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Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 19, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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there are ways to make anyone a net productive citizen

Not if they are young or old enough.

73% of Americans not in paid work are either under 18 or over the Social Security retirement age. Admittedly some of the people over retirement age could work, although blue-collar workers are getting a lot slower at this age, and "net productive citizen" is making the stronger claim that they could work enough to, in expectation, pay for their own healthcare. The other groups of non-workers are the working-age disabled (9% - again most could do some work, very few could work enough to pay for their own healthcare), students (5% - these are people who society is already investing in to make them net productive citizens in the future), SAHMs and other carers (7% - most of these people are net contributors, but not in a way that is legible to the GDP statistics), and the stereotypically unproductive (6% across "temporarily unemployed", "early retirement" and "other").

The vast majority of able-bodied working-age people already are net contributors (40 hours a week at the going rate for reliable low-skill labour is enough almost everywhere across the first world). This is obfuscated by measuring contribution at household level - a typical household contains net-contributor parents and net-leech kids.

The US has federalised the cost of subsidising olds and undergraduates, but mostly localised the cost of subsidising kids. This means it makes sense for communities to try to attract retirees and students (the "eds and meds" strategy) and the federal subsidies that go with them, but to try to keep families with children out. This isn't true in other countries where more of the cost of schools is nationalised and more of the cost of social care for the elderly is localised.

The threshhold for a net productive citizen is very low in my mind.

There is a concept in economics called the velocity of money. Basically money doesn't just disappear when it is spent, it usually get reused and spent on other things. Higher velocity things usually cause more spending and re-spending.