Most People are too Stupid to Understand Where this Leads, But . . .

....Just in case you are not too stupid, you may wish to take some things into account in planning for your future.

Stanford
Populations of Europe, North America, Oceania, and East Asia are aging rapidly. Such aging brings about certain unavoidable costs to societies.

Stanford

One of the most significant financial problems that countries will face in the coming decades is the amount they will spend to support the elderly. This will be exacerbated by increased debt-to-GDP ratios in most of the 49 countries where old age costs will be the highest percentage of GDP, according to the Standard & Poor’s Global Aging Report PDF. Of the 49 countries, 32 are members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, and 17 are large, emerging market nations.

The Standard & Poor’s Global Aging report emphasizes: “No other force is likely to shape the future of national economic health, public finances, and policy making as the irreversible rate at which the world’s population is aging. The problem has been long observed and is well understood.” The analysis adds, “U.N. figures show the proportion of the world’s population aged over 65 is set to more than double by 2050, to 16.2% from 7.6% currently.” _Source

The higher the educational levels and IQs of a given society, the faster it is tending to age. And within advanced societies, it is the higher IQ segments -- the smart fractions -- which are aging and disappearing most quickly. In terms of national and global skills resources -- human capital -- these trends are quite ominous. Not only will the costs of pensions, elderly medical care, long term elderly care, and unemployment increase exponentially with aging, but the remaining human capital -- people who keep the wheels of commerce and industry rolling -- is likely to shrink at an increasing rate as well. Put another way, the people who keep food on the table and keep the lights on, are going away at the same time that the need for them will grow greater.

In Korea, farmers over age 60 accounted for fully 55.4 percent of the country's total farming population. Rising costs of aging and impending skills shortages in Germany threaten the nation's shaky prosperity. Australia continues to experience critical shortages in skilled trades relating to its most important industries.

People with important skills in energy, industry, construction, the infrastructure of IT, and other central skills in a high-tech society, are nearing retirement age, without sufficient replacements having been trained.

The irreversibility of these trends is what is so hard for many to grasp, despite the danger they represent to the future. Governments which are incapable of making difficult decisions will allow these trends to shape a dead-end future, without ever having explained to an increasingly dumbed-down constituency what is happening to them.

The skyrocketing costs of pensions, health care benefits, unemployment, disability, and a host of other entitlements, is very real and important. But not nearly so important as the loss of the human capital which underlies the engines of industrial and agricultural production, and the market mechanisms of distribution.

The "singularity" is not the answer, except as a sort of escapist fantasy preventing more imaginative humans from working out solutions to real problems. Clinging to the security of government unions, academic tenure, or other group-thinking organisations will likewise only get you so far. In fact, the early retirement ages found among government union workers etc. only accelerates the descent into irreversible debt and demographic decline.

Most people are far too stupid to even suspect that a problem exists. But instead of a single problem, multiple interlocking problems are tied into the ongoing demographic transition. The consequences of some of them are extremely dire.

What to do?