/int/ - International

Barring an AI technological miracle or a medical anti-aging miracle, cratering birth rates will either destroy democracy or destroy the countries who stick to it. How do you stop old people from abusing their demographic weight to vote more money for themselves and suck all the life out of the youth who will bear the burden? Day of the Pillow isn't an easy sell unless you hate your parents and grandparents.

>>10454 >will either destroy democracy I will rejoice on that day inshallah

>>10454 1) not all developed nations have such bad a situation 2) you can change it by certain policies: - moving up the y-axis by increasing the retirement age - moving right on the x-axis by introducing more savings-based pensions and reducing the pay-as-you-go schemes

>>10463 RIP Greece.

>>10463 The trendlines are very bad everywhere. >moving up the y-axis by increasing the retirement age France tried that and was forced to immediately back down due to popular pressure. It also mobilizes the seniors against it during elections, providing incredibly powerful political incentives for parties not to even flirt with such policies. I mean look at this. UK's "Triple Lock" is one of the more fiscally atrocious systems in the Western World but it's very popular. Good luck cutting old Nigel's gibs and surviving the next election.

>>10469 Amazing. Even just a double lock (inflation or wages) is a giant W for old people. They provide nothing to the increased productivity, yet get to reap the benefits, but in case of decreasing real wages, they get the full inflation rate.

>>10469 I don't deny the voting problem with pension spending. in this country pensioners are like the top supporters of Lukashenka, so indexing pensions to the inflation rate is like the sacred cow of his policies. however, there are some tactical solutions to circumvent the old age voters resistance, like increasing the retirement age for the future pensioners, i.e. people who are currently young

>>10471 >in case of decreasing real wages, they get the full inflation rate a good point and well, while it's not the general case, it is true for the UK

>>10475 That has slightly better odds but I'm not sure of its feasibility in many cases nor if such piecemeal shredding can be done fast enough to prevent a death spiral. For one it requires a degree of selflessness in our political class, as whoever pulls that off suffers for someone else in ~two decades to reap the benefits of. Secondly, it compounds the fertility problem by disillusioning the people in ever-smaller productive age cohorts who rightly recognize their futures are being sacrificed for the benefit of the gerontocracy, further depressing family formation and incentivizing emigration. Thirdly, you also somehow need to figure out a way to set it into stone, otherwise you just leave an easy win for cynical operators to exploit in the future by rolling the changes back, and it will work because people are largely economically illiterate until the situation gets really bad. Maybe I'm too disillusioned, but it just seems like too tall an order. France had one of the least worst demographic pictures in the developed world (even if it clouds a disproportionate contribution from less productive demographic groups) and it still didn't pull it off. Now it faces a looming economic crisis. Italy seems like a lost case. Germany ain't much better. All made worse by increasing political gridlocks where less and less can get done. I can't shake the feeling that whole of Europe in particular is heading for a massive reckoning in the ~2040s at latest. I'd love to be wrong, but I don't think I am.

It's not really a boomer issue in France. The French government has been trying to do stuff like raise the retirement age for years now and every time it comes up there are mass protests.

>>10454 Families should be supporting their elderly like the old days, then the oldies would be forced to invest in their kids unlike how the selfish boomers behaved. There's no way I'm putting my folks in a home where some curry will abuse them.

>>10515 That's absolute Berndocide though. What should people without kids do?

>>10523 Bernds would just continue getting gibs into old age if they can prove they don't have kids.

>>10524 You cannot prove that you don't have kids though.

>>10525 Births and deaths are registered, even now you can't just turn up to social security office and walk away with gibs so easy, at least here.

>people who accumulated more capital have more income And? >>10514 Raising the retirement age would make it even "worse" since there would be more people working, lowering salaries, and once they retired they'd have accumulated even more money (for working longer).

>>10731 It would have some impact but that would depend on the labour market also using native labour would mean less brown labour had to be imported which also helps reduce house prices. In France debt is a particularly large issue and raising the retirement age helps reduce that. But really the best solution is to do something like Australia does with our super fund scheme whereby a employers are made to put a percentage of an employees pay is into a retirement account. I thin that's why Australia ranks so low in that OP image, I think it is based on pensions and not assets or Super.

EU income transfers will pay for it, like they have up to now

>>10742 France is a net contributor to the EU budget

>>10731 >more people working, lowering salaries would be true if France had a young population wave incoming but they have more boomers leaving the workforce thus putting the upward pressure on wages

>>10514 Because raising the retirement age NOW is just too late, too little and it will put an even more increased burden on the people who now still have to work. They should have done that 40 years ago.

How is that even possible...

>>10768 Clever tax schemes ;^)

>>10744 The got a massive payout in the Corona package in 2020

>>10768 because the EU runs on corruption

>>10768 It's mostly wages.

>>10731 >people who accumulated more capital have more income >And? that's the point that it doesn't work like this in the pay-as-you-go pension systems: there it is basically every year they collect the pension payments from the working folks (mostly done by your employer, so you don't see it), amass those money into a huge non-personified pool, and then transfer a share to each pensioner

>>10744 Poland, lmao!

>>10825 Huh? Poland is the straight one in that video.