Category Archives: Economics

The Malaise of Wealth: the Transition to Post-Scarcity

I probably don’t need to regale you about the economic troubles of our generation. Manufacturing work has been declining for decades hurting the economic prospects of the working class. Professional occupations are now suffering as well, enough so that even the mainstream media gets it. Unemployment is near 50% for new graduates and young people are being hammered by the recession. You all know the drill.

Everybody has a solution to the problem. Obama, Krugman, and the Keynesians say throw fiat money at the economy until it moves. Conservatives and libertarians decry excessive regulations and taxes. Economic nationalists say close the border, criminalize outsourcing, end free trade, and put up tariffs, while neo-liberals call for more free trade.

They blame the rich, they blame welfare bums, they blame bureaucrats, they blame capitalists, they blame the young, they blame the old.

The thing is, they’re all wrong.

There is no real solution to Western economic malaise, as the “malaise” is not actually an economic problem.

Our economic “problem” is that we are too wealthy.

Of course, this doesn’t seem to make sense. Unemployment is high, labour force participation is declining, and people can’t get jobs. How can I possibly say we are too wealthy?

If you look at GDP, it has increased steadily for decades. The “great recession” we blame for our economic woes caused the economy to fall to 2007 levels in 2009 (and we weren’t poor in 2007, at the height of the housing boom, were we?), which was promptly righted in 2010. In terms of what we produce, the goods that actually make our life better, the effects were minor.

Our economic malaise is one not of a lack of production, but of a lack of employment.

Or stated another way: as a society, we are continually producing more of the goods we want, but we have to do less work to get it.

It is the second part of that sentence that is the problem: we have to do less work to get it.

That is the cause of our economic problems. That is why there are no jobs, there is no work for people to do.

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The problem is that we are in the process of transferring from a capitalist economic system to a post-scarcity “economic system” and nobody is ready for it. It is something that is completely out of most people’s understanding.

Post-scarcity is a word that some of you may have heard of before, or you may not have. So I’ll explain: a post-scarcity economy is one where scarcity has been overcome, where all people have access to as many goods and services as they want, with minimal labour necessary to produce them. In a post-scarcity economy, people do not have what we would consider to be jobs; because most goods and services can be produced with negligible labour.

People will work, but it will be according to the old Marxist saw “[communism] makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.”

Work will be something you engage in because you want to, not because you have to. You may choose to hunt, but you will do so because you enjoy it, not because you need to eat. You may choose to design a website, but it will be in leisure, not because the boss says to. You will be able to work at whatever you want, or at nothing, because it doesn’t matter to your material wealth, or anyone else’s for that matter.

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If you want to see post-scarcity today, the best place to look is at the music industry, or perhaps more accurately, it’s continuing collapse. Music can now be made cheaply: at most it costs a couple thousand dollars in instruments and a couple thousand in recording costs. With music creations software, all it costs is a computer you already own and some pirated software to create music. Once the original act of music creation is completed it costs absolutely nothing and requires almost no labour to create another digital copy.

And that’s the whole problem; that’s why the music industry is collapsing. Music executives are finding that it is very hard to justify charging people for what they can get for free. They are fighting free music tooth and nail under the guise of copyright to protect their profits, and they are losing, badly. The economic spin-offs of this are that everybody in the music industry is going to lose their jobs eventually. Why buy a CD when I can download it for free? Why sign with a label when I can distribute my own music on the internet? Why hire a producer when production software is so cheap? Why go to HMV when I can download music at home?

The producer loses his job, the CD manufacturer loses his, the marketing exec loses his, the sales clerk loses his. Thousands of jobs are lost.

Yet, are we poorer? No. Every person in the west now has functionally unlimited access to almost every piece of music ever created at negligible costs. My music library is functionally unlimited and it costs me nothing.

Bill Gates has no greater access to music than I do and I have more access to music than even the richest of men in existence prior to a couple decades ago.

That is post-scarcity.

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Now the problem with post-scarcity is that every economic system we have had to date has been based on scarcity; there was only a limited amount of resources to go around, so we need some way to distribute those resources. Goods required work, so we needed some way to encourage people to work. That’s why capitalism works, it distributes resources to an individual according to how others in society value the individual’s contributions to society.

But in post-scarcity, capitalism breaks down. With resources being unlimited, nobody can profit off the production of those resources.

Nobody knows how to handle post-scarcity.

The RIAA fights music pirating as post-scarcity means they can’t profit off of the goods.

