[xerxesaa]

We have an aging population and many places have a flat birthrate. We need to solve how to deal with this consequences.

Who will care for these people? How will we deal with the consequences of flat population growth? How will we deal with the stock market's expectations of perpetual growth when the underlying population itself is not growing (and especially since productivity has also been relatively flat)?

[ssss11]

This aging topic is very important. Re: stock markets, economies need to shift from eternal $ growth to share holder wallets, to providing equitable outcomes for all people and the planet - that will be very interesting to watch, i can’t see it going well.

[defrost]

Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered

    is a collection of essays published in 1973 by German-born British economist E. F. Schumacher.

    The title *Small Is Beautiful* came from a principle espoused by Schumacher's teacher Leopold Kohr (1909–1994) advancing small, appropriate technologies, policies, and polities as a superior alternative to the mainstream ethos of "bigger is better".

    Overlapping environmental, social, and economic forces such as the 1973 energy crisis and popularisation of the concept of globalisation helped bring Schumacher's *Small Is Beautiful* critiques of mainstream economics to a wider audience during the 1970s.

    In 1995 The Times Literary Supplement ranked *Small Is Beautiful* among the 100 most influential books published since World War II.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful

[nine_k]

This seems somehow unrelated.

It's not about scale, it's about balance. You can run a small an beautiful country with zero economy growth and zero decline, all in a perfect balance, and 70% of population younger than 65. Everything works out.

But when 50% of the population is older than 60, the picture changes a lot; the percentage of economically productive population is much lower, and the need to care for people who can't sustain themselves any more grows. Take a look at how Japan fares today.

[defrost]

Fair point, in hindsight it seems I may have thrown this book recommendation in under the wrong comment.

It's relavant to this Ask HN question at large as we very much need to move away from blind pursuit of unlimited growth in population, resource consumption, waste byproducts, etc. and address the question of how to live well within our means.

Aging population demographics is a challenge, but one that we must address and then move beyond to a move persistent and sustainable low term distribution.

As for the current situation, I am 60, my father was born in 1935 and lives here in the same town as I do. He takes meals on wheels to the older folks who aren't all that mobile (yes, he's almost 88, walks 10km per day, and maintains a 15 km long section of a 1,000 km long walking trail) which is indicative of the entire community which has the highest median age in this country.

There is scope to employ able older people to look after less able older people which gives provides purpose, companionship, and reduces the demand for younger pople in care roles, etc.

This is not a full solution but it is a partial path forward.

[pixl97]

We'll we're going to have to learn how to deal with it.

At the start of the 1900s the world was set for a population boom and overshoot. We went from families having 6-12 children to 2ish children in a few generations. This is going to lead to those 'boom' generations having a far older population and there is not really anything that can be done about this unless you want your population to continue growing forever.

[dools]

You might be interested in the work of Steven Hail and Gabrielle Bond. There's an online course they run through Torrens University that covers a lot of this stuff:

https://www.torrens.edu.au/courses/business/economics

[bequanna]

> to providing equitable outcomes for all people and the planet

The top 10% who hold essentially all the wealth in the world have very little interest in that goal.

[ssss11]

Yep 100% agree. Unfortunately

[candiodari]

Problem is, if you're being fair, the 90% bottom that will actually have to do the work, also don't want to care for elderly.

A decent fraction would need to become nurses, and frankly, with less pay/worse conditions than they currently get. A small fraction will need to study a lot more so more treatments can be provided, which requires doctors and researchers. And we'll all have to do with less (much less) because this will cost a lot even disregarding wages.

[atoav]

Given limited resources exponential growth will always hit saturation. It is time we structure out economic systems in a way that aknowledge this reality.

[TheFreim]

> We need to solve how to deal with this consequences.

I'm hoping that we start to see an increase in pro-family policies. A couple rough ideas to look into would be decreasing taxation (or giving refunds/payments) based on how many children a productive family has, providing financial support so families can buy homes, and promoting wage increases so a single income can support a family to allow one to work and the other to focus on raising the children.

[hayst4ck]

Housing policy is dead simple (not easy): build more homes.

The problem is, when you build more homes, the price of homes go down.

Great for people that want homes and people who are just joining the workforce. Not great for grandma and her retirement planning.

If you frame your housing policy around anything but building more, then housing is fundamentally zero sum. If it is zero sum, that means those couples with a children are being subsidized at the cost of that 20 year old new grad or people who earn minimum wage without a family. Those people look at their finances or their mental health and make decisions about their future. So if people new to the work force are subsidizing those with children you could be harming their mental health to the point where they don't want children.

Why would any sane person bring children into a world that is almost guaranteed to be worse for their children than it is for them? I wouldn't.

