[_bxg1]

There's a short-term problem of society becoming "top-heavy", where there might not be enough young to pay for the continued care of the old. But in the long run this seems like a win. I wonder what impact it might have on climate projections.

[zanny]

Pretty much every western civilization on Earth is fully capable of providing a minimum standard of living to its entire population today, let alone just a larger chunk of the pie elder group in half a century.

Its an active and intentional decision not to do so. Unless society collapses and the knowledge of how modern mass production works to produce so much plenty evaporates it will continue to take a tiny percentage of the whole population to provide the resources needed to survive to the rest.

We should be expecting a technological singularity before 2100, not some dystopia where all wealth evaporates and the only people with money left are under 30s who get to work 80 hours a week farming rice for grandma.

[efficax]

what does it mean to "pay for" the continued care of the old.

Unless we have such a population implosion that we can no longer produce food or run our factories, then we don't need to "pay for" anything. We can simply decide to distribute the resources necessary for the care of the old.

The real cost of everything is the labor required to produce it, not the dollar value it receives in a market place. I don't think anyone is talking about a complete collapse in the labor pool.

[mlyle]

Yes, but e.g. Japan faces a big problem where the labor pool will be a small part of the population, with a big noticeable slice involved in elder care. If current plans to automate large amounts of this work (and I worry that automating it could be horribly dystopian) do not succeed it will be a large problem. (Not to mention other types of resources that those not in the labor force consume besides direct care).

[_bxg1]

Pensions, social security, etc. The point is that the "active economy" will shrink beneath what was expected for those systems to function for the number of elderly they will end up having.

[young_unixer]

A big part of that problem is that most nations have a pension system where the active work force pays for the pension of the elder instead of each person paying their own pension by saving/investing troughout their lives.

[snowwrestler]

Government and private retirement strategies both rely on cash transfers from younger workers. In a government system, the younger workers pay taxes which are transferred to retirees. In a private retirement system, younger workers are the purchasing counterparties as retirees sell off their investments.

Retirement financing in general relies on future economic growth for future cashflow. That said, you don't necessarily need a growing population to make it work. If the population declines 15%, but the average worker's productivity goes up 20% during that time, you still come out ahead.

[logicchains]

>Government and private retirement strategies both rely on cash transfers from younger workers. In a government system, the younger workers pay taxes which are transferred to retirees. In a private retirement system, younger workers are the purchasing counterparties as retirees sell off their investments.

The core unit of the economy is not cash, it's value. Saving roughly corresponds to avoiding consumption and preserving value; in a very basic economy, this would take the form of e.g. preserving grain in a granary rather than eating it all. People or government savings systems that save for retirement are then able to consume the value they saved when they retire; they don't require any value transfer from the working population.

[snowwrestler]

In a society that wishes to support people who are not producing value, the people who are producing value will need to overproduce.

Whether you measure the overage in units of lifetime granaries, or running annual surpluses, is primarily an accounting choice.

As a practical matter, it's impossible for one farmer to save up enough food to span their entire retirement. Storage is an expense, and food goes bad eventually. The concept of a retirement is only possible in a society that transacts value regularly.

[kmonsen]

Yeah but we have money that can be stored and anyone that is old and have reserves of money will be treated and get food etc.

Society doesn’t reward you based on the value you produce but based on how much fictional currency you have. This could be entirely granted to you for example in a a lottery and you never produced anything of value.

[imtringued]

Money spoils (aka inflation) just as much as food does. To maintain the value of your money you have to actively utilize it in the economy by investing it. This is not a flaw. It is necessary to keep the economy running. Otherwise we would see Scrooge McDuck in real life.

[philipkglass]

You can't store medical workers in a silo for later. That's the big problem. Older people don't need to eat more but they do need more attention from nurses and doctors.

[mr_woozy]

You'd still need someone to sell that 20% more product (or service) your worker is producing and with 15% less people your entire market has just shrunk.

[imtringued]

That money is worthless if it is not backed by a young labor force that can produce what the pensioners need. There are not many things that you can buy during your 30s and keep using in your 80s.

Think of a reverse Corona virus that only kills the young. Retirees have lots of money but the shops and factories are closed.

[hiccuphippo]

But then our lifespans are getting longer and longer so we might be able/doomed to work forever and not need that pension.

[imtringued]

The system was obviously designed for a "reasonable" amount of retirement from 5 to 10 years. Nowadays everyone is exceeding that despite a raised retirement age.

[toomuchtodo]

Saving and investing is ineffective if everyone’s investment returns (assuming there’s any returns to be had with productivity slowing and economies stagflating, note the monetary policy in Japan and Europe) are chasing the same limited pool of healthcare and caregiver labor.

The only solutions are technology or rationing care.

[kmonsen]

The key is who saves/invests the most and they will have access. This is how it works with everything in capitalism and this is the only efficient way we know of distributing resources.

[epx]

The boomers will have to accept a haircut. This is a matter of time.

[silisili]

The boomers will be dead long before the system shocks itself. Probably the tail end of Gen Xers or Millenials that will get royally screwed, if I had to guess.

[iso947]

Of course, screwed by boomers, then screwed by the those born today.

[imtringued]

I don't really think so. It's the parents who decided to have fewer children and be against immigration (mostly the US and UK). If they are really getting screwed then they can always open their countries up for immigrants.

[Gibbon1]

I'd like to see an accounting of the real resources (not money) that elderly require vs children and young to middle aged adults. I'm suspicious because it sounds much like the undue burden tripe you hear about disabled people.

[sk5t]

At least in the US, expenses in later life seem not too bad, until the last 3-5 years--at which point healthcare cost absolutely blows everything out of the water. Like, more healthcare cost in one week at 85 than an entire year at 50. Especially once a person is unable to safely walk to the bathroom or prepare a simple meal without falling. Meds, ambulance transport, non-emergency wheelchair transport, rental of various equipment, home health aides, physical therapy, speech therapy, rehab or nursing care, palliative care. The costs are just stupefying.

Edit: I've replied mostly along the lines of the financial costs, but the human service component is by far the largest part of it, that's the main resource consumed.

[Gibbon1]

I was thinking more along retired or semi-retired. But yes end of life is a thing. Even then people 'sounding the alarm' about the ratio of workers to retirees 'plummeting' are way overstating things. Over the next thirty years the percentage of people over 65 is going to double and then level off.

The source of the panic is the 'exponential growth forever' dingbats being confronted by a reality they don't like.

[cheez]

Why does it seem like a win?

[arp242]

The planet is of finite size, so unlimited growth was clearly never an option. The question is, what is the best population size, and how do we get to that level?

[cheez]

There are natural growth levels I'm sure.

[toomuchtodo]

Less future humans in contention for limited planetary resources.

[cheez]

Are they really limited (edit: with respect to the number of humans)? What makes you say that?

[0xy]

When pension systems run dry or hyperinflation occurs to prop it up (a mathematical certainty), the result is massive depression and an unprecedented decline in progress. When times are tight, nobody is going to care if their power is green or not because they're focused on survival.

Without the young, the house of cards collapses.

[paulcole]

Nobody wants to admit it but the only chance to “win” against climate change is to either drastically reduce the population or invent some magic technology that solves the problem for us.

Advancements in existing technology just aren’t going to be enough at the timeline we’re looking at. Political change is another non-starter because it just won’t happen on a global scale. Then there’s the fact that for the vast majority of people alive today, the Earth’s condition in 50 or 100 years is rightly not even on their radar.