[worrycue]

You seem to be ignoring his point.

An ever shrinking population of productive people (percentage-wise) is going to have to provide goods and services for an ever growing population of people who can no longer work.

It’s a huge burden. Taxes will be higher - which will have all the associated consequences.

[gloryjulio]

The assumed burden is higher because you are trying to let the young to the shoulder the burden of the old. In Japan(or any other country tbh) the return of the tax values to the young is vastly smaller than the old. Immigration is not gonna solve this problem, that's just delaying the ponzi scheme or push the burden to the other country anyway.

What if we tip the scale to young more and treat them fairer? What if we start moving some of the services to the young instead of the old?

[jackcosgrove]

The only way to tip the scales is to have a baby boom. When populations were youthful and there were very few elderly, democratic societies did not have pension programs. Was that because people were ignorant, selfish, etc? Or was it because the constituency for pensions was small?

Actually my rhetorical question is only half wrong. People, young and old, are selfish. They are however not at all ignorant about who butters their bread. If you want to increase spending on the young, then you need more young to vote for that.

If anything the growing ranks of the elderly guarantee a greater share of public spending will go towards them. From a growth perspective, that's a vicious cycle. From a fairness perspective... well it kinda makes sense that larger cohorts should get more spending in a democratic society. I get there's a lot of nuance, but this is the gist afaict.

[kemotep]

What does shifting the services from the old to the young actually mean?

[gloryjulio]

> Older generations, who benefit most from fiscal redistribution (via taxes and transfers), are significantly wealthier than younger generations. Wealth poverty is significantly lower for older generations. Moreover, the wealth ratio of older to younger cohorts is relatively high in Japan compared with Germany and Italy, though lower than in the United States. The evidence thus points to significant wealth inequality across generations.

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2020/03/shr...

It's not a unique Japan problem tbf. The young people are getting shafted all over the world.

[kemotep]

This does not answer the question, what does the redistribution of services from the old to the young looks like.

If the issue is wealth disparity, then why only target the elderly not the young people who are wealthy as well?

[gloryjulio]

Where do wealthy young people come from? You mean the one who inherited the wealth from their parents? Or do you mean income tax? Well the income tax is usually far higher than capital gain isn't it?

[jackcosgrove]

Speaking for myself, the motivation for such thoughts mostly stems from treating wealth as a reward for work. Which is not crazy, it's similar to the labor theory of value. Or if you prefer, incentivizing work means more work will get done, and work always needs to get done. There are valid reasons from a number of perspectives to valorize and reward work.

And the elderly largely don't work, because they can't anymore.

Shifting services means the elderly will get poorer. Which given the high wealth level they have in developed countries relative to the young is not a catastrophe. However it would be a huge adjustment to expectations downward, since the elderly would have the rug pulled out from under them. Whereas the young haven't yet had a chance to adjust their expectations up since they haven't had money yet. Hence the political settlement.

For a prosaic example, in many US states funding for public universities has been cut to pay for public sector pensions in the past thirty years. This has shifted educational costs to the young in exchange for maintaining the benefits of retirees. This is an example of shifting services from young to old.

[worrycue]

Frankly, shifting money around might not do anything.

The actual amount of goods and services produced will be lesser and/or be stretched thinner.

The only real way to combat it is to import young people from places with a mostly young population and getting them productive to make up for the productivity shortfall.

[throwawaylinux]

I thought I did the opposite of ignore it, which was to address it directly. I acknowledged it was a difficult thing to deal with but that almost all countries will have to soon anyway, and I also also rejected the assertion that it is the "true" problem.

Japan has PPP per capita income more than twice as high as China, 5x India. The idea it can't possibly pay more to take care of its elderly and infirm otherwise its society will collapse is up there with the most ludicrous wall street craziness I've ever heard. And they've already been ousted as shysters, mind you, because they've been repeating the same thing for a generation now. Because what they are really scared of as I said is people waking up to the fact that their pyramid scheme isn't the only way to do things.

Seems to me that by the time we reach a global crunch, countries like Japan that will already be a generation or two into addressing this problem and restructuring their societies and economies to cope without ever increasing population will be in a far better position than those continuing to push unsustainable growth to defer the inevitable.

[ffhhttt]

> most ludicrous wall street craziness I've ever heard

I have heard many more ludicrous things. Japan is already heavily indebted and as relative per capita productivity will decrease significantly while while taxes increase there won’t be necessarily that many incentives for young people to stay in the country further exacerbating the problem.

> their pyramid scheme isn't the only way to do things.

Any suggestions?

> better position than those continuing to push unsustainable growth to defer the inevitable.

Or far worse.

> without ever increasing population

Who said anything about ever increasing population? Why are you even saying that?

The problem is a severe decrease in population accompanied by a similarly severe increase in average age.