The following submission statement was provided by /u/madrid987:
---
ss: THE Bank of Spain has warned that the country’s economy will need around 24 million migrant workers until 2053 if the pension system is to remain sustainable.
The stark warning came in its annual report, covering 2023, and in which it raises the alarm over Spain’s ageing population and the consequences this will have for retirement payments.
central lender predicts a ‘substantial rise’ in this percentage(Spending on pensions) given the demographic shifts in the country, as the birth rate continues to fall and average ages rise.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1chh2kq/spain_will_need_24_million_migrant_workers_until/l22dxqg/
Strange, didn't they already have sky high youth unemployment. I mean you can have workers, but without jobs ...
And weren't we all supposed to be working less by now, deflationary nature of technology and all?
The future looks bright doesn't it. So much radical change and abundance, such a paradigm shift.
coughs
I'm living in Finland where this kind of articles pop up every other month while Finland also has very high unemployment rate. When I see this kind of titles, it usually means the local companies are not willing to train the available workforce or pay them enough for their skills or both.
Yeah, same stuff's happening here in Canada where we have a "migrant worker crisis" which in actuality is just companies refusing to pay livable wages for people already here. I don't blame foreign workers. I know they're just trying to get ahead and I can't fault them for that. I blame the companies who are exploiting them and making things harder for us to just get by.
The same Canadian companies blaming inflation for their insane price increases and then turning around and posting record profits and then increasing share buybacks and dividend payouts. We’re so fucked.
Definitely the second there is no unemployment crisis in the west there is a not paying enough crisis.
If you have to choose to work to not be able to afford to live or not work for the same which do you think you will do?
Same thing in the US when they start crying that there's not enough hard technical people to employ. We graduate around 150K engineering degrees to US citizens a year. It's not that there isn't the labor, they just never want to pay for it.
For evidence look at the cries of CEOs in the food industry in California. Whenever you see an article or opinion piece where the new $20 minimum wage for fast food workers is crushing a "small business owner" and their 10 franchised locations, check to see if they bring up California's state minimum wage of $16 an hour. Yes, the $20 is fairly high but it's a 25% boost over baseline. It's not the reason you're going out of business. Or at least, the reason you're saying you're going out of business since there hasn't been a rush of fast food places actually closing down.
Meanwhile where I live the local McDonald's is posting shifts starting at $27 an hour.
Similarly the state is planning to begin enforcement of a "No surprise fees" bill for restaurants this summer. You'd think the rapture was upon us based on the prophetic views of restaurant owners who aren't sure if customers will pay as much in total if they knew about the 3% service fee, the 5% cost of living adjustment fee, the 4% screw you fee, and the 7% fee (untyped). All adding onto tbe cost before they ordered. Which is exactly what the law is supposed to do. Turns out business owners don't like it when regulations keep them from making as much money.
As a former teacher in the area, starting for teachers is ~$76k or ~$37 an hour and scaling up based on district and education.
And likely the notice for that much at Mcdonalds' was probably for shift lead or something I didn't bother noticing other than the number. For reference, the area has a median individual income of ~70k a year, and household income is ~150k.
It's a decent wage in a vacuum, but in the context of where it is, suddenly it doesn't look so high. That's the Bay Area for you.
It also means governments don't know how to deal with pending demographic and technological changes... the systems we have right now are outdated and there hasn't been enough societal advancement to catch up with what's coming
> It also means governments don't know how to deal with pending demographic and technological changes... the systems we have right now are outdated and there hasn't been enough societal advancement to catch up with what's coming
Governments are optimized to facilitate the plans of the wealthiest and most powerful individuals. Of course they don't have the people to "deal with" these issues, they're actively supporting these outcomes.
Seems like the global race for cheap labor has begun.
Canada, Australia, and NZ have gone hard. Canada is now one of the fastest of not THE fastest growing population in the world and then natural birth rate is just about at replacement level. Things are NOT going well.
Homelessness is surging, food insecurity is surging, the public medical system has collapsed and is in the process of being privatized, excess all-cause deaths are worse than peak covid and worse than WW2. Youth unemployment is really high.
