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Adults over 65 will outnumber children by 2029

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Re: Adults over 65 will outnumber children by 2029

#161

Post by iamnothere »

card_zero wrote: post #157
iamnothere wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A people that will not or cannot reproduce itself must eventually step aside for a people that will. Those who govern us see us as an economic zone to exploit, so perpetuating core social values isn’t really a concern. Although even countries who recognize this problem are having trouble finding a solution. It may simply be that the future doesn’t look very much like the “developed world”. The only nations (or large…

But the next generation of "a people" are not the same people, and perhaps those people won't, and then where's your "step aside"?

But that’s what’s happening now. The new generations in the developed world are not reproducing, so they will not have descendants. Unless something changes, the culture will be replaced by one that produces descendants.

You are not using “people” in the same sense. I mean “people” as a national culture, which does shift from generation to generation, but generally not in a radical sense. Immigrants assimilate over time, although they do leave lasting influence on the culture as they merge with it. Families pass on aspects of their attitudes and beliefs. Generations pass on cultural knowledge through media. This is why millennial culture in the US is a continuation and evolution of Boomer culture, despite all the intergenerational strife.

As the culture is replaced, revolution and/or national disintegration becomes more likely, as there is little to unite people in the face of significant challenges. (Why should I sacrifice for neighbors I can’t relate to? Why should I follow the laws and cultural codes of a nation I have no deep connection to? Perhaps my own culture’s standards are better!) It’s a natural process that’s happened many times throughout history.

(This sounds overly cut and dry, but culture is complicated, and a national culture is made up of tens to hundreds of regional cultures and subcultures that all have a share of influence. In the end it’s an abstraction. You can’t really force a culture of any size to behave in a certain way, nor can you “preserve” it except in the form of documentation. But culture does produce a lineage of identifiable characteristics that gets passed down, if it survives.)

Re: Adults over 65 will outnumber children by 2029

#162

Post by Gud »

mostertoaster wrote: post #25
pmontra wrote: post #11

So a lot of problems will be solved by 2049 (overpopulation) and probably many others will arise (we never had worldwide decreasing demographics.)

Overpopulation is not a problem. Maybe in a couple countries. But not for the world, and not for the west and definitely not for America. As the population has grown poverty has decreased.

It is a gigantic problem, we are literally destroying the planet.

Re: Adults over 65 will outnumber children by 2029

#163

Post by Ekaros »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #96
arjie wrote: post #41

I think it’s time to bite the bullet and raise the retirement^W elder benefits eligibility age and peg it to life expectancy at birth minus 15 years or some structure like that. It’s fine that my generation will have to eat the loss - having paid for the past one but not benefiting as much from the coming ones. Some generation has to, and better us than them. As we get better at healthcare and life, we should expect…

We should establish UBI and universal health care, not tied to age, and then the concept of "retirement age" can go away.

I am starting to consider that health care should absolutely be tied to age. Rationing limited resource based on most fair criteria seems only reasonable action to do.

Re: Adults over 65 will outnumber children by 2029

#164

Post by nec4b »

jaredklewis wrote: post #150
geye1234 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, absolutely right. Energy is very easy to produce cleanly (nuclear, and solar is looking better and better). The barriers to doing so are political and financial, not technical. They will be made worse by having an aged-heavy population, which is less innovative, less willing to invest in the future, and less willing to try new things. And it makes a poorer society, obviously. Malthus has been proved wrong at eve…

> Lack of children is about to bite us very, very hard. Why is everyone so sure of this? My own instinct is just that we'll adapt to it and it will be fine. It's just seems like the equivalent of making one of those charts that shows we're going to run out of [some critical resource] by [some date]. They are always wrong, without exception. Because as the resource becomes more scarce, we adapt our societies to become…

>> we adapt our societies to become less dependent on it

How? Old people need care. Younger people will need to take care of them. When they die, a lot of knowledge will be lost, because there will not be enough young people to learn all those skills. Less people will also mean overall less economic activity, less creativity, less inventions and so on. I'm not saying the world will stop, but the transition will certainly be painful.

