Imagine living in a magical kingdom with a full staff of servants, servants whose sole purpose it is to indulge your every whim. Sound good so far? It only gets better. These servants work around the clock, feed you, bathe you, and best of all, ask nothing in return.

Our paradise is real, and you don’t have to live right or praise an invisible man, goat, or deity to visit. This wonderland exists in just about every city, town, and burg on the map. Chances are you have at least one relative in this modern Shangri-La. This heaven is the rehabilitation center, or barring euphemisms, the great American nursing home.

I’ll admit that my description omitted a couple of minute details. Those servants whose sole job it is to dote on you are actually nurses and nurses’ aids. Don’t let the title deceive you, however; these philanthropists are charged with the indulgence of your every need … so long as that need is physical and pertinent to your continued life. They’ll feed you at scheduled intervals, help you to the potty when they see fit, and ask for nothing in return … so long as those Social Security checks keep comin’. But why bother with minutia? The nursing home is America’s gift to the elderly.

One of the more intriguing facets of America’s gift is its relationship with the sagging economy. Having briefly worked in a fiscally challenged, small-town retirement home, I’ve seen enough of this relationship to develop a formula for determining the state of our economic languor. For every piece of undercooked bacon served, and for every unexplained bruise on an elderly resident’s body, healthcare providers are roughly eight times more apathetic for those they’re providing for. The more apathetic the care providers, the less concern they have for public opinion. Less regard for reputation equals an increased concern for profit, which correlates to the state of the U.S. economy.

It would be an infallible formula, were it not for our cultural phobia of old people. If we had an ideal economy, our grandparents would still be sitting in their own filth and eating raw bacon. If nursing homes cut costs and offered big bucks to their nursing and aid staffs, they’d still suffer from a shortage of qualified personnel. If they screened for drug addicts and thieves, they’d be even shorter. I don’t need any lame equation to explain this one: we’re all afraid of death, so we tuck all reminders of it away in dirty, under-funded death-shacks. And who but the best and worst of people wants to work at the death shack? The love shack, baby, that’s where it’s at.

When I worked for an American gift facility, I found that the people who choose to work as nurses’ assistants often suffer from a deficiency in moral fiber. No, this doesn’t mean that they suffer from the same digestive hardships as those in their care, but it does mean that those in their care suffer from an excess of crap. (And yes, to clarify, I do mean that colloquially.) I’ve known nurses aids who despise the elderly, who insult and degrade them, but stick with the work because the homes pay better than Wal-Mart. And with no Patrick Swayze to watch over them, a la Baby in the seminal Dirty Dancing, the elderly get stuck in a mighty uncomfortable corner by incompetent caregivers.

I doth shamefully profess that America’s gift isn’t very flattering to those who receive it. I know that the adage asks that we not look our prize horses in the mouth, but this prize horse is very, very sick. This would-be stallion we’ve dedicated to our older persons is a sickly mule, suffering from undercooked food, poor treatment, and a bad case of dementia. If anyone presented me with this prize horse now, I’d put it down.

Despite how fantastic our American gift to the elderly seems, bad servants equals bad service. When they cook for you, the food is bland and cold; when they bathe you, they scrub down to the bone; and when they take you to bed, they leave you there. Even if these careless caregivers ask for nothing in return, what of the dignity they take without having to ask? It’s a raw deal, even if you are neck-deep in dementia.

This heaven is an ageist hell with a pretty cloud paint-job. Our matures-only paradise, our diseased mule, this American gift is the Hotel California at heart: “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.” Although at the Hotel America, you don’t even check yourself in; those you love do it for you.

Charles Smith is a native scamp of Southwest Virginia who has had his fair share of interesting jobs.