Don't Worry About Peak Oil, Worry About Peak Youth

[X_4AD_84]

The great inflection is upon us. The ongoing fall in world wide fecundity, coupled with improved health care and longer life spans, has brought us to the point of Peak Youth.

And guess who's going to pay for this situation?  

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/were-...00694.html

[Mikebert]

(05-16-2016, 07:43 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: The great inflection is upon us. The ongoing fall in world wide fecundity, coupled with improved health care and longer life spans, has brought us to the point of Peak Youth.

And guess who's going to pay for this situation?  

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/were-...00694.html

I was aware of this when I was in my early 20's, back around 1980.  Back then SS was going bankrupt and I believed that SS and Medicare would be gone by the time I was 65.  So I resolved to save a lot (which I did). To ensure solvency for the generations older than the Boomers, payroll taxes were raised in the 1980's to levels well above what was needed to pay for current benefits and the surplus used to finance tax cuts for the rich. The GI and Silent gens all collected far far more in benefits (and tax cuts) that they ever paid in, at the expense of Boomers and later gens in their maximum earning years in the 1980's and afterward. 

And then in 2005 the government came up with a plan to stiff the Boomers (and GenX) by getting rid of SS (privatizing they called it).  It did not fly.  The issue of financing these entitlements will come up again. The problem of getting GenX and the Miilies their proper due is actually trivially easy to do, technically.  Assuming GenX and the Millies back the right side, it will be fixed, no sweat.  If they choose the wrong side, then it won't.  So choose wisely.

[Ragnarök_62]

(05-18-2016, 04:25 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

(05-16-2016, 07:43 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: The great inflection is upon us. The ongoing fall in world wide fecundity, coupled with improved health care and longer life spans, has brought us to the point of Peak Youth.

And guess who's going to pay for this situation?  

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/were-...00694.html


With MMT, there is no need to "pay" anything. The real problem isn't demographics, but demagoguery  when it comes to "deficits". The best thing to is ditch the Fed because it's not necessary and turn the control of the currency back to the treasury. Debt free fiat currency should be used instead of our current currency regime which has its origin in debt. That is to say, the current dollar is "backed" by US government debt. Debt isn't sustainable because it grows exponentially. A MMT based debt free fiat regime requires us all to be grown ups so we don't end up like Venezuela. That means the US would need an accurate CPI number to go by and the backbone to raise taxes when the CPI goes out of range of say 1%. We also need MMT to counter deflationary effects of automation as well. So:
1. We need to basically decouple first health care from work with a single payer system like Canada and eliminate health insurance company monopolies, and eliminate Medicare and Medicaid as being redundant.
2. Beef up the safety need. This essentially means that we need to realize that there won't be enough real work to go around.
3. Fix up the infrastructure in the US. This would create jobs and reduce structural/hidden costs.  I don't want potholes creating a fallen transmission. I also hate driving and long TSA driven waits at airports. A 1st world passenger rail system would certainly be nice.

Mikebert Wrote:I was aware of this when I was in my early 20's, back around 1980.  Back then SS was going bankrupt and I believed that SS and Medicare would be gone by the time I was 65.  So I resolved to save a lot (which I did). To ensure solvency for the generations older than the Boomers, payroll taxes were raised in the 1980's to levels well above what was needed to pay for current benefits and the surplus used to finance tax cuts for the rich. The GI and Silent gens all collected far far more in benefits (and tax cuts) that they ever paid in, at the expense of Boomers and later gens in their maximum earning years in the 1980's and afterward. 

Yeah, I remember that also. I thought it was dumb since Social Security is just a line item on  a virtual balance sheet. Social Security taxes coming in are credits and Social Security payments are debits. I mean really, what the hell difference does it make since it's the entire balance that matters?

Quote:And then in 2005 the government came up with a plan to stiff the Boomers (and GenX) by getting rid of SS (privatizing they called it).  It did not fly.  The issue of financing these entitlements will come up again.

Impeccable timing by Shrub and his merry Republican friends.  Invest SS in dodgey stock market schemes right before a crash. I don't trust Wall Street with much of anything. Keep Wall Street's filthy hands off my SS!

Quote: The problem of getting GenX and the Miilies their proper due is actually trivially easy to do, technically.  Assuming GenX and the Millies back the right side, it will be fixed, no sweat.  If they choose the wrong side, then it won't.  So choose wisely.

Agreed.  Suggestion 1.  Friends don't let friends vote for Republicans!

[pbrower2a]

We will probably see people working longer into elderhood. Retirement isn't what it is cracked up to be.

The big problem for an economy will be a shortage of young adults to work cheaply. Maybe automation will solve that. I can imagine the Automat getting a revival as the kids who do fast-food counter work are no longer around in adequate quantities. Maybe the work might as easily be done by people of low intelligence as by smart teenagers (who have the bonus of physicality on the job).

Let's look at the good side. Unemployment will be lower. There won't be as much cheap labor. Crime, heavily a youth phenomenon, will be far lower. Older workers are generally more cautious, so there will be fewer industrial accidents (until one starts having people pst 75 in the workplace).

