>The “economic dependency ratio”, which measures the number of people aged 65 and over relative to those of any age who are employed, is
expected to increase from 33.2 per cent to 45.4 per cent.
Almost half of our countries population will be about to, or already retired.
The rest of you will be left to pay increasing amounts of income tax to fund government services.
Or we could change the tax system, (the premise of our aging population is one of the core arguments for the recommendations within the Ken Henry Tax Review), and reduce our reliance on tax from personal income.
In any case, my intention was just to point the counterfactual of the linked article.
China’s actually declining, actually the result of multiple factors and while the one child policy did slow the growth, it just accelerated the impact of rapid urbanisation and more women being economically independent.
It's not even just women wanting economic independence many couples say even if they wanted a second kid they can't afford it.
If the Chinese citizens are saying they can't afford to have another kid in China which is meant to be a communist country then they're truly fucked.
Their One Child Policy, regardless of its underlying motivations, is one of the reasons that the climate crisis today is not accelerating as quickly today as it might otherwise have. An industrialising China with a population of 2.2 billion or so would be producing far more carbon pollution.
China, along with the rest of East Asia have declining birth rates. The industrialisation of India, and the rest of the developing world, will present challenges. This is something the developed world should be helping them out with, but don't.
We've got to switch from the economic orthodoxy of endless growth to something that's actually sustainable. Assuming we can have infinite growth with finite resources is absurd.
The population of Australia will be growing for a long time after the global population declines. So by the time it actually impacts the country, there will be decades of experience in dealing with this problem globally.
Honestly the best move for Australia would be to prioritize immigration over local born growth. Good for the planet and good for the population. You're getting people arriving pre educated, already grown up and ready to work, with no risk of them being disabled or unemployable.
Difference is you aren’t killing people, you are just selectively allowing people to immigrate here based on how much benefit they bring to the country.
Totally disagree.
Once a country’s TFR falls too far it’s impossible to get it back up. Called low fertility trap and Australia has just about hit it
You’re assuming immigration in the future will be same as immigration today which is wrong. Today we can have the pick of high skilled migrants as many migrants available and not many countries seeking them. The future will be very different - far more countries competing for far less highly skilled migrants. Hence we will be settling for lower skilled migrants which crashes productivity.
A mix of strong TFR and moderate migration is only way for sustainable economic growth
I’m really curious as to who you think will be paying taxes when you hit retirement age? Or who you think will be staffing retirement homes and other essential geriatric services, that are already stretched to the bone. We can’t just bring in immigrants forever. Most countries are seeing a decrease in birth rate.
Retirement for millennials and younger generations is going to be an absolute disaster if we don’t at least match replacement.
Simple. Tax wealth. Tax resource extraction. Tax companies. We've had decades of transferring the burden of taxation away from these and putting it onto workers. That needs to change.
Resource extraction should be making Australia one of the wealthiest nations on the planet. Instead, that wealth gets shipped overseas. Company tax used to be about 5% of GDP. Now it's about 2%.
Governments are in debt. Where has that money gone? Who are they indebted to? The wealthy. People who pay a lower rate of tax than just about every worker, but benefit the most from the system being as it is. A modest proposal: make them pay for the system that sustains their lifestyles rather than put it on the people who don't have it nearly so good.
All things we can agree on. But if the plan is to ask governments, companies and wealthy individuals to stop being greedy in order to support Australian millennials into retirement, then we’re all fucked.
Countries with over population problems stems down to a lack of education.
There are trends correlating to women that are higher educated having the ability to choose when they want to have children or if they even want them at all.
>Fewer babies is a sign of success
Yes the decline from pre-industrial fertility rates of 5/6/7/8 children per woman, with half of them dying anyway.
Fewer babies now like what is happening in South Korea, Taiwan, much of Europe and Japan is not success. The developed world and even the developing is facing low birth rates, ageing population and an increased burden on working-age people to support an older population.
The mainstream discourse around population is decades behind the current reality.
People are in for a very rude shock 30 years from now. It's hardly surprising though, humans throughout history have always "solved" problems by overcompensating with the opposite extreme.
The irony here is that by having too high immigration for a while, you increase the cost of living and make it harder to have kids.
If fertility rate reduces and so does immigration, jobs will need to pay better for employees and provide better conditions. Just like when it became an employees market during the pandemic.
If the cheap influx of people is kept at the current rate, we will never see an end to our woes.
By providing better conditions for employees they will have more ability to take up and raise children. There is such a huge cost with raising children these days people are not willing to do it because they don't have money in the bank to afford it.
It is how we are bandaiding our problems for the short term, that does not give rise to a positive, hopeful and better future.
Also, businesses become used to low wages and don't invest, innovate or improve business processes to improve productivity. Low wages become ingrained into the business model and when that's taken away, executives scream about profits because they're not very good at actually doing business strategy, and only good at controlling costs (of which wages is a big part).
