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What does buying one hundred and fifty F35 aircraft have to do with not being able care for your parents / grandparents? Why do people think The Government™ is

What does buying one hundred and fifty F35 aircraft have to do with not being able care for your parents / grandparents? Why do people think The Government™ is able to, should, or can, solve everyone’s problems? The Government™ probably can solve defence. It probably can’t solve your lack of desire to do the right thing and look after your aging parents.

thinkingtoilet 17d ago
We're not making these problems up. Reality exists. These problems exist. The government is doing it because the population is failing to do it on their own. It's very obvious and not up for debate. If it wasn't a problem, the government wouldn't have to do it.
- andy99 17d ago
  > If it wasn't a problem, the government wouldn't have to do it. This is certainly very different from my experience with what governments think they have to do.
PorciiVorbesc 17d ago
>Why do people think The Government™ is able to, should, or can, solve everyone’s problems? Where do you see them demanding the government solve $ALL their problems? >The Government™ probably can solve defence. Agree. >It probably can’t solve your lack of desire to do the right thing and look after your aging parents. Is there a lack of desire? Or a lack of resources resulting as a consequence of how the modern developed economy works, where youth need to move away from the family to get a college education and skilled jobs, and in return the government taxes you to take care of your parents and your kids so that you can focus on maximizing your skilled productivity at work? Isn't this the modern (faulty) social contract? Sure, I can move back with my parents to take care of them, but then I won't have a job to earn money because all the industry in that town was hollowed out and moved abroad (also thanks to government actions of maximizing shareholder value). Now , if the government admits it can't solve elderly care and wants us to take care of our parents on our own dime, the it should also stop taxing us for a welfare state it can't provide and just focus on what it can, like defense. IIRC Switzerland works like that. Unfortunately, in our modern post-industrial economy we can't all go back to tribal/village lifestyles of our ancestors where we all lived on farms in multi generational households and we all took care of each other and lived only off the land. That would sound nice in theory, but it's not feasible anymore the way nations and economies are set up to work and compete against each other, unless we can somehow agree to fight wars from now on only with bows and arrows like our ancestors, instead of AI drones and cruise missiles needing cutting edge chips and SW made by singles with phds and no kids. We built this faulty societal system and now we're forced to live by it whether we want to or not.
- jll29 17d ago
  The Japanese fail to produce enough children. The country will either have to change or it will disappear soon. Most European countries have the same issue, but it is less visible due to immigration, which Japan does not have.
  - shoobiedoo 17d ago
    The population of Japan is projected to be 64 million in 2100. In 1930, the population of Japan was 64 million. Did it not exist back then?
    - mango7283 17d ago
      To be fair you'd need to consider how the percentage of young people looked in 1930 for that to be a meaningful comparison to today
    - Danox 17d ago
      Japan can easily operate with 60-80 million people in a country slightly smaller than California. And expand again in the future why not?
      - PorciiVorbesc 15d ago
        This. You CAN recover from an economic decline, you can recover from a demographic decline like what Japan is experiencing, but you CAN'T recover from demographic replacement, which is what the EU is experiencing.
    - klrefg 17d ago
      You should only be comparing the working age population or maybe even the ratio between that and retirees since absolute population is a deceitful metric.
    - rightnutwingjob 15d ago
      I just think there’s something qualitatively different between 64 million twenty-somethings and 64 million eighty-somethings.
justsomehnguy 17d ago
It's quite amusing how The Government™ is able to use the tax money to buy an overpriced useless military toys which solve nothing and cost trillions, but at the same time The Government™ can't spend that tax money on the care of their citizens.
saulpw 17d ago
A 100-year-old's children are 70-80 years old themselves, if they are still alive. They very well might be not be capable of taking care of a 100-year-old person. And not everyone has children. Rather than throw up our hands and say "too bad", perhaps we collectively have some responsibility to take care of those who aren't able to take care of themselves?
- brailsafe 17d ago
  and those 70-80 year olds may have children old enough to be going through menopause and any number of health issues themselves, along with their own adult children who may not have viable prospects for leaving home yet (if the dynamic is at all similar to other G7 countries). In Canada, I would be plenty old enough by now to have my own kids, and my grandparents, lucky though I am to still have them around, are old enough to be needing some help in their 80s. Thankfully they all have their own homes and can take care of themselves financially, but even if I was interested in having kids, there isn't really a viable financial strategy for creating a support structure viable for even myself long-term. Adding one other person to the mix isn't feasible and won't be in foreseeable future unless I made some dramatic changes solely for that purpose. Thankfully the Gen Xers in my family got in early to the whole "social contract" thing and seem to be handling what they can, and I contribute when I'm visiting by putting in the physical labor where it's useful. I can barely reliably pay for a basement apartment, and the way things are looking, that's about as far as it's ever going to get.
- antisthenes 17d ago
  > perhaps we collectively have some responsibility to take care of those who aren't able to take care of themselves This is the cornerstone that all society rests upon. If a person argues that there is no such obligation, they do not understand the social dynamics of a civilization and you can be sure you're dealing with a sociopath.
spacechild1 17d ago
You certainly live up to your name.
PostOnce 17d ago
These people are over 100, and have been paying tax to the Japanese state since before world war 2. They lived through world war 2, and they rebuilt japan afterwards. You're proposing to tell them they haven't "done enough", saved enough, paid enough tax, worked enough, sacrificed enough. You're assuming they all have kids to care for them. 20-something billion dollars can pay for a lot of medicine and care that F-35s can't deliver. Defence is necessary to protect the people. But so is everything else. Medicine, food, affordable housing, education... If the state wants tons of money and sacrifice, then what is the point of protecting it if it provides nothing in return? This extends to everyone else in the developed world: if we're fucked anyway, why bother doing all this stuff the government wants? To protect the assets and incomes of the rich? So we can give all our life and labor to the lords and landlords? I'm not buying it, and I doubt the centenarians are either.
- totetsu 17d ago
  Their kids are in the 70s and 80s too
- klrefg 17d ago
  > haven't "done enough", The people who are over 100 probably had enough kids but in a few decades the generation that will start getting close to that age will only have themselves to blame since they didn’t have enough children (tax contributions can’t really compensate for that).
- rightnutwingjob 17d ago
  You’re hung up on the idea that The State should take care of you. That’s never worked out well for anyone. Australia has social welfare, a full funded national disability scheme, and state funded Medicare. They’re all a mess. The welfare system and disability scheme, I’m not even joking it’s literally called that, a scheme, are both overwrought with fraud, I’ve never actually met anyone who needed to be on welfare. The disability scheme is openly defrauded by Indian immigrants en mass, some locals too. The Medicare system is absolutely shit, you would want to have to use. It’s beyond me how anyone still believes The State is an answer to anything. The State got us in to this mess, how is more of it going to help? And if you aren’t convinced by Australia as an example of a poorly run state funded medical system, I guess you could look to Canada or the UK.
apsurd 17d ago
you’re on HN and it’s as if you’ve never even heard of “thinking in systems”
rexpop 17d ago
Well, you see, when people invest their resources in any venture, they incur an "opportunity" cost.
elzbardico 17d ago
Well, government money IS people's money. Maybe people don't want the government to take of their parents, but would enjoy paying less taxes so they could have money to do it themselves. Or people can't take care of their parents and grand-parents, because government expenditures transfered wealth from them to the rich via the Cantillon Effect. Nobody fucks complain about government fiscal profilgacy having enabled the golden age of Venture Capital based Unicorns through an unprecedent period of extreme liquidity in the markets. Nobody fucking ever complains that we went through an era of incredible levels of market concentration because of the fucking State fiscal habits. But, creating some remedy for woes of a working class that can't even bet some money on some Oracle CDSs, because this is not for NPC retail investors tastes. Yeah, that would be communism! Let them eat croissants!

