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Comment by lionello | Hacker News Reader

“We’re getting older and older, which means there are fewer people able to work to support more people who can’t.”

Well, if we’re getting older and older, isn’t that because we’re getting healthier and healthier? Wouldn’t the number of years we’re “able to work to support more people” increase as well?

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> isn’t that because we’re getting healthier and healthier?

Not necessarily, just look at the obesity epidemic. 40% of Americans are now obese. Not overweight, obese. Our society has tackled large scale public health issues that used to kill lots of people (cholera, polio, etc.) But living longer is no way an indicator that we are healthier than we used to be. There's not as much out there to kill us when we're young.

0: https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/articles/...

I’d say being alive and obese is healthier than dying earlier from diseases we’ve been successful at tackling. Obese doesn’t mean anything close to being unable to work and be productive for society. A 6ft tall man is obese at 220. Hardly debilitating.

I'm 30 now and having the first minor issues of my body not working as great as before, I can't imagine how it is at 70. The simple fact is that almost no full-time career job (except for politician apparently) can be fully filled by the average 70 year old.

Either the vast majority of our productivity gains will to to pensions in the future (as they already do in Europe), or retired people will have to live with severe cuts to living standards.

It seems to me that pretty much any job not involving physical labor could be filled by a 70-year old. Why would someone 60+ not be able to be a banker, a civil servant or even a lathe worker? There's a vast amount of jobs these days that don't involve much or any physical labor at all.

Decline in health, energy, mental acuity, motivation. Doesn't happen to all people of course, but does for many.

I think the real challenge, at least in the western world, will be getting people to work when retirement at a "normal" age is not on the table. A lot of people work boring jobs with the knowledge that they're done at 60 or 65 and if health permits can have 10-20 years of nice retirement. It's going to be a tough sell for a lot of jobs to convince people to want to just do them until they die. For interesting jobs, I think many do this anyway, but if you're some pointless cog in a bureaucracy, you're probably just counting down days to get your pension. Losing that would make people rethink the whole thing (and hopefully enjoy themselves more)

This attitude of many people makes me sad. Working and thus wasting your whole life in a miserable job and just waiting for retirement. Feels like a recipe for disaster.

As a society, we are quite good at keeping people alive for a long time but not so good at addressing chronic illness. With the massive increase in autoimmune disease, obesity and other chronic illnesses, I would contend that overall we are less healthy on average than just a few decades ago and this trend will continue indefinitely until massive changes occur in the medical and food industries.

"Older and older" means the average age.

This is driven more by the number of old/young people rather than a small % increase in life expectancy.

Look at a graph of the distribution of people in age groups

No, we're burning our youth to keep our old alive by taxing the shit out of the young and productive to feed it into the endless maw of the old.

Famous American aphorism: A society grows great when old men buy land and charge rent for the young to plant trees on which the old will then sit in the shade of

Birthrates are falling too. Meaning less young people to pull down the average age.

American life has never been unhealthier, that is why average lifespan is decreasing now.

Not equally.

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