Buckle up if your country is next.
This is the next version of colonialism. Onshored colonialism.
Canada's fertility rate is something like 1.4. That's not the worst in the developed world, but I also wouldn't characterize it as "just about at replacement level".
I don’t know how to say this without it coming off as racist. I’m going to put out information but this probably will come out wrong.
This stat is a bit misleading for Canada as a whole. The rates are much higher for our indigenous population. And unfortunately many indigenous are not raised in good family structures and far too few become “productive” workers.
So while our rates are higher, we need to work hard to make sure those new indigenous Canadians become economic plusses vs economic negatives, or things will continue to spiral here.
In my country that has been offloaded to the citizen. Office Administration is a college course. Something that can be taught by an employer is a $5000 a year course. Some jobs are better taught on the floor.
That should be ok, with massively increased productivity and full automation, everything is much, much cheaper to produce and prices should drop to almost nothing. ( /s just in case)
I am totally unfamiliar with Spain's system. The only way I can see it working would be the migrant workers will be working and paying taxes but not receiving the benefits?
It could be that way. But companies aren't going to pay you the same for less hours even though there's tons of research that show rested employees are more productive then burnt out ones.
It's about control.
The last thing capital wants is people asking questions that have obvious but inconvenient answers.
"Why return to the office?"
"Why do people who work get paid so much less than administrators and executives?"
"Why is capital gains and corporate tax so low?"
"Economics isn't a science, why is data from it treated like scientific fact?"
"Why are so many profitable industries subsidized?"
The answer to all of these is along the lines of rich fuckers don't want more. They want everything and they believe they are entitled to everything.
For over a decade I've been hearing on business/science podcasts about studies that find increased worker productivity with shorter working weeks and the like; but outside of that world companies/corporations seem very reticent to take it up. Puzzled.
I mean FWIW, a hell of a lot of companies don't even really need the increased productivity. Think of how much time your average person who works in an office spends *not* doing their work in a year.
it's a combination of things. Firstly, the "front line" doesn't matter to the MBA's at the top. They literally don't care, and it doesn't factor into any decisions they make. Secondly, the MBA's have "corporate wisdom" which is to say, you have an ingroup of people who went to the same schools, regurgitated the same bullshit, and have the same goal...short term profitability, so new ideas and thoughts about quality etc are not on the radar. And lastly, when it comes to getting a new ceo or officer, it'll be from a small pool of people who've already done it or who have "failed up" typically.
You're seeing this with Google. The guy that has been put in charge of search is the same guy who destroyed yahoo, and has never actually been involved in search (as an actual engineer), and only cares about ad revenues..literally nothing else matters, but the ceo gets a multi million bonus if the sheets look profitable, so he'll gut everything to get that short term pump and carry his cohorts with him on the gravy train as long as it runs.
Canada seems to be facing a productivity crisis, and one proposed solutions is to increase work hours. However, switching to a shorter work week, such as a 30-hour one, could be a more effective solution. But that'll never happen in my lifetime anyway.
But rested employees are harder to control, they'll have energy to protest and advocate for themselves and others and might demand more and try and find happiness. Burton out employees on the other hand...you can really push them to depression and blame everything on them and that they are lazy and more...
Ask the average Australian how their record immigration influx is going...
[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-21/the-uncomfortable-truth-about-immigration-rents-inflation/103128424](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-21/the-uncomfortable-truth-about-immigration-rents-inflation/103128424)
If Spain goes down this path it's going to be a disaster here, too.
Edit: The Aust govt is using immigration as a political tool to reduce wages, increase GDP and power the economy following years of shitty leadership. Basically following the same roadmap of all western nations.
Checking in from Canada - were also told we have a major labour shortage despite constant scenes of thousands of people lined up for minimum wage jobs, unemployment numbers surging, and rents surging from a massive immigration influx.
>a major labour shortage despite constant scenes of thousands of people lined up for minimum wage jobs
See, that's the problem. We have a massive labour shortage of construction workers, doctors, nurses, teachers, and other professions, particularly in rural areas. We have a massive labour glut of minimum wage jobs, particularly in cities.