Re: Adults over 65 will outnumber children by 2029

#165

Post by arbll »

sublinear wrote: post #158
geye1234 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, absolutely right. Energy is very easy to produce cleanly (nuclear, and solar is looking better and better). The barriers to doing so are political and financial, not technical. They will be made worse by having an aged-heavy population, which is less innovative, less willing to invest in the future, and less willing to try new things. And it makes a poorer society, obviously. Malthus has been proved wrong at eve…

You're assuming at least two things that I disagree with. First about behavior in old age. I'm pretty sure the majority of adults today don't want to live and think like their grandparents, so we can't say "less" anything. The circumstances are definitely changing enough that we already know it will be different. The population decline is not happening in huge step changes. "About to bite us" is definitely hyperbole.

No, it will simply be a slow and steady increase of pressure on the working age population: taxes, retirement age delayed further and further, "everyone must work", etc...

Re: Adults over 65 will outnumber children by 2029

#166

Post by Razengan »

matchbok3 wrote: post #153
Razengan wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The over 65 crowd does not produce more than they consume. So that's the end goal our species should aspire to? Produce™ and Consume™? Eternally without relent?

Yes, that sounds great! I love my iPhone and air conditioning. Don't you? Will you be the first to go volunteer to back to the stone ages? I didn't think so.

I mean robots can Produce while we continue to do the Consuming

Re: Adults over 65 will outnumber children by 2029

#167

Post by sheepolog »

card_zero wrote: post #155
baxtr wrote: post #95

Let’s consider this logically: What kind of people will not wanting children likely select for? At least two kinds come to mind: 1) People who love children and are willing to have them regardless of the impact on their financial situation. 2) People living in societies where women (and likely some men) lack a say in whether or not to have children. The first kind could be very good. The second is definitely not some…

Opinions aren't genetic, so that's not very good logic. I guess the logic depends on a culture passing on a value - by means of words, not by genetics - such as spawn furiously to the next generation, who accept it uncritically. That would be a version of (2) I guess: mindless reproduction along with hostility to thinking about it, with memes as the mechanism. This memetic condition would tend to win, you'd think, ex…

Opinions definitely do have a genetic component. Twin study meta-analysis suggests that 40-50% of your personality is inherited.

I agree that these days, the bulk of the drive to procreate comes from your culture/memetics.

Re: Adults over 65 will outnumber children by 2029

#168

Post by preg_match »

eigencoder wrote: post #106
throw-the-towel wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You jest, but I'd think it really is the opposite. Hard to care too much for a child if you've got five spare ones.

Do you have children? Because I've never heard a parent think that way

I mean historically this is exactly how it worked. When infant mortality was 25-50%, people often had 10 children or so. Maybe 5 would make it to be adults, but people back then didn't view death like we view it now. Sure, they mourned, but losing a child was not a "stop the world" event, because you could expect to lose many. So, it couldn't be.

That was a little over 100 years go. So, a long time, but not that long.

Re: Adults over 65 will outnumber children by 2029

#170

Post by arjie »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #137
arjie wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose we could pay everyone about $1.2k/mo and that would exhaust the entire current federal budget but that would eliminate the 60% or so of the federal budget dedicated to the aggregate of all social welfare programs. The tax increases required would be substantial to keep Medicare, Social Security, Health services, Education, and so on. Without more productive capacity the extra $1.2k/mo would cause enormous i…

> that would eliminate the 60% or so of the federal budget dedicated to the aggregate of all social welfare programs 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, increme…

Studies also show that $1.2k/mo sustained do not result in substantial changes to people’s lives. They change what they spend their time on but not in a productive direction. If we eliminate the 60% of spending and give people $1.2k/mo we nearly instantly kill almost all dialysis patients. That amount is below the floor of cost for that treatment. And those 800k people use just under 1% of the federal budget.
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