The Problem With Haven? Prolong!

Textev is about 25 (my opinion is that it's probably a fuzzy line that depends on the specific person) for first generation.

IIRC Hamish and William Alexander's father lived to 110-ish and was one of the last pre-prolong people.

namelessfly wrote:I know third generation prolong has a young maximum age. What about first and second generation prolong?

It is also possible that the prolong breakthrough included advanced treatments for people who were already old. These treatments might make them young again, but they would allow them to live and draw public benefits longer. Unhealthy elderly people consume vast wealth eithpublic or private.

Now that people are correcting my memory, I recall even first gen prolong was useful only at a young age. A life expectancy of say 120 years without prolong will not strain an economy unless people expect to retire at 65 or so.

The fact that people would suddenly live longer might not impact demographics as much as delayed child birth. If the introduction of prolong was accompanied by delayed child birth (people might wait intil after retirement at 65?) which resulted in say a 80% drop in birth rates would gradually result in a diminishing and aging workforce. Rather than having promotion prospects obstructed by older workers who would not retire or die, the workforce would shrink and get older as fewer new people reached adulthood.

The easy solution would be to ban contraceptives which is something else Rob Pierre might have done.

Donnachaidh wrote:Textev is about 25 (my opinion is that it's probably a fuzzy line that depends on the specific person) for first generation.

IIRC Hamish and William Alexander's father lived to 110-ish and was one of the last pre-prolong people.

namelessfly wrote:I know third generation prolong has a young maximum age. What about first and second generation prolong?

It is also possible that the prolong breakthrough included advanced treatments for people who were already old. These treatments might make them young again, but they would allow them to live and draw public benefits longer. Unhealthy elderly people consume vast wealth eithpublic or private.

I had intended (though now looking back it wasn't clear) for my point about modern politics to be an after thought.

My main point was that you're making the assumption that retirement age doesn't change. It may have, it may not have. There is no evidence either way. For that matter with the percentage of Dolists it made not have made a huge difference. As several others have pointed out, Haven was on that economic track for almost 150 years before prolong. Now for places like Manticore, San Martin, the Andermani Empire, the Solarian League (the non-OFS worlds at any rate), etc... it was an issue in the past and it will soon become an issue for Grayson and the Talbot Quadrant if it isn't already.

namelessfly wrote:

Donnachaidh wrote:You're assuming that the retirement age 2000 years in the future is the same as it is today.

You're also attempting to drag modern day politics into this as though they are identical to the politics of Haven.

Both of those things severely limit the validity of your argument and make it challenging for others to be willing to pay attention to statements you make.

I very overtly refrained from dragging contemporary politics into it.

The demographic realities are indisputable. Reducing the percentage of people in a society who are productive strains the economy. It appears that technology and automation are increasing productivity and limiting the utility of unskilled workers so that only s small minority are needed to make the economy function. However; this could change.

OK, first of all I'd like to correct a mistake the OP made: These days First World nations are moving away from tax based retirement plans and towards giant savings account system. One view actually suggests that the US never actually had a tax based system (Look at the names used), rather having a single giant savings pool.

These saving accounts have existed in the past under some form of pension plan (Not to be confused with an actual government pension system, this is why they may now be known as superannuation plans). The real change is that contributions based on a percent of your salary are now mandatory and possibly tax exempt.

There's also a couple of things I'd like to correct about prolong.

I doubt that Prolong was ever part of the PRH BLS system, rather it seems to be part of every nation's that can afford it public health care plan, the idea is simple, if people live longer but the amount of time they spend needing government support (At the start and end of their lives) doesn't change the government actually wins, especially in the medium-long term, once the first people to receive it start reaching the old retirement age and don't retire. It was no effect on the social welfare side, apart from the INCREASE in time that the productive part of the economy can be taxed.

The other is age, there was a cap on how old you could be to receive Prolong, but I think there was a minimum age as well, later versions can be given younger (I think) but also definitely have a lower maximum age

A point that is often missed regarding the percentage of a population working is productivity.

A simple illustration is that 200 years ago a team of 10 men with picks and shovels would be needed to dig a ditch, yet now you could have one person driving a bull dozer doing it quicker, being paid a much higher wage, then his tax being used to keep the surplus 9 labourers on the dole. Net effect to the economy is the same.

Regarding the retirement age I'm an example of how changes in life expectancies affect superannuation. They closed off entry to my superannuation years ago as it was designed when people died in their early 70s. My indexed whole of life pension may hopefully have to last decades past that.

Wasn't there something in one of the more recent books about the RMN having to kick people out at one hundred or there about? It was preprolong, so it must have been one of the stories in Beginings, or in HOS. Any how, if my memory is not fooling me, that would be a very good indicator that the standard retirement age has shifted.

In societies where prolong is universally available, at least the entire population would be going through the change at once making it somewhat simpler for the government to change policies. Where the situation is likely to get complex is polities where there is partial adoption.

For example

Imagine a scenario where a verge system has an OK but not great economy

The average lifespan is 100 and the government provides a government funded pension at 90 years old, which the government can barely afford.

Prolong is invented but is too expensive for the government to provide universally, so like Torch the government choses to provide it only to members of the military (0.5% of the population)

Now say that the average member of the military serves 20 years and then rejoins the civilian population and thus is eligible for the civilian pension at age 90.