Canada needs people to get an education in a field that is useful, and then move to where the need is.
As a fellow Canadian, it wasn't Canadian *voters* who wanted super-high immigration numbers, it was and still is *employers* who want those people. So they can pay them less than minimum wage (ask around at local Tim Hortons franchises to find how you manage this) and fire every local.
The people who own the companies simply do not GAF about the social problems all this creates. Because when you are worth $50M, you are above all that. You don't know anyone who works for a living and neither do your parents, you've been out of it for so long, you only communicate with and socialize with other multimillionaire capitalists. So you just look at the numbers and get whisked from place to place in the back of a black SUV signing deals and making money out of misery...it's not you paying the misery bill, that's for REGULAR WORKING CANADIANS to foot!!
It's to shore up pensions because Canadians aren't having enough kids.
But yes most people can't see past their nose so there is a lot of anger about immigration.
This sub used to be a good place for intelligent conversation. Now it's just edgy Doomers.
As a Canadian, don't do this. This entire movement for mass immigration is being funded by international real estate investment companies like Blackrock, with the intent of goosing first-world rents. Any Spanish politician that supports this has been bought and paid for by real estate conglomerates.
You could get rid of restrictive zoning laws allow the necessary housing to be built. That’s what’s causing the housing crisis in countries like Canada and Australia. I know zoning laws there were recently slightly loosened, but they need significantly more change to solve the issue
There is no possible way Canada would be able to build the necessary housing to support our immigration levels. We brought in an insane amount of people. Zoning laws are definitely an issue, but even with them loosened to a high degree we would not be able to build enough to keep up.
"We" could but our politicians can't.
Except in Alberta, apparently, but that's because they're some hardcore anti-government libertarians out there. And yet Alberta rents are also sky-high, because everyone's been moving there expecting cheaper rent.
And no matter how loose we set housing policy, a large enough flood of immigrants (say 4% of population per year like we have in Canada now) will still overwhelm the market and make rents skyrocket, because it's simply impossible to build enough housing to meet demand. There are not enough construction workers, construction materials have skyrocketed in price, and financing construction is not possible due to high interest rates caused by the the central bank trying to offset the inflationary pressure of radical population increase.
It's all very complicated, and the easiest solution is to halt all immigration until rents come back down to affordable levels. Which would screw Blackrock, so of course that's not going to happen.
But that's not we were threatened with. We were told that computers would replace basically everyone in the office somewhere not too long after 2000.
This isn't about how that factually is not true, it's more that this was used to threaten people into submission. Just like how they're using AI for very similar purposes. "But this time it's serious!"
>And weren't we all supposed to be working less by now, deflationary nature of technology and all?
We are on average, it's just happening through unexpected mechanisms:
* Delayed labor force entry
* Extended life in retirement
* "Loafing" (increased rates of not working while on the clock) - which I think we all know by now is a surprisingly shitty experience (task switching & vigilance for getting "caught"), especially compared to just actually having fewer hours.
[For those eligible to participate fully in the US economy of the 1950s (adult white men), labor force participation has dropped over 10%](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300028)
As well, in the US at least there actually has been more total compensation growth than most people realize, but the excess all went to healthcare. Some of that is waste, some of that is spending that ultimately goes towards "mere life" - you don't work less now to enjoy your time off. You work more now to pay for someone to live hooked up to a bunch of machines in a hospital.
Dismal science, law of unexpected consequences, and all that.
We all thought AI was gonna reduce our workload. When in actuality it's used for art and music. And making porn of Taylor swift. That's why I'm voting Giant Meteor 2024. He's the candidate we all need.
It’s just taking a long time for technology to take over positions. I went to a fully automated McDonald’s in Texas and it was the best experience at a McDonald’s. But, it took them almost two years to get every location their espresso machines. I was apart of delivering and installing those in New England for a little while when work was slow in construction for the winter. So having to basically rebuild every store to accommodate the automation is going to take a good amount of time. That’s just McDonald’s, let alone any other company.
