If you are 40, you are one of about 5 people supporting those retired.
When you are retired, there will be about 2 people supporting you.
When you are retired, there will be about 2 people supporting you.
No one working, everyone consuming, so we get either high inflation or high debt. If high inflation, old people need a strong welfare state or they die, so we get high debt. Young people need to pay for the debt of their elders, so high taxes. Productivity plummets because taxes are high and tax revenue decreases. Life gets worse for everyone.
One escape is that we have to drastically increase the retirement age. Getting rid of a welfare state wouldn't help, because they would still be consuming without being productive. Another solution is that we kill all old people. Another possibility is that innovation allows us to make investments that drastically increase productivity, but that's not guaranteed either.
As the problem gets worse, I think we will see this play out in formerly wealthy European countries and Asia, as their aging populations are further ahead than the US. Great opportunity for the US and third world countries to seize economic power from these places though.
You misspelled psychopathic.
Drastically increasing the retirement age only makes sense to us keyboard jockeys who rarely even see physical labor up close. Data shows that people in physical jobs start to break down physically in their mid 40s. It's silly to think that these people are going to work until they are 75.
> Another solution is that we kill all old people
I mean, let's be frank. We're talking about killing poor old people. Have you looked at Congress lately?
We need to ask, is our economic system here to serve the human species, or was the human species put on on this planet to serve our (current) economic system? Since modern capitalism has only existed since the Dutch East India Company, I think the answer is obvious.
I do wonder how this squares with the fact that the average age in the skilled trades is 55, and 57 in farming. I know those jobs are more physically demanding, but I always doubt the extent to which blue collar jobs 'ruin your body'. In my experience, the wise old farts in the trades are in much better health than their compatriots in sedentary roles in the office. There's just more opportunities for young bucks to hurt themselves in the trades if they aren't careful and follow proper safety procedures.
That's how it worked for my grandparent's generation, and likely most others before that. So not really that silly (but still sad). It'd be great to adjust the work so it's not as destructive. I don't think adjusting to earlier retirement isn't really an option based on history (retirement is a recent thing).
Yeah, modern capatism may not be great for society in general. But how does it compare with the prior models, like monarchy? Or even things like socialism? Seems like corruption and human nature ruins even the best theoretical systems.
But what about the other 3 grandparents?
Sorry, after you did it twice I couldn't help myself.
Now, I'm no different than most people. I am extremely apathetic about our situation as well. However, it's still soul sucking to realize I'm contributing to the path we're on while feeling like there is nothing I can do.
Feels bad :/
Many Baby Boomers went through something similar in the 1970s when the last of the radical political movements with teeth died down. They retreated into themselves and started viewing the crumbling world around them (e.g., late 1970s NYC) as "beautiful".
Much of the requirement for individual people to remain productive is largely unnecessary. Clothes, fruit, vegetables, medicine, etc.
Its not even theoretical. We just put the value of one's private property(not personal) and Capital over the value of general well being.
They won't have a choice. The smaller the proportion of workers, the fewer resources we have to spread around. We can tax people up to 100% of all the wealth not needed for them to survive, but if communist experiments in the 20th century are any indication, that will only decrease economic prosperity.
> I mean, let's be frank. We're talking about killing poor old people. Have you looked at Congress lately?
No, realistically we're not killing anyone because old people are the most powerful voting block. Their power will only increase as the population ages. More likely we're going to force young people to carry out debt.
> We need to ask, is our economic system here to serve the human species, or was the human species put on on this planet to serve our (current) economic system? Since modern capitalism has only existed since the Dutch East India Company, I think the answer is obvious.
This would be a problem in any economic system. But I want to put it back to you: should young people work to serve the economic system of old people? Should we force young people into servitude by spending money on their behalf? This wasn't a big problem when there weren't many old people, but with an aging population we're demanding a lot more from them.
We're not crushing young people with social security taxes. We're crushing them with wages that can't pay their bills, with or without social security taxes deducted.
There are limits to how much you can redistribute. People will simply stop producing taxable income.
> We're not crushing young people with social security taxes. We're crushing them with wages that can't pay their bills, with or without social security taxes deducted.
Never said we were. But if the population continues to age like we see in places like Japan, we will very quickly find ourselves with huge social security bills.
But only once. After that, nobody will lend to them, at least not at reasonable interest rates.
But if done intentionally, with a warning to the citizens that from here on, taxes will have to pay for expenses, it is quite doable for a country like the US to get out of almost any debt trap, at the expense of bond holders.
Keep in mind, there are very few signs that the US is going to balance the budget anytime soon.
At some point, the debt will be so high that lenders lose confidence, especially for 30-year or even 20-year maturity bonds, and at that point, there is very little time left to turn the ship.
Much of the supply of labor shortage that has led to inflation is in the food services, construction, landscaping industries; Of which, the US uses h2b migrant visa to seasonally fulfill some of; but that has led us to competition amongst the states, with a high fee, low local reinvestment rate.
It works only for rich diverse countries (US, Canada). For countries like South Korea or Japan, it would be painful for those societies to bring in a huge number migrants they need.
How would this even be possible, in an economy that is roughly 80% services? All there is to "consume" is the output of someone else's labor. If nobody is working, there is nothing to consume.
If you're under 40 (maybe even 50), wrapping social security income into your retirement calculations is a fool's errand. I'm in my 30's and basically treating it as play money. If it's there I might use it to help buy a car or something in my 80s, but I'm assuming I'll get approximately $0 for everything I've paid in supporting today's retirees.
Don't buy it. Don't spread it.
This is trivial. But “some level of benefits” could theoretically mean using all of the nations’s productivity to support the elderly.
The pertinent question is what level of wealth transfer will the working populations tolerate, especially if the current workers believe they will be getting less when it is their turn to receive.
Actually, number of workers per retired person matters A LOT regardless how you look at it.
If you disregard imports, the total amount of goods and services produced per capita goes down. No amount of cash can buy more stuff than is for sale in a market. As more and more money chase less and less stuff, inflation has to go up to compensate.
And these two workers can demand more or less what they wish, while old people get poorer and poorer.
And there is a limit to how far down society will let the pensions of the poorest retired people go, so some way will be found to bring enough cash for them to have at least a little.
Meanwhile, the working people can more or less demand what they want in saleries, if the shortage of workers is great enough. And if the government tries to take a lot from them through taxes, they can always go on strike, move abroad or something similar.
Those with savings but no productivity, who are rich without working, they are fair game in such a society.
The word "boomer" is already a slur used against a generation seen as pulling the ladder up after themselves. And as the number of retired people per worked continues to go up, such thinking will just gain traction.
I'm currently in a phase where the boomers in our family are moving into permanent elderly care, as well as a few that have passed on already. What is striking is their rich support system. Most have several siblings, partners of those siblings, their own children, partners of those children, grandchildren. So there's a relatively large amount of people able to contribute to the care, even if just by doing the occasional visit. If each does a little, that's still plenty for a humane type of care. A lot of this care is done by the women in the family whom in the post-boomer generation still often had the traditional role.
The social care will be dramatically different in the future. Most people have few siblings if any. Few children if any, whom may be less capable to help out as they're busy staying afloat. And most women aren't housewives anymore either.
In other words: you are mostly on your own compared to the current retirees.
Importantly, we should not use this to bash the elderly. Rather we should strive for a world where working two incomes until you're 70 is curtailed. We're over-asking people.
See “American Families Plan” section: