Only Immigration can save us from Pensioners

zagubov

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

No what I'm saying is that throughout human history it has always been the case that the number of people of working age were greater by far than the number of old people unable to work. Despite GD's efforts to write that off as a pyramid scheme, it is in fact the natural order of things and has been throughout hundreds of thousands of years of humanity.

Thanks to advances in medical science in first world western economies, we are now experiencing, for the first time ever, a situation where that may not be the case.

The problem is that all of our systems, healthcare, economy, infrastructure, pensions, etc, are dependent on there being 4-5 workers for every pensioner.

If that changes markedly, such that there are only 2 workers for every pensioner, then the financial burden on the average young person for caring for the old will double, because we don't pay for our own retirement, we pay for the retirement of people 2-3 generations ahead of us. If it gets to the stage of 1:1 then the costs per worker would quadruple. Basically, the economy and society as we know it would collapse.

Now over time this will have to change if we're to avoid the requirement for an exponentially growing population forever. But you can't do it overnight. It will take many decades to adjust the situation such that the cost burden is passed down through the generations until we get to the point that we are all paying for our own retirements.

Because to try and do it any quicker than that would result in such a huge percentage of income being saved/hoarded that we end up in a multi-decade recession, and thanks to the paradox of thrift, eventually we'd all end up being poorer despite the increase in savings.



Well I'm certainly not going to make the mistake of Henry Malthus and assume we are all doomed if population keeps growing for the foreseeable future.

Our biggest resource is our people. And in a world where many countries will suffer economic decline thanks to a falling working age population and demographic imbalance, our competitive advantage in the world is dependent on us doing so to a lesser extent than others.

We're skating around the delicate point here that the working lifespan is going to have to be extended along with our chronological lifespan.

Raising the retirement age is a real hot potato, as pensioners try to make their votes count. Doctors are encouraged to work past retirement age and so should many other experienced skilled workers.

The most sensible (sorry, fairest) way would be to gradually increase the retirement age as the years go by, but our saintly leaders are too macchiavelian to do that when it's politically safer to do it in one big burst to get the pain over with.

And nobody wants to be the one that pushes that toxic a policy in the first place.

chucknorris

zagubov wrote: »

We're skating around the delicate point here that the working lifespan is going to have to be extended along with our chronological lifespan.

Raising the retirement age is a real hot potato, as pensioners try to make their votes count. Doctors are encouraged to work past retirement age and so should many other experienced skilled workers.

The most sensible (sorry, fairest) way would be to gradually increase the retirement age as the years go by, but our saintly leaders are too macchiavelian to do that when it's politically safer to do it in one big burst to get the pain over with.

And nobody wants to be the one that pushes that toxic a policy in the first place.

The Gov is actually doing this though, or are you saying that they are doing it too slowly?

JonnyBravo

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

If that changes markedly, such that there are only 2 workers for every pensioner, then the financial burden on the average young person for caring for the old will double, because we don't pay for our own retirement, we pay for the retirement of people 2-3 generations ahead of us. If it gets to the stage of 1:1 then the costs per worker would quadruple. Basically, the economy and society as we know it would collapse.

Now over time this will have to change if we're to avoid the requirement for an exponentially growing population forever. But you can't do it overnight. It will take many decades to adjust the situation such that the cost burden is passed down through the generations until we get to the point that we are all paying for our own retirements.

Not at all.
It can be done remarkably easily and quite quickly.
As zag has pointed out, simply move the retirement age so that the proportion of those being supported remains constant.

Of course if you start the process too late or do it too slowly the proportion of those with a vested interest not to change it will be too large and it then becomes hard to sell in a democracy.

chucknorris

homelessskilledworker wrote: »

What astounds me about this board(and it is a great education to me) is that many posters on here will take a postion, and in the case of Hamish, Wosthat, Johnybigmouth and half a dozen others it is "WE LIKE EXPENSIVE HOUSING".

They then become supportive of every cause that will aid that want, they are Immigrant loving, debt loving, estate agent loving, government fiscal loving, Gordon Brown loving, single jobless mother loving, population growth loving, property ramping, high rents loving blinkerd individuals, it's laughable.

It sounds like you are easily astounded to me, I like expensive housing, of course I do because I have invested in it. Would you expect people who invest in shares to start booing the ftse?

Of course there is a downside to expensive housing, some people can't afford to buy and that's tough (I mean that sympathetically not sarcastically). But do you think the land of magical frogs and pixies will ever come true where everyone can buy a house and there is no poverty.

As for becoming supportive of everything that supports higher prices, well maybe quite a few of them yes:

Immigration loving - Perhaps but not for the reason you would think, I welcome the chance for people to make the most of their lives and improve the prospects for them and their family.

Debt loving - Nothing wrong with sensible levels of debt.

Estate agent loving - I don't judge people by what they do for a living (sounds like you might though, at least when it comes to EA's).

Property ramping - This is laughable, anyone here who thinks they can or others can influence the market via this forum needs a lobotomy (or perhaps they have already had one).

High rent loving - Well obviously if you own investment property you don't want to see your yields fall.