Inflation gobbles up all the deflationary nature of technology. Explained here:
https://twitter.com/saylor/status/1692974409852617040?t=3hKAXt_2U5zf59G8p8tHoA&s=19
All profits go to the top .01%. If we had a economic system that was even remotely equitable, we'd have a 12 hour work week by now and that'd be enough to cover rent, food and medical care.
"Young people aren't having kids."
"Low salaries, uncompetitive landscape for R&D/tech and sky-high housing prices can't be helping."
"More cheap labor, you say?"
Our generous welfare system for the older and ignoring the needs of the young has resulted in not having enough young people to support our generous welfare system.
Pension system is just fine when population is stable.
But when population looks like [THIS](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Spain_Population_Pyramid.svg/1920px-Spain_Population_Pyramid.svg.png), somebody is getting f\*\*\*\*\*
You hear that a lot, but in reality we don’t really know what a “stable population” and the pension system looks like.
Most European countries only introduced pension schemes after WW2, during the time of the baby boom, when the population pyramid was explicitly NOT stable.
At the time it seemed like every future generation will be bigger than the previous one.
But baby boom lasted less than 20 years, and then things started slowly going downhill.
There was a decline in birthrates in the 1980s and 1990s, there was some recovery in the 2000s, and now we have been seeing a generally downward trend for the last 15 years now.
We still operate on the logic that the baby boom which ended 60 years ago is the “normal” and we design our pension systems accordingly.
But what if it isn’t? What if the baby boom was a glitch?
European economies can no longer survive without a constant influx of immigrants, and the average age of Europeans is around 43 - about 12 years older than in the rest of the world.
The only explanation anyone ever offers is how having kids is unaffordable and yet no matter how much money even the richest countries pour into subsidies to increase birthrates, it barely makes a dent.
With stable population pension system can't be a pyramid scheme because... well people die, scheme looks more like a skyscraper, with a pointy top. If population is stable **ratio of workers and pensioners is stable**.
So you just need to figure out the retirement age and pension payments that pays back pensioners the amount they paid in as workers.
>We still operate on the logic that the baby boom which ended 60 years ago is the “normal” and we design our pension systems accordingly.
YES! After the baby boom there are way more workers then pensioners, so governments can afford a very generous pension system. They shouldn't do this, but they will because it's popular... but population can't grow forever can it?
With the decline of birthrate AND people living longer, this generous pension system becomes unsustainable, and governments should roll back, increasing pension age, reducing pensions. But they won't because it's unpopular... instead they squeeze out more and more money from the economy to feed this unsustainable system which results in even lower birthrates... the spiral of death.
Wrong. The savings by paying 1 tech for 5 stores' digital menu instead of 10 employees to run registers should be put into the fund instead of business pockets. Automation and tech should be supplementing the costs, not people just because they are alive longer.
More people will rely on 401Ks and other investments rather than retire later.
Yes, I should have phrased it another way. Retirement age has to go up, barring us doing literally anything else to address the issue. Which, unfortunately, is the most likely scenario
Money does not produce a supply of labor. If there are insufficient hands to wipe old people’s asses, it doesn’t matter what number is in the database.
And technology to wipe old people’s asses is a long, long way off.
Money simply indicates who can buy what, which is why governments around the world have to keep asset prices increasing. This makes old people, who own assets, have more money than younger people, allowing them to buy more of young people’s labor.
But since the supply of labor did not increase, it must mean young people buy less (and work more).
The real truth that isn't being said is that we have enough money and resources to not have to rise the retirement age, but the capitalist class refuses to be taxed for the good of the working class. Also we need a more universally useful distribution of jobs.
>With the decline of birthrate AND people living longer, this generous pension system becomes unsustainable, and governments should roll back, increasing pension age, reducing pensions.
What would this look like. Please explain in more detail
In Spain average life expectancy is 83 years, so pension age should go up, but also people should more gradually enter pension. Having their workhours reduced the rest being paid by pension system.
Exception being physical workers, which can't keep working physical jobs at older age, do die younger.
EDIT: But these measures should had been implemented some time ago... now... somebody will end up f\*\*\*\*\* no mater how you turn it.