Politicians back copyright law and fight pirating, not realizing that everybody is getting richer in actual terms as everybody now has unlimited music access, but because they aren’t paying for it it doesn’t register in GDP. In addition, the ability to create nigh unlimited music with negligible labour becomes “unemployment” according to economic measures.

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That’s all well and fine for music, but it’s not a material good, it’s easily digitized. Certainly the manufacturing of hard goods requires labour.

Does it really?

We can look at 3D printers.These printers can take raw materials (usually plastics or metals) and convert them into durable goods. Industrial printers are expensive and the technology’s still being developed. Simple home printers can now be purchased for less than a used car. Compare their development to that of computers; 30-40 years ago, home computers were a primitive luxury good for businessmen and geeks, large mainframes were commercial technologies, and the internet was a military project. Now, everybody owns a computer with internet access that easily dwarfs the power of those older commercial mainframes and that has hundreds of applications pre-installed.

Why wouldn’t 3D printers advance like this as well? They may be primitive toys for nerds right now, but a couple of decades from now?

Think about it. If your knife broke (or bowl, or computer, or phone, etc.), you just download plans (which was created for free by an online 3D printing design community) for a new knife  to your desktop 3D printer, feed in some metal and plastic, press the start button, and a minute later a new knife.

If you need a bigger object, say a car, you just go to the free neighborhood printer (why wouldn’t it be free, when another printer can print a printer for almost no cost?), stick in your old car to be broken down for raw materials, then have it print out a new car from plans you downloaded to a flash drive earlier.

Think it sound implausible? Why?

We have the basis for the technology, it’s simply a matter of refinement and scale. Remember what happened to computers.

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Also remember what happened to the music industry.

When this happens (and I believe it’s a when, not an if), why would you need to work, if you could print whatever you wanted? Why would someone pay you for your work if almost anything was free? Why would you pay anyone else for something?

The capitalist market would collapse. Scarcity would disappear.

According to official measures though, GDP would plummet and unemployment would skyrocket.

In addition to the printers, robotics will be used to cover some production.

(I will say this: even in post-scarcity, we will probably need a few people keeping an eye on things, but the prestige, trappings of power, and/or conspicuous altruism of such positions will likely be enough to get the requisite number of people to do this).

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What about raw materials? The printers couldn’t create those.

At first, out-sourcing. We’d pay poor foreigners to mine or grow raw materials with easily duplicated goods. Robotics could also be used.

At some point, recycling would be enough. There is a limit to what you could possibly want.

If you already have three cars and want a new one, just break down the old one and have a new one reprinted. Same with anything else.

What if you want more than what you have? My question would be why?

Most goods are simply positional; they are used for showing off your wealth.

If anybody can print a Lamborghini for the same material cost as a Pontiac (free, except for the $100 of scrap metals and plastic), the Lamborghini would be worthless as a positional good.

Once you have what you need: food, transport, housing, recreation, positional goods made by someone else would  mostly meaningless. Any positional good that would bring you status would have be something deliberately created apart from the printers/crowd-sourced plans.

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What about the services?

These would mostly be made unnecessary.

Amazon has made bookstores completely irrelevant. Steam is making video game stores irrelevant. In the future, 3D printing will make stores irrelevant.

Robotics and AI would replace some of the rest.

Communities of interested individuals would take care of the rest. If you had unlimited free time because work became unnecessary, you would pursue and master your favourite activities would you not? So would others. They would form communities and groups just as they do now. They would provide community members services and teaching, just as they do now.

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So what’s the problem?

The problem is that these are not all going to happen together. Different occupations will be effected at different rates.

Manufacturing has already been dying a slow death for decades as robotics and off-shoring has replaced domestic labour. Unskilled blue-collar labour is already pushing towards post-scarcity conditions.

On the other hand, the trades are still doing well. Skilled blue-collar work is harder to replace.

Unskilled white-collar labour has been going there as well; filing replaced by digitization, clerks were replaced by Excel, etc.

Skilled white-collar labour is harder to replace with technology, but even so, we are approaching the tipping point.

In addition, different industries are effected at different rate. The music industry is in it’s death throes, book publishing will follow soon after.  On the other hand, health care still requires human workers and will for a while to come.

So, while the transition to post-scarcity is occurring, we need a way to incentivise those we need to work to continue working. At the same time, we need to keep those who society does not need to work from causing trouble.

