On Sat, Nov 20, 2010 at 5:30 PM, Robert Munn <cfmuns...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Just look at the demographics of the country, that tells the whole story. If > you don't have enough workers, you can't pay for the retirees.
I have looked at the demographics. Hence, you know, why I just wrote a whole freaking long email about demographics. Did you not notice? How I go through the cohorts for the pre and post boomer generations and showed why the current situation is an anomaly? Of course, things may change, which is why I only give slight credence to the 75 year projections. They are useful, but not precise. None the less, if you have subsequent generations of similar sizes and you have roughly similar increases in wages compared to inflation and roughly similar long term employment rates, the numbers work out quite easily. There are, of course, cases where the number of workers may plummet. Canada faced such a situation as they stared sub-replacement level native population growth in the eye and decided to form an immigration policy that focused on educated, young, child-bearing familes, precisely to bolster their health care and pension system. The US has hung out around replacement levels with the combination of immigration and birth rates. Long term, industrialized countries tend to veer toward lower birth rates as far as we can tell, so immigration reform might be a worthwhile answer. Of course we are on the leading edge of industrialization, so we may discover new trends in population dynamics before other countries do. >> All I've heard is bluster. I've shown, again and again, a variety of >> proposals that will extend the Social Security program, as designed, >> out past the next 75 years. Personally, I think that trying to >> forecast 75 years out is a bit of black magic. If you want to bitch >> that we can't forecast for 7 generations, well, that's your right I >> suppose but it's really stupid. >> > > The point is that even shorter run projections show structural deficits as > far as the eye can see. Well, there are slight structural deficits, though not severe, if you do nothing. That's true and I've already admitted as much. Overall, they are pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things when you compare them to other structural deficit factors. And, once again, it is a rare problem to which multiple answers have already been identified. We suffer a deficit of will, not of solutions. >> >> Here's a little simple demographic math for you: >> >> The reason why there was formerly a larger number of people paying in >> for each retiree was that there was the "baby boom". We had an >> abnormally large cohort post-WWII. Now we are running into a situation >> where that particular cohort is getting to retirement age. >> > > Everyone understand this, but your logic about generations returning to > "normal" size does not hold. If anything, the US will face a leveling off of > the population like Europe, and that would make the problem even worse, as > people live longer and longer. The US likely will face a leveling off of native population growth. Immigration policy will be key. However, even if we just kept things as they were and stayed right around population replacement levels, lifespan increase represents a very slow growth problem. Average life span (in the US) has grown very slowly over the last half century. In the 60s it was about 66, now it is about 75. It is difficult to project these trends too far out into the future as life expectancy has mostly changed in little leaps and bounds due to things like antibiotics, eradication of polio, etc. You'll find these little jumps that happen due to an advancement and then long periods of relative flatness, sometimes with oddities like the recent decrease we've seen due to obesity and cancer. Simply put, the problem isn't without merit, but it is a slow growth, arithmetic progression. It is not something to freak out over. >> Medicare, though, is a problem here and now. And its getting worse, >> faster, than any other program. And we don't have a good set of ideas >> on what to do to fix it. Social Security is a red herring. >> > > > Medicare is going to collapse as soon as our credit with China runs out. > Tic-toc, tic-toc. That is a profoundly unhelpful attitude and pretty much makes your contribution to any discussion on good governance meaningless. There are real problems. Lets stop the pissing matches about the shit that doesn't really make a big difference and try to focus on the things that do. I don't have all the answers to health care reform. Not even vaguely close. But I've got enough information to be able to show, without a doubt, that it is *the* problem and therefore the one we should be trying to figure out instead of trying to score political points on piddly bullshit. 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