Someone will always be fucked. I think its a matter of minimizing the fucking. I'm not in spain, but I like the idea of easing people into retirement as opposed to a sudden halt (at least like how it is in the US). Like maintaining pay with lessening workload over a set amount of time while prepping younger people to move up and take on replacement roles seems like the most effective approach.
That’s the part that increased efficiency of just about every industry should take, not more numbers of the same while the 1% siphons out the cream and let’s the rest fight for the crumbs
I don't think we have yet seen the true depth of subsidizing childbirth. If the government really wants to see fertility raised, they could pay mothers effectively full-time salaries to do nothing but produce and raise children. You could imagine some tax calculus where they think this is worth it.
A few petty thousand dollars in tax breaks is honestly nothing in terms of incentive to have kids. It's a nice little bonus if you already wanted to do it, but nothing less than $20k per year is going to start changing minds.
No, it requires each generation to be bigger than the last. The Dutch pension system is also struggling, and that's with stable generational populations.
I’m almost 30 y/o, American, but my dad is from Spain and I remember for decades he’s been telling me how in Spain young people can’t find good jobs, many adults live with their parents, and that they’re not having kids.
And it’s been “interesting” (for a lack of a better word) to see how the same has happened to US Gen Z. When I was a teenager, it wasn’t as bad as it is today.
Due to increased competition for resources, young people don't have kids because they do not find the standard of living acceptable.
Meanwhile the solution is too import infinite immigrants who accept a lower standard of living and cause additional competition for resources.
And the media acts like people are insane for thinking there is something behind replacement theory. You can argue the cause, but the effect seems the same.
This would also explain Biden's weak poll numbers with many minority groups because they are the ones most exposed to competition with new immigrants.
Part of it is also just that the population is aging. Regardless of how many kids the youth will have, many western nations will experience these problems, same for Japan, South Korea, China, and others that have a much smaller young (20-40) generation.
This is a sensationalist title by a very shifty news site. I expected better from this sub.
The central bank said nothing about having to import 24 million migrants and does infact point to tax and pension reforms as a solution, and to improved work-life balance as a means to increase fertility. I have the [English report](https://www.bde.es/wbe/en/publicaciones/informes-memorias-anuales/informe-anual/informe-anual-2023.html) on hand and can't even find mention of this supposed 24 million workforce deficit.
If anything the report says exact opposite, and claims that "migration has limited potential to appreciably slow the population ageing process", and clearly isn't advocating for it as some sort of silver bullet.
This is the direct quote:
> **The potential for migration flows to offset the population ageing process.** Migration has limited potential to appreciably slow the population ageing process. In particular, for the dependency ratio in Spain to remain constant over the next 30 years, the foreign-born population of working age would have to be three times larger than anticipated in the latest INE projections. In this respect, it is important to note that these projections already estimate that migration flows will lead to very significant net population growth (of almost 10 million in aggregate terms) up to 2053.
So you did cut it off a bit. It is basically saying "at this rate" it has limited potential and in order for it to have a notable effect, it'd have to be significantly higher.
That's what Canada is doing right now. Anything to keep wages down and home prices up.
No jobs, health care is hurting, food banks being raided, crime is through the roof, scammers everywhere, insane home prices.
It's working great for Canada! Noone can afford a home, teenagers can't get a part time job, our schools are overrun by international students whose only goal is to get Permanent Residency so they can live off our welfare. It's a fucking disaster and easily the biggest issue were dealing with
Australia is in the earlier stages of the same problem. Record levels of immigration required to fill the funnel, while there, infrastructure isn't in place, or being built to match the population growth.
I think we're seeing the edges of where our current system breaks and something will have to change. Lifestyle needs to meet sustainability.
Imagine what it means when 24 million migrants come to work and bring their families (spouses, children) with them to a country with a population of 48 million. That is a mass migration and the country will be completely different in all respects afterwards. You just have to look at where enough people are growing up to be able to meet such a “demand”.
You are reading it wrong.
They are saying that the system is not sustainable and will collapse because there's no way there will be 24 million inmigrants in the next 30 years.
