It's a stale old talking point. As you say, the numbers don't necessarily add up the way that CW has it.
So a good fertility rate target is not >2.1 indeed, but it's not 1.2 either. I would hazard 1.8 as a good target. I guess Russia, Germany, Italy and Spain really are rather low and will suffer, particularly in the countryside. France and the UK in particular are too high. Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Gandhi
But there's still a big political problem, which I don't think was addressed there, namely that people usually will voluntarily support their children, even at a cost of a lower standard of living for themselves. Supporting the elderly will involve a transfer of resources from working people. These are resources that they would previously have been spending on their own children, but now have got used to spending on themselves. Raising the retirement age may be politically a lot easier than the alternatives.
Have they? We are talking about continuous transitions here.
Raising the retirement age may be politically a lot easier than the alternatives.
Raising the retirement age only makes sense if there are jobs to be taken (otherwise, we just shift the tax load from retirement contribution to jobless benefits). *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
I think so, as every childless family has more disposable income, and gets used to spending it. I agree that it's a continuous transition, but I think that's how continuous transitions work. Not that I'm not suggesting that childless families are spending lavishly - other expenses such as housing may also adjust to the ability to spend.
As to your second point, shifting the tax load from retirement contribution to jobless benefits doesn't really make sense, as you say, unless the jobs are there. But the accepted wisdom seems to be that increasing the retirement age is necessary, while increasing taxes of any kind is bad. To oppose this means going against two pieces of accepted wisdom, which will be quite difficult, though hopefully not impossible.
That's not exactly what I said. What I said was that if the jobs aren't there, increasing retirement age will, in effect, only shift the tax load from retirement contribution to jobless benefits (because more people are forced to stay in the labor force, thus more people can't find jobs). *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
