's Friday, October 18th. On today’s show, democracy, voting integrity, and much more. Plus, a conversation with Ken Dychtwald, the founder and CEO of Age Wave, about the importance of longevity, and what the presidential candidates are doing about it. We're going to tackle one of the hottest topics in today's presidential campaign season, democracy, voting integrity, the electoral college campaign, finance, corruption, election, integrity, and gerrymandering.  

But before we do, I got a question from Muddyunicorns5160. Here's what Muddy wrote.  

Muddyunicorns5160: “When must you check yes to the IRS crypto question on form 1040? Do you have to report this even though you have no distributions from the IRA that year?” 

Ric Edelman: Yeah, this is a big deal, but I don't think anybody cares right now, Muddy, because we're not in tax season right now. You're going to have to deal with this come next winter when we get into tax season in February and March, but let's talk about it now anyway, since you asked.  

We all know that millions, tens of millions of Americans now own Bitcoin and other digital assets. The last number I saw, 52 million Americans. We also know that most of these folks have no idea how crypto taxation works.  

The IRS is convinced that the vast majority of Americans who own Bitcoin are not properly reporting their transactions, as required under the tax code, on their tax returns correctly. To the point that the IRS has now placed on page one of the 1040, it's the very first question you are now asked. After you provide your name, address, and social security number, boom, there's the question from the IRS about your ownership or disposal of crypto. The question becomes, as Muddy asks, when must you check yes to the box? 

Well, we have produced an entire two-hour webinar on crypto taxation with a focus on this particular question that appears on the IRS 1040. You asked a very specific question, Muddy. Do you have to report your ownership even if you have no distributions from an IRA? 

I can only tell you this. The IRS has not specifically answered that question, but I'll tell you what I think the answer is. And by the way, this has no weight of any kind because I'm not a tax advisor. I'm not giving you financial or tax advice. You need to go ask your tax advisor, but I'll tell you this. 

If you have a defined benefit plan, meaning a pension, then no, the crypto tax question on form 1040 does not apply because you're not the owner of the account. The pension plan is. So, it's for them to answer, not you. If you have a solo 401(k), then yes, you probably do need to check the Yes box because the solo 401(k) doesn't file its own tax return. 

It's your account and therefore captured on your 1040. Ditto for IRAs. You're the beneficial owner of the IRA and therefore I would argue that if you own crypto inside of an IRA, the IRS question on your 1040 applies to your IRA as much as it applies to your taxable accounts. Now, whether you need to check the box yes, depends on the circumstances of your crypto activities, which is frankly beyond the purview of here, or we'd be spending two hours talking about it. 

Go talk to your tax advisor. If they don't know what they're talking about on this, if they don't have crypto expertise, go get a new tax advisor.  

 

Ric Edelman: Okay. With all that out of the way, let's now tackle today's topic. We are in the midst of our series of 34 topics, across 19 podcasts to help me move from undecided to decided and who I'm going to vote for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. 

And, today's topic is democracy, voting integrity, the electoral college, campaign finance, corruption, election integrity, and gerrymandering. First, I want to begin by saying that we have all seen the accusations being leveled, so many on the left arguing that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy, and frankly, I have seen many on the right arguing in very different ways that Kamala Harris is a threat to democracy.  

I frankly don't believe either one of them are the threat that they are being made out to be by their political opponents. I frankly abhor the commentary that is being made not only by Trump and Harris themselves personally against each other, but by their minions and their supporters with or without their knowledge or consent. 

I think this is helping to drive Americans apart. I think it is creating the animosity. And I believe that if this goes unchecked, we're going to have a witness to the one prediction that I am pretty confident is going to occur. Violence. We've already seen three assassination attempts two official ones and one just the other day where they caught a guy before he got anywhere near the grounds where Trump was, yet he had two weapons, false ID and fake license plates on his vehicle. You [00:06:00] telling me this guy didn't have nefarious intent?  

So, I am very, very concerned that we are going to see violence, not merely continuation against Donald Trump, as we've seen, but also, potentially against Kamala Harris and others, governors, senators, members of Congress, election board officials. 

We have already seen incidents of this. They are being egged on. They are being incited by the awful rhetoric that we are seeing. I think everything that everybody is saying in this area, all of that, frankly, is a threat to our democracy.  

As far as voting integrity goes, I think both parties are positioning themselves to be able to cry foul in the election on November 5th. Both parties have already filed dozens of lawsuits preemptively. They're already positioning themselves to argue that the elections in various jurisdictions are fraudulent or improper or invalid.  

Here's my second prediction. In addition to violence this election season, my second prediction is that we are not going to know on November 5th who the next president is going to be. We are going to spend days, probably weeks, and possibly months trying to figure out who won in given states because of the lawsuits that are going to be filed that are challenging the outcome of the reported results.  

