The demographic timebomb was Re: the whole kid thing

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Ali" <Ali at z...> wrote:
 
> Quite simply, the ratio between the working population and 
> the "economically inactive" population has changed drastically in 
> the last century and is set to change still further. What does this 
> mean? It means that each worker is effectively supporting a higher 
> and higher number of non-workers.

Well, I've read in a reliable journal which I'm too lazy to look up 
right now that, if one counts children as well as retirees when 
counting non-workers, there were more non-workers per worker in the 
USA in the 1950s than in the 1990s. When you're comparing 100 years 
back instead of 40 years back, you have to reckon how much of the 
higher ratio of workers to non-workers in those days was that 
children (except in the upper classes) joined the workforce at age 6 
or 7, compared to how much was that adults died instead of retiring.

> I won't bore you with statistics  unless you ask), but our 
> societies are ageing, people are opting for smaller families,
> later and more children are staying on in further education.

Here in USA, it is widely believed that children staying on for 
further education is *good* for the economy, as it is widely 
believed that the average lifetime earnings of a college graduate are 
higher than the average lifetime earnings of a high school graduate, 
despite the high school graduate being in the workforce for four or 
five more years than the college graduate.

> Older people are dependant on those working to ensure that there
> are sufficient funds going into their pension funds to give them
> an allowance, sufficient taxes going into the treasury to pay the 
> higher welfare bills.

How much money goes into the pyramid scheme funds (ours is named 
Social Security) doesn't depend as much on how many people are 
*in the workforce* as on how many people *have jobs* and *how much* 
they make. Between automation, computerization, efficiency, and 
globalization, there are already more people than there are jobs
for. Not enough jobs for all the people who need them, not even all 
the qualified people who need them. I was strongly tempted to reply 
to David's post yesterday, that having children is just as likely to 
swell the 'reserve army of the unemployed' as to provide workers to 
earn money to support retired people: the unemployed don't pay into 
retirement funds. (And the competition among job seekers drives wages 
down, which reduces how much the employed pay into Social Security.) 
Now, if the robots and the automated machinery paid taxes .... 

In 40 minutes I haven't been able to write this in a way I find 
acceptable, so I will write it in a snide and probably offensive way 
instead: One of the many ways in which cats are better than children 
is that I don't have to worry whether my cats will be able to find 
jobs to support themselves.

> The concept of the "Work/Life balance" is growing in popularity
> with  the novel but simple idea being that we can work and have a 
> life. 

Not in USA, where the average number of hours in the work week gets 
longer and longer each year. (I'm doing my bit to keep that average 
down!) And the number of vacation days taken each year gets less and 
less. Many people who are entitled to two weeks of vacation per year 
take only half those days, scattered for personal business like 
waiting for repairmen, because they want 
or need to cash in the other half. I myself don't like taking my 
vacation because I don't trust what my company will do while my back 
is turned.

> In Europe a whole new raft of legislation has been passed in recent 
> years to protect workers, and women's rights have increased 
> considerably. For example, if I were to have another baby now, I 
> would be entitled to a year off work (about half of which would be 
> unpaid and the majority of the rest paid for at about £100 per 
> week) and still return to my old job (well if I was working). We 
> have child benefit, family credit, limited nursery places from the 
> age of 3.5 and if our incomes are low enough (mine wasn't - quite) 
> subsidised childcare. There are many other rights that we now have. 

Due to the Family and Medical Care Leave Act passed under Clinton, a 
woman who bears or adopts a baby is entitled to take off four months 
without pay and still get her job back, IF she works for a company 
with more than 50 employees, IF she was classified as full-time 
year-round, IF the company doesn't finagle its paperwork to show that 
her job was abolished in her absence. Here in California, women on 
maternity leave can get paid from Disability Insurance. While I 
understand that having a baby is a terrible burden, I am less than 
thrilled with having to do both my own work AND that of a colleague 
on maternity leave (but not getting her salary in addition to mine). 
As for those other benefits, if I recall correctly, now half the 
homeless are women and their dependent children.