161–170 of 1001 posts
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Wouldn't the fourth way be via increasing either birth rate or immigration?
Raising immigration rates to solve an aging population is a Ponzi solution.
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2 has some options. Increase the number of (young) immigrants. Increase the birthrate (has anywhere managed this?).
Mormons and Amish have above replacement fertility rates. Millionaires in western countries also have above replacement fertility rates. To me it seems rather obvious: you need both the will and the means to raise 3+ children.
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A 99.9% wealth tax on US billionaires would cover the annual deficit for about 1.5 years. The scale of the problem is absolutely mind-blowing.
US annual deficit/debt is a meaningless number since it just prints as much money as it needs being the world reserve currency. It's a looney toons number.
Seems the US will have to do this soon. Just very very unpopular. Not sure which party will actually pull the trigger.
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What is the political incentive to do this ever?
My thinking was, cutting taxes via budget reconciliation (which is the only process the currently paralyzed legislature can do) requires some hand waving deference to the notion of being revenue neutral by the Byrd rule, so cuts to social programs or rollbacks of government spending have been increasingly included as a way to get tax cuts. Tax cuts fund your donors who fund your reelection campaign. But, I just looke…
If this budget hits the PAYGO limits, which is basically guaranteed, that will trigger automatic cuts to Medicare, so they can backdoor cut the program without anybody voting for that.
It's utterly insane that people need to work more and longer as technology increases productivity. A truly dystopian economic system. In 1930 Keynes projected that by 2000 their grandchildren could work 15 hours per week¹. Now the projection is that we will work more and longer in the future. And what is this labor supposed to even do? How much of even current work really increases wellbeing? Graeber's thesis of bull…
Yes, that's what strikes me as well. Where is the productivity gains going? Why are we still working 40 hour weeks, and possibly even for many more years? If I remember correctly, Denmark even removed a holiday recently. So work more days a year as well. That's the problem here. That a few people reap all the benefits of this, while the rest of us toil.
I wonder what a good answer would be here. Intuitively we are increasing productivity in activities that does not increase social welfare. Take corporate lawyering, marketing as an example.
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There are quite a few highly paid professions where the main purpose of that profession’s union seems to be to prevent there being an adequate supply of the professionals.
Is that what’s happening here?
This is because of their low birth rate primarily right? I think the system has failed at this point, when you are expected to work that long.