- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
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I have my doubts on the presumption of causality on point two - are they sure an aging population causes income inequality, and not the other way around? Because I’d be more willing to believe (as I’ve experienced and multiple surveys have indicated) that economic strife causes couples to delay or forgo having children.
A lot of economic strife is caused by housing shortages. This can be caused by an aging population: people who live longer take longer to pass on their house to their children; the older generation have also used housing as an investment vehicle and/or purchased second/holiday homes; and the elderly are typically the most likely to object to new housing developments, blocking their construction.
My feeling as that an aging population drives inequality, and inequality drives an aging population. It creates a feedback loop that requires active intervention to break, for which there is insufficient political will… because old people vote more consistently than young people.
people who live longer take longer to pass on their house to their children; the older generation have also used housing as an investment vehicle and/or purchased second/holiday homes; and the elderly are typically the most likely to object to new housing developments, blocking their construction.
I don’t know anyone who inherited a house.
I don’t know anyone whose parents own more than one house.
I personally have objected to a large condo building that was planned on an unstable hillside with only a steep alley for access - cuz that shit was stupid in so many ways and a disaster waiting to happen.
Where is this huge population of wealthy old people who own multiple houses, and where are all these young people who are inheriting houses?
Just maybe we should be getting pissed at job insecurity, ruinous healthcare being used to chain workers, and falling wages for the source of wealth inequality…. Pretty hard to buy a house when your boss makes 500x what you do. (He’s making all that delicious money off you).
“Buy-to-let” for housing has, for decades, been a popular retirement income in the UK. Maybe it’s not such a big thing in the US, but here a major part of the housing shortage has been caused by the wealthy elderly people realising that buying an extra house or two actually pays better than their pension. The vast majority of rental property portfolios are 1-10 houses owned by individuals, not large companies. And for an awful lot of people aged 40 or younger, their only realistic prospect of owning a house is having a parent or grandparent die - I do know a few people who got a house this way, or used other inheritance as a deposit to buy a house. For the majority of people in this situation, said parents or grandparents haven’t died yet.
The elderly are also the ones who most often object to perfectly good housing developments because it “spoils their view”. This is housing on flat, safe land, on the edge of existing settlements, where there is a recognised need for additional housing. But a bunch of wealthy people complain that it’s going to be built (“I’m alright Jack”), and so it doesn’t happen.
Nice to see that Divide And Conquer propaganda tactics are still going strong. Aleksandr Dugin would be so proud.
“Ok, fellow kids! Let’s all blame our own parents and grandparents, not that tiny population of oligarchs!”
All the study and article says that there is a correlation between an older population and inequality, that there is a relationship but not what the relationship is.
You could easily use this to make the argument that the Oligarchs are destroying everyone else’s ability to have a family
No, correlation does not mean there is a relationship. That’s the whole point behind “correlation does not equal causation.”
Read some of the ludicrous correlations people trot out to illustrate it. Two things occurring at the same time do not have to be related.
And no, I couldn’t use that meaningless population statistic to make the argument that oligarchs (lower case “o”) are destroying everyone else’s ability to have a family. Arguments require data, not correlations.
Meh… I downloaded the actual paper from the link. There are so many holes in it I don’t have enough time to cite them all… not sure for who, why, or for what purpose this was written but I can think of a few high school students in our district (who I have had the pleasure of tutoring in other subjects…), who can write a better than this.
Wealth distribution factors and aging factors in EU, in Japan, and in the US are multi-factorial, each impacted by far broader and systemic issues than what this presents…🙄
Also a high school tutor. My students would’ve caught the grammatical error in the title immediately.
Stop Population Decline? What is this site?
The about section is very vague about what the org actually is.