So from a systems thinking point of view, the only cogent housing policy is to build more homes.

[TheFreim]

> Great for people that want homes and people who are just joining the workforce. Not great for grandma and her retirement planning.

I think policies that encourage families from passing their property down to their children rather than being used as an investment vehicle should definitely be considered. The strategy of buying a home young and dumping it later seems to cause bad behaviors that result in families spreading out which prevents a healthy familial support network to form.

[reducesuffering]

> providing financial support so families can buy homes

You mean building more homes. If there's X homes, and Y families get 10% subsidy, they're all still buying the same X homes for 10% more. (roughly)

[TheFreim]

Not mutually exclusive. More homes + making it easier for families specifically to get a home.

[shortrounddev2]

We should subsidize supply, not demand

[shortrounddev2]

I see people always talking about the economics of starting a family, but they're missing the real reason for low birth rates: opportunity cost borne by women.

Women who choose to have a child put their careers back several years at the age when they are making the most important advancements in their careers. They choose not to have children because doing so doesn't just mean they have to pay a bunch of money in childcare costs, it means they will likely never achieve the dreams and goals they set for themselves. It will become much harder for them to travel, climb the corporate ladder, create things, and be someone. Many women want to achieve all these things and then have children later in life, but it becomes biologically infeasible for them to do so.

This is harder to solve. We can force maternity policies with hiring mandates, but that would be VERY expensive for smaller businesses (having to pay 2 salaries to get the work of 1 for a year or more).

I'm just not sure what other policies exist to solve the opportunity cost issue. You can give people as much cash as you want but government can't give away free self-actualization

[xerxesaa]

I lived in Singapore for a little while and this was one thing I noticed they did there. For example, by giving preference in subsidized housing to people who were married and further preference to those who had kids.

In the U.S. (and broadly, the western world) we seem to have a really hard time using economic incentives to encourage certain behaviors. I think it's partially because we don't want to implicitly judge a given lifestyle choice as better than another.

However, I think there is much we can learn from a place like Singapore. Singapore simply does not stick to any single political dogma - they choose a mishmash of policies based on the outcome they want to achieve.

[carlosjobim]

That is a down-right evil idea, in my opinion. It means those who cannot find partners to make families are further punished, making their chances to create families even lower. They're turned to a literal slave caste to provide for other people's families.

Remove taxation on young and productive people instead if you want to help them create families.

[TheFreim]

> It means those who cannot find partners to make families are further punished, making their chances to create families even lower.

Incentivization of family formation would push people to get married, it would not make family formation less likely. The entire point of incentivizing a behavior through providing benefits is to make it easier for people who partake in that behavior, therefore drawing people to it.

> They're turned to a literal slave caste to provide for other people's families.

I'm single, and due to various factors it's unlikely I'll be getting married in the immediate future. I'm one of the people who would be "punished" by my "down-right evil idea" but I still think it's good. Economic pressure would definitely make me more invested, not less, in getting married sooner. Calling this a creation of a "literal slave caste" is an extreme emotional exaggeration since I'm definitely not calling for myself to be enslaved by any meaningful usage of the term.

[carlosjobim]

The end result is that a class of people live and die to provide for others. That's against nature, unless we reduce ourselves to the existence of ants.

Down-right evil is what the consequences would be, but I retract that comment regarding the idea itself, because I don't think any malice is intended.

Economic incentivizing by the government often have awful side effects. Let me make a comparison: Business is good for the economy and nation. Therefore the government should incentivize people to have businesses. Let's therefore give a million dollars to every successful business owner. We take the money by taxing those who don't have businesses.

I think most do not like that idea, but it's basically the same thing.

Let's not pit young people against each other furthermore.

[thfuran]

Houses are against nature. That doesn't mean they're bad.

[TheFreim]

I don't agree with the person your replying to but its clear that they aren't using "nature" to mean "things happening outside" or "things happening to non-humans". When people say "against nature" almost always they are saying that something runs contrary to the nature of man in such a way as to inhibit an ordering towards flourishing. Against nature means something not conducive to the proper ordering of the human person, so a house is not in principle "against nature" since it acts in accord with human nature and furthers human flourishing rather than frustrating our natural faculties.

[yieldcrv]

> How will we

By adjusting which price to earnings multiple we want to tolerate, just like we always do

Or take a bearish position if it happens to match your risk tolerance at the time

The stock market will be fine, people will trade shares, who cares if the market price is greater or less than today’s

[Denatured9654]

aging population who accumulated a lot of wealth. so that'll take care

[orlin_georgiev]

Wealth is just paper and bits in a database if there is nobody to hire to take care of you in old age