I'm not against working until a debilitating disease shows up, although I have a convenient job for older age (doctor). It would be better if a couple of things are met: advancing carrier, mostly from basic profession to managing people and projects, and capability to move somewhere else, depending of life stage and following the kids. Then working to the end is viable.
If we do AI right, they may not have to work at all. Extrapolating temporary trends to infinity while ignoring the larger picture is an exercise in futility.
Speaking of the larger picture, who is "we" exactly? Only those whose jobs don't require physical labor? AI will replace farmers' 7-day week reality? Construction workers? Or only we privileged few of the "tech" industry? And how will tomorrow's new grads secure a comfortable AI-enabled career as beneficiaries of this supposed infinite source of wealth distribution, as opposed to becoming a plumber?
This hype, this AI-does-all-humanity's-work-for-us pipe dream relies on an extrapolation to infinity: where at that extreme, somehow AI is the solution to like, perpetual motion or something. Living is a zero-sum game; someone has to do the work. And if the people doing the work isn't "we", and it isn't AI, then what is that called?
Taxation cancerously grows on all constraint edges. In this case you could calculate it as implicitly increasing to something nearer 90% ‡ (5 years retirement out of working from 20 to 80).
Voters want more of everything, and our systems encourage everyone within the system to want more.
We don't vote for reducing budgets, and politicians who try to economize get wasted. Everybody wants unlimited health services and the compromise we all select is to increase various tax takes.
Note everybody in the developed world is given relatively similar amounts of time. Yet most of us value our time poorly, since it is a resource we cannot replace.
‡ 90% taxation sounds silly, but it is closer to the truth than looking at $ or working hours. It is hard to choose what to measure - perhaps quality of life or alternatively (total disposable hours versus total waking hours). And choosing the basis of what is a fair amount of resources one person should receive is completely intractable.
This is a certainty as absolutely nothing will change over 60-70 years. Politics and economics are immutable constants, just like the speed of light! Nostradamus was right! The Mayan calendar nailed it!
Through diplomacy it could be decided by future generations they aren't paying off the tab accrued by then long dead Boomers and Big Tech Bro billionaire GenXers, wipe it all out with a debt jubilee.
Right; so you realize this isn't a certainty. If raw numbers mattered why didn't China and India get to the moon first? They had billions more people than the US this whole time.
Signal propagation through a populace is physical scaling problem. A future pandemic here, populist revolt there; long dead dear leaders efforts fall apart.
See the end of New Deal as that generation died off. So my point stands the content of future political discourse and economic policy matters; despite billions more people in India and China in the 1960s, they were not chanting "we choose to go to the moon".
They were far more tribal societies back then. See America becoming more tribal and norms falling apart.
Will keep relying in my first hand experience engineering hardware, seeing with my own eyes how difficult stable signal propagation is.
Pensions should be banned. The entire notion of a guaranteed income is unrealistic and incredibly expensive. People need to save and manage their own spending and savings responsibly. Taxes for redistribution make sense within some range of policies but simply telling people they’ll be guaranteed a certain income? With various loopholes to maximize pensions? It’s no surprise that many pension funds are in the red.
And the pensions mentioned in the article are an example of this. It mentions that two workers supporting each pensioner is a problem. How? If that’s the case wouldn’t these two workers eventually need four workers to support them as pensioners? What makes this different from a Ponzi scheme?
Savings is an insidious lie to ourselves. It makes zero sense to an economy. X people working, and Y people not working leads to the outcomes you see as obvious. Trying to say some people are not saving enough becomes meaningless when looking at a whole economy. Or you are saying that people should increase their time worked or reduce their disposable spending which is saying they hardly deserve any rewards for their hours.
As someone who has legitimately tried to save enough for my retirement, it is obvious that my savings will be taken away through government taxation changes (the "tax the rich" movement will insidiously spread to taxing middle class savers in New Zealand). The government can't afford to pay for retirees so it will grab resources from whoever has them which I expect to be the "savers" you mention.
An economy can reduce spending on retirees, and increasing the retirement age is the most convenient way to do that.
The proper way out is to increase the productivity of the economy.
Perhaps you are not acquainted with the common retirees that are skimping on all expenses - trivial things like enough heating or food. I have a retiree friend living in his car (and still working hard).
Also I somewhat question that money will have same purchasing power in future if either of population and productivity growth fails. The idea is that you save now and in future there is enough labour to buy... Which is likely to fail. You can make numbers look like anything. But that does not solve the issue that people need to be willing to do something for you for price you can pay.
I'm not against working until a debilitating disease shows up, although I have a convenient job for older age (doctor). It would be better if a couple of things are met: advancing carrier, mostly from basic profession to managing people and projects, and capability to move somewhere else, depending of life stage and following the kids. Then working to the end is viable.
If we do AI right, they may not have to work at all. Extrapolating temporary trends to infinity while ignoring the larger picture is an exercise in futility.
