But human labor is incredibly efficienct in the modern day. You don’t need ten young people for every one old person - nine of whom die by their mid-30s - so that everyone doesn’t starve.
But the role of elderly people has changed so much in the last century. On a national scale, they’re no longer master craftsmen or child caregivers or elder advisors. They’re just the base of the consumer economy and the electoral pool.
As democracy fails and the economy becomes more fixated on tech capital than quality of life, they’re marked out as increasingly expendable.
It isn’t that we need more young people so much as we’ve alienated and de-skilled our old people.
Your old people don’t really need any skills when they own most of the economy. People over 55 own 52% of everything in the US. And that’s how retirement works, whether you have a government as a middle man via taxes or the old people have their investments, they have to live off the backs of the young. The investments, after all, are mostly ownership of companies that the young people work for. Companies that do their best not to raise wages so the shareholders (boomers) can have a better retirement.
If people want to retire in their 60s, there needs to be growth happening all the time, until we’ve entirely gotten rid of the need for human labor.
But human labor is incredibly efficienct in the modern day. You don’t need ten young people for every one old person - nine of whom die by their mid-30s - so that everyone doesn’t starve.
But the role of elderly people has changed so much in the last century. On a national scale, they’re no longer master craftsmen or child caregivers or elder advisors. They’re just the base of the consumer economy and the electoral pool.
As democracy fails and the economy becomes more fixated on tech capital than quality of life, they’re marked out as increasingly expendable.
It isn’t that we need more young people so much as we’ve alienated and de-skilled our old people.
Your old people don’t really need any skills when they own most of the economy. People over 55 own 52% of everything in the US. And that’s how retirement works, whether you have a government as a middle man via taxes or the old people have their investments, they have to live off the backs of the young. The investments, after all, are mostly ownership of companies that the young people work for. Companies that do their best not to raise wages so the shareholders (boomers) can have a better retirement.
If people want to retire in their 60s, there needs to be growth happening all the time, until we’ve entirely gotten rid of the need for human labor.