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You keep attempting to avoid the fact that you must tie losses to a specific entity being lost. You lose productivity because a specific person is no longer bei

You keep attempting to avoid the fact that you must tie losses to a specific entity being lost. You lose productivity because a specific person is no longer being productive. It's as simple as that. In the case of low birth rates, you are getting productivity losses at the tail end. That's where specific productivity is being lost. Where you seem to be getting tied up is that normally that loss would be offset by gains of new productivity -- a 100% or greater population replacement rate, aka a growing population. Think of it like accounting for stock at tax time. You can't just "sell stock". You have to sell a specific stock that you bought at a specific time for a specific basis. And if you had a loss on that sale, it is immutably and forever a loss. You can, however, offset a loss by selling a different stock for a gain.

thaumasiotes 9y ago
> You keep attempting to avoid the fact that you must tie losses to a specific entity being lost. You lose productivity because a specific person is no longer being productive. It's as simple as that. This is a delusion that exists only in your own mind. You don't have to account gains and losses separately; most of the time you want to net them out, because you only care about the difference. Net losses are still losses -- that's why they're called "losses". Think of it like accounting for mutual fund shares on an average cost basis.
- jdmichal 9y ago
  It's fine to talk about net gains and losses. But you keep talking about those, while at the same time attributing the losses to a lack of young people. But that's not where the losses are coming from. There may have been gains predicted there that didn't materialize, but that's still not where the actual losses are coming from. You want to talk about average cost basis, but then you keep saying that you lost money because investment X only gained +$Y instead of +$(Y+Z). Which is wrong. You lost money because you had other investments that lost money. Investment X gained value; it just wasn't enough to offset those other losses.

thaumasiotes 9y ago

> You keep attempting to avoid the fact that you must tie losses to a specific entity being lost. You lose productivity because a specific person is no longer being productive. It's as simple as that. This is a delusion that exists only in your own mind. You don't have to account gains and losses separately; most of the time you want to net them out, because you only care about the difference. Net losses are still losses -- that's why they're called "losses". Think of it like accounting for mutual fund shares on an average cost basis.

jdmichal 9y ago
It's fine to talk about net gains and losses. But you keep talking about those, while at the same time attributing the losses to a lack of young people. But that's not where the losses are coming from. There may have been gains predicted there that didn't materialize, but that's still not where the actual losses are coming from. You want to talk about average cost basis, but then you keep saying that you lost money because investment X only gained +$Y instead of +$(Y+Z). Which is wrong. You lost money because you had other investments that lost money. Investment X gained value; it just wasn't enough to offset those other losses.