So, I think in the end, the accusations of voter fraud are way inflated, just as those accusations were way inflated without substantiation or evidence back in 2020. I think we're going to see a similar repeat of that. Only this time, I think it's going to be more vindictive and as a result, more violent.  

Regarding the Electoral College, this is an absolutely stupid conversation. People are complaining about it. I actually heard Vice President nominee Tim Walz say that he wants to do away with the Electoral College. Is this guy out of his mind? Why even raise such a divisive conversation? This is embedded in the Constitution. Unless you're prepared to hold a constitutional convention and rewrite the Constitution, which would in fact, eliminate our republic and our democracy as we know it, as the floodgates would open with a rapid, massive, unrestricted, wieldy rewrite of that sacred text. 

I don't even know why this is being brought up. I don't care how you feel about the Electoral College. It's there. It isn't changing. It's not going away. Certainly not between now and January 6th when the Electoral College will vote.  

Regarding campaign finance, this has been a sore spot for everybody for decades and decades and decades. We know that there's far too much money being spent on these elections. That there's far too much money coming from far too few people. Extraordinarily rich people giving millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars to support the candidates and policies of their choice, which is distorting the information that you're getting...which is altering the viewpoint that you have, none of it in a favorable, healthy way for an effective democracy. 

Neither candidate is suggesting any change or reform to our campaign finance laws for the simple reason they're the personal beneficiaries of this outlandish behavior. So, nobody from the presidential candidates to the Senate and House candidates to the governors and state legislators, none of them want to do anything about this because they all benefit from it. 

And that takes you to corruption. Of course there's corruption. Both parties at all levels of local, state, and federal office are loaded with corruption. We see it all the time in virtually every state, clearly from both political parties. And I don't see Harris or Trump saying or doing anything that's going to stop it. And of course, we can certainly argue that Donald Trump has had his share of being complicit in the engagement of corruption activities himself.  

So, when you get to the election integrity, well, frankly, fundamentally, I believe that the voting is being operated in an election integrity basis. I have not seen any evidence of election fraud of any degree that would move or change the results of any election. And despite the fact that people are throwing out all kinds of accusations, I haven't seen any evidence to support those accusations. So, election integrity I think is being operated very carefully and very deliberately and very consciously by the folks in the trenches on the ground in the election booths, counting those ballots as diligently as they can. 

And until you show me evidence to the contrary, save the rabble rousing and hyperbole and innuendo for another day.   

And our final topic there is gerrymandering. This is a huge problem. And again, it's been going on for decades. Whichever party controls the state legislature, they want to maintain their control. And so they rejigger the local jurisdictions to ensure that they are more likely than not to have their current in-office, public official remain in office in the next election. And this is why we see bizarre boundaries drawn around congressional districts. It's obscene, it's abhorrent, it's manipulative. It does not reflect democracy, but quite frankly, there's nothing new to this debate and there's nothing at all that either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump has had to say about it.  

So, I've really only got one point to make, where either of them has in fact said anything of a serious nature, and that is Kamala Harris. She has said, quite frankly, she wants to end the Senate filibuster rule. What is a filibuster? That's when a senator, and remember Kamala was a senator before she was president. A filibuster is when a senator blocks a vote. This block can go on indefinitely, and until it ends, the Senate can't vote on the bill in question. 

It takes 60 votes in the Senate to override a filibuster. So, let's say they're debating on a bill, and they're about to come up to a vote. If a senator raises his or her hand, gets called on by the chair, and the senator starts talking, that senator can keep talking forever, blocking the vote itself. The bill never comes forward for consideration. The only way to shut that senator up is for 60 other senators to vote to end the filibuster. You've got 100 senators. One of them is filibustering. 99 left. Of the 99, 60 of them have to vote to end the filibuster. That's a huge hurdle. 

And that's why filibusters almost never end until the one senator filibustering agrees to end it. But now, Kamala Harris wants to end the filibuster. She wants those filibusters to come to an end with a vote of only 51 senators. Don't make it 60, she says. Don't make it an overwhelming majority. Let's just have 51 senators kill the filibuster. Let's have 51 end the blockade. That kind of seems innocuous, right? I mean, we're all complaining that the Senate never gets anything done, that they never pass legislation. So, one of the reasons is because of the filibuster. Let's end the filibuster. Let's let the Senate get back to doing business.  

But the issue's bigger than that. Think about this. Kamala Harris wants to kill a filibuster. Right now it requires 60 votes. She wants to be able to eliminate it with just 51 votes. Well guess what? The Senate right now has 47 votes. If they have control in the next term, the end of the filibuster would be easy. Because if the Democrats have 51 votes, then they could end a filibuster. 

They wouldn't need strong support of the Republicans. And quite frankly, vice versa. If the Republicans have a razor thin majority of only 51 votes, then they would be able to end the filibuster. This would let either party pass legislation with a 51 to 49 vote that right now they would never be able to pass. 

