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Comment by boczez | Hacker News Reader

GOOD. We’ve done well to keep everyone alive. All that’s left is to implement sensible economic policies that allow normal folk to start families

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But the people disinterested in starting families (boomers, genx) are going to be the majority of the voting base?

We've already seen 20 years of policy driven by people who don't care about families being started.

A great point, but I don’t think those policies should go after the (relatively tiny) wealth that boomers et al currently hold. As another commenter alluded to, the money is going to have to come from much bigger fish; there’s literally nowhere else to get it from!

Parents and Grandparents might not be interested in starting families, but they're interested in their (grand)children starting families. Ideally, that's where their wealth would go, except that it's being completely obliterated by retirement and end-of-life care.

If that were true, US policy and trends would reflect that. Instead, as groups, we are seeing earning potential decreased in the young and wealth increase in the old. This is a dysgenic shift. Coupled with AI, which when viewed as a force against labor is a product that reduces the earning potential of the young cohort as a group, this is not sustainable. The lack of stability and opportunity for young people is the sort of stuff that leads to revolution.

>(relatively tiny) wealth that boomers et al currently hold

Their wealth is not liquid, but it's not relatively tiny.

>$93 trillion in assets[1]

>Total wealth: $167.26 trillion[2]

[1]https://investor.visa.com/news/news-details/2026/Visa-Resear...

[2]https://smartasset.com/financial-advisor/wealth-by-generatio...

What? If boomers and genx weren't interested in starting families, where did the generations after them come from?

They still wanna be grandparents or great grandparents

I hate to tell you, but no generation is particularly interested in starting families at this moment in history. This is the closest thing the world has gotten to a general strike to force capitalism to slow its roll.

Yeah, with apologies to the mill which demands more grist, we grew up hearing that if you can't afford children, then you shouldn't have them. And we learned that lesson. Lived it too, from the other side. Our parents couldn't really afford it, and it's tougher now than then, getting tougher still. So it goes.

In the US, social security is the angle to take on this one. "Unless you want changes to your social security, you'd better make it easier for youngsters to have kids and for people to immigrate."

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