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| Older people aren't retiring This is called the "Lump of labour fallacy". In economics, the lump of labour fallacy is the misconception that there is a fixed

• qwerqwerasdf 7y ago
  Except the term was created to reject the idea that restricting hour of labor will lead to reduction of unemployment. All I am trying to say is that there is restricted number of jobs, and people have to live longer given increased life expectancy plus poor social security in Korea so elder are becoming competitors from the perspective of youth. I don't particularly disagree with what the term you've introduced me argues. Korea has been trying to actively reduce work hours and etc and it still gets all the problems. My point in saying that "older people aren't retiring" is that there's limited number of jobs, and companies don't have the capacity to hire all the people (reducing work hour can lead to larger total employment, but the income per person will be reduced so not like it helps much). If companies kept growing, and was able to employ people of all age groups then things would look good. But with no new players expanding the economy it's mostly about older people trying to hang onto their job and younger ones trying to break into what exists. I totally agree with the fact that economic growth isn't 100% zero-sum. But that's when economy grows and everyone is winning, not when almost everyone is about to lose.
  • JeffL 7y ago
    But saying that there are a limited number of jobs is exactly falling for that fallacy. There are as many jobs are there are people who want to work. There can be other problems, like not enough entrepreneurs, too many regulations, not enough capital per person to effectively compete globally, etc. Old people being forced to retire or everyone being forced to work fewer hours would not help. That would result in massive load of productivity and value creation. The pie might get shared more equally, but it would be a much smaller pie.
    • qwerqwerasdf 7y ago
      Fair enough. I see where people can get that interpretation from reading what I wrote. But for last clarification allow me to say that I am not arguing that pie is going to be fixed size nor arguing that it can’t be grown. There are many attempts in progress for Korea but they aren’t turning out to be successful that’s all. Some of the difficulties for growing the pie is listed under what you mentioned as possibility for Korea. But until Korea can figure out a solution, people will end up fighting for a pie.
    • blub 7y ago
      Where's the proof that this so-called fallacy is indeed a fallacy? After reading the wiki description it seem to me that while the core idea is true, this theory is overreaching in trying to explain away for example the impact of immigration on the job market. You're ignoring a very important detail - the quality of jobs. Only if people lower their standards enough will there be as many jobs as people that want to work. A significant number of those jobs will be (nearly) worthless, causing other social issues. Disguising a lack of jobs as "not enough entrepreneurs" or "too much regulation" is simply a malicious semantic trick.
    • zbentley 7y ago
      > There are as many jobs are there are people who want to work. What? In the face of large short-term changes in labor supply, that's a bonkers claim to make. It might be true over a very long time horizon, but even that's arguable.
• momokoko 7y ago
  That is with solid growth. When growth stalls, holding off retirement does indeed reduce opportunities for younger workers.
• nerdponx 7y ago
  And this is an example of the "Economics Platitude Fallacy".