Look, I agree with people who complain that in Congress nothing gets done, but frankly I'd rather see nothing get done than to see a whole bunch of laws get passed that are simply extremist, that are only being put forward by one party along party lines where the other party hates it.  

We need bipartisan legislation. We need laws that members of both parties can support. And if you can do that, you'll get 80 or 90 votes on every law. Not just 60, and not just the 51 that you need to win along party lines. Ending the filibuster is a shortcut that lets you avoid the need to make compromises to get bills passed. It's easier to force your views on your opposition without a filibuster. 

It takes more work and effort to get your opposition to agree with you. But that's the true art of politics, and the fact that Kamala Harris wants to eliminate the filibuster means that she wants fast and easy control of the U. S. Senate. That is not democracy.  

So, I totally disagree with Harris on that point, and since she and Trump are dead even on all of the other points: democracy, voting integrity, the electoral college, campaign finance, corruption, election integrity, gerrymandering...her support of the filibuster is a loser. It really, really worries me about her true agenda. 

 

You know that all month we have been talking about the presidential election. We're in the midst of the 34 topics that I have identified as the issues affecting who we should be voting for. As I have told you for the past several weeks, I'm undecided and who I ought to vote for president. And I've been asking you for your help in helping me figure out this conundrum. And so we're tackling these 34 topics one at a time, sometimes two at a time over the course of this month of October. And one of the big issues, you could argue it is the biggest issue, not merely facing the presidential season, but our society as a whole is the notion of longevity. 

The fact that we have an aging population due to longer lifespans than we've ever experienced in human history. And so it's perfect timing to bring this topic to bear, but you're not going to do it with just me. We're going to do it with the world's leading expert on the topic. And so I'm really happy to bring back onto the podcast, my very dear friend, Dr. 

Ric Edelman: Ken, great to have you back on the podcast. Good to see you, my friend.  

Ken Dychtwald: I think I was your first guest on your first podcast in this new era, and I am so delighted that we're going to be having this discussion.  

Ric Edelman: Whenever we have to do something profound, I turn to you. So, you're absolutely right. It's funny because I wanted to bring you on on the very first podcast I did a couple of years ago, following my 32-year radio career. And then I said, I want to bring you on at the end of this year to put a cap on 2024. And you said, no, let's do it during the election. So here we are.  

Ken, for those of you who don't know, is the CEO and Founder of Age Wave. He is the foremost visionary on the notion of an aging population. He's a psychologist, gerontologist, bestselling author of 19 books, which is six more than me. He is named one of the most influential thought leaders in the financial services industry for the past 35 years.  

And right now, Ken, you have just released five age-related issues that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris must address, which they haven't addressed to my knowledge, or at least not sufficiently.  So, I want us to tackle these five issues to help people start to think about them. And more importantly, to try to get answers from these two. So, we're going to run through these five issues and it's going to be very compelling, eye opening and soul-searching content.  

First of all, Ken, the definition of old, what is the new age of old? How do we define an old person today?  

Ken Dychtwald: Well, let's keep in mind that when our constitution was signed, the life expectancy in America was 35 and the median age was 16. When we crafted social security, life expectancy was about 63. So, choosing 65 as the entry point into old age might've made some sense a century ago or two centuries ago. But more and more today, people are thinking about old age, beginning at 80 or 85, or maybe it's not even an age. It's how you're doing.  

And yet so many of our pension programs, our entitlement programs are geared to this age, 65. And so I would want to hear the presidential candidates talk about when do they think people grow old today. Now I realize that anybody over 65 or near 65, and I'm 74 myself, gets very nervous when they hear about this, but it's a reasonable question to ask: What is the new age of old age in this extraordinarily progressed era with regard to longevity. 

Ric Edelman: I guess at the core of that is the question, at what age should retirement benefits began? You know, at what age should you begin to be eligible for Social Security? What age should you begin to collect a pension? Because when those systems were created, people weren't projected to live for 40 years collecting those checks the way that many do today. 

Ken Dychtwald: Right, right. And in 1940, shortly after Social Security was set in motion, the Social Security Act, there were 42 workers paying in a little bit each month to support a retiree. Today it's 2.8 to 1, and that ratio is even going to get tougher on young people. So, a question that the presidential candidates ought to talk about is, should we move on to the second one? 

So, I've watched every single presidential debate for the past 20 years, and the issue of when are we old now, not when were we were old a century ago, has never been broached. And I think that both Trump and Harris ought to be asked that question by the media. And, I put some of the responsibility on the media for not even asking the question. 

By the way, I gave a talk about a month ago to about 500 older adults. And I asked them at what age did they think old age began? And they raised their hands at various numbers, but it came back between 80 and 85. And so I kind of kiddingly said, so I suppose you wouldn't mind not getting your old age benefits until you're 80 or 85 and they booed me. And so, there's the conundrum. 

