I'll put my testimony behind the claim that teacher training programs are useless. When I started my career as a public school teacher, I could barely believe how much of a disconnect there was between the realities of the job and the content of my courses. It would have made infinitely more sense to skip the classes entirely and just start student teaching with a decent mentor.
'Old people' and 'young people' are not different groups of people. It's the same group of people over time. The elderly parasites you despise were once creative young people that were not hired, made useless contribution to social security etc, according to your simplistic view. The current elderly have invented tools (technology, medicine) and maintained peace that makes it possible for the current young to be more productive. It's funny how you simultaneously claim that world is getter better, all the time, but then also, the current young (accustomed to the best tech and medical care in the history of mankind) are screwed, it's so bad!
Meanwhile, "the young" are far from a single group. For starters, there is lot of evidence of increasing political gaps between men and women. Conservatives (whoever they are) are already winning over young men. It is harder than ever to appeal to "the young" as a group.
Clearly, there are some well known and significant economic issues that you raise: wasteful education, housing costs, medicare. Social security is not a big problem and there is not reason for big moves there. It is also not wise, politically or substantively, to make or advocate so many huge policy changes in a society that is already unstable and polarized.
One of the biggest problems facing this movement, are attempts to further infantilize young people, the whole teen brain meme has been extremely successful, and no doubt further attempts are being made to push it past 25, relatedly at the other end attempts are being made to deny the effects of ageing.
Interesting view on important problems Richard, thanks.
I think including the time dimension in your analysis will be revealing. That is, most youth do make it to older age, and there the difference in outcomes between rich families and poor families are so huge that ignoring this is a serious gap, I think. For those who have the "merit" of being born in families with some wealth, inheritance means all this tax on the young will eventually get compensated by receiving the wealth of their elders. For those whose who don't have that merit, it's a just a tax that gets repeated every generation.
Therefore what looks like a transfer from the young to the old when frozen in time, is effectively a transfer from poor families to rich families, when considering time.
It would be easy to remove this driver of gerontocracy by just taxing inheritance at least much as work is taxed - but that would be against the interests of ALL lawmakers' children, so is highly unlikely to get done without popular pressure.
If you are looking for incoherence in the professed belief in meritocracy of both left and right, inheritance taxation, or lack thereof, is where it's most glaring. With a threshold of 1 M$ per child before a punitive marginal tax rate kicks in, and get 99.99% of the voters behind it. But don't expect lawmakers to take that initiative.
This article makes it sound like all of these problems are somehow due to the "gerontocracy", but in reality they are the sum of many bad decisions made by politicians, especially the left. While it is fine to suggest changes to policy, this article is very glib, IMO, about "well if we just do this" we can fix it.
Personally, given how woke the younger generations are, and without ANY Judeo-Christian guidance apparently, I would not give much hope for my chances when (if) I reach my 70's or 80's and they make the laws.
> The ban on age discrimination against old people has been particularly disastrous in the tech industry, where the young naturally tend to be better at learning new things.
> Young people are the last hired, and often the first to be let go.
This does not agree with any discussion of the tech industry that I've ever seen. It is generally acknowledged to apply some of the strongest age discrimination it's possible to find in the wild. Young people are hired first, and often exclusively.
For the ban on age discrimination to have had particularly disastrous effects in the tech industry, there would have to be truly incredible gains to be achieved from the tiny sliver of possibility space between the colossal amount of age discrimination already practiced by the industry, and the amount that counterfactually would be practiced in the absence of the ban. But there's a limit to how much age discrimination it's possible to practice; where would these gains be coming from?
You need to also address the fact that cutting these benefits will lead to some of these costs shifting to other family members. The children and family members already drain their savings and time acting as caregivers to their loved ones, so taking away these resources will indirectly also drain the younger population you are wanting to help. But you did make some good points about housing, credentialism, and supporting young families
I like these ideas in isolation but I think it’s going to be hard to turn them into functional policy. Social Security was intended to subtract old people from the workforce. If you cut it you’re going to encourage old people to stay in the workforce. But then if you kick them out through age discrimination they are going to need more assets, such as expensive houses that they can sell to live on. This goes against the goal of providing cheaper housing for young people to raise families in. And so on.
It is not the age, but rather the ideas that underpin the mental lives of those in positions of authority or trust which matter. Wisdom takes decades of experience to achieve and not many do. In rackets (don't call them systems) like those which are now crumbling before our eyes, falsehood, not wisdom, has proven to deliver results to those vain, untalented, incompetents who can't make it on merit. Even they have to survive somehow, usually by taking from others what they can't make themselves. Reward merit, founded upon truth -- in short, get better ideas -- and all boats are lifted, except those who have nothing but bravado and purported victimhood status. They will sink. In fact, their edifice is collapsing right now.