thinkingtoilet 17d ago

We're not making these problems up. Reality exists. These problems exist. The government is doing it because the population is failing to do it on their own. It's very obvious and not up for debate. If it wasn't a problem, the government wouldn't have to do it.

andy99 17d ago
> If it wasn't a problem, the government wouldn't have to do it. This is certainly very different from my experience with what governments think they have to do.

PorciiVorbesc 17d ago

>Why do people think The Government™ is able to, should, or can, solve everyone’s problems? Where do you see them demanding the government solve $ALL their problems? >The Government™ probably can solve defence. Agree. >It probably can’t solve your lack of desire to do the right thing and look after your aging parents. Is there a lack of desire? Or a lack of resources resulting as a consequence of how the modern developed economy works, where youth need to move away from the family to get a college education and skilled jobs, and in return the government taxes you to take care of your parents and your kids so that you can focus on maximizing your skilled productivity at work? Isn't this the modern (faulty) social contract? Sure, I can move back with my parents to take care of them, but then I won't have a job to earn money because all the industry in that town was hollowed out and moved abroad (also thanks to government actions of maximizing shareholder value). Now , if the government admits it can't solve elderly care and wants us to take care of our parents on our own dime, the it should also stop taxing us for a welfare state it can't provide and just focus on what it can, like defense. IIRC Switzerland works like that. Unfortunately, in our modern post-industrial economy we can't all go back to tribal/village lifestyles of our ancestors where we all lived on farms in multi generational households and we all took care of each other and lived only off the land. That would sound nice in theory, but it's not feasible anymore the way nations and economies are set up to work and compete against each other, unless we can somehow agree to fight wars from now on only with bows and arrows like our ancestors, instead of AI drones and cruise missiles needing cutting edge chips and SW made by singles with phds and no kids. We built this faulty societal system and now we're forced to live by it whether we want to or not.