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As a society on the road to post-scarcity, we are already so productive that we already pay a large chunk of our surplus to those who aren’t contributing, and we have been doing this for decades. Social security and retirement, welfare, EI, disability, foreign aid, and the like are all us paying some of our surplus to the unproductive.

The problem is, as soon as we start paying people to be unproductive, then people have less incentive to be productive. If we start just distributing good income to the unproductive with no pretense, then we might not have the people we need producing, producing. So all the above usually have some conditions attached, so it is not a generally usable condition.

Yet, we have a lot more people who need employment, than we have work that actually needs doing, so we have to find ways beside just giving people money to keep them occupied.

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We have created a number of strategies to keep unemployment low while post-scarcity works itself out.

First is the welfare state. Welfare and disability, properly stigmatized, can keep the unproductive lower classes from causing trouble, while the stigma keeps productive people from pursuing this option.

Second, jail. If we jail the unproductive that cause trouble, they stop causing trouble.

Third, government. I’m a government worker, but we have to face it, government is on the whole unproductive. Some parts of government are productive, such as infrastructure or health care (assuming a public health system), but the majority of it is not. Redistributive government programs do not produce anything, they just shuffle wealth around while destroying some of it in the process. The regulatory functions of government actively destroy wealth and hinder wealth creation. Not to mention that the taxes necessary to fund government discourage wealth creation. But the government keeps a lot of white-collar people employed.

Fourth, the military. The US has no real external threats and it’s military is vastly superior to anything else on the earth, but the military keeps a lot of people, particularly those people who may be inclined to organized violence, employed.

Fifth, the subsidized. the government subsidizes a lot of economic activity and organizations that would otherwise be unable to continue to exist.

I’m not saying that these were actively created because the people creating them knew we faced unemployment problems due to the transition to post-scarcity, but they do help keep the problem of unemployment in check.

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So, what should I take from this?

It’s simple, the next few decades are going to be very painful economically. Our wealth will increase, so we’ll continually have more goods and services over time, but at the same time our unemployment will increase and GDP might not accurately reflect the increase in goods and services as post-scarcity resources (such as pirated music) will be outside official measures of wealth as they will not require economic transactions.

Economic inequality will likely continue to increase, as the productive capacity continues to rely on fewer people, while more people are replaced by technology and have less access to wealth.

As each industry faces it’s own movement into post-scarcity each will push it’s own form of blowback as they realize their profits and jobs are going to disappear as technology replaces them.

Together, these forces will create great societal tensions. Government redistribution will continue to grow to keep the lid on these tensions.

At some point though, we will reach the tipping point into post-scarcity. After this, work as we currently know it will no longer be a thing and society will rearrange itself to adapt to a totally new situation.

Since when was Covetousness a Christian value?

Here’s one Mr. Sirota at Salon discussing left-wing Christianity and spouting ignorance. (h/t Secular Right).

in England 1) “religious people are more active citizens (who) volunteer more, donate more to charity and are more likely to campaign on political issues,”

Same in North America. In fact, in North America conservative religious people donate and volunteer more than liberals. You see, conservative religious folks believe in these little things called charity, community, and loving your neighbour, rather than using the state as a device for sanctioned mass looting so individuals can feel free to ignore the poor.

First, they tell us that, contrary to evidence in the United States, the intersection of religion and politics doesn’t have to be fraught with hypocrisy.

Notice how Sirota thinks an ideology based upon freedom, tradition, and/or order is contrary to the Bible, but left-wing ideology based on greed and covetousness is somehow congruent with it.

Summing up the situation, scholar Gregory Paul wrote in the Washington Post that many religious Christians in America simply ignore the Word and “proudly proclaim that the creator of the universe favors free wheeling, deregulated union busting, minimal taxes, especially for wealthy investors, and plutocrat-boosting capitalism as the ideal earthly scheme for his human creations.”

The Creator of the Universe never spoke much about the political economy, except in relation to the tribal polity of Israel in the Old Testament. To assign God to any political ideology is simply silly.

In addition, plutocrat-boosting capitalism is primarily an ideology of liberalism (be it the neo-conservative, socialist, or progressivist kind). Actual right-wingers believe in a neutral free market of uncoerced exchange.

Of course, many Americans who cite Christianity to justify their economic conservatism may not have actually read the Bible.

And most liberals who cite Christianity to justify their economic theft don’t believe the Bible is truth.

No doubt, only a few generations ago, such a conflation of religion and right-wing economics would never fly in America.

That’s because a few generations ago, the left hadn’t begun waging all-out-war on Christianity.

