Step 3

Mandatory Euthanasia at 75.

You've lived a long, fruitful existence. Now get the hell off the planet. That's kind of the idea anyway. This comes with a caveat in your favor: Retirement begins at 60. And because the country is spending buttloads keeping people alive, you get to live in luxury your last 15 years. By luxury, I mean comfortably. I haven't quite worked out the specifics of the retirement but there's the skeletal plan.

This solution has several benefits. One being, the money we'll all save by not keeping old people alive. We get sick as we age. Even if we're in good shape, the body is shutting down, and trips to the doctor and perpetual prescriptions take it's monetary toll. And Ensure is not cheap, you don't want to have to budget for that kind of expense.

Also, there are a lot of weird feelings surrounding death; a lot of "why" questions. I'm not saying this plan will eliminate our need to grieve, but it will eliminate our need to make sense of it all. People get so selfish regarding their loved ones. When we're old and decrepit, sometimes we want to die. But our families insist that we cherish life. Well life has been cherished for 80+ years, your grandparent is living in an old folks home and hates it. Why are we content to torture our elderly?

People will live happier lives. How can we be happy knowing when our time is up? Because people tend to put things off for later. You've always wanted to go to Hawaii but the right time has never presented itself. If you know you've only got another 25 years on this planet, are you going to procrastinate getting your shit done? I don't think so. We encounter this method every day in our lives. If you have a paper that must be written but there's no due date, is this a priority? I can tell you from experience, that it's definitely not. Things of little importance will take priority over that goal (oh look! My bathtub needs a scrub. Wow, I haven't taken a Zumba class in ages. You get the idea.) Knowing our expiration date will force us to pursue our dreams. It'll also help us to recognize and appreciate everyone in our lives. We'll remember to tell our family how much we love them more often. And I think our tendency toward ageism will dissipate. How can you be mad at the old sloooowwww dude writing a check for his prune juice in front of you at the grocery? He's only got a few days left, leave him alone!

Won't it be comforting to know how you're going to die? Unless you get reckless at 70, you won't be falling down the stairs to break a hip and being left for dead (here's my fear) or suffering from heat stroke because your AC went out during a heat wave. You can plan a party a few days prior and take comfort in knowing a shot to in your arm will be painless. It's like anesthesia, but you never wake up. Now that doesn't sound so bad right?

Also, this is just an aside, we're not burying you. You're getting cremated. There isn't enough room on God's green earth to bury everyone who was ever born. It's so goddamn selfish to think that a space of land should be dedicated to you FOR ETERNITY.