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Comment by kemotep | Hacker News Reader

What does shifting the services from the old to the young actually mean?

> Older generations, who benefit most from fiscal redistribution (via taxes and transfers), are significantly wealthier than younger generations. Wealth poverty is significantly lower for older generations. Moreover, the wealth ratio of older to younger cohorts is relatively high in Japan compared with Germany and Italy, though lower than in the United States. The evidence thus points to significant wealth inequality across generations.

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2020/03/shr...

It's not a unique Japan problem tbf. The young people are getting shafted all over the world.

This does not answer the question, what does the redistribution of services from the old to the young looks like.

If the issue is wealth disparity, then why only target the elderly not the young people who are wealthy as well?

Where do wealthy young people come from? You mean the one who inherited the wealth from their parents? Or do you mean income tax? Well the income tax is usually far higher than capital gain isn't it?

Speaking for myself, the motivation for such thoughts mostly stems from treating wealth as a reward for work. Which is not crazy, it's similar to the labor theory of value. Or if you prefer, incentivizing work means more work will get done, and work always needs to get done. There are valid reasons from a number of perspectives to valorize and reward work.

And the elderly largely don't work, because they can't anymore.

Shifting services means the elderly will get poorer. Which given the high wealth level they have in developed countries relative to the young is not a catastrophe. However it would be a huge adjustment to expectations downward, since the elderly would have the rug pulled out from under them. Whereas the young haven't yet had a chance to adjust their expectations up since they haven't had money yet. Hence the political settlement.

For a prosaic example, in many US states funding for public universities has been cut to pay for public sector pensions in the past thirty years. This has shifted educational costs to the young in exchange for maintaining the benefits of retirees. This is an example of shifting services from young to old.

Frankly, shifting money around might not do anything.

The actual amount of goods and services produced will be lesser and/or be stretched thinner.

The only real way to combat it is to import young people from places with a mostly young population and getting them productive to make up for the productivity shortfall.

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