What shortgage 421,306 homes built in a single year in france!

MFW_ASAP

CLAPTON wrote: »

if there is a shortage of working people in relation tot he total population, then whether we have funded or unfunded pension schemes make no difference to the lack of people to do the work.

How do you work that out?

CLAPTON

MFW_ASAP wrote: »

How do you work that out?

I'm not sure what you are asking.

the issue about the demographic change is that we will have fewer working people available to provide goods and services but an increasing population

whether we have funded or unfunded pensions does no change the ratio of working people to total population

MFW_ASAP

CLAPTON wrote: »

I'm not sure what you are asking.

the issue about the demographic change is that we will have fewer working people available to provide goods and services but an increasing population

whether we have funded or unfunded pensions does no change the ratio of working people to total population

My question is what is the main issue with the ratio of working people to total population?

CLAPTON

MFW_ASAP wrote: »

My question is what is the main issue with the ratio of working people to total population?

We have an increasingly an aging population ... sometime people refer to this as the demographic time bomb meaning that there will be too few people of working age to provide for the whole population i.e too few doctors, nurses, farm workers, utility people, shop workers, fire, police etc

Hamish's answer is unlimited immigration so we import the shortfall in people of working age : some disagree

cells

MFW_ASAP wrote: »

My question is what is the main issue with the ratio of working people to total population?

Without immigration or an increase in birth rate or a big increase in the retirement age the figure is set to fall

So for instance today 30 million work out of a population of about 63.5 million. Or nearly 50% of the population works

As life expectancy increases further and with birth rates below replacement that could fall to...just for arguments sake 25 million workers for a population of 75 million. Or 33% working


The only solutions to these problems are

Work more hours a wk
Work more productively per hour
Start work at a younger age
Finish work at an older age
Accept lower wealth
Increase birth rate
Allow immigration

I suspect a lottle of all tje above will happen to solve the problem

Cornucopia

From my perspective, only increased immigration (perhaps on the "guest worker" basis suggested earlier) is both practical and palatable.

There is a further solution, which is to encourage emigration of older people to other countries willing to accept them (and their pension wealth).

MFW_ASAP

CLAPTON wrote: »

We have an increasingly an aging population ... sometime people refer to this as the demographic time bomb meaning that there will be too few people of working age to provide for the whole population i.e too few doctors, nurses, farm workers, utility people, shop workers, fire, police etc

Hamish's answer is unlimited immigration so we import the shortfall in people of working age : some disagree

The biggest timebomb is having a smaller number of taxpayers to pay for these services and benefits, the greater part of which will be state and public sector pensions.

To give a stark example, currently £1 in every £5 of council tax goes into paying for council pensions. This can only increase in line with the number of pensioners.

Add in the cost of providing state pensions and pension related benefits (pensions credit, etc.) and public sector pensions and we end up with most of the tax income going to pay pensions, not on services.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

MFW_ASAP wrote: »

My question is what is the main issue with the ratio of working people to total population?

OK.

I'm going to simplify this example to the extreme so as to make it easy to understand the concept.

Assume there are 12 people on an island.

-3 of them are too young to work

-6 of them are of an age where they can work

-3 of them are too old to work

The 50% of people who are the right age to work have to do all the work for both themselves and also for the other 50% who are too old or too young to work.

They have to earn all the money, pay almost all of the taxes, maintain all the infrastructure, keep the services going, physically care for the young and the old, pay for the healthcare, etc.

That is very roughly the position, in % terms, that we have today in the UK.

Now change that mix as follows......

-2 of them are too young to work

-3 of them are of the right age to work

-9 of them are too old to work

Now only 25% of people can work and they have to support the other 75% of the people.

The same amount of work has to be done (actually, a bit more as the number of elderly to care for has increased), but the number of people able to do it has halved.

But it's worse event than that, because now the cost to society has increased as there are more old people than young, and old people need more in healthcare, etc.

So the cost per worker to maintain all the things in society, infrastructure, healthcare, services, etc, has more than doubled.

And the income to society, taxation etc, has fallen as there are now fewer people working....

Even if you take pensions out of the picture entirely through self funding, a position that would take 50 years to get there, it very, very, very rapidly becomes unsustainable.

Even a change of a few percent the wrong way, never mind the 50% in my example, leads to a rapid decline in tax income and spiralling debt and deficit.

ukcarper

Productivity could improve less people could be in part time work. I think it's more complicated than a straight ration of people working to people not working.

CLAPTON

ukcarper wrote: »

Productivity could improve less people could be in part time work. I think it's more complicated than a straight ration of people working to people not working.

of course, cells post above covers some of the options