Anyway, I dislike when anybody tries to say there’s a “Christian” political or economic system.

There’s a few political and economic systems that might be inherently unchristian, such as those based on gassing Jews, massacring priests, or purposely starving millions of people, but unless your system requires those kinds of atrocities, there is no “Christian” or “unchristian” system, because Jesus didn’t much talked about the political economy. He mentioned something about rendering unto Caeser his own, but that’s more or less it.

Jesus never said, “woe unto thee who opposeth the welfare state” or “truly, I say to unto thee goods should be exchanged freely in an open marketplace” or “blessed be those who raise taxes”.

Jesus’ message, the Christian message, is spiritual, not material and not political.

So, please Mr. Sirota, refrain from making yourself look silly.

Affordable Daycare is a Pipe Dream

I came across this article with some women whining about the costs of child care.  (h/t Captain Capitalism)

Child care is one of those things that is usually not going to be “affordable” (or a good economic decision, for that matter) except to the well off and the poor (ie. single mothers). No matter how much feminists or the state desire to bring down its costs, it simply can not be made a sustainably affordable option for your average working-class and middle-class folks.

The reason: child care requires human workers that can not be outsourced and can not be replaced with technology. There is no way to offshore your child to India (other than boarding schools) and it will be decades (at least) before there is a robot capable of properly taking care of a child. So, there is no way to remove paying for labour from the equation (unless grandma is willing to take the kids).

The gains that can be made from efficiencies are also limited. Kids require work, a lot of it, and it is not the kind of work that can easily benefit from economies of scale. Sure, you can cut costs around the edges, like consolidate day cares to use larger buildings or buy diapers in bulk, but the labour costs can not really be made more efficient. You can not simply feed children or change their diapers on an assembly line, and each child requires some amount of unique individual attention, even if only to stop them from jabbing crayons into their eyes.

On top of that, governments often mandate a certain level of labour costs with the use of staff/child ratios. This makes sense of course, you don’t want one 23-year-old girl made responsible for 15 different 2 year olds, it’s simply unsafe (not to mention the complete lack of mental development or learning opportunities a situation like that provides, one of the chief benefits touted by daycare enthusiasts).

So, you legally limit the maximum ratio of children per staff. The actual mandatory ratio varies by jurisdiction and often by age, but in my jurisdiction, the max ratio for infants is 4:1 and 8:1 for preschool.

Think about what a 4:1 ratio means in economic terms for a second.

It means that, at best, only 4 women will be required to pay the entire salary (plus benefits) of one daycare worker.

If we assume both the childcare worker and the working woman make average wages, then a women with a single infant in care is paying (at least) 25% of her pre-tax income for the wages of the childcare provider, alone. This does not even include overhead, management, or supplies; simply, the direct labour costs are 25% of her income. If she has two infants, it rises to 50%. Two preschoolers: 25%.

For the working woman with the average 2.4-child family; labour costs for child care alone would eat up 25%-50% of her pre-tax income. If you add on other daycare costs (diapers, the building, etc.), taxes, the costs of working (transportation, lunches, business clothes, etc.), it is easy to see she barely comes out ahead. She’s taking home, at most, a few dimes on the dollar.

This means that only for the rich or the poor is child care a remotely economically rational decision. The rich for obvious reasons, the poor simply out of necessity; they may only make a few dimes on the dollar but without those dimes they make nothing.

Obviously, given the number of working-/middle-class women that use daycare, it’s more affordable than my simple illustration, but why?

The main reason is, daycare workers do not make the average wage. In the US, the average daycare worker makes less than $20k/year, while the average female working full-time makes $33k (while the average income for a full-time worker is almost $40k).

This brings the comparative labour costs down to about 15-30% of your average woman’s earnings, providing another dime or two on the dollar in take-home pay.

To lower these labour costs, you could lower childcare workers’ wages, but then you’ll simply have fewer workers to meet the same demand, so they’ll charge more or there will be a lack of supply. In addition, if child care labour is paid less, you’ll get less qualified candidates, and you want some minimum levels on who looks after children.

Also, wages in this sector tend to be trending up over the long-term. Jurisdictions are increasingly requiring higher qualifications for childcare workers, which will increase the wages necessary to attract workers. For example, my jurisdiction now requires a two-year diploma for childcare workers. In addition, childcare workers are demanding increasing benefits. In my jurisdiction there has been talk of the implementation of a pension plan. Labour costs are set to go up, not down.

