And I don’t want to hear about young people supporting aging populations. That’s a man-made problem that has solutions.

Well, okay. I have a bridge to sell you.

Look. Everything is a “man made” issue with solutions.

It doesn’t matter what economic system we want or have; fact is something has to put a ton of work into taking care of old folks, unless you kill them off or let them rot. Hope and ideology isn’t going to fix one’s body/mind, and that has nothing to do with capitalism.

…Will we automate the problem away some day, WallE/Star Trek style? Sure. That’s the goal. But we aren’t close to there yet. Overloading the young taking care of the old IS our short term problem, and we have plenty of land to support a growing population with room for expanding conservation, as long as we don’t do stupid shit like ranch excessively and expand oil. Then we can level off the population. But we can’t do any of that if entire counties collapse from the pressure/burden of support.

But okay. Let’s say tomorrow, every country on the planet rises up, abandons capitalism, and embraces cooperative economics, with a magic snap of the fingers. That’d be great.

But we continue to let populations in developed countries age.

Then what?

How does that change the needs of elderly folks at all? How does that change the math of young people needing to devote more and more of their energy to them?