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Fair enough. I see where people can get that interpretation from reading what I wrote. But for last clarification allow me to say that I am not arguing that pie is going to be fixed size nor arguing that it can’t be grown. There are many attempts in progress for Korea but they aren’t turning out to be successful that’s all.

Some of the difficulties for growing the pie is listed under what you mentioned as possibility for Korea.

But until Korea can figure out a solution, people will end up fighting for a pie.

Except the term was created to reject the idea that restricting hour of labor will lead to reduction of unemployment. All I am trying to say is that there is restricted number of jobs, and people have to live longer given increased life expectancy plus poor social security in Korea so elder are becoming competitors from the perspective of youth.

I don't particularly disagree with what the term you've introduced me argues. Korea has been trying to actively reduce work hours and etc and it still gets all the problems.

My point in saying that "older people aren't retiring" is that there's limited number of jobs, and companies don't have the capacity to hire all the people (reducing work hour can lead to larger total employment, but the income per person will be reduced so not like it helps much). If companies kept growing, and was able to employ people of all age groups then things would look good. But with no new players expanding the economy it's mostly about older people trying to hang onto their job and younger ones trying to break into what exists.

I totally agree with the fact that economic growth isn't 100% zero-sum. But that's when economy grows and everyone is winning, not when almost everyone is about to lose.

I would attribute the low birth rate to the fact that economic growth has slowed down.

The 20s of this generation are literally the ones that are getting the shorter end of the stick. Imagine yourself being 18 year-old male in South Korea, 80% of highschool graduates go to college, so given the status of the job market you are pretty much forced to go to college unless you are willing to work in a poor environment (as in jobs that don't provide career progression, or pose high risk on personal health).

To add salt to this wound, the college tuition has been hiking. The parental generation of Korea who are in their 50s lived through a time of high economic growth, and education was affordable due to cheaper tuition that could be paid off in short term. Let's say that you take college somewhat seriously, and spend extra year or two after highschool to get into a solid college. You are now 20. After a year you have to serve the military. You are now 23-24, second year in college. After finishing college, you are 26, but there are good amount of people who take year or two off so you will get plenty of 27-28 year old males that have lot of debt, and not much job experience.

Ok, time to get a job. But hey, the job market sucks right now. Older people aren't retiring. Some companies give you contract or internship work but these barely pay for cost of living, and rarely convert to satisfying full-time positions. There were times when college degree meant a guaranteed full-time employment but not anymore. If you managed to land a full-time job after gaining job experience, you're probably 30. To make things better, real estate is spinning out of control so you wouldn't be able to afford a house any time soon. If you asked a person like this about getting married and having children within a year or two... You can't blame them for saying no.

Population kept scaling with the assumption that economic growth will match it, but things have slowed down. It's not like Koreans will go extinct or kill themselves as a whole. But it's the matter of how much is the population going to drop by and whether they can find breakthroughs in the meantime to grow its economic capacities.

As a side note, although people are mainly concerned about teens or young adults when discussing suicide issues, I would like to point out that suicide rate in Korea is exceptionally higher for older people (60+).