Living longer means more people enjoying later life free from work - having earned that privilege. That should result in more people-hours being devoted to leisure activities, travel and not-so-extreme sports. Longer retirement does, however, mean a heavier drain on the country's money in the form of superannuation.
It also means more doctors are need to cater for a burgeoning older population; more age-related surgical procedures mean fewer medical resources are available to go round.
But, most of all, it means more older people to whinge about the younger generations and the changes that have ruined society.
As we accelerate toward our twilight years, we find more things to complain about - some with good reason - and less to appreciate in modern living. We compare, often unfairly, our own childhoods with those of today's youngsters, finding fault and blaming it all on lack of discipline/political correctness/the price of milk, or whatever it is we don't like today. That's not to say we're wrong, but to complain is not to set things right.
But for the very old it is a different story.
Once upon a golden age, the older people were the sages, the healers, the oracles, the deep wells of advice and knowledge, there to help and guide the young through the trauma of growing up. People aged with grace and dignity, surrendering quietly their youth and donning with pride, more than resignation, the grey mantle of advancing years.
There were material rewards that came with age, as well as a deep respect from those still enjoying the stamina and strength of their hey-day. The young deferred to the old, tended to their comforts and took their counsel with gratitude.
Now, despite the promise of a long and relatively healthy old age, people fear the numbers clicking over, clinging to the fusty relics of youth and denying, cosmetically, that the old grey mare she ain't what she used to be.
To be young again, or to retain a semblance of youth is an obsession, reflected in sales of anything that promises, Canute-like, to hold back the tide of accumulating days.
But what happens when the waves break through and no amount of denial, grief or anger will hide the physical certainty of oldness? What happens when the cosmetics and the surgery produce grotesque parodies of youth and the child within us emerges wearing a horror mask?
Chances are, there's still a lot of living to do and are we going to waste it raging against the unfairness of time, cold and uncaring in its eternal linear advance? Or will we treasure each grey hair, give each wrinkle a name and count ourselves lucky to have outlived all those appliances with a lifetime guarantee?
As I have learned from the experts, living to 100 and beyond really is all it's cracked up to be, and those who greeted extreme maturity honestly and somewhat gratefully, can still be regarded as keepers of wisdom. They have much to teach us, not about modern living and the facile toys useless technology has given us to play with, but about enjoying each moment of a life of uncertain length, adding to the store of treasured memories every day and leaving regrets by the wayside.
The stories they can tell, if we let them, teach us things that only life has qualified them to impart. We, and those younger, could do much worse than to stop playing silly games for a moment and listen.
