THEY CALL IT A DEATH SHORTAGE--
I CALL IT INCREASING ELDER CLOUT.

"In the scientists' projections, the ongoing increase in average lifespan is about to be joined by something never before seen in human history: a rise in the maximum possible age at death.

Stem-cell banks, telomerase amplifiers, somatic gene therapy—the list of potential longevity treatments incubating in laboratories is startling. Three years ago a multi-institutional scientific team led by Aubrey de Grey, a theoretical geneticist at Cambridge University, argued in a widely noted paper that the first steps toward 'engineered negligible senescence'—a rough-and-ready version of immortality—would have 'a good chance of success in mice within ten years.' The same techniques, De Grey says, should be ready for human beings a decade or so later. 'In ten years we'll have a pill that will give you twenty years,' says Leonard Guarente, a professor of biology at MIT. 'And then there'll be another pill after that. The first hundred-and-fifty-year-old may have already been born.'

Even this relatively slow rate of increase, he says, will radically alter the underpinnings of human existence. 'Pushing the outer limits of lifespan' will force the world to confront a situation no society has ever faced before: an acute shortage of dead people."

I don't know about you, but I'm ready to wield some collective wisdom.

The Coming Death Shortage