I'll never forget that. My first house I thought I was lucky in that I could assume 70% of the loan at 12.5%, financed the rest as a 2nd mortgage at 18.5%. Talk about house poor.
But something I didn't really see directly addressed: people like to preserve the idea of retirement as something to look forward to; the promise that someday this drudgery will be over. That's why the French youth riot. Even though "drudgery" for them includes 6 weeks of vacation and half-assing their jobs the other 46 weeks, even then, people don't want to let go of the ability to daydream about being free of it. Like the guy who buys a single lotto ticket each week just to maintain the ability to daydream.
I imagine a lot of people would be inclined to accept somewhat more drudgery during their working years if it means being able to keep the dream of their golden years alive.
Moreover, the average person also knows that if left to save for his own retirement, even if given somewhat more money than the net present value of his expected retirement benefits, he wouldn't end up with nearly enough money to retire. He would presumably blame someone else and not his lack of frugality and self-control, but regardless, his prediction of the future would be correct.
I gained new despair for the average person's ability to save when I learned that a majority of people who have traditional IRAs (surely an indication of being middle class and giving a reasonable amount of thought to the future) will at some point in their lives pull funds out of those IRAs, with full penalties.
Maybe not an insurmountable problem, but that's what we're discussing: taking away the ability to daydream about retirement from the median voter.
I was searching for some approach which can connect the dots of different developments and what is the missing answer to all of them. Things like
- The weird thing about Covid weren't masks or vaccines but the fact that all the measures were still made after it was known it mostly hit old people in nursery homes. It's a weird strategy for a society to protect the unproductive old by locking down the youth
- Why is the precautionary principle so dominant, especially in Europe?
- Why are the populist movements mostly in favor of recreating the past 2-3 decades ago but not for a radical growth strategy?
Thank you, it really does make sense that a missing focus on youth is basically the same as a missing sense for the future. To come back to the future we need to empower a focus on youth
If the young had more money, they'd just blow it. Better for the olds to hang onto it until the kids mature into prudent, productive adults. IOW, let nature take its course.
I'll put my testimony behind the claim that teacher training programs are useless. When I started my career as a public school teacher, I could barely believe how much of a disconnect there was between the realities of the job and the content of my courses. It would have made infinitely more sense to skip the classes entirely and just start student teaching with a decent mentor.
Well said. Credentialism and house price inflation are incredibly moronic and are barely challenged or even recognised in the mainstream.
'Old people' and 'young people' are not different groups of people. It's the same group of people over time. The elderly parasites you despise were once creative young people that were not hired, made useless contribution to social security etc, according to your simplistic view. The current elderly have invented tools (technology, medicine) and maintained peace that makes it possible for the current young to be more productive. It's funny how you simultaneously claim that world is getter better, all the time, but then also, the current young (accustomed to the best tech and medical care in the history of mankind) are screwed, it's so bad!
Meanwhile, "the young" are far from a single group. For starters, there is lot of evidence of increasing political gaps between men and women. Conservatives (whoever they are) are already winning over young men. It is harder than ever to appeal to "the young" as a group.
Clearly, there are some well known and significant economic issues that you raise: wasteful education, housing costs, medicare. Social security is not a big problem and there is not reason for big moves there. It is also not wise, politically or substantively, to make or advocate so many huge policy changes in a society that is already unstable and polarized.
One of the biggest problems facing this movement, are attempts to further infantilize young people, the whole teen brain meme has been extremely successful, and no doubt further attempts are being made to push it past 25, relatedly at the other end attempts are being made to deny the effects of ageing.
Interesting view on important problems Richard, thanks.
I think including the time dimension in your analysis will be revealing. That is, most youth do make it to older age, and there the difference in outcomes between rich families and poor families are so huge that ignoring this is a serious gap, I think. For those who have the "merit" of being born in families with some wealth, inheritance means all this tax on the young will eventually get compensated by receiving the wealth of their elders. For those whose who don't have that merit, it's a just a tax that gets repeated every generation.
Therefore what looks like a transfer from the young to the old when frozen in time, is effectively a transfer from poor families to rich families, when considering time.
It would be easy to remove this driver of gerontocracy by just taxing inheritance at least much as work is taxed - but that would be against the interests of ALL lawmakers' children, so is highly unlikely to get done without popular pressure.
If you are looking for incoherence in the professed belief in meritocracy of both left and right, inheritance taxation, or lack thereof, is where it's most glaring. With a threshold of 1 M$ per child before a punitive marginal tax rate kicks in, and get 99.99% of the voters behind it. But don't expect lawmakers to take that initiative.