No matter how much whining is done about the high costs and unaffordability of childcare, there is no way to bring it down given the nature of child care services.

The other idea to lower costs for individuals is subsidization. Canada does this, and spends about $5-billion/year in public money subsidizing daycare (the numbers are from 2005, so it’s probably higher now). The US federal government spent $3.7 billion in 2002, and I can’t find data on the spending of the various states.

This, of course, just transfers the costs from the users of daycare services to everybody. This benefits the poor who pay less tax, but get the most subsidies for daycare (another reason they can afford daycare, when it squeezes the middle-/working-class.) On the other hand, it simply means more of the parents’ incomes goes to taxes for the middle class, hiding the cost of daycare behind layers of bureaucracy, but not really solving the problem of affordability.

What will inevitably happen, is that as daycare becomes increasingly expensive and economically infeasible for the middle class, it will become some sort of “right” and the state will simply nationalize it. Taxes will go up further squeezing the middle-class. More couples will be forced into using daycare as they won’t be able to afford the increased taxes on a single income. Essentially, the public school system will simply expand to include the younger years.

In conclusion, daycare will never be “affordable” due to the nature of the work but at some point your children will likely be raised by unionized government workers for their early years. Enjoy.

An Economic Analysis of Marriage – Part 1

The Cost of the Risk of Material Loss in Divorce

Marriage is often discouraged in the Manopshere, and a single male, choosing whether I want to marry or stay an eternal bachelor is something important. Now, there’re a lot of reasons provided for why to avoid marriage, but the risk and consequences of divorce are easily the most convincing argument. So, I’m going to create a series on the economics of marriage.

This first post will be the economic cost of the risk of divorce for the average bachelor considering marriage.

At another time, I will attempt an economic analysis of the immaterial losses of divorce and the benefits of marriage. Then I will combine it all together in a cost benefit analysis.

What are the odds of divorce?

The “50% of marriages end in divorce” statistic is thrown out a lot, but this number includes those with multiple marriages and divorces, which skews the number higher than for people considering their first marriage, among other problems.

So, according to the US Census Bureau, for men, only about 60% of men reach their 25th anniversary for their first marriage (p. 11), which means about 40% of men did not.

Now, the data is by age cohort, and those married earlier had a greater chance of reaching any particular marriage anniversary milestone. For example, those married in 1975-79 had a 54.4% chance of reaching 25th anniversary, while those in the married in 1960-65 had a 66.9% of reaching this milestone. But, those married in 1975-79 had the worst chances of attaining any particular marriage milestone; they were peak divorce you might say. Since then, younger marriage cohorts have been more likely to reach milestones.

Meanwhile, in Canada, Statistics Canada has it that about 40% of first marriages will end in divorce.

So, we will estimate there is a 40% chance that a male entering their first marriage will divorce.

(Remember, the chances of marriage ending in divorce can vary depending on a wide range of variables, which I am not going to calculate at this time, but I might go into them in-depth in the future.)

How much does the divorce process cost?

The cost of the actual divorce process varies considerably, depending on a wide range of variables. A simple divorce will run about $1000, while a contested divorce can run from about $8,000-$133,000.

According to this, the median cost for mediation is $5,000, while the average contested divorce costs about $20,000.

So, we’ll say your divorce process will be about $20,000.

(Here’s a calculator if you’d like to play around).

What about Spousal/Child Support?

Your chances of paying spousal support depend on the amount of child support already paid and your income. There’s a ton of laws on this, so I’ll just use this calculator to calculate this.

The average Canadian household income is: $74,700
Two-earners without children: $79,700
Two-earners with children: $85,600
One-earner without children: $58,100
One-earner with children: $60,900

The average length of marriage is 14.5 years, with the average age of divorce for men being 44 and for women, 41.

So, putting the average divorce and income in the calculator we can get the average cost of support (both child and spousal) payments come divorce (in Ontario):

For your own income and planned family situation input the number in the calculator.

So, the average male will have to pay about $149,436 in support if sole provider, $73,458 in support if primary provider, and $0 in support if equal provider. (The cost of child support is there for illustrative purposes, but that would be the cost of having a child, not marriage and divorce.)

One interesting thing to notice: if you’re the sole breadwinner, your likely monthly payments can actually decrease as mandated child support payments replace spousal support payments. I would not bank too much on this, as it’s likely just a quirk in Canadian law or the calculator and may not apply broadly.

US law does not seem radically different overall from Canadian law.

