Posted by brandonb 16 hours ago
As we get better at healthcare and life, we should expect to be productive and care for ourselves for longer. I hope that as I age I remain in favour of succeeding generations over my own self. Plant the tree whose shade we won’t see etc.
That would lower the retirement age for me. I was born in the mid-80s.
I know that was just a suggestion. We could go with something like "life expectancy at birth minus 5 years", which would raise the retirement age for me, but we're basically just admitting that retirement isn't a thing anymore if we do that. Hopefully the wealthiest nation on Earth can do better.
I think, whatever we do, we should recognize that the current retired generation holds more wealth than any other generation. If we want more kids in our society, maybe we need to get some of that wealth into the hands of people who can have more kids.
This is the natural consequence of declining birth rates.. it's either that or immigration right now.
Encouraging people to have more children requires drastic changes in society which is difficult to implement.
In this case, I presume they're taxed on their continued employment and so they're still paying into the pension they're receiving benefits on? I don't see a problem if that's the case. They contributed to the pension with an agreed payment date and followed the process correctly. I can understand how you feel that it's unfair, but I really don't see a problem unless they stop paying into the pension or stop paying taxes on their continued employment.
Like others note, UBI is a fair solution. Let's have everyone, regardless of age, be able to have a baseline. Then allow extra income form those who enjoy, or value, additional work and income.
Without more productive capacity the extra $1.2k/mo would cause enormous inflation. Just a question of what the country is optimizing for, I suppose, but I think people would be unhappy with the result.
The combination of UBI and healthcare largely should. UBI serves as a better alternative to most such programs (and has much less administrative overhead).
Also, any form of UBI will likely result in substantial spending increases (trickle-up economics is well-established as actually working, incremental dollars handed to the average person are typically spent, not saved), as well as reducing structural friction in the labor market (people can change jobs more easily).
> Without more productive capacity
UBI will also likely result in more businesses/entrepreneurship, R&D, and other substantial improvements to productive capacity. Studies generally show that UBI does not cause people to substantially leave the job market.
Countries with larger populations will see these guys commit civilizational suicide with enough time to recover one can hope. We won’t be funding USAID when the majority of Americans are drawing from Medicare though.
We absolutely need an abundance agenda if we want people to have children. Reject the zero-sum investment thesis of NIMBY protectionism. Invest in density, efficiency, and antitrust. This is one of the most openly obvious self-owns in history. It's genuinely absurd.
We are all in this together. Make financial security easy for young people and we'll actually get children.
Of stack and packs lol
> We are all in this together.
When’s the last time I heard that one
Africa doubled it's population in the last 28 years.
In 20 years, will countries start to compete for young people? Tax breaks, benefits, etc. Will some countries thrive while others die off completely? The proportion of young people will be a huge issue regarding military strength, innovation, etc.
Could get very ugly.
Improving healthcare and medicine should be one of the core goals of civilization, so eventually we should have healthcare good enough to enable "practical immortality": No "aging" and no deaths save in extreme cases or physical accidents/violence.
In an ideal future, the majority of humans SHOULD be all over 100 years old! and hale and healthy as a 30 year old.
The problem is not "how long most people have been alive", maybe the problem is our unwillingness to reassess social assumptions established >2000 years ago:
That everyone has to "work", everyone has to "earn", everyone has to constantly "buy", and that everyone has to constantly pump out babies so they can also keep doing the same...