It's a very personal issue for a lot of people, because when my grandparents reached their 60s, they kind of thought they were near the end. And so, to have a couple of years to gather your wits and socialize and relax a little, maybe take a trip, made a lot of sense. But, if you're 65 today, the average life expectancy is another 20 years. 

So, that's a lot of life. Maybe time to fall in love again, and maybe time to write a book of poems, and maybe time to start a new career. It's not what it used to be.  

Ric Edelman: And when you say that the average life expectancy at 65 is another 20 years, that's today's level set of medical innovation and technology. When we look at the advances that are likely to be coming over the next 20 years, by the time the 65 year-old is 85, odds are pretty good I would think it's going to be a lot higher than that, right?  

Ken Dychtwald: Yeah, and I would tell you that when it comes to how long we live, we're only 50th at this point worldwide. There are 49 countries in the world that live longer than we do. So, could we make improvements? Yes. Will there be breakthroughs? Maybe not this month, but in the next 10, 15 years? No question, as you've been writing about and talking about for years. And so that number, when are we old, is a non-trivial question. And it's one that ought to be asked of Harris and Trump.  

Ric Edelman: So, there are only two reasons I think that the candidates have not addressed this. One is they don't know that it's an issue to address. Or it's an issue that they're afraid to address. Which do you think it is?  

Ken Dychtwald: Oh, a hundred percent second.  You know, I've briefed most of the political campaigns over the last decades. They all know about longevity. They all know about this, but they also realize that if they were to broach the subject of maybe we're going to move back when people get benefits, whether it's Medicare or social security or whatever, they wouldn't win any election. So, they avoid it. And that's a little bit deceitful in my view.[ 

Ric Edelman: But that kind of means that from a political perspective, the conversation's moot, isn't it? That if they're not going to address it because it's the third rail of American politics, there's no hope of improving on it.  

Ken Dychtwald: Not only is there no hope in improving on it, but the pressure to support more and more older people by a declining number of young people is going to make life very hard for the young generations, very costly, and so it needs to be discussed. 

And there's all sorts of reasonable solutions, but this first question of, when are we old? Not as we were in the 1930s, and as you say, in the years to come, it's going to be elevated even further.  

Ric Edelman: Yeah, we have to acknowledge this, and the longer we keep our heads in the sand, the more dire the circumstance becomes. This is an issue that's simply not going away.  

Ken Dychtwald: Yeah, and I'm not running for an office, so I'm not worried about losing votes, but as a gerontologist, I look at this and I say, boy, people are just avoiding this discussion. And Ric, to your questions, it's not because they don't know what the issues are. They just avoid them because it has become the third rail of politics. That's not the way democracy ought to work. 

Ric Edelman: Let's move on to the second question. One of the issues associated with longevity is the health care elements of living in old age. We know that older people spend more on health care than the rest of the population. 

The diseases of aging you describe as being the financial and emotional sinkhole of the 21st century.  

Ken Dychtwald: Yeah, think about this for a second, my friend. As I mentioned, there's been enormous progress over the past century or two with public health and antibiotics and a pharmacopeia and doctors able to do surgeries due to anesthesiology and lifestyle. 

So we're living longer, but we're 50th in the world with regard to how long we live. Not so good. Now, that has not come up in any presidential discussions. Why are we only 50th in the world?  

But even worse is what's now being referred to as healthspan. How many years of your life are you reasonably healthy? And we're 68th in the world when it comes to our healthspans. And so what you've got is in America, more than really any country in the world, Commonwealth Fund just put out a report that of the 10 developed nations, we're 10th. We're the worst. What we've got is a medical system and a scientific community that is more geared to having people be sick for 5 or 10 or 15 years at the end of their life than in creating healthy longevity. 

And as you and I have been discussing for a decade, we all want to live better, longer. And we all want to be healthy when we're 75 or 95. We want to be vital. We want to be contributory. We want to be able to not be suffering. And yet, that's a question I'd like to see Harris and Trump answer. How are you going to create more health among our aging population? 

Simple question. Because we're doing most things, maybe well intentioned, but we're doing them with terrible outcomes. So, I'd like to hear that question asked. 

Ric Edelman: So, what the candidates have been asked and what they have articulated answers on is what they will do regarding Medicare and Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Both of them say they're not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid, that they are going to continue to provide funding for health insurance for people and so on and so forth. 

They have varieties on the plans they would execute, etc. But what they seem to be talking about is simply,the concept of, we promise that we will pay for the healthcare you need. What they aren't really saying is we're going to figure out how to improve your health so you don't need the healthcare. 

Is that what you summarize?  

