The UK’s age dependency ratio – those too young to work, or old enough to retire against the working age population – is hovering around 58pc. But this massively undersells the burden on the working population.
In addition to those under 16 or over 65, the 27m people employed in the private sector are tasked with supporting 9m working-age people who are economically inactive, and the 6m employed in the public sector. If you tot that up, you find that rather less than half the population is providing the basis for the lifestyles of everyone else.
Carthage. It’s the only language they’ll understand.
Well, that’s simplistic. The shares in my SIPP mean I’m supported by miners in Canada, oil workers all over, lots of foreigners as well as the Brits. The SIPP was started using redundancy money paid by a couple of foreign corporations. My pensions from work are (theoretically) funded by contributions I made when I worked. The OAP and my Army pension are indeed funded by UK taxation. It’s complicated. And I’m not now economically inactive, I buy stuff and pay tax.
And anyway, surely the government can print more money and hand it out?
D’you know, the clue is in the name: Baby Boomers.
A bulge in the population working its way through its life cycle. This bulge coincided with (and was partly responsible for) the postwar economic growth that saw war-shattered countries and 3rd world shitholes ascend to rich nation status. Their mass retirement coincides with an era of economic stagnation. Who’d have thought it?
Patience, children. Like St. Éxupery’s python eating an elephant, this bulge will pass through. We horrible old Boomers will die off and you whining youngsters won’t have to support us any longer. Populations will crash worldwide and Nature will recover – what Progressives seem to want – and all the nasty manual work and bottom-wiping will be done by the sharp, productive, entrepreneurial and value-creating African diaspora.
Utopia awaits. Not long now.
the 27m people employed in the private sector are tasked with supporting 9m working-age people who are economically inactive, and the 6m employed in the public sector.
Agree with Rhoda. I’d argue against the concept that the 27m in the private sector are supporting the 6m in the public sector. The 27m in the private sector are providing goods & services to the 27m in the private sector. And thus are supporting them by paying for them. So how’s that differ from the proportion of the 6m in the public sector providing services to themselves & the the 27m? Not everybody in the public sector is a diversity councillor. There’s no functional difference being treated by a NHS nurse to a private nurse. They’re both a service that has to be paid for.
bloke in spain
The 27 million are creating wealth which supportes themselves plus the non-wealth producers.
The 6 million in the public sector either produce no wealth, so consume some of what the 27 million are creating, or in the example case “nurses” are consuming more wealth than they produce. If we agree medical care is a consumer good, then the value to the consumer must exceed the cost to produce it, otherwise it is destroying wealth, and consumers would not buy and/or seek alternatives.
Since NHS is a cost centre, its output has no pricing and is a non-contestable monopoly there is no way to test whether and/or to what extent consumers value its output.
Evidence from experience shows that State-run anything will consume more wealth than it creates.
Norman… Boomers are Last Year… The Onus is now on GenX, of which I’m at the crest fo the wave..
Mum’s a Warchild (’42) , Father ( “Dad” is a …different issue..) an actual early Boomer ( ’49). Selfsame born ’68.
They don’t blame you old toddlers**, because you kill granddad/granny for the Goodies. Their growling is at us. the Feral Generation..
And the Kids forget we grew up when the Dreams and Golden Mountains were Shattered in the ’70’s and ’80’s…
**They will blame anyone convenient because it’s never them… It’s always Outside Forces/Bad Influences/Bad Luck. Not a single brain cell twigging on the fact that “your own stupidity” may be a factor.
In any org system you have production, maintenance and admin. (I regard marketing & sales, management, etc. as admin). Production generates wealth; maintenance and admin are costs. You need all three or production will rapidly cease.
Obviously the private sector requires maintenance and admin but for-profit enterprises try to minimise these and make them as efficient as possible, because they’re costs.
The public sector is almost entirely involved in maintenance and admin. The NHS is almost entirely maintenance (as is private medicine): if you don’t get ill you don’t need it. Government and DIE tossers are entirely admin. One could argue that academia is production but the utility of a lot of it is extremely debatable, as Sowell points out.
And then there are the bennies claimants and pensioners. They’re all costs unless they’re producing cash-in-hand, and the pensioners make by far the largest demand on the NHS. Nowadays, pensioners are Boomers and their Silent parents, and there are few Silents left. The WWII-fighters are dead.
So I maintain that the wealth-producers support maintenance and admin, and that Millennials and GenZ will inherit the earth when the Boomers finally peg. GenX is a small generation. Those having to wait the longest are Millennials, but in the main they’re such tossers they deserve it.
@Norman
I’d have difficulty distinguishing between production & maintenance. Maintenance increases the value of what’s being maintained. How is that different from production raising the value of the input materials? There’s value created in both.
Norman / Grikath,
The term “baby boomer” is an Americanism, with different characteristics in the UK. The USA had one long boom, starting after the war and ending in the late 1960s. The UK had two booms: one short spike immediately after the war, followed by a long dip; then a second boom 1960-1972. That second boom is still working. As they retire over the next 15 years, it’ll be terrible for the economy; but great for my own career progression!
I’m approaching “old”, and I’m perfectly happy to work…… if some bugger would actually ******ing pay me.
“Thank you for your application, we had had huge interest in this post, but we think somebody else fits the position better.”
IOW: ***** off, too old.