>>Retirement is still dependent on children. Before it was your children. Now it’s a collective mass of children.
Which messes up the incentive structure. People with many children are subsidizing those with fewer/none.
Which messes up the incentive structure. People with many children are subsidizing those with fewer/none.
What an extraordinarily perverse view of recent history. Who do you think built and maintained the socioeconomic systems that allowed women to focus on creating and raising children? You could even more easily twist your perceptions such that men have been forced to work hard and short lives serving the whims of women who have enjoyed the luxury of sitting around making babies, singing nursery rhymes, and gossiping over afternoon tea with their friends.
Women have stopped making babies. So men have stopped wanting to make civilisation. We are indeed seeing the consequences of the collapse of this social contract.
This statement completely ignores how our current world is shaped by white supremacy and the patriarchy. Women were prohibited from taking part in anything expect raising children (which even today is seen as contributing nothing).
Women who dared venture outside the home had their work ignored or credit stolen. Eunice Foote and Rosalind Franklin are two obvious examples.
Later, textiles, telecoms and computing were powered by women labour and they were expected to stay in their lane so the men could take credit and the money.
> Women have stopped making babies.
Couples have stopped making babies.
Raising your child will run you ~300,000 USD, in addition to the massive opportunity cost from time investment. Given that social security is funded entirely through taxes in that tax year, it's a bit much to expect the children of 53% of the population to care for 100% of the elderly when the willfully childless 47% of the population did not put in more upfront in some other way. As birth rates drop, the ratio of workers to retirees will skew worse and worse, and the entire safety net will collapse progressively.
Alternatively, we can encourage and incentivize child rearing. Yes, that means that the willfully childfree will need to pony up resources for those who want children. What would you prefer: pay now for the continuity of the safety net, or the collapse of the safety net?
This isn't true, or wasn't true for a long time. SS long had a surplus that it lent to the federal government (a lot of the US debt is debt that is owed to SS). It stopped booking a surplus a few years ago, which means that it is dependent on the government paying back what it is owed, and eventually that will be gone, at which point SS will basically be, as you say, living paycheck to paycheck (or probably be insolvent requiring a cut in benefits or an injection from the general fund).
The rise of AI and automation messes everything up. We don't technically need to have more children, we could even shed a few billion people to a new stable smaller population point. The problem is equitable distributions from AI and automation so that unneeded labor isn't just left to die.
For example, in 2005 Social Security had a 172B surplus, but the US government had a deficit of 318B. Social Security's 172B surplus was spent by the US government in the same year for government services on the people of 2005. The money was spent on voters, taxpayers, and citizens in 2005, but the liability was recorded against people who hadn't been born yet.
You've referred to a fiction, but reality is as I've stated. The US government loves creating fictions, but that doesn't mean we visit the Vietnam Police Action Memorial.
I think it's only fair that save for my own retirement.
You could make a different bet, e.g. invest into whatever infrastructure they'll need to take care of aging population. But your savings fund likely invests in luxuries for aging big spenders, so...
I am rather curious how this plays out long-term, since there is no investment instrument for "please build train / underground closer to my house".
Who will work in these companies? Who will buy their products and fuel their revenues?
> How many children my neighbor has impacts my social security payments or other retirement disbursements in no tangible way.
All the retirement savings you have, whether state-managed or private-managed, are just some coupons for your share in the economy of the future. If the economy of the future shrinks your coupons will be worthless.
The number of kids you and your neighbor have not only have an impact on your retirement, these kids are your retirement.
The investment happens when somebody sells you the shares in exchange for fiat used to pay off the workers. Who do you buy your shares from? That's where you invest.
As for the first part, holding fiat or assets convertible to fiat when fiat has been issued with interest and must be eventually repaid under threat of confiscation of assets. :shrug: It's basically a game of chicken.