Ken Dychtwald: Yeah. And I'll give you a number that'll rattle your listeners and viewers. The average couple in America, their out-of-pocket healthcare and long-term care spend from the day they retired to the end of their lives is on average $472,000. Now who's got that? Nobody's got that. 

So, this is not only something that's costing the government 20% of the federal budget on Medicare, but it's costing the average household, the average family. So, if we could do away with Alzheimer's disease, if we could cause people to have healthier vascular systems, if we could cause people to understand the importance of eating anti-inflammatory, non-inflammatory diets, we could have more older, long-lived people with fewer illnesses and at a far lower cost.  

So, rather than just discussing, as you said, giving access, what we've got to more people, my feeling is why not create a better approach to healthcare? So we have healthier people saving money at the same time.  

Ric Edelman: Is this why America's scoring so low on the nations around the  world in life expectancy and quality of life?  You said we rank 50th.  

Ken Dychtwald: 50th in life expectancy and 68th in healthspan.  

Ric Edelman: And is this because in other nations people are healthier and people are therefore living longer healthier? Is that the difference that they have better lifestyles?  

Ken Dychtwald: There's three or four answers that come up most often. Number one, they have healthier lifestyles. Number two, they're not as overweight as we are in the United States. Number three is there's a lot more movement. We've created a culture where moving and exercising, some people do a lot of it, but most people don't do any of it. And we generally call upon a medical system that's very siloed. For example, over the age of 65, 30% of our over 65 population sees five doctors a year. 

And very often, those doctors don't talk to each other. So, you might see somebody for your kidneys, you might see somebody for your heart, somebody else for your lungs, somebody else for your brain. And if they're not talking to each other, it's likely they're prescribing medications that are mixing up in odd, strange ways. 

Or they're not putting you on the healthiest path. And by the way, I think, AI, this should be the assignment for AI because the average doctor can't keep track of all the things going on with a seven year-old. So just like we have WAZE, I think if we had a health WAZE where we could program in a hundred year-old, you know, Ric and Jean Edelman and Ken and Maddie Dychtwald, and each day be guided as to what we should eat or whether we need supplements or whether we need to exercise more, that would be better than the healthcare system we've got. 

We have a healthcare system where there's a lot of people making money, but we're not creating healthy people and it's particularly an issue when it comes to older adults and longevity. Let me give you one other example: Medicare doesn't require that doctors or nurses or nurse's aides or whomever receive any training in geriatrics, they'll pay him anyhow. And it's nuts.  

Last year, 96% of all the medical schools required that every single student in order to graduate receive a rotation in pediatrics, but only 10% required a rotation or any courseware in geriatrics. And yet, we've got millions of health professionals, many of whom are really good people, but they are kind of winging it. 

And Medicare has not insisted on any kind of level of competence in dealing with older adults, who are by far the biggest consumers of healthcare. It's a nutty system that needs to be fixed.  

Ric Edelman: Is this simply because of the legacy of how medical schools have evolved over the past couple of hundred years? 

You didn't have a lot of old people, so you don't need to provide training to serve them? And they haven't caught up with the fact that we now have so much longevity?  

Ken Dychtwald: I think that this is a brand new thing, you know, two thirds of all the people who have ever lived past 65 in the entire history of the world are alive today. 

So, everything about this age wave, as I call it, is new. And I think our medical system, which should have been ahead of the curve, seeing all these older people coming, we got 10, 00 boomers turning 70 a day right now. It's behind the curve. So, people like you and I and others, because neither Harris nor Trump are putting any attention against this. 

We need to sound the wake-up call so that our moms and dads and our loved ones won't be at the suffering end of a healthcare system that's not geared to the needs of people as they age. 

Ric Edelman: One of the issues you cited earlier was our desire for a healthy lifespan. Not just a long lifespan, but a healthy one. And you began this conversation by referring to the financial and emotional sinkhole associated with the diseases of aging in this century. And you used one disease, you cited one in particular that I want to highlight here, and that's Alzheimer's. Talk about this. From everything I've seen, this seems to be the biggest fear people have. That they're one day going to develop dementia or Alzheimer's.  

Ken Dychtwald: We just released a massive report that we did a study in conjunction with the John A. Hartford Foundation. And by the way, all of the studies that I'm referring to, or I'm building off of, can be found for free at the AgeWave.com website. So, if there's something where we're going too fast and people want to read more.  

We ask people, thousands of older adults, what health problem are you most frightened by? COVID, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's disease is way above the rest. And yet we spend far too little money on trying to beat this disease. By the way, if we could eliminate Alzheimer's, half of all the nursing home beds in America would go empty. We would not have such a need for families to spend down their life savings. 

People would be able to be 80 or 90 and productive and contributory. So it's the bad one. I've been in this field for 50 years now, and I've looked at lots of things that can go wrong as we age, but cognitive loss, or dementia, is at the top of the list. And more and more folks are beginning to realize that now. 

