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Your Pension Depends on Kids You Did Not Have

julienreszka.com

31–36 of 36 posts

Re: Your Pension Depends on Kids You Did Not Have

#31

This is propaganda of the most obvious kind. You should have a retirement plan. Kids are not a plan.

Both are true. You should have a retirement plan, but kids are also needed on a societal level for that plan to actually work and for society to keep running.

There needs to be enough working aged people to run all the services a person relies on (utilities, health care, home maintenance, food production, etc). There also need to be enough people in the population to consume so all the investments in the retirement fund don't crash and burn.

At an individual level, a parent shouldn't be relying on their kids to pay for them in old age, at least not directly. But enough kids are needed to keep the world going and economies afloat.

Re: Your Pension Depends on Kids You Did Not Have

#32
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not a legend at all. I think you skipped the article I quote near the end. https://julienreszka.com/blog/pensions-buy-fewer-babies-cutt...

This is AI slop.

bots accusing bots of bottery

truly a 2026 moment

Re: Your Pension Depends on Kids You Did Not Have

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All systems work this way. Even systems where you do it all yourself -- invest while you work and withdraw when you retire. A 2026 dollar and a 2046 dollar are different things. A dollar is a share claim on the productive capacity of a nation. If a nation has less productive capacity because few people had children, that dollar is worth less.

The comment you are replying to doesn't concern inflation and GDP. It simply states the system is ill-planned.

That statement implies that there is a system that is better. There isn't.

Re: Your Pension Depends on Kids You Did Not Have

#34
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would millenia of data from primarily agricultural, family-worked farms suffice?

Sure. Let's see the ancient Egyptian papyrus where poor farmers describe how they actually don't like sex but they need more farmhands.

I'm sorry, but this is absolutely brain dead.

Re: Your Pension Depends on Kids You Did Not Have

#35
post #3

This article is apparently propaganda aimed to cause people to have more children. ¿Cui bono? Is Julien worried his own pension won't be covered, or is he trying to enslave his children so the benefits of their work will go to him but not to me? There are far too many humans for the planet to support right now. People never had children to guarantee their future financial stability. It was always some combination of…

Moderns are sometimes quite surprised to learn that, in the West and in Christian culture, children have always been obligated to support their parents. This is a concept called "alimentation". https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01312b.htm As adult parents are obligated to care for their children, to give food, clothing and shelter for their well-being, children are also eventually obligated to their parents for the sa…

> Moderns are sometimes quite surprised to learn that, in the West and in Christian culture, children have always been obligated to support their parents.

> And that is why we've always done it this way, because the youth had respect for their elders, and cared for them

Which is it? They were obligated to do so, or they did so because they had respect (dad-gum it!), unlike the kids of today?

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