> going to be one of the grand challenges of the 50 years
I’m sceptical of this claim. Demand per capita grows unabated. Working lives are lengthening. A smaller population living well is economically indistinguishable, in the aggregate, from a large one living poorly. Maybe post-industrial civilisations settle into a lower-population steady state than ones requiring lots of unrefined labor.
Yes, dependency ratios will mean re-jiggering the skewed benefits almost every country provides its old at the expense of the young. But that, too, isn’t a bad thing, particularly if it encourages labor force participation.
(There is another comment arguing demographic the dividend’s inverse is a myth. I don’t go that far. I just think it’s a manageable problem versus a catastrophe.)
> A smaller population living well is economically indistinguishable, in the aggregate, from a large one living poorly
I'm sceptical of this claim. Young people and old people are biologically different, in the aggregate. Obvious differences in physical capabilities aside, arguably even more impactful for the future of a given nation are their psychological differences; i.e. innovation and risk-taking invariably comes more from the younger generations.
Perhaps if you're only considering dollars being circulated in a domestic economy, an abundance of wealthy old folks can potentially offset the lack of youthful societal members. But the developmental direction such a demographic structure pushes its society is unlikely to be good for sustaining itself in the long run.
So strange to me that when UBI is discussed, pervasive automation is right around the corner to pay for it, but when birth rate decline is discussed, the only solution on the table is open borders. I wonder why that could be?
I don’t think people are saying the only solution is open borders. More immigration is just the most obvious answer. It is possible in today’s world without relying on future technological developments. But when talking about UBI, people don’t look to immigration as a solution since they would need to be payed the same benefits as anyone else (unless this was some sort of two tiered society). UBI proponents then look towards automation as a solution.
> but when birth rate decline is discussed, the only solution on the table is open borders. I wonder why that could be?
Because people saying that are doing accounting with money, not productivity.
People need three things to live in retirement. Food, water, shelter[1], and some degree of medical care. We are not in a demographic collapse situation where society cannot be productive enough to fail to provide the first three to the retired. The latter is the only thing in danger of seeing some cuts.
[1] Housing isn't expensive because building four walls and a roof is expensive. Housing is expensive because there's no upward bound on the cost of a square foot of land in a city.
There's complete cognitive dissonance and confusion at the moment over popular notions of national prosperity. On one hand people readily agree that the GDP is an inaccurate measure of prosperity, that wealth gained mostly goes to the top and it ought not be a prime focus, while at the same time suggest that high rates of immigration are crucial to prop up said GDP. Many countries with stagnant birthrates are rather enviable places to live, i.e. Iceland, Japan, SK. Besides a large aging population to support for a generation in some cases, I don't see the problem.
Well, in the cases of Japan and SK, there is the issue of elderly people beginning to commit crimes on a regular basis in recent years because prison is free and they can't afford a retirement home.
Unfortunately, low fertility rate is not a one-time problem of boomer generation followed by a stable plateau. It leads to a perpetual spiral of gerontocracy, high dependency ratios, under-investments and general vitality being sapped out of the populace. It's no coincidence that Italy and Japan, once vigorous and creative, are not exactly bursting with enthusiasm in the past ~20-30 years
I understand japan isn't as exciting as it used to be, but they still have a pretty dynamic and influential popular culture. I understand their working population is declining relative to retirees, but eventually those old people will start to die. Anyway, its not as if this will be some sort of old people zombie apocalypse.
What if the votes of each age group were weighted to account for the size of that group, e.g. making the votes of 18-20 have the same weight as the votes of 40-42, even if there may be more people in the 40-42 group.
This would prevent an aging population from giving too many benefits to older age groups, and would encourage policies that consider long term impacts more.
In many places and for certain purposes (the US and the EU for instance), geographical regions have one vote, regardless of their population size.
It’s unclear that an age-based distribution instead of geographic distribution would be worse. But it would probably be unrealistic to achieve without basically completely upending existing political structures.
The US is one country and disparate voting power between states(mainly in the Senate, to a lesser extent with the electoral college) is a real problem. I see little reason to make it worse. Although it's useful to rhetoric out how little sense the current system makes
The point of having both proportional and state-based voting is to incentivize both small and large states to stay in the union. The optimization is for political unity over perfectly representative democracy. It makes perfect sense when you consider the ideals and goals of its implementation -- that being a compromise in order to convince both small states and large states to cede large parts of their sovereignty to what at the time were effectively foreign nations.
This made sense back when the states were actually mostly self-governing polities, and there were relatively few pertinent issues on the federal level. But this is no longer the case today, and in practice, EC and Senate result in a "tyranny of the minority", where the minority can not only veto the majority's agenda, but actually push their own instead.