But there's a lot of discussion about, which I respect-- and my mom had Alzheimer's--how do we care for people with dementia in a kinder way? I'd say, having done a book when I was 30 with Jonas Salk when he said we gotta wipe out polio, and I don't wanna make a dollar, I'd like to see a world without Alzheimer's. 

If that were the case, we would save literally trillions of dollars over the coming decades, and people would have their lives laid out in front of them in an appetizing way. And it's not enough the focus of medical science. It ought to be the moonshot of this era.  

Do I hear Trump or Harris talking about it? Not really. Now Trump's father had Alzheimer's, near the age that he is now. So, you gotta know he's thinking about it, but not being talked about.  

Ric Edelman: Why do you suppose that is?  

Ken Dychtwald: The stigma. I think that if people put out the idea that I'm frightened about Alzheimer's, then they may lose votes. If they're in their 60s, not an issue. But once you hit your late 70s and early 80s, it really begins to percolate. And so I think people avoid the topic. Certainly Biden did. Trump and Harris.  

It ought to be an issue because the entire population is thinking about it and it's scary. So, why is this not one of the issues in this election? Why is it not being brought up in the debates?  What would you do to eliminate Alzheimer's? Fair question.  

Ric Edelman: And is it also possible that Trump particularly doesn't want to talk about it because he, at his age, is more susceptible to developing or displaying its symptoms compared to Kamala who is so much younger?  

Ken Dychtwald: Yeah, I've watched him because I knew about Fred Trump's situation, and I knew Ronald Reagan and he had Alzheimer's at the end of his term. It's a bad disease. And it's not a disease that Trump would want to have anybody thinking that he was falling victim to.  

But forget that, forget their own personal circumstances. This is an illness that could take down the whole country, take down the world. You and I have had this discussion now for a decade. And yet there is some progress being made, but with more funding and more scientific attention, maybe that's what ChatGPT ought to be used for. To solve it. 

But this is a disease that we ought to stop, just like we stopped etheria and typhoid and cholera and things like that. We ought to bring an end to Alzheimer's. It ought to be the moonshot of somebody running for president.  

Ric Edelman: And so we've got people living longer than ever, as a result spending more on healthcare than ever, creating as a natural byproduct of that, I would argue, a level of poverty that we haven't seen before. It used to be that the elderly were the wealthiest because they had all the money. They had a lifetime of savings, but now people are outliving their money. We're facing, this is your third point, a new era of mass elder poverty.  

Ken Dychtwald: I don't think we're there at this moment. The 65 and over population has got about an 11% poverty level, which is half of what young people's poverty level is. But, if you migrate up into the 70s and then around 80, the poverty level skyrockets. And, you know, you've seen the research I know. The people who have retired over the last year, half of them have nothing saved for retirement. 

So when I look out at the future and I think, okay, if they're going to live a year or two, that's one thing, but if they're going to live 15 years, they're going to run out of money. They're going to outlive their money.  

And on top of that, if some of these diseases that prey on the very old are not eliminated, they're going to spend down, you know, it's $106,000 a year to be in a shared room in a nursing home. You know, we're going to bust our Medicaid. We're going to bust our federal budget. We're going to bust families’ savings paying for the diseases of the later years.  

So back to the point of what you're doing right now, how come this issue, this is not a trivial issue, how come this is not being discussed and debated with brilliant ideas being put forth by either the Harris or Trump campaigns? Now we can talk about in general, let's make everybody a little richer. But how are we going to cause a prevention of a mass era of poverty? Now keep in mind during the 1930s before social security was set in motion a third of the elderly were living below the poverty level and so aging and poverty were entwined. We've pulled away from that. My worry is we're going to head back into it again unless we take action. 

Ric Edelman: And like you said, neither candidate has spoken out on this and over the next couple of weeks. Not likely that they're going to.  

Ken Dychtwald: Well, by the way Ric, I would say that I'm just as concerned about the fact that the media doesn't ask these questions. Would it be a reasonable question to ask? It looks like tens of millions of older adults, a third of all the homeless people in America right now are over the age of 65 and that number is growing. So to ask the question, how are we going to be sure that our older and elder populations don't find themselves impoverished? I'd like to hear their answer. 

Ric Edelman: Me too. There's another element related to this, which is your fourth point out of the five we're talking about here today with Ken Dychtwald, the Founder and CEO of Age Wave, the world's foremost authority on this topic.  

A lot of folks in their sixties, this recently happened to a friend of mine who is 66, like me, he's been unable to find work. He's a CPA, he has a master's degree, and he was recently involved in a massive downsizing at the bank he worked for, one of the big major banks in the country, part of a big, many hundreds of people laid off. And he's been out of work for a year and a half now, and he says everybody who he's interviewing with are, as he phrases it, kids in their 20s and 30s who have no desire to have their grandfather working for them. 

