The Ratio of Workers to Retirees Is Plunging Across Developed Economies | Hacker News Reader

The Ratio of Workers to Retirees Is Plunging Across Developed Economies

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The talk was that this was part of the reason that Merkel was so open in taking in so many refugees back in 2015, and have a 'open door' policy. It was both a 'calculated economic decision', and a humanitarian one.

Unfortunately it backfired as it encouraged too many economic immigrants to come with boats and undertake dangerous trips risking their lives, only to eventually get turned down in their lengthy asylum process. And she is risking her position/government as her people got fed up on the influx. It also is risking the EU stability itself, with Austria and Italy taking a hard right and turning into immigrant hostile countries, and helping putting eurosceptic parties in power.

The problem is that you can't have a liesure class of healthcare consuming old people without an underclass of young working age people toiling for high taxes. Eventually you have an even worse social issue. Further, people probably don't realize they are voting to close the border to their sole source of future dependency. A vicious cycle. The other problem is there is a huge gap in the quality of immigrants, some stay dependent where others drive the economy like no native can. Complicated issue all around.

There is always the option of reversing the decline of fertility in Western countries.

But as Peter Zeihan says, it takes 20 years to make a 20 year old. So the policies to support family formation need to be in place asap.

Fertility is declining globally it’s not a western thing. The only way to realistically improve fertility rates is to recess women’s rights back to the 1950s.

Instead we should focus on improving quality of life for all through more efficient and automated production methods. The end goal is to increase productivity per hour such that we don’t need as many young people to support the older population.

sure you can. the US government can lower taxes and spend more by simply selling more debt, while at the same time increasing the size and productivity of the overall economy by creating more Googles and Facebooks. Other countries however do not have this luxury. They don't have a large influx of high-IQ talent nor the ability to raise money so cheaply. It used to be very expensive to produce food, and food expenditures used to be a much higher percentage of income than it is now. Now food production is very cheap. Same for electricity.

But also the possibility of rationing healthcare is a politically untenable issue

Quality of immigrants matter. I do not care for country of origin, but importing people who are from poorer backgrounds back home is not going to make it any better in one generation. I am not saying poor people should not allowed, but most of the immigrants should be ably educated enough to operate in the complex economic infrastructure of advanced economies.

The first generation of migrants will mostly fail to get jobs[1] and become a burden on the welfare state.

1) https://www.ft.com/content/022de0a4-54f4-11e7-9fed-c19e27000...

That’s not true in Canada. Most immigrants I know do pretty well. And the reason is that Canada actually actively tries to integrate and assimilate. To the point that you get paid a small amount to attend language classes in QC, and other provinces have other programs.

Technology will solve the problem - immigration just kicks the can down the road.

If you import a large amount of immigrants they will have less hereditary wealth than the same amount of native Germans.

This increases state dependence when these immigrants become old themselves and enhances the viscous cyle

It hasn’t backfired, the German economy has never been stronger and Merkel has been an incredibly successful chancellor.

The migrant boat trips would have happened regardless of policy, the economic incentives for being in a wealthy country are always there.

I agree with her policy, but it’s clearly far too early to come up with any causations between economic growth and her immigration policy. Many of the new arrivals haven’t even taken up their first proper job

There is no proof either way, but there would have been far easier ways if you wanted to increase immigration to drive up your economy. Personally, I believe the economic reasons were promoted after the fact to win over those people who didn’t care about the humanitarian reasons

I doubt that it was a calculated economic decision because refugees have a negative net lifetime contribution to the state's coffers. If it was an economic decision then Germany would have relaxed its immigration laws to attract more highly skilled immigrants, who have a net positive contribution. Insiders claim that Merkel was actually not open to taking in so many refugees, but that her decision was made because she was afraid of the negative press that would result from German border guards physically stopping hundreds of thousands of refugees from crossing the German border. When hundreds of thousands of people are coming, the only way to stop them is by erecting a fence and using the military. This will result in violence because people who have traveled halfway around the world and sold all their belongings will not be happy about that, and the logistics of keeping hundreds of thousands of people hydrated, fed, and warm at the border would be impossible. There is simply no way that Germany would have executed such a policy, even if somebody other than Merkel had been the chancellor. In this sense it was not a German decision to let in so many refugees; the decision was made by the refugees. Merkel could have told the German population that she didn't want to let in that many refugees but that she was practically powerless to stop it, but imagine the storm that would have caused. She decided to do the opposite.

Then Merkel should really have gone for some "point based system" similar to Canada or Australia and pursue it aggressively, no? Why open floodgates to everyone in Middle east / North Africa?

Coming from a third world country, I can assure you - a lot of smart, talented folks who would jump at the opportunity to migrate to Germany legally. It will benefit them (better living standard, more money) and benefit Germany (more educated workers). Only loser would be those third world countries who fail to invest in their people for whatever reasons.

And the ratio of workers to worker productivity increases every year, so it all balances out.

In the US I pay inordinate taxes and do not get the health, education etc. that I would in Europe. Instead I am paying for hundreds of US military bases all over the world, the $1.5 trillion F35 piece of junk etc. The one thing I will get, money in retirement, they are trying to take away from me.

The productivity numbers the past few years are not that great!

As the birth control pill became available around the 1960-1970 around the developed world, birth rates plumeted. A lot of countries took inspiration from 19th century Germany's social security system and have the current workers pay pensions for the current retirees, which predictably leads a big problem 60-70 years after any big decrease in birth rate.

It's a disaster we have seen coming for decades, with limited success at mitigating it. Germany for example is (pretty late into the problem) trying to switch over to a system where everyone saves for his own pension (which is robost against any population changes), without looking like they mistreat the generation unfairly that has to pay both the current retiree's pension and their own. Getting more migrants to smooth things over is also a valid strategy, as long as integration works out.

This is the result of western economic policy which is designed to promote corporate growth and monopolies (along with the income and wealth inequality which is associated with it) - It causes people to concentrate in major urban centers where all the corporate HQs are located; this causes rents to go up, which means that people have less disposable income and can't afford to have children... Fewer children translates to fewer workers to support an ageing population - This creates an incentive for the older generation take in immigrants to fill gaps in the workforce.

Having one generation depend on the taxes collected from another is a bad idea.

I think the forced savings system Singapore has makes a lot more sense.

Money isn’t intrinsically valuable. Forcing people to save for retirement doesn’t bother me one way or the other, but, how can I put this…

Imagine a family living alone on an island. They use gold coins for trade amongst themselves. Parents get old, kids look after them. Those kids decide not to reproduce (reasons are different between analogy and reality, effect is similar). When the kids get old themselves, no amount of coin changes the fact nobody’s doing any work, catching fish or whatever.

If we can automate all the work, great, we can all retire. If not, we need some balance between working and reproduction that varies depending on the rate of reproduction.

I wonder if longevity will start falling soon, Gen-X don't seem to have very healthy lifestyles.

But it's not like Boomers in the 1970s and early 80s exactly treated their bodies like temples.

The surge in entitlement spending could be considered a form of basic income. Proponents of basic income need to take into account that spending is already very high.

That’s already given as one of the arguments in favour of it being affordable.

can you elaborate how that would work

Instead of n different benefits schemes, of which pensions are just the most socially accepted, take all that money plus all they money used to decide who should have that money and just give it to everybody equally no questions asked.

That’s basically what people tell me when trying to justify it. I don’t know if it adds up or not or if it does but only in one country. My opinions on it at this point are still just a complicated tree that branches on facts I don’t know.

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