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This ties into the larger problem of Western democracies generally degenerating into gerontocracies. Older voters can form a bloc protecting pensions and pensio
by stupidcar 9y ago
This ties into the larger problem of Western democracies generally degenerating into gerontocracies. Older voters can form a bloc protecting pensions and pensioner-directed state-benefits that no politician dare take on.
The results of this is a political trap without an easy exit: Impose punitive taxes on the working population and you'll strangle the economy and incite capital flight and outright rebellion. Form a consensus with other mainstream politicians to slash pensions and benefits, and you'll push the pensioner voting bloc into the arms of whatever extremists promise to protect their interests. And you can't allow large-scale immigration to correct the demographic imbalance and raise tax revenues, because the same pensioner voting bloc is also rabidly anti-immigration.
Brexit was a first taste of this: The 1997 Labour government saw the demographic and revenue crisis coming and thought EU migration was a solution. But the long-term result was to inspire an anti-immigration and anti-EU movement amongst older voters that has forced the country out of the EU. In Germany you see the same forces at work with the rise of AFD, and in France with the FN. This is going to get a lot worse before it gets any better.
- hkmurakami 9y agoYou've perfectly described Japan. And honestly they're more anti immigration than any western country!
- dmm 9y ago> generally degenerating into gerontocracies. Solution: You can't vote your first 17 years and you can't vote your last 17 years. The average life expectancy in the US is ~78 years so you can't vote after 61, periodically adjusted for changes in avg. life expectancy.
- DINKDINK 9y agoAre you proposing taxation without representation or that people after 61 wouldn't be taxed?
- PurpleBoxDragon 9y agoOnly to the same extent those under 18 are taxed.
- mattmanser 9y agoFunny thing is that 20 years ago all the history and economics text books when I was at school were talking about growth and how it was going to stop soon. But since the politicians invented mass immigration that conversation has seemingly disappeared. Politicians have engineered a massive ethnic and cultural shift inside their own countries without asking anyone just to keep infinite growth going, which doesn't sound like it'll work long term and has resulted in the rise of the right. It's pretty insane what they've done, apparently a 1/3 of all children today in the UK have at least one immigrant parent.