This is ageism. Talk about ageism and its pervasiveness in society today. We've got sexism, we've got racism... 

Ken Dychtwald: ...homophobia, but ageism is a weird one because we all get older if we're lucky. And so I may never be discriminated against because of my gender or my race, but you reach your late 50s or early 60s and all of a sudden you don't see yourself in the ads or you're kind of a knucklehead uncle in a movie. And even worse for a lot of people who realize that in order to have financial well-being, they might need to work an extra couple, three, four years, which is not such a terrible thing because it's been shown that people who work a bit longer actually have a better mental state and are healthier and live longer. You find yourself though, not being considered or not being hired because of your age.  And that discrimination can be devastating.   

Let me give a little bit of a historical perspective to this Ric, that I think you'll find entertaining. Imagine the painting we've all seen of the signing of the Constitution, where the life expectancy, as I earlier mentioned, was only 35, but all the people in the painting had white hair. And it was because they were powdering their hair or wearing white wigs to look older, because it was believed that the older you were, the more powerful you were, and the more you were selected by God.  

Then the 20th century rolled in, and we entered into the Roaring Twenties, the Industrial Era focused on youth, and then the Baby Boomers came along, and modern marketing and advertising, and the idea of brand loyalty. 

And the notion emerged during the 1960s that if you can capture people,to like your car or your toothpaste or your shoes when they're in their late teens and early twenties, they'll stick with that product for life. And so don't bother relating to older people because they're already set in their ways. Focus entirely on young people.  

Well, here we are now in the 21st century. And as it turns out, people over 50 have 70% plus, of all the wealth in America. And they're open to trying new things and they don't think of themselves as old. So, it's absolutely foolish that marketers and advertisers and employers are avoiding older people because they may be the best market that's hiding in plain sight. 

So, I would say to Harris and Trump: What are you going to do to eliminate ageism in America? It's a reasonable question. You know, people have talked about diversity and inclusion and equity, very important themes. We don't like to think of ourselves as Americans as being prejudiced or discriminatory, but the way we relate to older people is punishing for many, many, many older people. 

So what would you do to end ageism? And, you know, Although Harris is 60 ish, he's not a 30 year-old. You know, Trump, were he to win, would be in his eighties. And how do young people feel about older people controlling things, and so that ageism, it's got a basis to it.  

There's a little bit of a worry among young people that these older people may be kind of out of touch or set in their ways or kind of living in the past. And for young people, they want to know that leadership has got an eye on the future.  

Ric Edelman: And our final issue, the new purpose of maturity. We are in an environment where it used to be that as you reached retirement, as you pointed out Ken, you are going to be dead in a few years. So, play with the grandkids, take that world cruise because you're on your way out.  Not anymore. Now at 65 and retirement, you're as healthy and vital as you were at 55. You're a lot healthier today at 65 than your parents were when they were 80. And you've got a lot more money too.  

So, with a 20 or 30 or 40-year life expectancy ahead of us at age 65 and a lot of wealth, we now have a ton of time on our hands. What on earth do we do with ourselves?  

Ken Dychtwald: Yeah. Let me give this to you in a story right before COVID. I spoke at a conference and the speaker was Harrison Ford and he's a climate activist. And he said, we got to get all the young people in the world planting trees and everybody gave him a standing ovation. 

And I had a private meeting with Harrison afterward and I fawned over him..I loved your movies, by the way, great to meet you. I said, are you aware of the fact that there's a billion people in the world over the age of 60? And nobody's tasked them with anything. Now Ric, you think about that for a second. 

What have we tasked older people with other than move to the sidelines. And that's a profound social, political, cultural, psychological, financial mistake. And so I would like to ask Harris and Trump, what's the biggest idea you have for what we might be able to do with all of these older adults?  

We've got 68 million retirees in this country. And last year, the average retiree watched 47 hours of television a week and only 28% volunteered. Now, I'm not saying people need to take up full time jobs to make the world a better place. But a couple, three hours a week, helping in schools, helping mentor young people, sharing what you know, having purpose--and by the way, studies have been done at Yale and at Stanford that older adults who have some kind of purpose and they're giving back are more connected to the modern age, are healthier, and will literally live seven and a half years longer. So, there's a lot of research to suggest that a purposeful life in maturity is better than thinking of it as an extended vacation. 

Yet, I would ask Harris and Trump again and again and again, what should older adults’ purpose be? And if the answer is, there is no purpose for these people, I wouldn't vote for them.  

Ric Edelman: So it's really interesting that you mention all this, Ken, because I'm just thinking that as an 18 year-old, there's a really big effort by the government to encourage 18 year-olds to enter military service. There's a focus on Peace Corps and AmeriCorps, community service programs. There is no such “elder corps” program to say: Hey, upon your retirement in your sixties or seventies, here's a government program, a government service opportunity. 

