Jeremiah

I'm not sure how one would check the age distribution for this.

Maybe kids these days should be blaming Gen X for that instead.

But the older generations would take some responsibility for the shape of the age distribution.

End quote.

Scott writes, This is an interesting synthesis.

Most of people's problems with the boomers are really problems with an inverted demographic pyramid.

Since the old outnumber the young, they have, quote, too much wealth, jobs, etc.

compared to people's natural expectation, and previously solvent benefits programs are falling apart.

Is this right?

I actually wasn't sure where our population pyramid was.

I thought maybe the recent wave of immigrants would have righted it.

But no, it looks like it's getting increasingly top-heavy.

Here's a graph, dependency ratios in the US over time.

and it shows the old age dependency ratio increasing to the present day and then projected to increase dramatically into the future.

Scott writes, I don't think that it's especially worth blaming the boomers for this.

If you look at the secular trend, here's the total fertility rate in the United States from 1800 to 2020, it's continually downward, with a little spike in the 1940s before continuing on downward.

Scott writes, It's pretty funny that a gigantic boom in robots is about to save us from this right when it starts becoming a noticeable problem.

4.

Comments about social security technicalities

Matthew writes, quote, here quoting Scott, even when their benefits per capita per year are stable or declining.