Boomers could spur bust

Taxes, less spending will offset retirements: Economist


With a greying population marching toward retirement and old age, Canada faces an unavoidable choice, a leading Canadian economist told a Parliament Hill audience Wednesday: Raise taxes or curb spending -- or both.

"I think most Canadians know that there is a population aging challenge," said Christopher Ragan, an associate professor of economics at McGill University and former special adviser to the Bank of Canada. "But I think most Canadians do not know how big it is and what it implies."

He spoke at a "Big Thinking" lecture hosted by the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences.

For decades, Canada has enjoyed "double-barrelled" growth in its economy, Ragan said.

But the enormous baby-boomer generation has swelled each part of Canada's age structure as it passed through and that generation is now on the cusp of retiring, Ragan said, which will throw the long-standing growth of the labour force into decline.

"Now, the oldest baby boomers, born in 1946, turn 65 next year, so the whole process unravels for the next 20 years," he said.

That means a shrinking tax base right at the moment when age-related health-care costs are set to skyrocket.
Link -
http://www.theprovince.com/life/Boomers+could+spur+bust/3775343/story.html
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Wow Perceptions Now
Nice BIG CHARTS you have there.

Growth can't continue forever in finite world

The op-ed piece by University of the Pacific economics Professor Bill Herrin published Oct. 23 in The Record, "Sleep well tonight; the future is probably bright," contains misconceptions about population growth, and his reliance on facts and evidence is selective.

It is true that the rate of population increase is in decline, but he failed to mention that population growth is still high, with 77 million added to the planet annually.

That increase will result in 2 billion people being added over the next few decades before population can be stabilized.

Since we already have 2 billion living on $2 a day or less, 1 billion going hungry every day, millions in refugee camps and millions unemployed, it would seem insane to add to an already stressed population.

Herrin failed to mention global climate change that will result in 9 billion people living on a planet far different from the one I grew up on in the 1940s. This new planet will have higher ocean levels, devastating to coastal areas such as New Jersey, Florida and Bangladesh.

However, there is no indication that humans are willing to do anything about rising greenhouse gas emissions. It's likely it's already too late to avoid climate disruption and flooding. People remain in denial.

Herrin also failed to mention peak oil production. Our oil-dependent, industrial food production uses yesterday's photosynthesis stored as coal, gas and oil. Since 1859, we have used up a trillion barrels of oil. An estimated trillion remain, but it is much more difficult to extract than the first trillion. This fossil energy accumulated over 400 million years. To grow enough biomass to replace current oil use of 80 million barrels per day and meet other demands for food and fiber would require 30 to 40 additional planets' worth of farmland.

How dependent are we? The bioenergetics are not good. In nature, if an animal expends more energy to capture food than the food contains, starvation is the eventual outcome. Our contrived food chain uses 10 calories of fossil energy to put one calorie of food on the table. When energy production declines, we can expect food production to decline also. Here is a recent headline from the British newspaper The Guardian: "US military warns oil output may dip causing massive shortages by 2015." See, you don't need to worry until at least 2015!

Thomas Malthus was also an economist, and his prediction about population outpacing food supply has been wrong for the past 200 years due to human cleverness at increasing food supply. The result has been an overshoot of carrying capacity. Some scientists think the population will crash to a lower carrying capacity of about 1 billion or less. Most geological epochs have rounding errors of 10,000 years or more, which is the time frame of our human civilization. Our moment in the sun will be a short run by geological reckoning.

Herrin puts faith in knowledge and our rising per capita incomes, but wages are stagnating in America. As for knowledge ,we seem to lack even common sense in finance and other endeavors.

Economists talk only of growth when what we need is stability and a reversal of growth on an overpopulated, finite planet.

Perhaps economist Ken Boulding said it best: "Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist."

Economics is a subset of ecology and nature, not the other way around.

It is a biological and geological world, and we need to come to terms with its finiteness no matter how self-congratulatory we are at globalization and at being clever.

Lee Miller has a bachelor's degree in biology from Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania and an master's degree in biological sciences from the University of Delaware. He retired after working 37 years with the state Department of Fish and Game, mostly on fish problems in the Delta. He is a member of the Sierra Club's Committee for Sustainable World Population.

Link -
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20101204/A_OPINION03/1204031...
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Malthus is correct, as is Professor Albert Bartlett, it is simply not possible to have Exponential Growth of anything, in a Finite world.

We are now living thru a period, which will prove that statement to be fact, not just a theory!

Population strategy critical for economy

The release of the Commonwealth Government’s Sustainable Population Policy Issues Paper has been welcomed by the Property Council of Australia.

Property Council CEO Peter Verwer says: “For the first time since the Second World War, the national government has committed to produce a National Population Strategy.”

“Today’s Issues Paper fires the starting gun on an important policy debate.”

"The Issues Paper and the reports from the three advisory panels mean that we can now move from myths to facts and conduct more rational policy discussions.”