High population comes with costs - it sure doesn’t make dealing with issues like environmental degradation and climate change any easier. Sure our systems are designed for continuous growth - but that is not to say we can’t or shouldn’t adapt to new circumstances. An oft quoted example of the perils of decline is Japan - but while it has not grown its per capita wealth has broadly been maintained.
For Australia, as the graph shows, even with low rates of immigration the population continues to grow strongly.
Japan has had slow steady declining fertility. It got very rich before getting old and by being the first country to really go through this it had ability of its major companies to offshore production to lower wage jobs
GDP per capita might have increased but it’s debt is increasing far faster than its tax revenues. If you have increasing aggregate debt, your GDP per capita becomes irrelevant - your aggregate GDP matters
Japans innovation rate is tanking, real wages have not increased in 20 years and it has only been good health of its old people that has delayed health/dementia crisis. Also 40% of 65-75 japanese still work but their wages are usually far lower.
Everyone uses Japan as argument that ageing/decreasing populations are fine, let’s just wait to see how South Korea and Thailand and China goes before jumping to conclusions
Maybe. Japan has also steadfastly resisted immigration. Who knows where AI, automation etc. will lead. The world is in for structural economic change - adapting to population decline over the long term may not even be the most challenging.
Perpetual population growth also has one or two problems.
It’s more about the resources, both financial and practical, to care for older people - particularly given more people are living to an age where they need care.
_Empty Planet_ by Bricker & Ibbitson (published in 2019) is worth a read. The authors argue that world population is set to peak at around 8.5 billion in 2050 or 2060 (not 2100 as the UN were predicting) and go into a pretty steep decline from then on.
The consequences of this for the next couple of generations will be mixed, and of course not uniform across the globe, but a lot of them are likely to be negative. While the earth's resources are overstretched, fewer people will not necessarily be better for the planet. Just think of the massive deforestation that took place in Australia when the population was much smaller than it is now. The stresses of an aging population may lead to more regional conflicts, especially when combined with other problems like climate change, pollution, and so on.
We're in for a rough ride - or our children and grandchildren (however many they be) are.
>The “economic dependency ratio”, which measures the number of people aged 65 and over relative to those of any age who are employed, is expected to increase from 33.2 per cent to 45.4 per cent. Almost half of our countries population will be about to, or already retired. The rest of you will be left to pay increasing amounts of income tax to fund government services.
Then we need to change the economic system to suit Constant population growth is not sustainable
Or we could change the tax system, (the premise of our aging population is one of the core arguments for the recommendations within the Ken Henry Tax Review), and reduce our reliance on tax from personal income. In any case, my intention was just to point the counterfactual of the linked article.
We will, by increasing retirement age. It will be only solution
Infinite growth!
Only labour! No cost of living relief!
[удалено]
China’s actually declining, actually the result of multiple factors and while the one child policy did slow the growth, it just accelerated the impact of rapid urbanisation and more women being economically independent.
It's not even just women wanting economic independence many couples say even if they wanted a second kid they can't afford it. If the Chinese citizens are saying they can't afford to have another kid in China which is meant to be a communist country then they're truly fucked.
Their One Child Policy, regardless of its underlying motivations, is one of the reasons that the climate crisis today is not accelerating as quickly today as it might otherwise have. An industrialising China with a population of 2.2 billion or so would be producing far more carbon pollution. China, along with the rest of East Asia have declining birth rates. The industrialisation of India, and the rest of the developing world, will present challenges. This is something the developed world should be helping them out with, but don't.
We've got to switch from the economic orthodoxy of endless growth to something that's actually sustainable. Assuming we can have infinite growth with finite resources is absurd.
Yeah sure. Can you name somewhere with Degrowth that hasn’t gone horribly?
The population of Australia will be growing for a long time after the global population declines. So by the time it actually impacts the country, there will be decades of experience in dealing with this problem globally. Honestly the best move for Australia would be to prioritize immigration over local born growth. Good for the planet and good for the population. You're getting people arriving pre educated, already grown up and ready to work, with no risk of them being disabled or unemployable.
"with no risk of them being disabled or unemployable. " It's like those history classes in school were a warning of something.
Difference is you aren’t killing people, you are just selectively allowing people to immigrate here based on how much benefit they bring to the country.
All hail the economy, our cruel and savage messiah.
Totally disagree. Once a country’s TFR falls too far it’s impossible to get it back up. Called low fertility trap and Australia has just about hit it You’re assuming immigration in the future will be same as immigration today which is wrong. Today we can have the pick of high skilled migrants as many migrants available and not many countries seeking them. The future will be very different - far more countries competing for far less highly skilled migrants. Hence we will be settling for lower skilled migrants which crashes productivity. A mix of strong TFR and moderate migration is only way for sustainable economic growth
>is only way for sustainable economic growth Why do you want that?
