Friday, November 04, 2005

Aging populations

All western populations are aging. The Netherlands, Scandinavia, USA, Canada, you name it.

Because people have fewer children or none at all. Basically this means that the proportion of people in the working age decreases. Which makes it more expensive to take care for the elderly, who are not working. Which means that people in working age have to pay more to support these elderly people. That is a problem. But not a huge one. Extend the working age. Limit the services and benefits for the elderly. Increase taxes to finance the system. All the option are slightly unpleasant. Our wealth will grow slower than we are accustomed to. But it is not a desaster and importing foreign non-western populations is a desaster. On top of that, immigrants age too! So importing foreigners does not really do solve the problem at all. If all Western countries would import foreigners to maintain the present proportion of people of working age versus the elderly not only would Western countries but hugely overpopulated, but the world would run out of people to feed immigration hunger.

Basically importing foreigners to take care of the aging population problem makes no sense at all.

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