We already know what the next financial crisis is going to be.

No, not student debt. It’ll be something far worse.

In President Joe Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure stimulus package, otherwise known as the American Jobs Plan, about $400 billion is being allocated for elder home care.

Just $400 billion, you say? That may sound like an awful lot, but it’s going to cost a lot more than that in years to come to take care of our mushrooming elderly population.

The crisis is going to be how to pay for the needs of the elderly boomer population. We are going to have a tsunami of gigantic elder-care needs within the decade.

In less than 10 years, some born in the earliest years of the boomer generation, from 1947 to 1963, will be turning older than 80. How are their knees going to feel? How about their hips? How about their mental state?

In a decade, health and housing care by boomers are going to make up a big chunk of senior-care spending. Can you imagine potentially a big segment of the largest demographic in history needing long-term dementia care? Does anybody see what a nightmare that is going to be, in an age when home health care agencies, independent housing organizations, state programs to aid seniors and others will be struggling against all odds to find staffing for aging adults?

At the same time, what is going to happen to Social Security and state elder-care programs if the boomers live into their 100s?

A March 31 White House Fact Sheet spells out the reasoning behind the amount and raises other questions as well:

“Caregivers — who are disproportionally women of color — have been underpaid and undervalued for far too long. Wages for essential home care workers are approximately $12 per hour, putting them among the lowest paid workers in our economy. In fact, one in six workers in this sector live in poverty.

“President Biden is calling on Congress to make substantial investments in the infrastructure of care in our country. Specifically, he is calling on Congress to put $400 billion toward expanding access to quality, affordable home- or community-based care for aging relatives and people with disabilities.

“These investments will help hundreds of thousands of Americans finally obtain the long-term services and support they need, while creating new jobs and offering caregiving workers a long-overdue raise, stronger benefits and an opportunity to organize or join a union and collectively bargain.”

Home care for the elderly is a worthy goal, but should it count as “human infrastructure?” wrote Doyle McManus of the Los Angeles Times.

We cannot negate the importance of human infrastructure.

But $400 billion won’t be remotely enough to take care of the incoming tide of need for an increasingly elderly population.

By the way, according to Newsweek, the package’s $115 billion set aside for improving roads and bridges is just under 6% of the plan’s $2 trillion total in spending.

Is Biden trying to simply do too much?

Perhaps $400 billion for elder care is a step in the right direction. We hope so.

— AA