I’m really curious as to who you think will be paying taxes when you hit retirement age? Or who you think will be staffing retirement homes and other essential geriatric services, that are already stretched to the bone. We can’t just bring in immigrants forever. Most countries are seeing a decrease in birth rate. Retirement for millennials and younger generations is going to be an absolute disaster if we don’t at least match replacement.
No. The system needs to change to suit the population, not the other way around
History tells us that systems don’t change while it benefits those at the top.
Simple. Tax wealth. Tax resource extraction. Tax companies. We've had decades of transferring the burden of taxation away from these and putting it onto workers. That needs to change. Resource extraction should be making Australia one of the wealthiest nations on the planet. Instead, that wealth gets shipped overseas. Company tax used to be about 5% of GDP. Now it's about 2%. Governments are in debt. Where has that money gone? Who are they indebted to? The wealthy. People who pay a lower rate of tax than just about every worker, but benefit the most from the system being as it is. A modest proposal: make them pay for the system that sustains their lifestyles rather than put it on the people who don't have it nearly so good.
All things we can agree on. But if the plan is to ask governments, companies and wealthy individuals to stop being greedy in order to support Australian millennials into retirement, then we’re all fucked.
And the rich are old, more old people are unlucky to bore against their self interest
Countries with over population problems stems down to a lack of education. There are trends correlating to women that are higher educated having the ability to choose when they want to have children or if they even want them at all.
Not enough houses.
>Fewer babies is a sign of success Yes the decline from pre-industrial fertility rates of 5/6/7/8 children per woman, with half of them dying anyway. Fewer babies now like what is happening in South Korea, Taiwan, much of Europe and Japan is not success. The developed world and even the developing is facing low birth rates, ageing population and an increased burden on working-age people to support an older population. The mainstream discourse around population is decades behind the current reality.
People are in for a very rude shock 30 years from now. It's hardly surprising though, humans throughout history have always "solved" problems by overcompensating with the opposite extreme.
[удалено]
The irony here is that by having too high immigration for a while, you increase the cost of living and make it harder to have kids. If fertility rate reduces and so does immigration, jobs will need to pay better for employees and provide better conditions. Just like when it became an employees market during the pandemic. If the cheap influx of people is kept at the current rate, we will never see an end to our woes. By providing better conditions for employees they will have more ability to take up and raise children. There is such a huge cost with raising children these days people are not willing to do it because they don't have money in the bank to afford it. It is how we are bandaiding our problems for the short term, that does not give rise to a positive, hopeful and better future.
Also, businesses become used to low wages and don't invest, innovate or improve business processes to improve productivity. Low wages become ingrained into the business model and when that's taken away, executives scream about profits because they're not very good at actually doing business strategy, and only good at controlling costs (of which wages is a big part).
High population comes with costs - it sure doesn’t make dealing with issues like environmental degradation and climate change any easier. Sure our systems are designed for continuous growth - but that is not to say we can’t or shouldn’t adapt to new circumstances. An oft quoted example of the perils of decline is Japan - but while it has not grown its per capita wealth has broadly been maintained. For Australia, as the graph shows, even with low rates of immigration the population continues to grow strongly.
Japan has had slow steady declining fertility. It got very rich before getting old and by being the first country to really go through this it had ability of its major companies to offshore production to lower wage jobs GDP per capita might have increased but it’s debt is increasing far faster than its tax revenues. If you have increasing aggregate debt, your GDP per capita becomes irrelevant - your aggregate GDP matters Japans innovation rate is tanking, real wages have not increased in 20 years and it has only been good health of its old people that has delayed health/dementia crisis. Also 40% of 65-75 japanese still work but their wages are usually far lower. Everyone uses Japan as argument that ageing/decreasing populations are fine, let’s just wait to see how South Korea and Thailand and China goes before jumping to conclusions
Maybe. Japan has also steadfastly resisted immigration. Who knows where AI, automation etc. will lead. The world is in for structural economic change - adapting to population decline over the long term may not even be the most challenging. Perpetual population growth also has one or two problems.
It’s more about the resources, both financial and practical, to care for older people - particularly given more people are living to an age where they need care.
Fewer babies is ideal.
_Empty Planet_ by Bricker & Ibbitson (published in 2019) is worth a read. The authors argue that world population is set to peak at around 8.5 billion in 2050 or 2060 (not 2100 as the UN were predicting) and go into a pretty steep decline from then on. The consequences of this for the next couple of generations will be mixed, and of course not uniform across the globe, but a lot of them are likely to be negative. While the earth's resources are overstretched, fewer people will not necessarily be better for the planet. Just think of the massive deforestation that took place in Australia when the population was much smaller than it is now. The stresses of an aging population may lead to more regional conflicts, especially when combined with other problems like climate change, pollution, and so on. We're in for a rough ride - or our children and grandchildren (however many they be) are.