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A shrinking population places enormous strains on social benefits ( social security, medicare, etc ) and would devastate the two largest retirement assets of pe

A shrinking population places enormous strains on social benefits ( social security, medicare, etc ) and would devastate the two largest retirement assets of people - homes and stock market ( 401k ). The dominant 20th century economic and social model is based on constant population and consumption growth. Ultimately, as a society, we've borrowed too much from the future. If these assumptions fail, the stock market would collapse and housing prices would decline. We could head towards an equilibrium, but that would require an economic and social paradigm shift and lots of near to intermediate pain for a lot of people. Paradigm shifts rarely happen and when they do, it's because of extreme circumstances causing a lot of societal pain. It's like we are on a runaway train that's about to crash but we are too afraid to jump because jumping could mean death.

dnautics 8y ago
> The dominant 20th century economic and social model is based on constant population and consumption growth. This. It's probably worth reiterating just how fundamental this is: the necessity of growth is built in, fundamentally to the way that the dollar (and the euro, then yen, etc) itself works. I'm not convinced that punting on decisions has to be as bad as a crash. Japan has failed to meet growth for a few decades, and the way they handled it, there is just social malaise, an alienated generation, and excellent melancholy anime.
- growlist 8y ago
  Watching NHK World, parts of Japan look idyllic and make me want to retire there, or even move there now. I watched a charming piece the other day about an island whose inhabitants have amongst the highest life expectancy in the world. A genuine community, shared activities and culture, lack of stress, plenty of fruit and vegetables as well as little traffic seemed to be the recipe. Perhaps the rest of the world could do with some of this so-called stagnation!
  - dnautics 8y ago
    NHK World (my mother watches this) is definitely government propaganda. This is not to say that Japan is a horrible place, it's generally nicer than the US, but there's lots of societal malaise going over there. Also Japan sweeps a lot of poverty and soft corruption problems under the rug.

dnautics 8y ago

> The dominant 20th century economic and social model is based on constant population and consumption growth. This. It's probably worth reiterating just how fundamental this is: the necessity of growth is built in, fundamentally to the way that the dollar (and the euro, then yen, etc) itself works. I'm not convinced that punting on decisions has to be as bad as a crash. Japan has failed to meet growth for a few decades, and the way they handled it, there is just social malaise, an alienated generation, and excellent melancholy anime.

growlist 8y ago
Watching NHK World, parts of Japan look idyllic and make me want to retire there, or even move there now. I watched a charming piece the other day about an island whose inhabitants have amongst the highest life expectancy in the world. A genuine community, shared activities and culture, lack of stress, plenty of fruit and vegetables as well as little traffic seemed to be the recipe. Perhaps the rest of the world could do with some of this so-called stagnation!
- dnautics 8y ago
  NHK World (my mother watches this) is definitely government propaganda. This is not to say that Japan is a horrible place, it's generally nicer than the US, but there's lots of societal malaise going over there. Also Japan sweeps a lot of poverty and soft corruption problems under the rug.