What about a Settlement?

In Canada, “the spouse with the higher net family property is required by law to pay his” spouse “half of the difference between the two spouses’ net family properties.” Net family properties being current assets minus both liabilities and assets at marriage.

In the US, there are two systems, community property and equitable distribution, depending on the state with variations in how they are distributed. The former divides assets gained during the marriage equally, but leaves property attained before marriage alone. Equitable distribution distributes property equitably (not necessarily equally).

In general, we can say that the property you acquired during the marriage will be split more or less in half. If the wife was the primary housekeeper, while the husband was the primary breadwinner, then the difference will be the wife’s payments for continued support of the house. If they both shared provider status roughly equally, then an equal distribution of marital resources should occur.

There does not seem to be much economic cost to the average husband at the point of settlement in Canada, unless he sunk significant sums into the marital home prior to marriage and the wife did not match these sums after entering the marriage.

In the US, one could economically lose if the equitable distribution was not necessarily equal, or by quirks of local law, but for the average divorce, these would not present much of a cost. There might be extreme cases in both systems where quirks or abuses of the law could lead to unequal distribution either way, but

Other Cost Considerations

This is not to say that this will not increase economic hardship. Having to pay the expenses for two dwellings will, by itself, greatly increase economic hardship on both ex-spouses. For the ex-husband specifically though, the extra cost of two dwellings would be accounted for in the spousal/child support payments taken from his income.

It is possible a divorce could affect a male’s job performance, and thus his earnings, creating additional economic cost, but this would be outside my ability to remotely calculate.

The Total Material Cost of Divorce Risk for the Man Considering Marriage

Our formula:
Costs of Divorce Risk = Risk of Divorce * (Cost of divorce process + cost of support)

Average Male Single Earner
40%*(20,000 + 149,436 ) = $67774.40

Average Male Primary Provider
40%*(20,000 + 73,458) = $37383.2

Equal Male and Female Provision
40%*(20,000 ) = $8,000

For the average male who’s considering marriage and planning to be the sole breadwinner of the family, the material cost of the risk of divorce would be just over a full year’s worth of pay. For the average male who plans to be the primary but not sole breadwinner, it would be somewhat less than a full year’s pay. For the average male who plans a marriage where both partners earn equally, it would be a few months’ worth of pay.

So, if you plan on marrying and being the sole or primary breadwinner, you would have to ask yourself if you would pay roughly a year’s salary to be married.

* This analysis will be done for Canada. Canada’s divorce laws are generally nationally coherent, with federal laws and. The US’ divorce laws differ widely between states, so I can’t really calculate for the US. On the other hand, for the majority of men, the analysis shouldn’t vary too significantly.

Germany Eats Their Young

I promised more commentary and less self-indulgent reflection, so here we begin.

If you’ve been around the alt-right blogosphere/manosphere for a while, you’ve probably already somewhat familiar with the way the boomers have screwed over their own children in almost every way possible and how they have chained them to perpetual debt slavery.

Yes, that link to Mark Steyn did say the US owes 911% of GDP. In other words, Americans owe 9 full years of productive activity and the growth in debt shows no sign of slowing, which means the boomer’s children and grandchildren will likely spend a significant portion of their lives paying for the boomers’ excesses.

Thankfully, I live in Canada and despite Trudeau’s best efforts we have managed to avoid the worst excesses the US has subjected itself to, even thought the situation is not optimal. (I “only” owe about $17,000 in federal debt, while our pension system is actually somewhat funded, more or less).

Anyway, it seems Germany (which, as far as I know is in a fairly similar situation to Canada) will be having a problem funding its welfare state and benefits for the old (surprising, I know).

So, what are they doing to fix this?

Reducing the welfare state?

Decreasing regulation to create prosperity?

Putting back the retirement age as Canada is doing?

Of course not, that would be silly. They’re taxing the young, of course. Who could possibly want to leave their children and grandchildren better off than they are?

So, it seems Germany has explicitly decided to eat their young.

Germany’s boomers forgot to have children (where did life go?), now they realized that without children no one is there to pay for their health care when they become aged invalids (who could possibly have guessed?), so, why not take it out ofon what few children they did have.

Also, notice how their solution to a lack of a young workers to make up a tax base, is to work towards trying to drive away that same tax base. That’s sure to work.

Anyway, for those young Germans out there out there who want to work hard, keep their earnings, and be somewhat free, come to Canada; for now, we’re a bastion of near-sanity.

Expect more in future.