7 ms·

We have an aging population and many places have a flat birthrate. We need to solve how to deal with this consequences. Who will care for these people? How wil

We have an aging population and many places have a flat birthrate. We need to solve how to deal with this consequences. Who will care for these people? How will we deal with the consequences of flat population growth? How will we deal with the stock market's expectations of perpetual growth when the underlying population itself is not growing (and especially since productivity has also been relatively flat)?

ssss11 3y ago
This aging topic is very important. Re: stock markets, economies need to shift from eternal $ growth to share holder wallets, to providing equitable outcomes for all people and the planet - that will be very interesting to watch, i can’t see it going well.
- bequanna 3y ago
  > to providing equitable outcomes for all people and the planet The top 10% who hold essentially all the wealth in the world have very little interest in that goal.
  - ssss11 3y ago
    Yep 100% agree. Unfortunately
    - candiodari 3y ago
      Problem is, if you're being fair, the 90% bottom that will actually have to do the work, also don't want to care for elderly. A decent fraction would need to become nurses, and frankly, with less pay/worse conditions than they currently get. A small fraction will need to study a lot more so more treatments can be provided, which requires doctors and researchers. And we'll all have to do with less (much less) because this will cost a lot even disregarding wages.
- dools 3y ago
  You might be interested in the work of Steven Hail and Gabrielle Bond. There's an online course they run through Torrens University that covers a lot of this stuff: https://www.torrens.edu.au/courses/business/economics https://www.torrens.edu.au/courses/business/economics
- tomp 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - alexvoda 3y ago
    While communism does have it's flaws, i would argue it has in fact never been tried.
    - megalord 3y ago
      Communism has never been tried? Could you explain a little bit more? I don't know if you are joking or lacking knowledge. Or maybe I lack some knowledge you know about
      - lobf 3y ago
        It’s a “no true Scotsman” fallacy that communists trot out to defend their failed ideology.
        alexvoda 3y ago
        I did not argue that communist regimes didn't fail. I even think that was inevitable. And I even think that it was inevitable that the communist ideal would be immediately abandoned by every single regime once they gain power. That doesn't change that none of the well known historical regimes under the communist brand ever came close to the communist ideals. The betrayal of their original ideals was decried by communists themselves very early on. My argument is actually that there are good reasons that humanity as it was 100 years ago and as it is now is incapable of achieving the communist ideal and therefore we need better philosophical theory on how to get closer to that ideal. I think the idea that revolution can bring about the communist ideal was naive. There are comments here about smaller scale communist social systems claimed to have worked I did not know about and about which I will read.
        lobf 3y ago
        The important bit is that every communist country tried to implement communism and every single time it led to one-party authoritarian nightmares where actual thoughtcrime was illegal and brutally enforced. That indicates a fundamental problem with the ideology to me, and one that isn’t ever worth trying again.
- defrost 3y ago
  Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered is a collection of essays published in 1973 by German-born British economist E. F. Schumacher. The title *Small Is Beautiful* came from a principle espoused by Schumacher's teacher Leopold Kohr (1909–1994) advancing small, appropriate technologies, policies, and polities as a superior alternative to the mainstream ethos of "bigger is better". Overlapping environmental, social, and economic forces such as the 1973 energy crisis and popularisation of the concept of globalisation helped bring Schumacher's *Small Is Beautiful* critiques of mainstream economics to a wider audience during the 1970s. In 1995 The Times Literary Supplement ranked *Small Is Beautiful* among the 100 most influential books published since World War II. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful
  - nine_k 3y ago
    This seems somehow unrelated. It's not about scale, it's about balance. You can run a small an beautiful country with zero economy growth and zero decline, all in a perfect balance, and 70% of population younger than 65. Everything works out. But when 50% of the population is older than 60, the picture changes a lot; the percentage of economically productive population is much lower, and the need to care for people who can't sustain themselves any more grows. Take a look at how Japan fares today.
