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Is America becoming a gerontocracy?

economist.com

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Re: Is America becoming a gerontocracy?

#101

Post by zdragnar »

hyhatqtv wrote: post #94
solumunus wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s simply that for the first time in human history women have alternative options that don’t suck. That’s literally it. Birth rates will remain high only in socially conservative highly religious countries. Liberal democracies? No chance.

It would be interesting to see to what extent exactly this is accurate (of course to a certain extent it is) if the majority of the population in liberal democracies had the option of having more than 1-2 children without massively compromising their material wellbeing (or the future of their offspring due to the lack of resources).

There's a few confounding factors:

- larger percentage of population living in urban centers without the room for larger families

- full time employment for both spouses becomes necessary as cost of living increases

- delayed marriage and delayed age of first child means fewer children can be safely carried to birth

The "highly liberal democracies" is just pleasant coding for "consumerized".

Re: Is America becoming a gerontocracy?

#102

Post by bulbar »

ChiperSoft wrote: post #100
adrithmetiqa wrote: post #19

America may be become a gerontocracy but it’s far more likely to be a plutocracy first and that will cause more long term harm. Old people die eventually, but the ultra rich keep it in the family.

It already is a plutocracy

I mean, a billionaire runs the country. First thing he did was to invite another billionaire and give him access to quite extensive data of every US citizen.

He was even able to successfully campaign with stopping corruption which is kind of funny tbh. That's like "corruption is when billionaires bribe politicians. Just have the billionaires also being politicians - problem solved, you can't bribe yourself, right?"

Re: Is America becoming a gerontocracy?

#103

Post by littlexsparkee »

zdragnar wrote: post #95
littlexsparkee wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since social mobility has flatlined, this has more to do with about the decline in birthrates.

No, the numbers I referred to are percentages. The decline in birthrates doesn't factor in.

The biggest drops in fertility around 2007 were among teenage moms, hence fewer unwanted children / poverty. How is it immaterial regardless of pct or raw numbers? My point is that there's not a robust mechanism moving people out of working class to middle/upper.

Re: Is America becoming a gerontocracy?

#104

Post by littlexsparkee »

znpy wrote: post #93
littlexsparkee wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not having kids likely allowed them that stability in the first place; now that they have it, why would they give it up? Times are precarious.

> now that they have it, why would they give it up? a number of reasons, including avoiding to feed the gerontocracy > Times are precarious yeah i get it but at the same time, times are always precarious.

from your first line, i think we are in agreement - they want to preserve stability hence they remain childfree, also to not provide fodder to the machine

Re: Is America becoming a gerontocracy?

#105

Post by johnea »

America has become a wealth-ocracy, otherwise known as plutocracy.

There are plenty of young wealthy people that are contributing to fucking the place up.

I'd trade an elon or a suckerberg for a Bernie any day...

Re: Is America becoming a gerontocracy?

#106

Post by johnea »

niraj898 wrote: post #53

Not entirely, you can see the mayor of NYC who is very young, thats entirely dependent on voters, for instance, my country's PM and most of the ministers this time are at the age of around 35-40.

> entirely dependent on voters

A phenomenon otherwise known as democracy...

Re: Is America becoming a gerontocracy?

#107

Post by pseudohadamard »

ChiperSoft wrote: post #100
adrithmetiqa wrote: post #19

America may be become a gerontocracy but it’s far more likely to be a plutocracy first and that will cause more long term harm. Old people die eventually, but the ultra rich keep it in the family.

It already is a plutocracy

And it already is a gerontocracy, from the two dementia patients who fought for the presidency through to the geriatrics in charge of congress.

In the 1970s and 1980s we used to make fun of the geriatric Kremlin leaders, most notably satirised in Whoops Apocalypse where they wheeled a new one out several times in a scene. Now the US is the same...

Re: Is America becoming a gerontocracy?

#108

Post by fmajid »

pseudohadamard wrote: post #107
ChiperSoft wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It already is a plutocracy

And it already is a gerontocracy, from the two dementia patients who fought for the presidency through to the geriatrics in charge of congress. In the 1970s and 1980s we used to make fun of the geriatric Kremlin leaders, most notably satirised in Whoops Apocalypse where they wheeled a new one out several times in a scene. Now the US is the same...

Well, "Senate" literally means "assembly of elders" (same latin root as "senior", or "senile").

Re: Is America becoming a gerontocracy?

#109

Post by microgpt »

zdragnar wrote: post #97
microgpt wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is poverty?

As defined by the Census bureau. https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p... There's a link below the tables to a PDF that describes the definitions and methods used.

Where in the PDF? It's very big.

Re: Is America becoming a gerontocracy?

#110

Post by znpy »

lifestyleguru wrote: post #96
znpy wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> now that they have it, why would they give it up? a number of reasons, including avoiding to feed the gerontocracy > Times are precarious yeah i get it but at the same time, times are always precarious.

Why breed when you're certain in advance that your children will be losers? They can wake up early, study hard, work hard and they will every time lose against children (now grandchildren) of rich boomers. Your kids will see them passing by in Porsche, or speaking how they casually bought an island on Adriatic.

Your line of reasoning is very shortsighted.
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