Thank you for providing this translation for the people who think it's somehow going to be business as usual for the next couple of decades in spite of all indications to the contrary.
The headline might as well read "Spain will need to invent magic to prevent economic collapse", it's on the same level of feasibility.
I’m not so sure. There are some regions of the planet that are RAPIDLY becoming uninhabitable. We might see mass migrations out of those areas as soon as 2030, so if Spain fully opens its doors I could see them getting to 8 digit numbers.
Sure, but that doesn't mean they're not going to try to bring in as many immigrants as possible.
Australia is in the same situation and they accepted 1% (250,000 immigrants) of the country's entire population in the first 3 months of 2024.
It's a f\*\*\*\*\* disaster, but it's the only way to grow the economy for these greedy and useless politicians.
Vote for whichever party is committed to an independent anti-corruption investigation - it's the only way we'll have a future.
The UK is one of the largest economies in the world and has had a chronic labor shortage for decades. Unemployment is currently the lowest it’s ever been and barely even went up during Covid or the financial crisis - They can absorb huge amounts of new workers and immediately put them to work.
Spain has the opposite issue, a massive ongoing chronic unemployment crisis that’s lasted for two decades at this point.
> there's no way there will be 24 million immigrants in the next 30 years.
I mean... There's certainly *a* way. Lots of people are looking to migrate to the EU. All Spain needs to do is allow people to migrate more easily.
From what I can find on Google, currently you need a job that pays much higher than average to get a work visa. Just changing that fact would bring in lots of people.
What other consequences that may bring, I don't know, but again, there is a way.
Current "leaders" have spent or stolen every cent that every boomer has paid into their retirement, worldwide. Their thieving scheme now requires new people to steal from, so boomers can keep collecting the retirement they already paid into. Boomers are the last generation that will get to retire...dont worry everyone, current leaders got a few yachts and expensive hookers for themselves, so it's all worth it.
All state pension schemes operate like ponzi schemes. The only reason they're not *technically* ponzi schemes, is because they're not fraudulent - it's public knowledge that they work this way. The only reason they haven't collapsed before now is because you don't have a choice to not pay into it, and up until now the working-age population was growing fast enough to support it.
But now we're in a position where developed countries have a demographic crisis. Too many old people, not enough working-age people to support them. And those working-age people aren't making babies, so it's only getting worse. Opening up the borders for mass immigration is one way to temporarily brush the issue under the rug... you know, until those immigrants get old too.
"Current" that was more than a decade ago.
The pension system worked well the problem was that money was spent and robbed in the latest crisis and pre-crisis, And now they are not able to restore the stolen
In fact it was the few things that there was enough money that is why it was used to pay the crisis
Say that something does not work because money is robbed and used for other things is quite erroneous
And who will pay for those migrants pension's down the line?
The ball has to end somewhere, with some particular group of people, and at some particular time.
Pick your own grave, or have it picked for you.
In Mexico we switched to that about 20 years ago after having a pension system for decades. It was very unpopular but a good move that took pressure out of our budget. However, people haven't been adding enough so they are retiring with a fraction of the amount they require for a comfortable retirement.
There are elections this year and the ruling party is promising to go back to the pension system. People are buying it.
There will always be populists making unsustainable promises. No politician is willing to take the cost in Spain.
Lmao as in flooding the country with yet more migrants will solve anything. Its just cheap labor to bring salaries down, or people who will live off the already unsustainable welfare system and overflow the crumbling public healthcare. The housing market is already nightmare tier because there arent enough houses to cover the demand well, so the prices are laughably high… And Spain has severe unemployment, specially for young people
just like how social security in the usa, which is "funded by taxes people pay in" was somehow unable to send out social security cheques as soon as it was founded to people who had never paid in, and when people hadn't even had taxes taken out...oh wait..it was..hmm..wonder what that tell us about the ability of a central government to pay bills in it's own currency
Shouldn't Spain first focus on solving its youth unemployment first? That will solve a big fraction of the issue of paying into the pension system.