Others you mentioned - Don’t have much of an opinion on them.

chucknorris

zagubov wrote: »

They're doing it too coarsely. You wouldn't use a combine harvester to trim your window box.

For example the retirment age is currently tied to birthdays like we're simpletons. If we actually used computers for something that mattered instead of computer games, we'd be able to fine-tune retirement to a fair age for individuals, ie X years and Y months oir weeks so the extended working life is allocated proportionally as time goes by.

For that matter, gradually phasing in retirement in stages is another option. Say, dropping from a five-day to a four-day then a three-day week so the retiree has time to adjust and hand on theior skills to junior staff.

You are absolutely right I couldn't agree more, last time I tried that the combine harvester completely destroyed the bay window.

I like your phasing idea, what criteria would you suggest to fine tune the 'fair age' for individuals?

zagubov

chucknorris wrote: »

The Gov is actually doing this though, or are you saying that they are doing it too slowly?

They're doing it too coarsely. You wouldn't use a combine harvester to trim your window box.

For example the retirment age is currently tied to birthdays like we're simpletons. If we actually used computers for something that mattered instead of computer games, we'd be able to fine-tune retirement to a fair age for individuals, ie X years and Y months oir weeks so the extended working life is allocated proportionally as time goes by.

For that matter, gradually phasing in retirement in stages is another option. Say, dropping from a five-day to a four-day then a three-day week so the retiree has time to adjust and hand on their skills to junior staff.

Enterprise_1701C

If people had a decent personal pension this would not be a problem.

But some idiot government a few years ago decided to steal money from private pensions pots so that is not longer an easy answer.

wotsthat

homelessskilledworker wrote: »

What astounds me about this board(and it is a great education to me) is that many posters on here will take a postion, and in the case of Hamish, Wosthat, Johnybigmouth and half a dozen others it is "WE LIKE EXPENSIVE HOUSING".

They then become supportive of every cause that will aid that want, they are Immigrant loving, debt loving, estate agent loving, government fiscal loving, Gordon Brown loving, single jobless mother loving, population growth loving, property ramping, high rents loving blinkerd individuals, it's laughable.

I really don't know why I keep getting these namechecks although I must admit to being rather flattered. I'd rather the attention was from an attractive woman instead of an angry aging sparky but beggars can't be choosers I suppose.

My position is that I think houses are priced just right.

On immigration I don't buy into Hamish's argument or the evidence used to support it. If there's a shortgage of housing then importing people is going to make things worse.

The evidence I see in local towns & cities in the midlands is that huge numbers of low skilled immigrants are being/ have been imported. There's no way that they are making a positive contribution to the economy - they allowed the last government (and this one) to avoid a really sticky question - how do we persuade our home grown low skilled sections of society that low skilled jobs really are an alternative to a life of worklessness and not beneath them.

I've worked with different teams of low skilled immigrants over the years (all European) and I see the same pattern repeating. They arrive and work like trojans - they want as many hours as possible and don't want days off or holidays. British culture doesn't take long to permeate though and within a fairly short space of time they are calculating whether it's really worth working a Saturday because of the effect on wtc etc. I've seen spreadsheets set up in at least 4 Eastern European languages to calculate the marginal benefits of extra hours.

The clever and motivated work and work until they've got enough money to go home and fund university or a house purchase. The rest get demotivated, get outcompeted by the enthusiastic new arrivals, and make less of a contribution.

Let's fill skills gaps by all means but I find it objectionable that I'm meant to help subsidise a Polish worker to clean a solicitors office in central London. If we didn't have to subsidise low paying employers then we might see a few of them relocating to other parts of the country.

DervProf

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Hamish Hamish Hamish.

You never ever answer this point....

If we bring a load more people into the country to pay for todays's pensioners, that just means loads more people to pay for when those people imported require pensions themselves.

As I keep saying to you, it's a pyramid scheme through and through.

You hardly ever answer this point, though have seen you suggesting that all the immigrants will duly pay their taxes through their working life, and then emigrate back to their home countries just before retirement. Head in clouds stuff that my boy. Head in clouds.

But it would be nice for you to look at what you are doing. Just shovelling more people at the bottom of the pyramid in the hope it keeps those at the top going.

The music stops at some point. You know that, I know that. Shovelling more and more people into the bottom of the pyramid just makes the problem bigger. However, it sorts your lifetime out. And that's about the crux of it. Someone else with no kids, no grandkids, and no concern for those following them in respect to these issues.

Spot on.

Hamish keeps reminding us that not enough housing is being built to meed demand (and therefore we have HPI). Hamish may be correct on this point. The article that he quotes suggests that lots of people need to be brought into the country to support it's aging population, and this could (and probably will) mean an increasing shortage of property in the future. Sounds more like bad news than good news to me. However, I expect that this HPI will be welcomed by Hamish whenever it is announced. I am suprised Hamish left out the :beer: at the end his OP.

System

Plenty of good counter argumennts to this but not many alternatives. Seems as though all we can do is bump retirement age up to 80 and have done with it.