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Melissia wrote:So what's your opinion, is this a good thing, a bad thing, something else?

I'm looking forward to seeing how Chinese officials intend to deal with this problem. Say what you want about their political choices, they have proven to be resourceful and lessons may be learned from developments. With a lot of developed countries facing ageing populations themselves, it is becoming a pressing concern.
I feel particularly worried about the (un)sustainability of the current model where a shrinking working population supports an increasing aged population, with a life expectancy pushed ever further by medical progress. My hope is that said progress will find ways to fight the debilitating effects of ageing so people can stay active longer. In the meantime, I fear my generation is going to be under strain.

biccat wrote:
If you accept the behavior then the counterrevolutionaries terrorists win.

Depends on how much damage they cause.

biccat wrote:
When your power is based on controlling every minor element of everyone's life, allowing any behavior that undermines the party state isn't acceptable.

When your beliefs are based on the assumption that all minor elements in the life of person X are controlled, you feign outrage to justify said beliefs.

Hyd wrote:

Melissia wrote:So what's your opinion, is this a good thing, a bad thing, something else?

I'm looking forward to seeing how Chinese officials intend to deal with this problem. Say what you want about their political choices, they have proven to be resourceful and lessons may be learned from developments. With a lot of developed countries facing ageing populations themselves, it is becoming a pressing concern.
I feel particularly worried about the (un)sustainability of the current model where a shrinking working population supports an increasing aged population, with a life expectancy pushed ever further by medical progress. My hope is that said progress will find ways to fight the debilitating effects of ageing so people can stay active longer. In the meantime, I fear my generation is going to be under strain.

Nonsense! We'll simply send all the old people to work cam...I mean nursing homes, where they'll produce wool knitting's! a la Happy Gilmore

Hyd wrote:

Melissia wrote:So what's your opinion, is this a good thing, a bad thing, something else?

I feel particularly worried about the (un)sustainability of the current model where a shrinking working population supports an increasing aged population, with a life expectancy pushed ever further by medical progress. My hope is that said progress will find ways to fight the debilitating effects of ageing so people can stay active longer. In the meantime, I fear my generation is going to be under strain.

Of course, the downside is, if people can work longer as they get older, their are less jobs for the young people entering the workforce.

That's the real catch, that catch-22.

Because of increasing life expectancy and people having far fewer children, dozens of countries are facing a major demographic challenge. And, with the coming wave of baby boomers retiring, it's going to get ugly fast. We're basically faced with 4 options:

1) Increase the retirement age dramatically. Perhaps to 70 or 75.
2) Change the cultural viewpoint so that the burden of retirement is on the person wanting to retire rather than their family or society in general.
3) Start having a lot more babies. Which, really needed to happen 10 years ago...
4) Open up immigration and bring in a young workforce to pay taxes.

We'll have to choose one soon. If not, 2 is going to become the default, as Social Security goes bankrupt and the government either fails or abandons other senior programs.

It'll be two, but because politically speaking older people are a selfish breed who are a very strong voting block and don't give a damn about the younger parts of the population at all, our governments will try to do everything but two first.

Easy E wrote:Of course, the downside is, if people can work longer as they get older, their are less jobs for the young people entering the workforce.

Only if you assume employment is zero-sum.

It's not.

Grakmar wrote:Because of increasing life expectancy and people having far fewer children, dozens of countries are facing a major demographic challenge. And, with the coming wave of baby boomers retiring, it's going to get ugly fast. We're basically faced with 4 options:

1) Increase the retirement age dramatically. Perhaps to 70 or 75.
2) Change the cultural viewpoint so that the burden of retirement is on the person wanting to retire rather than their family or society in general.
3) Start having a lot more babies. Which, really needed to happen 10 years ago...
4) Open up immigration and bring in a young workforce to pay taxes.

We'll have to choose one soon. If not, 2 is going to become the default, as Social Security goes bankrupt and the government either fails or abandons other senior programs.

The US has chosen option #4 currently. Within five years it will add in option #1 and to a lesser extent option #2. Anyone under 50 who thinks SS will survive the Me Generation is a fool.


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biccat wrote:

Easy E wrote:Of course, the downside is, if people can work longer as they get older, their are less jobs for the young people entering the workforce.

Only if you assume employment is zero-sum.

It's not.

Effectively ts worse than zero sum currently. There are more people entering the job market than jobs being created. How's that Hope and Change working out for you?

Frazzled wrote:Effectively ts worse than zero sum currently. There are more people entering the job market than jobs being created. How's that Hope and Change working out for you?

Good point. Allow me to correct my previous statement.

Absent a miserable failure of a chief executive doing everything in his power (and some outside of his power) to suppress the national economy [i]t's not.

biccat wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Effectively ts worse than zero sum currently. There are more people entering the job market than jobs being created. How's that Hope and Change working out for you?

Good point. Allow me to correct my previous statement.

Absent a miserable failure of a chief executive doing everything in his power (and some outside of his power) to suppress the national economy [i]t's not.

biccat wrote:
Only if you assume employment is zero-sum.

