Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
Because asking the average Canadian to contribute as much in taxes in their lifetime as they will use in services is politically untenable. And that’s what you have to do to account for an aging population and declining birth rates - some combination of bringing in lots of new taxpayers through immigration, substantially increasing taxes on younger workers, and cutting health care and pensions for seniors.
Turns out voters hate all of those options. And that’s not just a Canadian thing - it’s true of every developed country in the world. We live in societies today where many people are retired longer than they worked. These unprecedented demographics present an unprecedented challenge to the delivery of public services, and no government in any country has figured it out. Which is one of the reasons why populism is on the rise everywhere.
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Your first paragraph should be an argument for steady state population though, not a need for continuous population growth. Unless we've set society up to be a pyramid scheme(which is entirely possible).
My point is exactly this, though. Our economic system is predicated on growth, not steady state. It can do this because of an ever growing population. But what, other than defaulting to it, is the benefit of that? It seems we didn't really choose, but we now live with this. The reality of what that means when global population peaks will be interesting to see.
I just don't think plodding along on the default path to an unknown cliff is really where we want to go, but all our concerns and "solutions" are moving in that direction.