After the Chinese census data came out this year, the most shocking data should be the aging data. According to statistics, China’s population of 60 years and over has reached 264.02 million. After seeing this data, many people expressed concern about the aging problem. Because aging means that a country’s economic development will slow down, and it may also face increasing pressure to solve the pension problem.
Since aging may bring such bad expectations, is there a better way to solve this problem? Regarding this, we can take a look at the history of foreign countries. After all, the problem of aging did not start in our country. Other countries have already faced such pressure a long time ago.
First of all, let’s understand under what circumstances are aging.
Aging standards
Nowadays, there is a standard for what conditions can be called aging in the world-an aging society means that the 65-year-old population accounts for more than 7%.
A long time ago, this standard of the United Nations was that the population over 60 years old accounted for 10%. The improvement of this standard can be understood from the improvement of medical conditions and the better and better health of the elderly.
According to the United Nations standard, the data of our census this year are: the population aged 0-14 accounted for 17.95%, the population aged 15-59 accounted for 63.35%, the population aged 60 and above accounted for 18.7%, and the population aged 65 and above accounted for 13.5. %.
From this point of view, in fact, we have entered an aging society. According to the theory of many economists, there has been a decline before old age.
I mentioned earlier to solve the problem of aging. Other countries have already begun to deal with it a long time ago. So what did they do? What has been the result over the years?
American model solves aging
In fact, throughout history, the United States should be one of many countries where the aging problem is not serious. Why do you say that? Part of the reason can be attributed to the US stock market.
As early as the end of the 19th century, the United States continued to use the influence of the government to slowly withdraw the large families of consortia from the stock market. At the same time, that is, since that time, they have also continued to increase their share of the public. It is hoped that through the redistribution of wealth in the stock market, the vast majority of people will become rich.
We can understand this from several sets of data:
The first set of data is from 1930 to 1980
The second set of data: from 1940 to 1990
The third set of data: from 1950 to 2000
From the real historical data, we can see that the stock return in the United States in the past 50 years has almost reached 8%.
What is this concept? This is equivalent to when a college student starts from the day of graduation, as long as he invests 10,000 yuan in the stock market, and when he retires at the age of 50, the funds he can get back become 470,000 yuan.
In the United States, there is basically no problem with a pension of 470,000 US dollars. With this money, this old man will not have the problem of being supported in the United States, because he can realize the pension by relying on the wealth he creates.
What we have listed is only the data from 20 years ago. We don’t need to pick up the gains in the past 20 years. The US stock market has repeatedly set new highs, which everyone can see.
After graduating from college, young people can invest $10,000 in retirement income at the age of 50 to achieve retirement income of 470,000. This is also a prerequisite, because the US government must maintain long-term growth in the US stock market. If long-term growth cannot be achieved, they want to achieve personal It is impossible to create wealth to solve the problem of pension.
Therefore, the goal of the US government is very clear. As long as the stockholders of public-owned companies are old and dependent, the aging problem in the United States will not be a problem.
Therefore, for so many years, the US government has been doing one thing, which is to force every professional manager to use his best ability to do the company well. It is also very simple for American people to invest. Just hand the money directly to these fund companies and let professional people do professional things.
In addressing the problem of aging, in addition to the American model, there is another model called the Nordic model
The Nordic model tackles aging
Regarding the Nordic model, one thing that is completely different from the American model is that the Nordic model provides for the elderly with a high tax burden.
In fact, the Nordic countries are also very short of young people. In the face of the increasingly serious problem of aging, the Nordic choice is to support these elderly people with heavy government taxes, that is, rely on the taxation of the people behind to support them.
In the short term, there is no major problem with the heavy-tax pension model, but in the long term, it will greatly impact the productivity of the Nordic countries. Once the productivity declines, this means that the impact of the aging problem will increase instead.
Therefore, in terms of sustainability, the high tax system in Northern Europe where the next generation supports the previous generation is difficult to sustain in the long term.
In contrast, the U.S. relies on stock market gains to solve the pension problems of the previous generation, rather than relying on the next generation to pay higher taxes. Therefore, the U.S. tax rate is definitely lower than that of the Nordic countries.
And what is the biggest benefit of a low tax rate? A low tax rate means that productivity or creativity is stronger, and everyone’s desire to work will be higher.
From this point of view, the United States has adopted a system to allow American elderly people to solve the problem of old age dependence.
In fact, we are here to describe the quality of a system, but from relatively successful cases, we can absorb some useful essence, and we can avoid many detours in solving some similar problems.
After all, there are big differences between China and the United States. Take the stock market as an example. Over the years, the U.S. stock market has repeatedly set new highs. Even if there is any risk, the term we use most is high diving. But we are completely different. We are low and sideways. What risks are really encountered, can only be said to be jumping on the negative floor.
However, regarding the use of a system in the United States to solve the problem of aging support, there are two points worth thinking about.
First, how to achieve a long-term stable return
Second, how to improve the productivity of young people
Solving these two problems, presumably the aging problem should be solved!