It's not.

Yes it is, it can't be otherwise on a moment to moment basis. Over time, maybe its not (sort of), but at any given point there are X number of people vying for job Y; making it zero sum.

The only people pretending that isn't true are lying, to themselves and everyone else.

Would there be anything in the assisted suicide of older family members 'falling on the sword' to help the family in China?

TL;DR

I assume that it's to do with the place being a sausage-fest? Amirite?

Or are too many people actually living to retirement age?

Henners91 wrote:TL;DR

I assume that it's to do with the place being a sausage-fest? Amirite?

Or are too many people actually living to retirement age?

No. It has to do with low birth rates.

Low birth rates result in a large percentage of the population being part of the work force (adults of working age), and very few as dependents (children and the elderly). But, as that population ages, you have more and more people retiring and becoming dependent on the productive members, while there isn't enough people entering the work force to support them (because there aren't as many kids growing up).

This results in a top-heavy demographic, with the working population unable to support the dependents.

Henners91 wrote:TL;DR

I assume that it's to do with the place being a sausage-fest? Amirite?

Or are too many people actually living to retirement age?

Both of those, and a few other issues, combining to make China's demographics a bit of a nightmare.

dogma wrote:

biccat wrote:
Only if you assume employment is zero-sum.

It's not.

Yes it is, it can't be otherwise on a moment to moment basis. Over time, maybe its not (sort of), but at any given point there are X number of people vying for job Y; making it zero sum.

The only people pretending that isn't true are lying, to themselves and everyone else.

Which is exactly where there are as many jobs now as there were in Caveman days.

Oh, wait...

The job market is not the least bit zero sum. Only over very short timeframes could it ever be considered such.

Ahhh so it's like the greying population problem 'ere in ol' Blighty but multiplied by over 9000?

Eek.

sourclams wrote:
Which is exactly where there are as many jobs now as there were in Caveman days.

And of course there are just as many people now as there were in "Caveman" days.

sourclams wrote:
The job market is not the least bit zero sum. Only over very short timeframes could it ever be considered such.

Sure, time frames of, say, 5-10 years. So, basically, the time frame of your average job search in tough times.

Honestly, I don't understand why people refuse to admit that when they take a job, they necessarily deny one to someone else. Probably some foolish attempt to feel righteous.

dogma wrote:Honestly, I don't understand why people refuse to admit that when they take a job, they necessarily deny one to someone else. Probably some foolish attempt to feel righteous.

Because it's untrue backward thinking that is completely bogus. Is that a good enough reason?

Even if we were all peasants in Warcraft III waiting for the gauntlet to click us and send five to a goldmine, the labor market would not be zero sum. Over there in that unexplored corner of the map there is another gold mine, waiting for five more peasants to maximize capacity utilization. Even when that mine is maxed out, there will still be a need for a peasant to build a Farm, or for a peasant to cut down trees. And this is a game limited to two resources -Gold and Tree-and 30 second build queues.

Then you look at the Real World, where employers routinely report position openings that have sat open for extended durations because they've been unable to find a worker with the right skill set. Employment is not at all zero sum, it's nonsensical to even think of it as such. If employment was zero-sum then countries like Japan and those in southern Europe would have the most open and available job market, new products would never be invented (innovation doesn't work in zero-sum, only economies of scale and process improvement), and countries with the most universities would have the highest joblessness rates.

sourclams wrote:

dogma wrote:Honestly, I don't understand why people refuse to admit that when they take a job, they necessarily deny one to someone else. Probably some foolish attempt to feel righteous.

Because it's untrue

I take it you've never actually applied for a job, then?

If you're applying for a job, and someone else takes it, you don't get the job. There's never enough jobs for everyone.

Except I have a job, so obviously I've applied for one. There are plenty of jobs out there, right now, you might just be unfit for them. That's when the onus is upon the job-seeker to prove new and valuable skills to the market, in order to differentiate yourself so that you're not Peon #6 watching #1-5 work the Gold Mine.

sourclams wrote:
If employment was zero-sum then countries like Japan and those in southern Europe would have the most open and available job market, new products would never be invented (innovation doesn't work in zero-sum, only economies of scale and process improvement), and countries with the most universities would have the highest joblessness rates.

No, that's ridiculously wrong, and your mistake seems to stem from a basic failure to understand what "zero sum" actually means. Any zero sum "game" entails a situation in which X is the upper bound of the supply at any given moment. The most often discussed format for this is power vis international politics. There may be more or less power in the game at any given point, but at the relevant point there is only X power. Similarly, at any given point there are only X jobs, with Y people to fill them. Yeah, more jobs might be made manifest, and more people might be born, and more power might be created, but that doesn't matter. If it did, then nothing would be zero sum.


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sourclams wrote:Except I have a job, so obviously I've applied for one. There are plenty of jobs out there, right now, you might just be unfit for them. That's when the onus is upon the job-seeker to prove new and valuable skills to the market, in order to differentiate yourself so that you're not Peon #6 watching #1-5 work the Gold Mine.