“The bottom line is that a growing population can be managed to ensure that we continue to build a nation that maximises our prosperity, sustainability and liveability.”

Mr Verwer says the key issue is not growth for growth’s sake, but rather, how we manage population growth.

“Population growth is needed to grow the economy, provide revenue to invest in health and education, support jobs and boost business productivity,” Mr Verwer says.

“If we don’t grow our population, then our businesses, home values and superannuation savings will decline in value as the economy suffers.”

“It is why a new Population Strategy is so important.”

“Population policy is also essential if we are to successfully deal with the challenges of an ageing community, skills and infrastructure shortages and climate change.”

However, the Property Council believes that setting performance targets at all levels of government is essential to developing a robust public policy framework.

“To get the national policy settings right, we need a clear direction and a framework in which to grow,” Mr Verwer says.

Mr Verwer says it is important that government policies link together. The National Population Strategy must align closely to the forthcoming National Urban Policy and the COAG-led city planing reforms.

Link -
http://www.propertyoz.com.au/Article/NewsDetail.aspx?p=16&id=3922
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Australia & indeed the world, is on the edge of a lack of Energy & overpopulation cliff!

Food & fresh are set to become huge problems, but if anyone prefers to believe those with vested interests, then go right ahead?

Btw, both Labor & Liberal will continue to side with TPTB, UNTIL they are told who they are really working for!!!

China and India will reach a level of empowerment but will eventually be crushed by the sheer amount of their population.
Even now they realise that 'quality' of life cannot exist in the midst of such over-populationary demands.

Gotta laugh.
These over-populated nations thought they could live the 'high life'.
Watch China crack in 5 years. 

Quote:


Watch them try to recover the debts owing.

Ahhh...so sorry, have not got. Whatchya gonna do? Break down own economy in attempt to recover?
Round eye will call bankruptcy if try to recover. Not good for China.  

They are pretty naive in the bogus world of capitalism. They don't understand that money is really meaningless.
It wasn't that long ago that Bill Clinton offered to wipe out the debts of third world nations in order to keep the competition going strong.
Debts only mean something to us because we've been sucked into believing it as a reality. There's nothing real about it at all beyond perception.

Many Baby Boomers Facing Retirement Bust

CHICAGO (AP) - Through a combination of procrastination and bad timing, many baby boomers are facing a personal finance disaster
just as they're hoping to retire.

Starting in January, more than 10,000 baby boomers a day will turn 65, a pattern that will continue for the next 19 years. The boomers, who in their youth revolutionized everything from music to race relations, are set to redefine retirement. But a generation that made its mark in the tumultuous 1960s now faces a crisis as it hits its own mid-60s.

"The situation is extremely serious because baby boomers have not saved very effectively for retirement and are still retiring too early," says Olivia Mitchell, director of the Boettner Center for Pensions and Retirement Research at the University of Pennsylvania.

There are several reasons to be concerned:

- The traditional pension plan is disappearing. In 1980, some 39
percent of private-sector workers had a pension that guaranteed a
steady payout during retirement. Today that number stands closer to 15 percent, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

- Reliance on stocks in retirement plans is greater than ever;
42 percent of those workers now have 401(k)s. But the past decade
has been a lost one for stocks, with the Standard & Poor's 500
index posting total returns of just 4 percent since the beginning
of 2000.

- Many retirees banked on their homes as their retirement fund.
But the crash in housing prices has slashed almost a third of a
typical home's value. Now 22 percent of homeowners, or nearly 11
million people, owe more on their mortgage than their home is
worth. Many are boomers.

Link -
http://www.kolotv.com/nationalnews/headlines/Many_Baby_Boomers_Facing_Retirement...
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It's not quite as even as 10,000 each day, the Baby Boom actually started from a low base during the great depression and peaked around 1956, before starting a long decline. The boomer years were arbitarily allocated to between 1946 (as WW2 ended) to 1964.

Whilst the Baby Boom/Bust cycle is not the only factor involved, it is certainly one of the major factors influencing events and that has already started.

There are major issues with the Boomer generation retiring -
1) Increased Government Expenses.
2) Reduced Government Revenue.
3) Reduced National GDP, as the largest age group in history go into "retirement mode", they reduce consumption on everything, including homes, as McMansions are no longer needed or are even good investments.

The above, when added to much lower than historical returns on stocks puts massive pressure on the US & by proxy the Global Economy, with insufficient Superannuation/Pensions one of the outcomes.

Many in the US & elsewhere will have no option but to continue to try to work, well past when they had anticipated retirement!

But, will there be jobs?

I doubt it, as the Boomer Bust influence spreads & other major factors, such as Peak Oil, other Demographic issues (such as declining Global Population Growth rates) and Climate Change, are now also coming to play!

The ramifications will be many & varied, with some "unexpected" outcomes, even for those top level planners!