| > The elderly can't eat that directly unless they're in a good health and can be put to work on a farm. No but you need fewer farmhands to produce that food than you did 100 years ago. And you'll need even fewer in another 20 years. > the more the elderly, the more GDP you need to divert to them In absolute terms, sure. Proportionately, hopefully not because that would mean we aren't meaningfully increasing productivity anymore. > This makes the balance between the number of people who are working and the number of people who aren't the key factor...Which means the rest of the population gets less and also less gets invested into the future growth. It's a fundamental problem, which doesn't depend on which exact tax you plan to apply. I guess we have to agree to disagree about this. Worker productivity is 6 times what it was 80 years ago. At a high level 1 worker can support 6 times as many retirees as they could in the past. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OPHPBS So if the math worked out then it works out today. |