    - pixl97 3y ago
      We'll we're going to have to learn how to deal with it. At the start of the 1900s the world was set for a population boom and overshoot. We went from families having 6-12 children to 2ish children in a few generations. This is going to lead to those 'boom' generations having a far older population and there is not really anything that can be done about this unless you want your population to continue growing forever.
    - defrost 3y ago
      Fair point, in hindsight it seems I may have thrown this book recommendation in under the wrong comment. It's relavant to this Ask HN question at large as we very much need to move away from blind pursuit of unlimited growth in population, resource consumption, waste byproducts, etc. and address the question of how to live well within our means. Aging population demographics is a challenge, but one that we must address and then move beyond to a move persistent and sustainable low term distribution. As for the current situation, I am 60, my father was born in 1935 and lives here in the same town as I do. He takes meals on wheels to the older folks who aren't all that mobile (yes, he's almost 88, walks 10km per day, and maintains a 15 km long section of a 1,000 km long walking trail) which is indicative of the entire community which has the highest median age in this country. There is scope to employ able older people to look after less able older people which gives provides purpose, companionship, and reduces the demand for younger pople in care roles, etc. This is not a full solution but it is a partial path forward.
- atoav 3y ago
  Given limited resources exponential growth will always hit saturation. It is time we structure out economic systems in a way that aknowledge this reality.
yieldcrv 3y ago
> How will we By adjusting which price to earnings multiple we want to tolerate, just like we always do Or take a bearish position if it happens to match your risk tolerance at the time The stock market will be fine, people will trade shares, who cares if the market price is greater or less than today’s
TheFreim 3y ago
> We need to solve how to deal with this consequences. I'm hoping that we start to see an increase in pro-family policies. A couple rough ideas to look into would be decreasing taxation (or giving refunds/payments) based on how many children a productive family has, providing financial support so families can buy homes, and promoting wage increases so a single income can support a family to allow one to work and the other to focus on raising the children.
- reducesuffering 3y ago
  > providing financial support so families can buy homes You mean building more homes. If there's X homes, and Y families get 10% subsidy, they're all still buying the same X homes for 10% more. (roughly)
  - TheFreim 3y ago
    Not mutually exclusive. More homes + making it easier for families specifically to get a home.
    - shortrounddev2 3y ago
      We should subsidize supply, not demand
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  That is a down-right evil idea, in my opinion. It means those who cannot find partners to make families are further punished, making their chances to create families even lower. They're turned to a literal slave caste to provide for other people's families. Remove taxation on young and productive people instead if you want to help them create families.
  - TheFreim 3y ago
    > It means those who cannot find partners to make families are further punished, making their chances to create families even lower. Incentivization of family formation would push people to get married, it would not make family formation less likely. The entire point of incentivizing a behavior through providing benefits is to make it easier for people who partake in that behavior, therefore drawing people to it. > They're turned to a literal slave caste to provide for other people's families. I'm single, and due to various factors it's unlikely I'll be getting married in the immediate future. I'm one of the people who would be "punished" by my "down-right evil idea" but I still think it's good. Economic pressure would definitely make me more invested, not less, in getting married sooner. Calling this a creation of a "literal slave caste" is an extreme emotional exaggeration since I'm definitely not calling for myself to be enslaved by any meaningful usage of the term.
Denatured9654 3y ago
aging population who accumulated a lot of wealth. so that'll take care
- orlin_georgiev 3y ago
  Wealth is just paper and bits in a database if there is nobody to hire to take care of you in old age

