Whilst there, I ran into a couple of current and future Labour MPs, the perennially ageless gossip columnist Simon Wilson and a coterie of property developers of indeterminate vintage.
Brown is energetic, focused, and a lot of fun. He has, a reasonable individual may observe, more summers aft than fore.
The previous month, my firm hosted the Honourable Winston Peters at a breakfast event for some of the same dubious individuals that attended the Brown function and Peters was also in excellent form.
He spotted fellow Stuff contributor and agent of chaos, Verity Johnston, and joyfully berated her for declaring New Zealand was broken and that you’d be mad to stay.
When challenged on his longevity in politics, he joked: Why would anyone want to slip into a retirement home, where the highlight was what was for lunch and when it was time to play canasta?
Welcome to the age of the super-superannuant.
But before we look too closely at our octogenarians enjoying their third act, let’s check in at our maternity wards. They are empty.
There are a number of explanations for the decline and in some places collapse of fertility in the modern world, but I’ve settled on feminism.
I know what you’re thinking but bear with me.
A century past women faced three career paths: teaching, nursing or motherhood, and the least of those was motherhood. A simplification, but you get the idea.
A patriarchal world preserved interesting jobs for men; with the exception of Empress but, as Victoria proved, this didn’t preclude a lot of motherhood.
Thanks to the exceptional work of Emmeline Pankhurst, Susan B Anthony and Kate Sheppard, women gained the vote and the career opportunities that followed.
Now, women could do anything. Well, almost anything. We never sent a woman to the moon, and there is a lack of enthusiasm from the ladies in working in the North Sea.
But… law, accounting and politics became viable alternatives to diapers and dispensing gripe water.
After a surge in babies in the late forties, women took up the opportunities a combination of feminism and modernity afforded them.
Fertility began to decline. In New Zealand, we are at 1.5 babies per female - which, as any farmer will tell you, isn’t enough to maintain the herd.
If our fertility rates continue to fall, and expectations are that it will, the lopsided nature of our demographic decline will resemble that of South Korea, where the fertility rate is 0.7 per female.
Putting that into perspective, one thousand Koreans produces just 350 offspring, that begets 125, that sires 45. In three generations, the lights go out.
Now. OK. Maybe we need to consider other factors: microplastics, economic drivers and the unrealistic romantic standards created by films featuring Hugh Grant.
I don’t know what the problem is but I’m part of it; having only contributed a single soul to the next generation and falling well short of the standards set by Hugh (no relation) Grant. But I can foresee problems with this lack of infants.
Back when Sir Robert Muldoon introduced universal superannuation in 1977, 9% of the population was over 65 (although the pension only kicked in at 60 back then). It is now over 17% and on most projections going to spike over twenty in the next decade.
The population pyramid is inverting. By 2028, we will have more people over 65 than under 14, with an escalating demographic deficit.
Putting the absurdity of the pension into perspective, in less than six years I’ll qualify for the Gold Card and a stipend from Nicola Willis for not having died. Well done me.
Unless I experience even further catastrophic mental and physical decline in the coming years, I do not intend to use this as an opportunity to stop working, podcasting and writing inflammatory columns.
I don’t know the resolution to our fertility crisis, but I can do the maths.
If we have less younger people wanting to rent our investment properties, borrow our capital or work in our firms the return on our savings will decline. Even if you want to retire, the economics dictate that you won’t be able afford to.
That’s fine with me. I don’t know what I’d do in retirement, and being self-employed means I don’t have to.
The crisis is for those who find themselves willing and able to work but lack the means to do so.
It is a little understood and frightening statistic that 100% of people who retire… at some future point die......The full article is published HERE
Damien Grant is an Auckland business owner, a member of the Taxpayers’ Union and a regular opinion contributor for Stuff, writing from a libertarian perspective
The previous month, my firm hosted the Honourable Winston Peters at a breakfast event for some of the same dubious individuals that attended the Brown function and Peters was also in excellent form.
He spotted fellow Stuff contributor and agent of chaos, Verity Johnston, and joyfully berated her for declaring New Zealand was broken and that you’d be mad to stay.
When challenged on his longevity in politics, he joked: Why would anyone want to slip into a retirement home, where the highlight was what was for lunch and when it was time to play canasta?
