Nordic countries need more babies to fund their system

[cytg111]

Do you honestly think the majority of South America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle-East will ever get to that point?

Yes?

 

[Jhhnn]

From your 10m. You pulled that as an example, yes? I was following through on that idea.

We have met our obligations by covering our debts through growth. For example, and using real numbers, the United States has picked up an additional 100 million people in my life time. If current immigration trends continue, we'll easily pick up another 100 million people before I am a senior. I personally think that is devastating to our environment AND I believe we can achieve robust economic models that do not demand such growth from us.

We can't do that while indulging infinite greed at the top the way we have from Reagan forward. That indulgence is the basis for trickle down economics & very much a part of what conservatives believe in. It's definitely the basis for recent GOP tax cuts & deficits, bet on that.

Can't figure it out? Our billionaire President bragged on national TV that he didn't pay federal income tax because he's smart & the crowd cheered. His fellow mega-rich aren't much different, either.

It passes for patriotism on the right, apparently.

 

[alcoholbob]

Do you honestly think the majority of South America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle-East will ever get to that point?

South America? Argentina is at 2.29, Chile is at 1.77, and Brazil is at 1.73, Uruguay is at 2.0, Columbia is at 1.85. That's 80% of the population of South America already below replacement on average.

 

[pmv]

The topic isn't 'the welfare state' so much as specifically, pensions, surely?

If people stop having many children and the proportion of pensioners to those of working-age increases, that is going to cause stresses.

But that applies even if you don't have a welfare state at all. Pensions that are 'paid for' in free-market terms still require young people to do the actual work. Pensions do not consist of vast stockpiles of tins of baked-beans that the elderly can then live off. Doesn't matter if you've put money aside, if in the future there are too few young people to actually make use of that stored capital to produce the things you need you are going to have a problem.

Another issue is to ask _why_ people aren't having children. The cost of housing and childcare has to be part of that. (Though maybe it's just that children are intrinsically annoying, of course, though that would suggest that evolution has gone wrong somewhere.)

Plus there's an argument to just delay pensionable age, and oblige people to work for longer (which the UK certainly is doing). If work was less unpleasant and if people could reach that age in better health that would be easier. A problem there is that how healthy older people are is very dependent on their social class.

And finally there's the fact that countries can try to get round the problem by accepting more migrants. That's why Sweden doesn't in fact have this problem even while Norway does. And it's probably not a coincidence that Germany has been facing a huge slump in birth-rates (it's running out of Germans) and has been especially generous to refugees. Clearly there are all sorts of problems with outsourcing baby-production though. I'm absolutely not anti-immigration, but I don't think it's a completely harmless or 'natural' process either, and it does depend on having poorer countries to poach young and healthy people from.

I don't know what the answer is, but it's not purely a problem for social-democracies, and it's not clear that it's an insurmountable problem and it's not a 'Ponzi scheme'.

 

[pmv]

Not content. I think we could reach a point where resources are not a constraint. I think that is very far off. Closer is basic items such as food, water, shelter, education will get to a price that is effectively 0.

I don't really see a lot of evidence for that. Some, but not a lot.

Shelter, for example, generally requires land. Land is in limited supply, and the cost has in fact been rising in many places as the wealthy buy up a larger-and-larger share of it. The cost of water, in this country, has risen due to the privatisation of the water companies, meaning they are free to extract profits from something people can't survive without, and in a "market" where there is almost no competition.

One of the things that destabilised Syria was a big increase in food prices - some have argued that was due to climate change. Whether that is the case or not, climate-change, if not addressed, will probably lead to an increase in costs for that item generally.

Education...maybe. Information is more easily accessible now than it has been for much of human history, that seems to be true. Though that also is the case for misinformation.

Though sometimes it seems as if better communication leads to more, and angrier, and stupider conflicts (case-in-point - the Taliban destroying Buddha statues in Afghanistan leading to anti-Muslim riots in Myanmar...in past times the Burmese would not have known about the actions of the Taliban...maybe if none of us could communicate with each other we'd all get on much better? Certainly seems to work that way with some of my family)

What _has_ gone down in price is not those basic items, it's the consumer trinkets and the technology of entertainment and distraction. Also communication. Probably because there are far more minds at work on developing that stuff now than there used to be. In that sense increasing population has benefits, more human minds at work, more specialisation. But it seems to have more effect in some areas than in others, technological progress seems very uneven.

 

[Vic]

Funny thing, the youth complaining about having to pay old peoples' pensions today will be the retired old people complaining about the lazy youth tomorrow.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Overall quality post pmv

The topic isn't 'the welfare state' so much as specifically, pensions, surely?

If people stop having many children and the proportion of pensioners to those of working-age increases, that is going to cause stresses.

But that applies even if you don't have a welfare state at all. Pensions that are 'paid for' in free-market terms still require young people to do the actual work. Pensions do not consist of vast stockpiles of tins of baked-beans that the elderly can then live off. Doesn't matter if you've put money aside, if in the future there are too few young people to actually make use of that stored capital to produce the things you need you are going to have a problem.

Depends. Is the pension fund dependent upon other people contributing it as the basis of paying retirees out? If so, yes, that's going to have a problem.

Retirement should NEVER have dependencies on others. It's one thing to depend on the market (appreciation of funds), it's another to depend on the contributions of other people. I have to see an example of where that is long-term sustainable. You are correct in asserting that it's a Ponzi-scheme.

This is why people should honestly show more appreciation for the US moving to the 401k model. You won't be seeing advocating for tax hikes, or unions lobbying to fix their funds that they fucked up.

Another issue is to ask _why_ people aren't having children. The cost of housing and childcare has to be part of that. (Though maybe it's just that children are intrinsically annoying, of course, though that would suggest that evolution has gone wrong somewhere.)

Good question. I've often contemplated that myself. I think it's a blender mix of people working too much (remember, it used to be just 1 of the parents working), along with ridiculous rules and regulations that lead to very high costs of having children. There is no doubt that the high costs definitely plays a part of it - as someone that just recently went through it. Good thing I had health insurance, I want to say our final hospital bill was ~$2m.

Plus there's an argument to just delay pensionable age, and oblige people to work for longer (which the UK certainly is doing). If work was less unpleasant and if people could reach that age in better health that would be easier. A problem there is that how healthy older people are is very dependent on their social class.

Work is a major contributor to people BEING unhealthy is part of the problem as well. Expecting people to just live longer (I agree) is ridiculous.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Funny thing, the youth complaining about having to pay old peoples' pensions today will be the retired old people complaining about the lazy youth tomorrow.

Maybe they would rather just not be in that position and would rather fix the problem instead of putting a incy-wincy bandaid on the GUSHING GINORMOUS wound.

 

[biostud]

Or we can just keep raising pension age, which we do.

 

[Vic]

Maybe they would rather just not be in that position and would rather fix the problem instead of putting a incy-wincy bandaid on the GUSHING GINORMOUS wound.

That wound is the problem of not enough people saving enough money for their retirement. And as the youth are by far the worst culprits of that, they are the problem not the fix.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Or we can just keep raising pension age, which we do.

Kinda hard to justify when the average age is starting to actually going in reverse...

 

[cytg111]

Kinda hard to justify when the average age is starting to actually going in reverse...

Because you guys are so busy going for the Vlad model of governmentship

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...utin-world-cup-distraction-laws-a8402576.html

Keep pounding that Fox shit into the skulls of the conservatives, move every single penny to the top and cancel obama care, medicare, ACA, foodstamps etc... You guys are doing great.

 

[biostud]

Kinda hard to justify when the average age is starting to actually going in reverse...

Not here AFAIK, and if it is then we don't have a problem.