Hacker News Reader

Comment by docdeek | Hacker News Reader

This runs into trouble when the older people rely on the younger ones to pay for their retirement and government services. Having fewer children means fewer people to pay taxes, so while a lower birth rate might address environmental and automation/AI challenges, it creates significant headaches elsewhere and requires a society-wide shift in expectations and responsibilities.

View on HN

I’m in my 40s and have never believed retirement would be a thing for me unless I make a whole lot of money.

Retirement for all was an artifact of rapidly growing populations and shorter life spans. Back 50-100 years ago you had each young person supporting maybe 0.1 to 0.25 retired people, and a retirement age in the 60s meant you’d get a few years before now easily treatable heart conditions would kill you. (Everyone smoked too, which “helped” clear the retirement rolls.)

In a world with even a stable population (let alone a declining one) retirement isn’t viable. Or at the very least the age will be raised a lot. I could see 80 as a retirement age in 2050.

Honestly an institutionalized retirement age in the 60s today is unfair and exploitative toward young people. It’s generational economic cannibalism, stopping young people from establishing themselves to fund the old.

Young people can't pay for their own retirements, as they're effectively funding their parents retirements.

social welfare in almost any nation (excl. energy rich countries) is not sustaniable long term. maybe we can start with ack. that fact? Sure retired people can get some amounts and free food but bigger amounts in budget just don't make sense? I mean calculate and see it. Countries literally pay these with DEBT. How hard it is for avg people to get this? It is such a simple thing to calculate too. When debt gets too big for so many countries, entire thing collapses? we know that already

This has been a refrain of the political right for several decades now, particularly in the US, and appears to be ideological rather than factual.

I dont support right, just search for countries by gdp/debt %. It's been just incresing for decades, that is not sustanaible + welfare + any govern. service that relies on that debt.

More simple , it's not sustainable because new workers dont earn much, people live longer and % from the state budget just keeps growing.

Think of it as income growth getting slower and liabilities growing just bigger with more old people in terms of %. how can you or we fix that?

> just search for countries by gdp/debt %. It's been just incresing for decades, that is not sustanaible

This is an idealogical argument more than a factual one. It certainly appears to be sustainable.

Step back from the gdp/debt ratio figures though. The argument is really only about whether a decreasing workforce can support an increasing population of retirees.

If government pays retirees then retirees get a direct payout, and use it to buy goods and services that younger people provide.

If (like in Australia) we make everyone invest through their life then each has a well-funded retirement account largely tied up in the stock-market. This represents part ownership of assets in the productive economy, which can be converted to funds that retired people will use ... to buy goods and services that younger people provide.

Where the money comes from seems less important to me than the fact if there is an ever increasing population of retirees, then one way or another they are supported by working people.

The mechanism is just an abstraction. The demographic problem is probably more real.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com