ssss11 3y ago

This aging topic is very important. Re: stock markets, economies need to shift from eternal $ growth to share holder wallets, to providing equitable outcomes for all people and the planet - that will be very interesting to watch, i can’t see it going well.

bequanna 3y ago
> to providing equitable outcomes for all people and the planet The top 10% who hold essentially all the wealth in the world have very little interest in that goal.
- ssss11 3y ago
  Yep 100% agree. Unfortunately
  - candiodari 3y ago
    Problem is, if you're being fair, the 90% bottom that will actually have to do the work, also don't want to care for elderly. A decent fraction would need to become nurses, and frankly, with less pay/worse conditions than they currently get. A small fraction will need to study a lot more so more treatments can be provided, which requires doctors and researchers. And we'll all have to do with less (much less) because this will cost a lot even disregarding wages.
dools 3y ago
You might be interested in the work of Steven Hail and Gabrielle Bond. There's an online course they run through Torrens University that covers a lot of this stuff: https://www.torrens.edu.au/courses/business/economics https://www.torrens.edu.au/courses/business/economics
tomp 3y ago
[flagged]
- alexvoda 3y ago
  While communism does have it's flaws, i would argue it has in fact never been tried.
  - megalord 3y ago
    Communism has never been tried? Could you explain a little bit more? I don't know if you are joking or lacking knowledge. Or maybe I lack some knowledge you know about
    - lobf 3y ago
      It’s a “no true Scotsman” fallacy that communists trot out to defend their failed ideology.
      - alexvoda 3y ago
        I did not argue that communist regimes didn't fail. I even think that was inevitable. And I even think that it was inevitable that the communist ideal would be immediately abandoned by every single regime once they gain power. That doesn't change that none of the well known historical regimes under the communist brand ever came close to the communist ideals. The betrayal of their original ideals was decried by communists themselves very early on. My argument is actually that there are good reasons that humanity as it was 100 years ago and as it is now is incapable of achieving the communist ideal and therefore we need better philosophical theory on how to get closer to that ideal. I think the idea that revolution can bring about the communist ideal was naive. There are comments here about smaller scale communist social systems claimed to have worked I did not know about and about which I will read.
        lobf 3y ago
        The important bit is that every communist country tried to implement communism and every single time it led to one-party authoritarian nightmares where actual thoughtcrime was illegal and brutally enforced. That indicates a fundamental problem with the ideology to me, and one that isn’t ever worth trying again.
defrost 3y ago
Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered is a collection of essays published in 1973 by German-born British economist E. F. Schumacher. The title *Small Is Beautiful* came from a principle espoused by Schumacher's teacher Leopold Kohr (1909–1994) advancing small, appropriate technologies, policies, and polities as a superior alternative to the mainstream ethos of "bigger is better". Overlapping environmental, social, and economic forces such as the 1973 energy crisis and popularisation of the concept of globalisation helped bring Schumacher's *Small Is Beautiful* critiques of mainstream economics to a wider audience during the 1970s. In 1995 The Times Literary Supplement ranked *Small Is Beautiful* among the 100 most influential books published since World War II. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful
- nine_k 3y ago
  This seems somehow unrelated. It's not about scale, it's about balance. You can run a small an beautiful country with zero economy growth and zero decline, all in a perfect balance, and 70% of population younger than 65. Everything works out. But when 50% of the population is older than 60, the picture changes a lot; the percentage of economically productive population is much lower, and the need to care for people who can't sustain themselves any more grows. Take a look at how Japan fares today.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    We'll we're going to have to learn how to deal with it. At the start of the 1900s the world was set for a population boom and overshoot. We went from families having 6-12 children to 2ish children in a few generations. This is going to lead to those 'boom' generations having a far older population and there is not really anything that can be done about this unless you want your population to continue growing forever.
  - defrost 3y ago
    Fair point, in hindsight it seems I may have thrown this book recommendation in under the wrong comment. It's relavant to this Ask HN question at large as we very much need to move away from blind pursuit of unlimited growth in population, resource consumption, waste byproducts, etc. and address the question of how to live well within our means. Aging population demographics is a challenge, but one that we must address and then move beyond to a move persistent and sustainable low term distribution. As for the current situation, I am 60, my father was born in 1935 and lives here in the same town as I do. He takes meals on wheels to the older folks who aren't all that mobile (yes, he's almost 88, walks 10km per day, and maintains a 15 km long section of a 1,000 km long walking trail) which is indicative of the entire community which has the highest median age in this country. There is scope to employ able older people to look after less able older people which gives provides purpose, companionship, and reduces the demand for younger pople in care roles, etc. This is not a full solution but it is a partial path forward.
atoav 3y ago
Given limited resources exponential growth will always hit saturation. It is time we structure out economic systems in a way that aknowledge this reality.

yieldcrv 3y ago

> How will we By adjusting which price to earnings multiple we want to tolerate, just like we always do Or take a bearish position if it happens to match your risk tolerance at the time The stock market will be fine, people will trade shares, who cares if the market price is greater or less than today’s

TheFreim 3y ago

> We need to solve how to deal with this consequences. I'm hoping that we start to see an increase in pro-family policies. A couple rough ideas to look into would be decreasing taxation (or giving refunds/payments) based on how many children a productive family has, providing financial support so families can buy homes, and promoting wage increases so a single income can support a family to allow one to work and the other to focus on raising the children.

reducesuffering 3y ago
> providing financial support so families can buy homes You mean building more homes. If there's X homes, and Y families get 10% subsidy, they're all still buying the same X homes for 10% more. (roughly)
- TheFreim 3y ago
  Not mutually exclusive. More homes + making it easier for families specifically to get a home.
  - shortrounddev2 3y ago
    We should subsidize supply, not demand
carlosjobim 3y ago
That is a down-right evil idea, in my opinion. It means those who cannot find partners to make families are further punished, making their chances to create families even lower. They're turned to a literal slave caste to provide for other people's families. Remove taxation on young and productive people instead if you want to help them create families.
- TheFreim 3y ago
  > It means those who cannot find partners to make families are further punished, making their chances to create families even lower. Incentivization of family formation would push people to get married, it would not make family formation less likely. The entire point of incentivizing a behavior through providing benefits is to make it easier for people who partake in that behavior, therefore drawing people to it. > They're turned to a literal slave caste to provide for other people's families. I'm single, and due to various factors it's unlikely I'll be getting married in the immediate future. I'm one of the people who would be "punished" by my "down-right evil idea" but I still think it's good. Economic pressure would definitely make me more invested, not less, in getting married sooner. Calling this a creation of a "literal slave caste" is an extreme emotional exaggeration since I'm definitely not calling for myself to be enslaved by any meaningful usage of the term.

Denatured9654 3y ago

aging population who accumulated a lot of wealth. so that'll take care

orlin_georgiev 3y ago
Wealth is just paper and bits in a database if there is nobody to hire to take care of you in old age