Speaking of the larger picture, who is "we" exactly? Only those whose jobs don't require physical labor? AI will replace farmers' 7-day week reality? Construction workers? Or only we privileged few of the "tech" industry? And how will tomorrow's new grads secure a comfortable AI-enabled career as beneficiaries of this supposed infinite source of wealth distribution, as opposed to becoming a plumber?
This hype, this AI-does-all-humanity's-work-for-us pipe dream relies on an extrapolation to infinity: where at that extreme, somehow AI is the solution to like, perpetual motion or something. Living is a zero-sum game; someone has to do the work. And if the people doing the work isn't "we", and it isn't AI, then what is that called?
Taxation cancerously grows on all constraint edges. In this case you could calculate it as implicitly increasing to something nearer 90% ‡ (5 years retirement out of working from 20 to 80).
Voters want more of everything, and our systems encourage everyone within the system to want more.
We don't vote for reducing budgets, and politicians who try to economize get wasted. Everybody wants unlimited health services and the compromise we all select is to increase various tax takes.
Note everybody in the developed world is given relatively similar amounts of time. Yet most of us value our time poorly, since it is a resource we cannot replace.
‡ 90% taxation sounds silly, but it is closer to the truth than looking at $ or working hours. It is hard to choose what to measure - perhaps quality of life or alternatively (total disposable hours versus total waking hours). And choosing the basis of what is a fair amount of resources one person should receive is completely intractable.
I'm a genx'r and working until death is my best available option.
Homeless retirement is the alternative. In fact it was my likeliest future until a just a few years ago.
I currently live with my 4 adult sons. In our 4-income economy, it's the only way each of us can stay housed.
https://archive.md/tUqvl
This is a certainty as absolutely nothing will change over 60-70 years. Politics and economics are immutable constants, just like the speed of light! Nostradamus was right! The Mayan calendar nailed it!
...These longterm forecasts are useless.
"Demographics are destiny."
https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Slides_London.pdf
https://www.suerf.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/f_fa99ccdbe...
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2020/09/18/the-great-...
Your links are about raw meat suit numbers.
Not future political and economic policy.
Through diplomacy it could be decided by future generations they aren't paying off the tab accrued by then long dead Boomers and Big Tech Bro billionaire GenXers, wipe it all out with a debt jubilee.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_jubilee
If you'd like to bet on this occurring, let me know! We'll spin up a Long Bet.
https://longbets.org/
Right; so you realize this isn't a certainty. If raw numbers mattered why didn't China and India get to the moon first? They had billions more people than the US this whole time.
Signal propagation through a populace is physical scaling problem. A future pandemic here, populist revolt there; long dead dear leaders efforts fall apart.
See the end of New Deal as that generation died off. So my point stands the content of future political discourse and economic policy matters; despite billions more people in India and China in the 1960s, they were not chanting "we choose to go to the moon".
They were far more tribal societies back then. See America becoming more tribal and norms falling apart.
Will keep relying in my first hand experience engineering hardware, seeing with my own eyes how difficult stable signal propagation is.
If you steal from the young for pensioners, you eventually run out of young people to pay for pensioners.
Pensions should be banned. The entire notion of a guaranteed income is unrealistic and incredibly expensive. People need to save and manage their own spending and savings responsibly. Taxes for redistribution make sense within some range of policies but simply telling people they’ll be guaranteed a certain income? With various loopholes to maximize pensions? It’s no surprise that many pension funds are in the red.
And the pensions mentioned in the article are an example of this. It mentions that two workers supporting each pensioner is a problem. How? If that’s the case wouldn’t these two workers eventually need four workers to support them as pensioners? What makes this different from a Ponzi scheme?
Savings is an insidious lie to ourselves. It makes zero sense to an economy. X people working, and Y people not working leads to the outcomes you see as obvious. Trying to say some people are not saving enough becomes meaningless when looking at a whole economy. Or you are saying that people should increase their time worked or reduce their disposable spending which is saying they hardly deserve any rewards for their hours.
As someone who has legitimately tried to save enough for my retirement, it is obvious that my savings will be taken away through government taxation changes (the "tax the rich" movement will insidiously spread to taxing middle class savers in New Zealand). The government can't afford to pay for retirees so it will grab resources from whoever has them which I expect to be the "savers" you mention.
An economy can reduce spending on retirees, and increasing the retirement age is the most convenient way to do that.
The proper way out is to increase the productivity of the economy.
Perhaps you are not acquainted with the common retirees that are skimping on all expenses - trivial things like enough heating or food. I have a retiree friend living in his car (and still working hard).
Also I somewhat question that money will have same purchasing power in future if either of population and productivity growth fails. The idea is that you save now and in future there is enough labour to buy... Which is likely to fail. You can make numbers look like anything. But that does not solve the issue that people need to be willing to do something for you for price you can pay.