The small states who have excess control in the Senate cannot tyrannize the large states (except by maintaining the status quo), because the House of Representatives still exists. No new policy can get passed unless both a majority of states' representatives and a majority of the population's representatives agree -- if they disagree, the worst you get is gridlock, not "tyranny of the minority".
You don't need to weight the groups, since everyone experiences all ages (not counting early death).
My proposal is: Multiply the number of house reps and senators by ten (for instance). Each representative now represents a district / state as well as a decade of life (for instance). When voting for an age-graded role, your vote only counts towards the decade of life that you're currently in. You can only run for a position that matches your age range.
This would have a number of advantages: Disrupt two-party dynamics. Increase granularity of representation. It's harder for older folks to take younger folks hostage. Younger folks will feel more enthusiastic about voting for someone who actually represents them.
Probably, you'd want to fiddle with the numbers based on age demographics. 7-year intervals is probably the right number, with a big bucket for people over a certain age. (So, 18, 25, 32, 39, 46, 53, 60, 67, 74+) might be right.
One factor that needs to be considered is that in Korea, as in many Asian regions, people are expected to look after their parents when they get old. Society and social security have been build around this assumption.
That's been changing very rapidly in SK. Almost everyone in their 40s and 50s today have been putting money into public pension plans as well as a multitude of private options. When they retire, they won't be economically dependent on their children. Nor can they expect to, because their children's generation is by all means poorer than their own.
Whether those public funds and private options will be enough, of course, is a different question.
There is no magic in this world. When you make an investment into a company, you become dependent on the people that work at that company.
When you're investing in a private fund, or in real estate, you're still relying on your children. The material wealth you are consuming is still being produced by the generations that come after.
If your children's generation is poorer than your own and if there is less of them, then there is nothing you can do except rely on the children of people in other countries.
The average price of an apartment in Seoul is hitting $1M and the avg gdp per capita is around $38k.I am afraid a lot of that wealth is just real estate market speculation that might burst when the supply outstrips demand in 50 years.
Why are you so confident supply will every outstrip demand?
The government could just mandate old buildings get destroyed and turned into parks.
Remember, >55% of people are homeowners - they'll vote for anything that will protect the value of their homes - especially if non-homeowners pay for it entirely.
First they can update codes so that nothing can be rebuilt in a significant portion of the city. Then they can condemn buildings that aren't up-to code after a certain point. Then they can order the buildings torn down after a longer point. Then they can make people happy by turning abandoned buildings into parks.
Governments can always find ways to limit the supply of housing. They've been doing it fabulously in most of the West for the last 30 years.
I doubt that there will be a major, irrecoverable housing crash in South Korea within the lifetime of anyone who grew up believing that their children will support them later on. In the meantime, retirees who own nothing but an expensive apartment can reverse-mortgage their homes for a stable source of income. The bank, not their children, will inherit the property.
Two reasons why I don't think there will be a supply/demand mismatch:
1) Housing doesn't simply stay there once it has been built. Koreans seem very eager to tear down "old" buildings (anything more than 30 years old), so it's going to be fairly easy to control supply if demand goes down.
2) The number of people per household is steeply declining. Even if the population drops to half of the current level, if there are only half as many people per household, the total number of housing units needed will be largely the same. Smaller units will become more popular, though.
I don't see that. Demand for what? Consumption? Increasing the flow of "stuff" from store/Amazon to the landfill? If we account for inflation, what's increasing?
Young people consume things that can be made at scale. The march of technology makes the things we buy cheaper, better, and more abundant. At the same time, it makes labor related to the production of that technology more valuable.
Old people consume 1:1 care. And as medical technology improves, elderly people survive increasingly complex conditions requiring increasingly labor-intensive management. At the same time, work with scalable impact is still getting more valuable, so 1:1 care positions have to pay more to win workers, so 1:1 care gets more expensive (cost disease).
IMO Science and technology is a max() operator on the peoples ideas. Also, division of labour should go down in a smaller population, so I think this is far from linear in reality and a population collapse can be actually devastating
it really is a great challenge, because for example america will have to rethink its habit of paying for today's excesses by harvesting the labor of future generations. it's a completely different inter-generational relation than we have now.
I’m sceptical of this claim. Demand per capita grows unabated. Working lives are lengthening. A smaller population living well is economically indistinguishable, in the aggregate, from a large one living poorly. Maybe post-industrial civilisations settle into a lower-population steady state than ones requiring lots of unrefined labor.
Yes, dependency ratios will mean re-jiggering the skewed benefits almost every country provides its old at the expense of the young. But that, too, isn’t a bad thing, particularly if it encourages labor force participation.
(There is another comment arguing demographic the dividend’s inverse is a myth. I don’t go that far. I just think it’s a manageable problem versus a catastrophe.)