Free childcare would also help. And actually making this country a good place to have children. The main reason people don’t want children is economic.
Comment on UK state pension age will soon need to rise to 71, say experts
Jho@feddit.uk 4 months ago
“In the UK, state pension age would need to be 70 or 71 compared with 66 now, to maintain the status quo of the number of workers per state pensioner.
You know one great way to increase the number of young, taxpaying workers in a country with falling birth rates? Immigration!
Seriously, I’m shocked the article doesn’t mention this. In the UK we have an ageing population with not enough people having children, therefore we have an increasing issue of having too small a working population to pay for our retired population. One solution is to increase the retirement age, this makes our working population larger and also means that folks claim pensions for less time before dying. Another way is to have a working population immigrate. This is one of many reasons why anti-immigration policies are harming our country, our economy, and the everyday quality of life for the average British citizen.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 4 months ago
Jho@feddit.uk 4 months ago
Well yes, I’d agree with that too. Some of my family members are pressuring me to have children so I know what that’s like.
Financial reasons is one factor but also like… the absolute state of politics, healthcare, and education in the UK.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 4 months ago
Yeah. Literally every reason is fixable.
kralk@lemm.ee 4 months ago
The are approximately infinite ways to solve this “problem”, starting with how you even define it. If it’s unsustainable at current levels, what does sustainable mean? Is the time period this year, fifty years, a thousand? What’s the gap? Does it include administration costs, or just the payments?
Once you define what the question is, you can start to answer it. We could increase immigration (very good point btw). We could raise taxes (if so, which tax? Corporation? National insurance? If so - employer or employee contributions?). We could raise interest rates. We could remove the triple lock. We could just murder everyone over 75. We could do a mix of everything - raise taxes a bit and only murder the over 80s.
How you answer the question depends a bit on facts and a lot on ideology. The fact that this article takes one potential solution and declares it THE ONLY solution tells you a lot about their ideology.
Crisps@lemmy.world 4 months ago
You joke about murdering old people, but we do need to stop keeping them alive in states we wouldn’t keep an animal in. We spend a fortune on pointless end of life care with no chance of quality of life. Proper assisted suicide would greatly help the issue.
JasSmith@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
First, immigration is currently calibrated FAR in excess of any demographic gaps. The population is growing rapidly. If the premise were to plug demographic holes, we wouldn’t need nearly this many people.
Second, if the premise were to alleviate demographic issues at the young end of the pyramid, then immigration policies would block any applications for those over 30, or at least heavily bias the young. They don’t.
There is exactly one reason immigration has been calibrated so high, and with such little care for the skills and qualities of the applicants: to suppress wages and working conditions. It’s the same playbook all over the West.
porcariasagrada@slrpnk.net 4 months ago
immigration is just a bandaid in a collapsing dam scenario. what happens to the current uk citizens(its not happening only in the uk, its a developed world problem) will happen to the new immigrants. as their living standards increase they’ll have less children and we’ll get back to the same problem. not enough new meat for the grinder.
the system needs a foundational reconstruction not patching the roof.
Jho@feddit.uk 4 months ago
Yes you’re right. I will always advocate for changing our fundamentally flawed, capitalist system.
The system cannot succeed as it requires people to work, especially as we are accelerating towards a world where there will not be enough work for people as AI and automation becomes more advanced.
That said, systematic change cannot happen quickly and anti-immigration policies are absolutely not helping in the short term.
porcariasagrada@slrpnk.net 4 months ago
immigration just to add new meat for the grinder will just increase social divisions, because the cause of the problem will not be dealt with. the same effect can be achieved by demanding a better wealth redistribution by increasing wages and taxing the shit out of the wealthy.
i agree with you, sane immigration policies could also buy time to achieve the needed restructuring of our current system. but there is also a problem about immigration that most don’t take into account. the effect it has on countries where that immigration originates. brain drain is a real problem, if we drain countries from people that are willing to work hard those countries will never develop. the wealth and work redistribution needs to be on a global scale.