jll29 17d ago
The Japanese fail to produce enough children. The country will either have to change or it will disappear soon. Most European countries have the same issue, but it is less visible due to immigration, which Japan does not have.
- shoobiedoo 17d ago
  The population of Japan is projected to be 64 million in 2100. In 1930, the population of Japan was 64 million. Did it not exist back then?
  - mango7283 17d ago
    To be fair you'd need to consider how the percentage of young people looked in 1930 for that to be a meaningful comparison to today
  - Danox 17d ago
    Japan can easily operate with 60-80 million people in a country slightly smaller than California. And expand again in the future why not?
    - PorciiVorbesc 15d ago
      This. You CAN recover from an economic decline, you can recover from a demographic decline like what Japan is experiencing, but you CAN'T recover from demographic replacement, which is what the EU is experiencing.
  - klrefg 17d ago
    You should only be comparing the working age population or maybe even the ratio between that and retirees since absolute population is a deceitful metric.
  - rightnutwingjob 15d ago
    I just think there’s something qualitatively different between 64 million twenty-somethings and 64 million eighty-somethings.

justsomehnguy 17d ago

It's quite amusing how The Government™ is able to use the tax money to buy an overpriced useless military toys which solve nothing and cost trillions, but at the same time The Government™ can't spend that tax money on the care of their citizens.

saulpw 17d ago

A 100-year-old's children are 70-80 years old themselves, if they are still alive. They very well might be not be capable of taking care of a 100-year-old person. And not everyone has children. Rather than throw up our hands and say "too bad", perhaps we collectively have some responsibility to take care of those who aren't able to take care of themselves?

brailsafe 17d ago
and those 70-80 year olds may have children old enough to be going through menopause and any number of health issues themselves, along with their own adult children who may not have viable prospects for leaving home yet (if the dynamic is at all similar to other G7 countries). In Canada, I would be plenty old enough by now to have my own kids, and my grandparents, lucky though I am to still have them around, are old enough to be needing some help in their 80s. Thankfully they all have their own homes and can take care of themselves financially, but even if I was interested in having kids, there isn't really a viable financial strategy for creating a support structure viable for even myself long-term. Adding one other person to the mix isn't feasible and won't be in foreseeable future unless I made some dramatic changes solely for that purpose. Thankfully the Gen Xers in my family got in early to the whole "social contract" thing and seem to be handling what they can, and I contribute when I'm visiting by putting in the physical labor where it's useful. I can barely reliably pay for a basement apartment, and the way things are looking, that's about as far as it's ever going to get.
antisthenes 17d ago
> perhaps we collectively have some responsibility to take care of those who aren't able to take care of themselves This is the cornerstone that all society rests upon. If a person argues that there is no such obligation, they do not understand the social dynamics of a civilization and you can be sure you're dealing with a sociopath.

spacechild1 17d ago

You certainly live up to your name.

PostOnce 17d ago

These people are over 100, and have been paying tax to the Japanese state since before world war 2. They lived through world war 2, and they rebuilt japan afterwards. You're proposing to tell them they haven't "done enough", saved enough, paid enough tax, worked enough, sacrificed enough. You're assuming they all have kids to care for them. 20-something billion dollars can pay for a lot of medicine and care that F-35s can't deliver. Defence is necessary to protect the people. But so is everything else. Medicine, food, affordable housing, education... If the state wants tons of money and sacrifice, then what is the point of protecting it if it provides nothing in return? This extends to everyone else in the developed world: if we're fucked anyway, why bother doing all this stuff the government wants? To protect the assets and incomes of the rich? So we can give all our life and labor to the lords and landlords? I'm not buying it, and I doubt the centenarians are either.

totetsu 17d ago
Their kids are in the 70s and 80s too
klrefg 17d ago
> haven't "done enough", The people who are over 100 probably had enough kids but in a few decades the generation that will start getting close to that age will only have themselves to blame since they didn’t have enough children (tax contributions can’t really compensate for that).
rightnutwingjob 17d ago
You’re hung up on the idea that The State should take care of you. That’s never worked out well for anyone. Australia has social welfare, a full funded national disability scheme, and state funded Medicare. They’re all a mess. The welfare system and disability scheme, I’m not even joking it’s literally called that, a scheme, are both overwrought with fraud, I’ve never actually met anyone who needed to be on welfare. The disability scheme is openly defrauded by Indian immigrants en mass, some locals too. The Medicare system is absolutely shit, you would want to have to use. It’s beyond me how anyone still believes The State is an answer to anything. The State got us in to this mess, how is more of it going to help? And if you aren’t convinced by Australia as an example of a poorly run state funded medical system, I guess you could look to Canada or the UK.

apsurd 17d ago

you’re on HN and it’s as if you’ve never even heard of “thinking in systems”

rexpop 17d ago

Well, you see, when people invest their resources in any venture, they incur an "opportunity" cost.

elzbardico 17d ago

Well, government money IS people's money. Maybe people don't want the government to take of their parents, but would enjoy paying less taxes so they could have money to do it themselves. Or people can't take care of their parents and grand-parents, because government expenditures transfered wealth from them to the rich via the Cantillon Effect. Nobody fucks complain about government fiscal profilgacy having enabled the golden age of Venture Capital based Unicorns through an unprecedent period of extreme liquidity in the markets. Nobody fucking ever complains that we went through an era of incredible levels of market concentration because of the fucking State fiscal habits. But, creating some remedy for woes of a working class that can't even bet some money on some Oracle CDSs, because this is not for NPC retail investors tastes. Yeah, that would be communism! Let them eat croissants!