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China to raise retirement age for first time in decades as demographic crisis looms
(www.nbcnews.com)
this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2024
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That's unfortunate. I thought they wouldn't fall for this.
What do you mean, "fall for this"? What are they going to do — protest? Vote for someone else?
I mean I thought the CCP wouldn't go that route, pretending the workforce can't be productive enough to support their aging population without increasing the retirement age. I guess they either bought the (I think flawed) economic theory that this is needed, or they just want to extract more labor from the population and use that as pretense. Although given Xi's "welfare bad" tendencies I guess it's not surprising.
You're putting me in the difficult situation of backing up the CCP on this one, but how could it not be needed? They kneecapped birthrates for a whole generation, and never recovered. Unless they fix birthrates or start allowing immigration, they have no other recourse than forcing people to work longer. Either that or they actually start acting communist and redistribute wealth so that the soon-to-be retiree generations can weather the storm.
Edit: also, look at that male surplus. Ouch.
This is the direction I hoped they'd go. And let me clarify something. I think that there are vast gaps between the financial side of economics and the real economy. In other words, prices and financial capital do not accurately represent what's happening in the real economy and the error is significant. When I think of the real economic cost of taking care of the basic needs of seniors I don't see the problem some economists assert when looking at the financial side of things, typically dressed as "every X working people will have to support Y retirees" where X/Y is really low. For example farming is so absurdly cheap in terms of labor that very few people can feed everyone and have a third of it get thrown in the trash. The one component that is more labor intensive is healthcare but I don't think it'll need an apocalyptic increase in labor to handle.
Of course even then the economy might still shrink due to the decreased total labor as population shrinks. That part could be unavoidable without significant productivity jumps driven by technology, automation, etc., but on that I also do not subscribe to the traditional doom economist view. There are counterexamples where population has been decreasing and the real economy has maintained stability.
I broadly agree with you and like you also tend to criticize the CCP from the left. If you want to be communist, be communist and do it right (for the first time!).
However, it's far too late for China to do those things before GenX enters retirement, even if there were any political will to attempt it. China is (after the USA) the most grindingly capitalist place I've ever been to, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. Within the parameters of their current politics, they are absolutely heading at full speed for an economic cliff, even if Xi succeeds in killing off most of that male surplus on Taiwanese beaches. Taking Taiwan, however doomed and reckless the attempt may be, is perhaps the only hope of stemming that flow, since TW has much higher per capita GDP. I'm guessing that's why he's so intent on it.
Largely, I might agree with all you've said, but farming is extremely labor intensive, and takes a significant physical toll. So farmers should get early retirement and extra benefits, because who survives without them sacrificing themselves for us?
Sorry, yes it's extremely labor intensive in that the labor is difficult. However the number of people it takes to grow the amount of food needed has decreased dramatically over the last century. This results in the labor of a tiny fraction of the population being able to feed the rest. I don't have problems with farmers retiring early. I don't have problems either with reforming farming to overstaff the labor intensive parts of it, so that people don't get broken. It'll still require a very small proportion of the total labor available.
Thank you, and those are easily actionable solutions. Thank you for a thoughtful reply.
Well, this social network is ours so, it makes sense to be excellent to each other. 🫶
Agreed. 🫶