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The elderly may be a powerful voting block, but the percentage of people over 65 is still relatively low (~15% in the US). Even in countries with ageing populat

The elderly may be a powerful voting block, but the percentage of people over 65 is still relatively low (~15% in the US). Even in countries with ageing populations, it's nowhere near the majority (Japan is 27%). If taxes to pay for the elderly do become very onerous, 85-75% of the population is going to be against them politically. There are relatively fair measures to pay for their healthcare, like wealth taxes for people beyond retirement age and increasing estate taxes. Or a more politically feasible measure is to make social security means-tested. By far the best solution would be to mandate people to pay into their own retirement funds - Singapore does this. But of course, that would have had to be put in place decades ago.

imtringued 8y ago
Financing isn't the real the problem here. If 30% of the population works and 50% are retired then there are simply not enough workers to produce all the things you have saved up money for which will increase prices and inflate away your money. You can't "save" food and lots of other products the same way you can save money. It will spoil. This is why a home is actually a pretty good investment for retirement. If you buy it in your 40s then you will still have it in your 80s. More output while at the same time reducing workers means more productivity is required and to increase the productivity per worker we need far more automation. Things like truck/taxi automation might cause a temporary mass unemployment problem for unskilled workers but at the same time also solve the worker shortage that will happen when the population starts aging massively.
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  Automation is occurring at a hectic rate in almost every sector. The last 15 years have seen more than the previous human history combined. The idea that, the number of human being working is important at all, is rapidly becoming an obsolete issue.
  - polskibus 8y ago
    Automation yes, productivity is not necessarily improving, wages (in purchasing power) are mostly stagnant. There has been a lot of outsourcing going on in the last 15 years too, including moving a lot of factories to China, India. That can give a false premise that there has been a lot of automation going on, but in reality, globally there was little improvement.
    - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
      No, outsourcing is included in the estimate. Outsourcing occurs when a process hasn't scaled up enough to be worth automating i.e. cheaper to hire overseas hands to do the process. When factories come back to America for instance, its because the process got large enough to warrant automation, which can be expensive. It bring nearly no jobs 'back'. And productivity is funny. When folks move down the economic spectrum (from technical to office to labor etc) its called 'full employment' but almost by definition productivity of point-of-sale or labor is very low. Definitely there's no improvement for the individual.
JoeAltmaier 8y ago
Its pretty easy in most elections for 15% of the population to be the majority. Since in the US at least, a 20% turnout is considered good.

imtringued 8y ago

Financing isn't the real the problem here. If 30% of the population works and 50% are retired then there are simply not enough workers to produce all the things you have saved up money for which will increase prices and inflate away your money. You can't "save" food and lots of other products the same way you can save money. It will spoil. This is why a home is actually a pretty good investment for retirement. If you buy it in your 40s then you will still have it in your 80s. More output while at the same time reducing workers means more productivity is required and to increase the productivity per worker we need far more automation. Things like truck/taxi automation might cause a temporary mass unemployment problem for unskilled workers but at the same time also solve the worker shortage that will happen when the population starts aging massively.

JoeAltmaier 8y ago
Automation is occurring at a hectic rate in almost every sector. The last 15 years have seen more than the previous human history combined. The idea that, the number of human being working is important at all, is rapidly becoming an obsolete issue.
- polskibus 8y ago
  Automation yes, productivity is not necessarily improving, wages (in purchasing power) are mostly stagnant. There has been a lot of outsourcing going on in the last 15 years too, including moving a lot of factories to China, India. That can give a false premise that there has been a lot of automation going on, but in reality, globally there was little improvement.
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    No, outsourcing is included in the estimate. Outsourcing occurs when a process hasn't scaled up enough to be worth automating i.e. cheaper to hire overseas hands to do the process. When factories come back to America for instance, its because the process got large enough to warrant automation, which can be expensive. It bring nearly no jobs 'back'. And productivity is funny. When folks move down the economic spectrum (from technical to office to labor etc) its called 'full employment' but almost by definition productivity of point-of-sale or labor is very low. Definitely there's no improvement for the individual.

JoeAltmaier 8y ago

Its pretty easy in most elections for 15% of the population to be the majority. Since in the US at least, a 20% turnout is considered good.