This article makes it sound like all of these problems are somehow due to the "gerontocracy", but in reality they are the sum of many bad decisions made by politicians, especially the left. While it is fine to suggest changes to policy, this article is very glib, IMO, about "well if we just do this" we can fix it.
Personally, given how woke the younger generations are, and without ANY Judeo-Christian guidance apparently, I would not give much hope for my chances when (if) I reach my 70's or 80's and they make the laws.
Hanania’s best article yet
> The ban on age discrimination against old people has been particularly disastrous in the tech industry, where the young naturally tend to be better at learning new things.
> Young people are the last hired, and often the first to be let go.
This does not agree with any discussion of the tech industry that I've ever seen. It is generally acknowledged to apply some of the strongest age discrimination it's possible to find in the wild. Young people are hired first, and often exclusively.
For the ban on age discrimination to have had particularly disastrous effects in the tech industry, there would have to be truly incredible gains to be achieved from the tiny sliver of possibility space between the colossal amount of age discrimination already practiced by the industry, and the amount that counterfactually would be practiced in the absence of the ban. But there's a limit to how much age discrimination it's possible to practice; where would these gains be coming from?
You need to also address the fact that cutting these benefits will lead to some of these costs shifting to other family members. The children and family members already drain their savings and time acting as caregivers to their loved ones, so taking away these resources will indirectly also drain the younger population you are wanting to help. But you did make some good points about housing, credentialism, and supporting young families
I like these ideas in isolation but I think it’s going to be hard to turn them into functional policy. Social Security was intended to subtract old people from the workforce. If you cut it you’re going to encourage old people to stay in the workforce. But then if you kick them out through age discrimination they are going to need more assets, such as expensive houses that they can sell to live on. This goes against the goal of providing cheaper housing for young people to raise families in. And so on.
It is not the age, but rather the ideas that underpin the mental lives of those in positions of authority or trust which matter. Wisdom takes decades of experience to achieve and not many do. In rackets (don't call them systems) like those which are now crumbling before our eyes, falsehood, not wisdom, has proven to deliver results to those vain, untalented, incompetents who can't make it on merit. Even they have to survive somehow, usually by taking from others what they can't make themselves. Reward merit, founded upon truth -- in short, get better ideas -- and all boats are lifted, except those who have nothing but bravado and purported victimhood status. They will sink. In fact, their edifice is collapsing right now.
I'll never forget that. My first house I thought I was lucky in that I could assume 70% of the loan at 12.5%, financed the rest as a 2nd mortgage at 18.5%. Talk about house poor.
Good remarks, especially about credentialism.
But something I didn't really see directly addressed: people like to preserve the idea of retirement as something to look forward to; the promise that someday this drudgery will be over. That's why the French youth riot. Even though "drudgery" for them includes 6 weeks of vacation and half-assing their jobs the other 46 weeks, even then, people don't want to let go of the ability to daydream about being free of it. Like the guy who buys a single lotto ticket each week just to maintain the ability to daydream.
I imagine a lot of people would be inclined to accept somewhat more drudgery during their working years if it means being able to keep the dream of their golden years alive.
Moreover, the average person also knows that if left to save for his own retirement, even if given somewhat more money than the net present value of his expected retirement benefits, he wouldn't end up with nearly enough money to retire. He would presumably blame someone else and not his lack of frugality and self-control, but regardless, his prediction of the future would be correct.
I gained new despair for the average person's ability to save when I learned that a majority of people who have traditional IRAs (surely an indication of being middle class and giving a reasonable amount of thought to the future) will at some point in their lives pull funds out of those IRAs, with full penalties.
Maybe not an insurmountable problem, but that's what we're discussing: taking away the ability to daydream about retirement from the median voter.
This is it!
I was searching for some approach which can connect the dots of different developments and what is the missing answer to all of them. Things like
- The weird thing about Covid weren't masks or vaccines but the fact that all the measures were still made after it was known it mostly hit old people in nursery homes. It's a weird strategy for a society to protect the unproductive old by locking down the youth
- Why is the precautionary principle so dominant, especially in Europe?
- Why are the populist movements mostly in favor of recreating the past 2-3 decades ago but not for a radical growth strategy?
Thank you, it really does make sense that a missing focus on youth is basically the same as a missing sense for the future. To come back to the future we need to empower a focus on youth
If the young had more money, they'd just blow it. Better for the olds to hang onto it until the kids mature into prudent, productive adults. IOW, let nature take its course.
I think all of this is ignoring the point that people generally feel bad for older citizens because they're, y'know, old.