Welcome to the age of the super-superannuant.
But before we look too closely at our octogenarians enjoying their third act, let’s check in at our maternity wards. They are empty.
There are a number of explanations for the decline and in some places collapse of fertility in the modern world, but I’ve settled on feminism.
I know what you’re thinking but bear with me.
A century past women faced three career paths: teaching, nursing or motherhood, and the least of those was motherhood. A simplification, but you get the idea.
A patriarchal world preserved interesting jobs for men; with the exception of Empress but, as Victoria proved, this didn’t preclude a lot of motherhood.
Thanks to the exceptional work of Emmeline Pankhurst, Susan B Anthony and Kate Sheppard, women gained the vote and the career opportunities that followed.
Now, women could do anything. Well, almost anything. We never sent a woman to the moon, and there is a lack of enthusiasm from the ladies in working in the North Sea.
But… law, accounting and politics became viable alternatives to diapers and dispensing gripe water.
After a surge in babies in the late forties, women took up the opportunities a combination of feminism and modernity afforded them.
Fertility began to decline. In New Zealand, we are at 1.5 babies per female - which, as any farmer will tell you, isn’t enough to maintain the herd.
If our fertility rates continue to fall, and expectations are that it will, the lopsided nature of our demographic decline will resemble that of South Korea, where the fertility rate is 0.7 per female.
Putting that into perspective, one thousand Koreans produces just 350 offspring, that begets 125, that sires 45. In three generations, the lights go out.
Now. OK. Maybe we need to consider other factors: microplastics, economic drivers and the unrealistic romantic standards created by films featuring Hugh Grant.
I don’t know what the problem is but I’m part of it; having only contributed a single soul to the next generation and falling well short of the standards set by Hugh (no relation) Grant. But I can foresee problems with this lack of infants.
Back when Sir Robert Muldoon introduced universal superannuation in 1977, 9% of the population was over 65 (although the pension only kicked in at 60 back then). It is now over 17% and on most projections going to spike over twenty in the next decade.
The population pyramid is inverting. By 2028, we will have more people over 65 than under 14, with an escalating demographic deficit.
Putting the absurdity of the pension into perspective, in less than six years I’ll qualify for the Gold Card and a stipend from Nicola Willis for not having died. Well done me.
Unless I experience even further catastrophic mental and physical decline in the coming years, I do not intend to use this as an opportunity to stop working, podcasting and writing inflammatory columns.
I don’t know the resolution to our fertility crisis, but I can do the maths.
If we have less younger people wanting to rent our investment properties, borrow our capital or work in our firms the return on our savings will decline. Even if you want to retire, the economics dictate that you won’t be able afford to.
That’s fine with me. I don’t know what I’d do in retirement, and being self-employed means I don’t have to.
The crisis is for those who find themselves willing and able to work but lack the means to do so.
It is a little understood and frightening statistic that 100% of people who retire… at some future point die......The full article is published HERE
Damien Grant is an Auckland business owner, a member of the Taxpayers’ Union and a regular opinion contributor for Stuff, writing from a libertarian perspective
2 comments:
What does the continued presence of Verity Johnson in NZ tell us about her sanity?
The term 'fertility deficit' is has two applications, an objective one and a subjective one. The objective meaning is that there is a shortfall between natality and mortality eventually resulting in a negative population growth rate (i.e. it shrinks). The subjective meaning is that people are not having as many children as they would like.
The preferred number of children in NZ according to surveys is 2 or 3. But many to most couples are not having 2 or 3 because they can't afford it. Ones and zeros now rule.
The problem is not primarily the cost of children in itself (though that's bad enough). It's the reliance on 2 incomes for a quarter century to pay off the mortgage. Paradoxically, children are now the preserve of the wealthy and the bludgers at the bottom who pump out more welfare dependents into the system because it pays them to do so.
Let's not mince words: it's not just more babies we need, but more of the right sort of babies - those that grow up into productive, responsible adults.
Children are a public good as well as a private one. Society needs to invest in children as future human capital. This should be a major talking point at national level.
Readers may care to have a look at my article "Ode to the Methuselah Generation", 'Breaking Views' 2 January 2017 which elaborates on these points.
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