Now you have 2 issues:

1. A ticking pension timebomb. While the vast majority of the population still only collects the pension for 10 years, a tiny percent collect for 300 years. Over time the percent of the population which are 300 year collectors grows and grows until it becomes not tiny. The government can barely afford what it has now and with an steadily increasing amount of 300 year collectors. Tick Tick Tick....

2. Over time you'll develop 2 distinct classes. An ex-military class living 400 years and a purely civilian class living 100 years likely with significant tensions between the 2 groups destabilizing the society.

namelessfly wrote:A recent post about Haven's seemingly unrealistic recovery reminded me of my own thoughts about the origin of Haven's decline.

I think it was the introduction of prolong.

Consider a society where life span is less than a century, people enter the workforce at 25 years and retire at perhaps 75 years.

Assuming a static population, 1/2 of the population works.

Assuming a static population growth rate, 1/2 of the population works.

Assume that retirement is funded primarily by government rather than private savings.

Everything is fine until someone introduces prolong.

Average life expectancy soars to 200 years.

Nothing else about the economy changes.

After fifty years, population has increased dramatically.

Approximately 1/2 to 2/3s of the population is retired.

1/6 of the population has not entered the workforce.

1/6 to 1/3 of the population now works to support the remainder of the population.

The tax rate for productive people then has to be 66% to 85%.

Suddenly, even the productive become discouraged.

The young growing up become extremely discouraged.

Work force participation rate plummets even more.

The young are not even interested in education to increase future earnings.

I will refrain from making analogy to contemporary politics.

Haven attempts to solve the crisis by going on the warpath.

The productive citizens of conquered citizens support the indolent do lists until the productive citizens die or become dolists themselves.

Rob Pierre comes to power.

Rob Pierre does one simple thing.

Rob Pierre raises the retirement age to properly reflect the economic consequences of the
new demographic realities. (I fondly recall watching Governor Palin attempt to explain the effects of demographics on the liquidity of Social Security. He refused to understand)

Suddenly, all of those educated and once productive people who had retired at 75 with the expectation of remaining in retirement until they were 200 years old returned to the workforce at age 125. Many of them worked as teachers to train the many 25 to 50 year olds who had been too discouraged by the prospect of confiscatory taxes to learn.

The size of Haven's workforce doubles overnight.

The average education of Haven's workforce improves overnight and continues to improve.

Expenditures for BLS decline by perhaps 1/2 to 2/3s.

The people of Haven then contemplate the relative merits of being indolent subjects to a totalitarian government verses productive citizens of a free society.

If prolong was introduced universally over a period of only a few years, within 40-50 years or so you wouldn't HAVE any elderly folks anymore, which situation would continue for over a century, maybe even a century-and-half.

Just a thought.

Yes, a change in birth rate would indeed change demographics more quickly than the direct effects of prolong.

Let's assume that the Havenite young people immediately realize the effect prolong will have on their reproductive years and many start delaying childbirth. Let's also assume that in the long run they do not change how many children they have. Once the prolong recipients start dieing of old age (in a couple hundred years), we want Haven to head back back toward a steady state, births matching deaths.

So if childbirth years are extended by a factor of 10 (say, 250 years instead of 25 years), the birth rate for an individual person is divided by a factor of 10. In a couple hundred years, that will be balanced by the fact that there are 10 times as many women of birthing age at any given time, leading to the same overall birth rate as before. But until then, the total birth rate will be less than previously.

Let's say that normal child-bearing years is 20-45 years of age. If everyone makes the adjustment immediately, the birthrate just after prolong is introduced will drop to 10% of previous. As the first generation of prolong passes 45, the number of people still capable of bearing children will start rising, and the total birthrate will rise. After 80 years of prolong, people of child-bearing age will range from 20 to 105 (everyone with prolong and older than age 20). Total birth rate will have risen from 10% original to 34% original. Still much lower than before.

Of course, none of this would be as smooth as this analysis suggests. Nothing would be as abrupt, and the transition would take place over a longer time. In addition, I neglected to account for the fact that when the birth rate changes, 20 years later there will be fewer people entering child-bearing years, which will change the birth rate further. The whole thing could get messy. After 80 years, all of the people under age 75 would have been born after prolong, and potentially after the birth rate started changing.

While it is impossible to use this analysis to gauge actual numbers, it supports the idea that a widespread decision to delay childbirth could after a mere 80 years cause a serious reduction of the number of people of employment age (whether or not the retirement age changes). On the other hand, if it took forty or fifty years for people to change their habits and start delaying childbirth, there could actually be a significant increase in the number of people of employment age after 80 years.

Over several hundred years, we could expect the changes to balance out, but the transition period could be quite stressful on the economy. We don't have enough information about Havenite sociological patterns to decide which is more likely--a decrease in the number of people of employment age or an increase.

hanuman wrote:If prolong was introduced universally over a period of only a few years, within 40-50 years or so you wouldn't HAVE any elderly folks anymore, which situation would continue for over a century, maybe even a century-and-half.

Just a thought.

It would take longer than 40 or 50 years for that to happen. If prolong was introduced universally in a short period of time, anyone over age 25 would not have prolong. After 50 years, those people would still only be 75 years old, and looking forward to retirement for a few decades. After 80 years, most of them would be dead, but after only 50 years you would still have the same number of old people as before.