4 ms·

If we could just stop being economically gaslighted it would help. The economic system can't be simultaneously unproductive enough to require us to keep raisin

by pydry 4y ago

If we could just stop being economically gaslighted it would help. The economic system can't be simultaneously unproductive enough to require us to keep raising the retirement age and so productive that job loss is a big problem. It is possible that a political war on labor is being waged at both ends.

htss2013 4y ago
It's possible to have certain things be abundant and other things be scarce simultaneously, because technology doesn't make everything abundant at the same time. That means certain types of labor are abundant and others scarce at the same time as well. There may be a war on certain kinds of labor but having to raise the retirement age and having job losses from tech aren't evidence of it.
- pydry 4y ago
  >It's possible to have certain things be abundant and other things be scarce simultaneously This is so obvious it barely merits saying. >having to raise the retirement age You do realize that raising the retirement age also doesn't make "everything more abundant at the same time", right? Yet you internalized a belief that we have to do it when so much of the labor it would produce more of is already abundant. Why?
  - htss2013 4y ago
    >Yet you internalized a belief that we have to do it [keep laboring] when so much of the labor it would produce more of is already abundant. Why? If there is so much abundance and labor isn't needed, why is almost every country on Earth currently experiencing food inflation? Abundance would mean prices go down, not up. We would need fewer farmers, not more. Before you say it's being caused by corporate greed and price gouging, this is why I said globally. If for example Vietnam locally produces rice, and it's not even a capitalist country, there shouldn't be rice inflation there. Yet there is, and rice farmers in Vietnam aren't retiring because human labor and rice are so abundant. Why pretend that just because some things have become abundant with technology, we can make society wide proclamations about labor no longer being needed?
- ilyt 4y ago
  It seems more like war on paying people fair wage for the work. Suits don't want to live in age where shit job doesn't come with shit pay coz that cuts into profits.
unreal37 4y ago
The changing demographics is what causes the retirement age to be increased. In the 1960's, the average lifespan was in the 60s. So a retirement age of 65 meant that around half of retirees would die before collecting retirement. Now the average lifespan is 80. And the median age of the population is older than ever. Not really much to do with an "unproductive" population. Except that retirees are unproductive I guess.
- fl7305 4y ago
  > In the 1960's, the average lifespan was in the 60s Yes. At birth. The remaining life expectancy at 30/40/50/60 has not increased nearly as much as you would think from the increase in average lifespan at birth.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    It's gone from about 70 for average people in 1920 (when life expectancy was at a local minimum, probably due to pollutants and terrible diet) to about 80, not counting infant mortality. That still means tripling the years in which someone is retired.
    - fl7305 4y ago
      If you look at the pension system today, people work for about 40 years, and are retired for about 20 years. If the average life expectancy for the retirees increases by 1 year, they'd have to work 6 months longer to keep the system balanced with those numbers.
  - greatpatton 4y ago
    For Switzerland life expectancy for men went from 26 years at 50 years old in 1981 to 33.1 at the same age in 2021. That's more than 7 years. (At birth it increased from 72.4 to 81.6 at bit more than 9 years). So can we now please stop to mention all the time that the increase in life expectancy is only caused by infant mortality reduction when it's clearly not the case?

by pydry 4y ago

htss2013 4y ago

It's possible to have certain things be abundant and other things be scarce simultaneously, because technology doesn't make everything abundant at the same time. That means certain types of labor are abundant and others scarce at the same time as well. There may be a war on certain kinds of labor but having to raise the retirement age and having job losses from tech aren't evidence of it.

pydry 4y ago
>It's possible to have certain things be abundant and other things be scarce simultaneously This is so obvious it barely merits saying. >having to raise the retirement age You do realize that raising the retirement age also doesn't make "everything more abundant at the same time", right? Yet you internalized a belief that we have to do it when so much of the labor it would produce more of is already abundant. Why?
- htss2013 4y ago
  >Yet you internalized a belief that we have to do it [keep laboring] when so much of the labor it would produce more of is already abundant. Why? If there is so much abundance and labor isn't needed, why is almost every country on Earth currently experiencing food inflation? Abundance would mean prices go down, not up. We would need fewer farmers, not more. Before you say it's being caused by corporate greed and price gouging, this is why I said globally. If for example Vietnam locally produces rice, and it's not even a capitalist country, there shouldn't be rice inflation there. Yet there is, and rice farmers in Vietnam aren't retiring because human labor and rice are so abundant. Why pretend that just because some things have become abundant with technology, we can make society wide proclamations about labor no longer being needed?
ilyt 4y ago
It seems more like war on paying people fair wage for the work. Suits don't want to live in age where shit job doesn't come with shit pay coz that cuts into profits.

unreal37 4y ago

The changing demographics is what causes the retirement age to be increased. In the 1960's, the average lifespan was in the 60s. So a retirement age of 65 meant that around half of retirees would die before collecting retirement. Now the average lifespan is 80. And the median age of the population is older than ever. Not really much to do with an "unproductive" population. Except that retirees are unproductive I guess.

fl7305 4y ago
> In the 1960's, the average lifespan was in the 60s Yes. At birth. The remaining life expectancy at 30/40/50/60 has not increased nearly as much as you would think from the increase in average lifespan at birth.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  It's gone from about 70 for average people in 1920 (when life expectancy was at a local minimum, probably due to pollutants and terrible diet) to about 80, not counting infant mortality. That still means tripling the years in which someone is retired.
  - fl7305 4y ago
    If you look at the pension system today, people work for about 40 years, and are retired for about 20 years. If the average life expectancy for the retirees increases by 1 year, they'd have to work 6 months longer to keep the system balanced with those numbers.
- greatpatton 4y ago
  For Switzerland life expectancy for men went from 26 years at 50 years old in 1981 to 33.1 at the same age in 2021. That's more than 7 years. (At birth it increased from 72.4 to 81.6 at bit more than 9 years). So can we now please stop to mention all the time that the increase in life expectancy is only caused by infant mortality reduction when it's clearly not the case?