Blythe Terrell

Like, maybe you hesitate.

And then the next thing that happens that freaks people out about all this, it relates to the older people, right?

Like, we just heard that we have way fewer kids, and proportionally, we have way more older people in the population, right?

And they need someone to take care of them.

Yes.

Not only do they need someone to take care of them, they also need, like—

money to take care of them because there's two pieces of this right like there's like there's the idea that you can run into like caregiver shortages which we do hear about um but the thing that actually economists seem to be a little more freaked out about is that like okay when you get old what happens you're too old to work you retire you maybe have a pension but you also generally have health care and the way we pay for those things is through taxes

I know, taxes, woo, bro, I can see you.

I can see your eyes glazing over.

But it really matters.

This tax thing actually is really important because what happens is if you don't have people, younger people in your population, you end up with fewer people in the workforce, you end up with fewer people paying taxes, and then you end up not being able to pay for these programs for your older people.

Plus, we use taxes to pay for other stuff, right?

Like roads, parks, fire departments.

So all this could get messy.

And obviously, like, South Korea is trying to figure this out.

They are very aware of this problem, of course.

But it could get bad.

Here's what Jisoo told me.

Yeah.

Yeah, so South Korea, actually scientists call it a super-aged society because more than 20% of the people are older than 65.