As an extreme example, should we not create a draft? Not of 18 year-olds to enter the military, but for 70 year-olds to enter community service programs.  

Ken Dychtwald: Now, what we're talking about right now may be one of the most provocative considerations of our era. And I would tell you that when I wrote my eighth book, Age Wave, which was 35 years ago, my final chapter was calling for the creation of an “elder corps”, sort of like the way Shriver and Kennedy created the Peace Corps. And you're right, 

By the way, there are some wonderful volunteer programs for older people. There's the Experience Corps, there's RSVP, there's AmeriCorps. But nobody's ever heard of them, and they're all kind of local, or they've got a few people. But if there was a grand scale program that either mandated that people contribute a few hours a week, or simply made it appealing, and maybe even there was some sort of a barter that came along with it...we might have tens of millions of older men and women who have what I call time affluence. They have more free time than any human beings in the history of Earth who could find themselves more engaged, more involved, living more purposeful lives.  

And I think if I were to be able to interview Harris and Trump, and I've watched all the interviews, I would say to them, we have an aging population. It's never happened before. The boomers are going to have 3.9 trillion hours of free time over the next 20 years. If some portion of that were deployed to help their communities and to utilize their wisdom and their experience, it would be a different future. What are you going to do to bring about an “elder corps”? 

Ric Edelman: These are profound questions that ought to be asked to the candidates that are not being asked. The candidates are not volunteering commentary on any of these subjects, to the detriment of American society, both present and future. Ken, this has been incredible fodder, food for thought. I hope the audience, especially those who are undecided like me, will consider these questions and ponder which of the two candidates is more likely to address these issues if in office.  

Because these issues are only going to become more and more apparent, more and more obvious, and demanding attention. So maybe not now, in a campaign season, but perhaps in year three or four of their administration, this could become something that they weigh in on. Which of the two is more likely to address it in a manner that is beneficial to American society and the global population overall? 

Ken, great thought process. As always, your thought leadership on this subject is unsurpassed. Always good to see you, my friend.  

Ken Dychtwald: Always good to see you Ric.  

Ric Edelman: And by the way, Ken had offered his website, AgeWave.com. We've got a link to it in our show notes. So, very easy to get to AgeWave.com. It's incredible content and information, all of it free. I encourage you to go visit. Ken Dychtwald, thanks so much.  

Ken Dychtwald: So great to be with you. 

  

Hey, while I've got you, what are you doing on Wednesday, October 23rd? This is a really big deal. We're doing a special webinar at 2:00pm EDT...How to Factor Longevity into your Financial Planning. 

I mean, do you have any idea how long you're likely to live? If you're a financial advisor, do you have any idea how long your clients are likely to live? We've got massive ongoing innovations in medicine and healthcare, and it is extending life expectancies to an unprecedented level. People are living longer today than at any point in human history. And longevity risk...yeah, there's a risk to living too long. The risk that you outlive your money. So, I need you to join me for this fascinating and important conversation to talk about emerging solutions that are designed to help you resolve this issue so you can serve your clients yourself, in a really important fundamental way. Joining me is going to be Nate Conrad, the head of LifeX at Stone Ridge Asset Management. The webinar is free. If you're an advisor, you get one CE credit. Register right now. The link is in the show notes. Hard to imagine any topic more important than longevity. Wednesday, October 23rd, 2:00pm EDT.  

Ric Edelman: Coming up on Monday, we're going to talk about crime, gang violence, violent crime, guns, incarceration, and the death penalty.  

If you like what you're hearing, be sure to follow and subscribe to the show, wherever you get your podcasts, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and remember leave a review on Apple podcasts. I read them all. Never miss an episode of The Truth About Your Future. Follow and subscribe on your favorite podcast app.

See you Monday.

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Links from today’s show: 

Click here for Ric's worksheet to help you evaluate the candidates

Ken Dychtwald Age Wave Website: https://www.agewave.com

The 34 Issues of Election 2024 – The Daily Podcasts https://uth959jfpszs9vqn-59513929894.shopifypreview.com/blogs/this-weeks-stories/tagged/election-2024

Kamala Harris Official Campaign Website Policy Page: https://www.kamalaharris.com/issues/

Donald Trump Official Campaign Website Policy Page: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform

10/23 Webinar - How to Factor Longevity into Your Financial Planning: https://www.thetayf.com/pages/october-2024-webinar-how-to-factor-longevity-into-your-financial-planning

11/13 Webinar - An Innovative Way to Generate Income in a World of Declining Rates: https://www.thetayf.com/pages/november-13-2024-an-innovative-way-to-generate-income

10/9 Webinar Replay- Crypto for RIAs: Yield, Staking, Lending and Custody. What’s beyond the ETFs? https://dacfp.com/events/crypto-for-rias-yield-staking-lending-and-custody-whats-beyond-the-etfs/

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