Because, clearly, peons 1-5 have new and valuable skills.

Melissia wrote:

sourclams wrote:

dogma wrote:Honestly, I don't understand why people refuse to admit that when they take a job, they necessarily deny one to someone else. Probably some foolish attempt to feel righteous.

Because it's untrue

I take it you've never actually applied for a job, then?

If you're applying for a job, and someone else takes it, you don't get the job. There's never enough jobs for everyone.

Not entirely true. Unemployment in the UK in the 1970s was essentially 0. There was a shortage of labour.
This was probably because of the huge government intervention though. It's pretty much impossible in a free market.

dogma wrote:No, that's ridiculously wrong, and your mistake seems to stem from a basic failure to understand what "zero sum" actually means. Any zero sum "game" entails a situation in which X is the upper bound of the supply at any given moment. The most often discussed format for this is power vis international politics. There may be more or less power in the game at any given point, but at the relevant point there is only X power. Similarly, at any given point there are only X jobs, with Y people to fill them. Yeah, more jobs might be made manifest, and more people might be born, and more power might be created, but that doesn't matter. If it did, then nothing would be zero sum.

Okay, so by mis-applying an international political term to the economy, the job market is still not zero-sum, unless your definition of the upper X bound is 'a moving line that expands as population increases'.

Where you're getting hung up is on 'there are only X jobs, with Y people to fill them'. If this is the foundation of your belief, I can believe why you think the job market is zero-sum. 'X' jobs is an eminently flexible number that is going to expand and contract with economic activity. Y people is a more inflexible number due to the 'pipeline' of workers at any given time being approximately set for the next 15-25 years due to human biology. Thus you have a fairly stable upward population trend set against fluctuating economic cycles that result in either job availability in excess of population or deficit. This is not at all understood as a zero-sum scenario, but rather fluctuating capacity utilization.

I'm sure China well be fine.

Joey wrote:This was probably because of the huge government intervention though. It's pretty much impossible in a free market.

It's not impossible in a free market but it would have to be the result of some sort of exogenous shock. The Black Death, for example, wiped out a huge segment of the labor pool. Immediately after, peasants were commanding ever-higher wages to perform basically menial tasks--but there weren't enough menials to provide wage competition.

The tech boom would be another good example. You had 'retail' investors -- basically Mom and Dad -- buying stocks that had no real inherent value and inflating those prices. That much capital being dumped into the market still had to go somewhere, though, so goods and services and construction / jobs took off and thereby increased spending, which required more goods and services to fuel. That's how booms/bubbles feed off of themselves.

sourclams wrote:

Joey wrote:This was probably because of the huge government intervention though. It's pretty much impossible in a free market.

It's not impossible in a free market but it would have to be the result of some sort of exogenous shock. The Black Death, for example, wiped out a huge segment of the labor pool. Immediately after, peasants were commanding ever-higher wages to perform basically menial tasks--but there weren't enough menials to provide wage competition.

The tech boom would be another good example. You had 'retail' investors -- basically Mom and Dad -- buying stocks that had no real inherent value and inflating those prices. That much capital being dumped into the market still had to go somewhere, though, so goods and services and construction / jobs took off and thereby increased spending, which required more goods and services to fuel. That's how booms/bubbles feed off of themselves.

Is that why there was no unemployment during the 90s?

sourclams wrote:Except I have a job, so obviously I've applied for one.

I'm not sure I believe you. But regardless, even if you get those skills you're still competing with others who are also trying to get those skills.

There are not enough jobs out there for everyone. Even the best economies almost invariably have a structural rate of unemployment.

sourclams wrote:
Okay, so by mis-applying an international political term to the economy, the job market is still not zero-sum, unless your definition of the upper X bound is 'a moving line that expands as population increases'.

It is, "zero sum" doesn't meant "incapable of expanding."

sourclams wrote:
Where you're getting hung up is on 'there are only X jobs, with Y people to fill them'. If this is the foundation of your belief, I can believe why you think the job market is zero-sum. 'X' jobs is an eminently flexible number that is going to expand and contract with economic activity.

Of course its flexible, flexibility does not mean "not zero sum."

sourclams wrote:
This is not at all understood as a zero-sum scenario, but rather fluctuating capacity utilization.

You very clearly do not know what "zero sum" means. Zero sum does not imply that the net worth of the system does not fluctuate.

To draw an analogy: If I sit at a poker table with 1 guy, the game is zero sum, one of the two of us will take the pot. But, if another guy sits, and splits the pot three ways, its still zero sum.

Melissia wrote:

There are not enough jobs out there for everyone. Even the best economies almost invariably have a structural rate of unemployment.

This is best explained with swear words over harsh and difficult to digest economic terms.

Namely, have you seen how many toothless one-eyed fething morons with gills on their necks are walking the streets? Would YOU give them a job at your company?!

Jesus.. I cant even believe some of my more stupid, lazy friends have jobs. Let alone some of the mutants I see walking around the sink estates.