just my 2 ct
Cynical takes being de rigeur on HN, I’m not surprised to read this comment here; but it’s sad nonetheless. I suppose in a very narrow economic context of “utility”, you may be right. But it would be a truly impoverished society that marginalized the non-economic contributions of its citizens 60 and over.
I’m just shy of one of those “people in their 60s” and volunteer many hours a week at a music school. I’d like to think that I’ll continue being useful to society in that way and in other ways less formalized.
I admire your optimism. But from the datapoints we have, it is not the direction we're heading.
AI is just the next step of technology development, so it will just increase the rate of change we see for last couple of decades in the same direction.
And while technology is indeed helping people to be more productive, it also allows megacorps to capture the added value. You can see it in different economic benchmarks - that while there was an enormous economic growth in the past decades, there is increasing gap between classes, people outside of tech feel the decrease of their purchasing power and quality of life in general throughout the developed world.
There is a powerful systems forces in play, so it is not political, but rather more like a natural force of progress and especially automation.
If you're young and work in tech, you may notice that you are being disproportionately rewarded for your effort from the rest of the world for building tech.
My hunch is that in some cases boomers have been and will continue decreasing their net contribution to whichever economy they live in, which shouldn't be the most important thing in evaluating the value of someone's existence, except that in this case everyone servicing them is also being squeezed by the tax system, and the same people they're servicing. Could be living in a boomer's basement making less than them but paying 1/2 your check, or in a managed rental that's owned by a reit that's invested in by their pension fund.