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> Indeed, we saw lifespans increase by two dozen in the last > 80 or so years and nothing happened at all. Please define "nothing" in your sentence. Lots of co
by caio1982 10y ago
> Indeed, we saw lifespans increase by two dozen in the last
> 80 or so years and nothing happened at all.
Please define "nothing" in your sentence. Lots of countries have been dealing with welfare spending recently due to general aging in their population. If we live two dozen more years that means someone will have to pay for those retirements. I don't know where you live but most developed or developing nations have some sort of government-sponsored retirement/age pension system or welfare program they have to maintain (and is usually paid by the working force alive today).
> The usual arguments about overpopulation don't seem to
> apply to developed countries; if anything it's the
> opposite.
You gotta be kidding. Haven't you ever considered what would happen if a good chunk of the world population magically started to live by the wasteful and consumption driven standards most developed countries have, like the US or Japan (or even Russia)? We still have margin for more people in the planet but certainly not with the so called "developed countries" way of life (energy-wise, amount of garbage produced, pollution emissions etc).
- chimprich 10y ago> If we live two dozen more years that means someone will have to pay for those retirements. You're assuming that we'd just extend life rather than slow or partially reverse ageing as the article describes. You would assume that people would work for longer if this was the case. You may even get a "better" (from an economics point of view) ratio of working life to retirement time.
- conjectures 10y agoThis is important. The demographics issue isn't so much people being old, it's being old and infirm. If advances give us a healthier old age rather than merely a longer one, then they would alleviate rather than exacerbate the problem.