[Kinser79]

(05-19-2016, 10:25 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: We will probably see people working longer into elderhood. Retirement isn't what it is cracked up to be.

Retirement has always been over rated.

Quote:The big problem for an economy will be a shortage of young adults to work cheaply. Maybe automation will solve that. I can imagine the Automat getting a revival as the kids who do fast-food counter work are no longer around in adequate quantities. Maybe the work might as easily be done by people of low intelligence as by smart teenagers (who have the bonus of physicality on the job).

Actually a great deal of those jobs will be filled by the elderly who will by benefit of Social Security be able to afford to live on part time. That said, automation is coming, Wendy's is experimenting later this year with self-service kiosks for ordering.

Quote:Let's look at the good side. Unemployment will be lower. There won't be as much cheap labor.

Only if one at the same time prevents the importation of cheap labor. The best way to raise wages is to restrict the labor market. Sounds like an argument for Trump to me.

Quote: Crime, heavily a youth phenomenon, will be far lower. Older workers are generally more cautious, so there will be fewer industrial accidents (until one starts having people pst 75 in the workplace).

Crime is not restricted to youth. Violent crime figures may be lower though because older people have in general a lower propensity toward violence. As for there being fewer industrial accidents I think you over state the cautiousness of older workers. Some of them don't realize they aren't 40 any more.

[Kinser79]

(05-20-2016, 10:28 AM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: RE: Importation of cheap labor.

The chart in the article in the OP is global. Cheap labor will no longer be a thing, even in other countries.

Capitalism abhors expensive labor, as such I fully expect that automation will come to the fore before the price of labor becomes too dear.

Quote: Plus, with the tightening labor markets in the typical source countries for immigration into the US, the types of people who've immigrated here in the past will be less interested. Case in point, everyone's whipping boy, Mexico. We reached a point a few years back where more legal and illegal US residents of Mexican origin were leaving the US than entering. As usual, people who are upset about immigration from Mexico are fighting yesterday's war.

A great deal with the problem with immigration is not Mexicans. Mexico has developed to a point now that people are immigrating to there (well they always have but people seeking jobs in particular is a newer phenomenon, previously it was looking for land). The problem with the southern border is that it is currently undefended, and also those crossing are typically crossing Mexico's southern border.

It is interesting though, Mexico just built a state of the art Border Wall but the US doing the same is somehow evil? The point behind controlling immigration is primarily cultural. There has to be time given for those who are here to be assimilated before we can take more in. Also given the scarcity of jobs adding more people to population constitutes a burden on the people already here.

[Eric the Green]

(05-16-2016, 07:43 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: The great inflection is upon us. The ongoing fall in world wide fecundity, coupled with improved health care and longer life spans, has brought us to the point of Peak Youth.

And guess who's going to pay for this situation?  

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/were-...00694.html

"Aging has also become a universal phenomenon, and by 2050E, 80% of older people will live in EMs."
What the bleep is he talking about? What is an "EM?"
acronymns..... brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

I wish people would write in English


[/quote]

[Ragnarök_62]

(05-21-2016, 09:39 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(05-16-2016, 07:43 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: The great inflection is upon us. The ongoing fall in world wide fecundity, coupled with improved health care and longer life spans, has brought us to the point of Peak Youth.

And guess who's going to pay for this situation?  

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/were-...00694.html

"Aging has also become a universal phenomenon, and by 2050E, 80% of older people will live in EMs."
What the bleep is he talking about? What is an "EM?"
acronymns..... brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

#EM=emerging markets=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerging_markets

Eric Wrote:I wish people would write in English

And I wish ppl would stop fretting about population growth leveling off. For Chissake, there's these things called robots..

[Ragnarök_62]

(05-23-2016, 04:55 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: And I wish ppl would stop fretting about population growth leveling off. For Chissake, there's these things called robots..

Yeah but robots don't buy iShits, timeshares, a new car every 3 years, booze, you name it! And most importantly, they don't pay taxes, especially Social Security and Medicare taxes.

Nope, but given that demand for X=(A,B,C...) is constrained only by the population [as you've mentioned].  More elderly will increase health care good/sevices at the expense of Ishits, timeshares, and new cars every 3 years, then that's just a demand shift. The actual problem can be stated as a reduced #people in the tax payer zone.  So that there is the only supply/demand constraint as it comes to tax dollars.  Now since the population structure is a novel force on the economy, a new policy wrt economics is needed so the taxpayer population isn't overwhelmed. MMT would be the novel economic policy to deal with the novel economic force. There also needs to be a upper limit to money printing. A good , but not perfect measure would be the cost of energy produced in K Joules. The price of each K Joule of energy produced should be bound by a limit so inflation/ deflation can be kept within bounds. Deflation will be OK, once all of our current debt washes out. The idea that perpetual population growth is needed needs to go out the window because the earth can't deal with what we have now, let alone any more people. IOW, if the human population starts to decline by our volition, then mother nature won't have to oblige with some epidemic/famine/whatever.