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Comment by Beaver117 | Hacker News Reader

I mean we collectively decided in 2020 to trade young people's livelyhoods for old peoples lives

Assuming you are referring to covid lockdowns, you are mis-using the term "livelihood", which is the "means of securing the basic necessities (food, water, shelter and clothing) of life". Young people were not deprived of food, water, shelter, and clothing due to covid lockdowns.

Young people have parents and grandparents. Pitting age groups against each other is mistaken, short-sighted, and self-destructive. We're all in this together. This isn't Logan's Run. It would be psychopathic for young people to not care about the fate of their elders. Also, they're going to become elders themselves someday.

"We're all in it together" means nothing when you get shafted the most but ok

Who do you think got shafted the most, younger people schooling from home for a couple years, or older people literally dying?

I thought we're talking about young people, not --toddlers-- children, for Christ's sake

We are. Toddlers don't go to school, so they didn't miss any school during the pandemic.

Fortunate toddlers do go to school. Lots of babies and toddlers only get interaction with other children in daycare, which I assume provides some developmental benefit.

The subject of the submitted article is teenage unhappiness, so this seems like a tangent. Are toddlers unhappy? I don't know.

Yes, it was a tangent, but just wanted to point out that, for many in the US at least, it is not like decades ago when kids were out playing in the neighborhood. It is very possible that most, if not all, social interaction between kids happens in daycare, school, gym classes, or otherwise supervised get togethers.

I'm not against taking measures during a pandemic so that people don't die brother I just think taking and taking and giving absolutely nothing in return is a little disrespectful and your sharp debating skills won't make me any less empathetic for young people

> I'm not against taking measures during a pandemic so that people don't die

But I was talking about taking measures during a pandemic so that people don't die, because I was replying to this comment: "we collectively decided in 2020 to trade young people's livelyhoods for old peoples lives".

Thus, changing the subject in your reply to me seems strange, unhelpful, and unfair.

No one is pitting age groups against each other, it is just math due to drastically reduced fertility rates. There exists a point where society’s resources, including young people’s labor, is disproportionately benefiting the old.

I would even go so far as to say the asset price inflation and currency devaluation that is afflicting the developed countries is governments transferring a greater and greater proportion of the working population’s productivity to the non working population.

> No one is pitting age groups against each other

Comment I was replying to: "we collectively decided in 2020 to trade young people's livelyhoods for old peoples lives"

Sorry, I meant that the while it was not necessarily the political calculus, the fact remains that some things can be beneficial for one age group that are detrimental to other age groups.

Where this gets interesting is when half the population does not have kids, will population wide wealth transfer from working to non working be sufficiently politically popular?

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