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Notes -
The division of societal surplus in the gerontocracy
One oft-repeated epithet on the left is that we ought to be working 10-20 hours a week due to productivity increases. I always found that this is kind of funny or misguided, as we have kind of done just that - we just decided to give the surplus of productivity to the old (30+ year boomer retirements with eye-watering healthcare costs and redistributive transfers) and the young (10+ years of schooling and an adolescence that now almost lasts until you are 30).
I often think about how societal surplus is spent. If you look at the fastest growing sectors in most western countries, it's almost always healthcare and related professions. This is probably due to a whole host of factors but a big one is something akin to the median voter theorem; the median voter is most western countries is now very old and wants a lot of money spent on healthcare. Hence you get 10% to almost 20% of GDP (in the US!) going to that. As someone in their late 20s who hasn't seen a healthcare professional in more than a decade, that's wild. Healthcare has a low fiscal multiplier and is often purely a consumptive good, but people rarely think we spend too much on it per se - critiques are often made at nebulous administrative bloat (which when examined is often less of a good narrative than people think it is).
Another thing is immigration. Looking at it at face value, all western democracies are addicted to it. Even though right-wing culture warriors often single out Japan or SK, even these places have seen significant immigration (and concomitant pushback) in the past decade. Even places like Russia or Belarus do it. Again very often in service of aging populations - in order to stem inflation, keep asset prices high, etc.
Many western countries now how a U-shaped happiness curve - happy when young, happy when old, relatively miserable in old age. The meme "Nick 30 ans", perhaps not so common in the US, embodies this. If you are Nick (male), 30 years old and working, you are paying into a system that benefits everyone but you, chiefly the old, the the young, then women and then maybe the unemployed. I am one of these Nicks, I am 28 years old and I pay, for the country I reside in, a massive tax bill (probably 5-6x the median) and see nothing for it.
If the purpose of a system is what it does, the the purpose of modern western democracies is to drain young people (chiefly but not exclusively young men) and give the surplus to the old, the infirm, the antisocial. There is some rebellion or exit (people moving to Dubai etc.) though it's often hard to effectuate and sometimes punished by the system.
The striking thing is that when polled, most Nick 30 ans type people think old people are something like hard done to, think they deserve their pensions, think that the issues are not structural or redistributive but something to do with greedy corporations and the rich. I think some economists, Stiglitz or Friedmann or such, predicated concentration camps for the old due to accumulation of wealth and power, but young people do not rebel, they mostly submit and place the blame on other things as the system or the rich.
I sometimes wonder what the optimal thing is for someone who is the target of redistribution is to do. NEETdom is probably rational in many cases if you are not exceptional. I also wonder how various kinds of nationalists square the fact that their elders are quite happy to sell out their country, culture etc. for yet another cruise.
I'm pretty sure that young men have ALWAYS created a surplus which was used to support the young, the elderly, and women. The difference is that in the past, this surplus was distributed in a way that was less formal and more voluntary. Before social security, it was pretty normal and common for adult children to financially support their elderly parents; before AFDC women were far more desperate to marry and had far less contempt for men; a few hundred years ago, families were ecstatic about the birth of a healthy baby boy. In part because having an able-bodied man in your family could easily mean the difference between life and death.
So perhaps your real complaint is that your hypothetical 30 year old working man is not getting the respect he (arguably) deserves.
Maybe they should have a special express lane on the highway for people who pay more than $50k a year in taxes.
There's no need. When the support was voluntary, respect was required because the support could be withdrawn from the ungrateful. Now that it's mandatory, the supporters are merely slaves (or "tax cattle") and need no respect.
Young men were not an esteemed group in the past when that support was voluntary.
I was born after the welfare estate was established, but my grandmother lived her youth at a time when there was no social security, no AFDC, etc. She was overjoyed to have a healthy young man as a grandson, to the point where it really annoyed my sister. I think this was a pretty common attitude among people of this generation. Has this attitude changed? My general impression is that it has changed quite a bit.
I am open to alternative explanations, but to me the obvious explanation was that back in the day, having an able-bodied young man in your family could easily mean the difference between, on the one hand, malnutrition and grinding poverty and, on the other hand, eking by.
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