this post was submitted on 25 May 2025
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Political Memes

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[–] huppakee@lemm.ee -5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (15 children)

You can't just borrow or create money to fund things that are not profitable. Not saying infinite population growth is desirable but spending the large amount of resources on old folk does mean not spending it on the young folk = less money to education, health care and infrastructure. It's not fair to reduce real world problems to 'you just need to spend your money wiser'

Edit: just to clarify the comment I made above, it doesn't say we shouldn't care for retirerees, it is saying you can't keep the price we pay for supporting them the same if the size of the group if old people rises and the group of people who work to pay for it shrinks. An aging population is a burden to any population in any financial system just like a growing population is a boon. Again, that doesn't mean we shouldn't care for old people.

[–] redwattlebird@lemmings.world 10 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Mate, it's not a zero sum game. You can do both.

[–] huppakee@lemm.ee -2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

In a perfect world you can do both because a society has a very wide range of sources of income, but in the end it actually is a zero sum game.

[–] redwattlebird@lemmings.world 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

This

Particularly about the misunderstandings section.

politics and macroeconomics are not zero-sum games, however, because they do not constitute conserved systems

Or if you don't like Wikipedia, here's an economics website:

This

In a non-zero-sum game, it is possible for two parties to both benefit from a decision.

It also lists examples for each.

Zero sum games are often misunderstood and used as a vehicle of misinformation to perpetuate the lie that if you do one desirable thing, you lose the status quo.

Therefore, looking after the young and looking after the old is a non-zero sum game because you can literally do both. My best example is Australia; we have aged care and child care, with plenty of room for subsidising mining corporations.

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