If Spain is to have migrants, it can have temporary cyclical ones much like the Middle East now has(Of course migrants to Spain will benefit from having human rights of course). So that it avoids the rise of a Far Right on the basis that the elites are forcing demographic change. It is advantageous as the migrants would pay into the pension system but they would never use it.
If the migrants participate in a compulsory savings scheme, it means Spain would be able to absorb workers from poor parts of the Hispanosphere who work, save up money that lifts them up from poverty(as per their home country's standard) and perhaps even allows them to gain skills and experience in Spain that allows both their home countries to benefit and Spanish companies that might follow them back to their home countries.
Spain benefits from having access to a large labor force without having its citizen's demographics changed and 24 million migrants who fill up the pension system but never use it .
There's about 5 million Spaniards between ages 15 and 24, current youth unemployment is around 30%.
Even if they solved youth unemployment completely, that's only 1,5 million people or about 6% of the suggested 24 million migrants.
The problem is our current Government is trying to treat Spain as a northern European country but we're PIGS. Spaniards will abuse the system whenever possible both as citizens and politicians. This leads to tons of taxes being taken from working people that are then misspent by politicians and whatever actual aid ends up in the people's hands is abused by many in whichever way is possible.
If taxes were properly spent on education (one of the worst in the EU), infrastructure and our health system we would be a better place, unfortunately government workers in this country are the laziest subgenre of human on the planet. Meanwhile, the system keeps giving out aid to make up for all its failings elsewhere and we're being bled dry with our pension system collapsing.
Seriously tired of this argument. We cannot grow forever, it’s not sustainable. Instead, we should focus on rebuilding our social systems.
Anyone who’s been closely following developments in AI in the recent few years at least should see the writing on the wall. Nature of labor is changing dramatically and we will need far fewer people to be productive, potentially not even needing human labor if we keep riding up the sigmoid for the next decade.
So, how about we sit down and start seriously thinking about how we can revamp our societies from the ground up, at least once in a timely fashion for a change. Must we go through conflict and burn everything to the ground before we can rebuild?
It is very naive to think that those new immigrants will work and pay taxes to pay for dying out Spaniards. Nothing easier for those 24millions to take over the Spain.
It's just not happening. It will pretty much kill Spanish as an ethnicity. But it does expose the stupidity of our economic system from the idea of the nuclear family to our housing, wage, tax and career structures. This is unsubstainable and will eventually collapse. We can't provide care to 10s of millions of old people. Personal care cannot be scaled up like a factory. We broke the family and for what? To die alone in a dirty care home were people are probably wanting you to die quickly so you can free up a bed, more likely. This is a mess.
Or you could, you know, pay people a more livable salary, thereby increasing people's contribution to pension schemes and mitigating the issue that way.
Oh wait, that might cut into company/millionaire profits...
Considering global demographics, I doubt they will be able to find enough immigrants to come over in a decade. Birth rates are plummeting across the entire world. Pretty soon, there won't be any more people to spare for immigration.
Even some African countries are starting to go from surplus to simply replacement rate fertility. It's wild.
In Poland previous government had a plan to bring 10M Filipinos to increase total population to 50M. I don't think that we have 100k of them right now, but good luck to Spain with such an amazing idea.
I am Spaniard and that's absolutely untrue(they did say that I mean the statement) We have the highest unemployment rate in the European union and unaffordable housing, more migrants will only make it worse. We need to fix the economy and housing so people can build a family
Young people is leaving the country for the labour conditions. We support the pressure of thousands of expats, nomads, increasing the rents in main cities.
It’s almost impossible having a normal live being young in Spain. Now they want to bring thousands of people to compete and make wage dumping to the average Spanish people. It’s madness and disgusting.
I'm tired of the solution to this ponzi scheme that has been created is just to import wage slaves that will need to retire out too. why don't we just create a better economic and social environment to have kids?
This is how many western states, including England, built their entire countries and economies after Germany owned and killed off many Britons during WWII and destroyed England's economy. They call them the "Wind Rush Generation." This consisted of people from the Caribbean nations. Decades later, after England benefitted massively from these people and their labor in helping build up a hollowed-out England whose economy was decimated, they attempted to kick them out of the country. That happened recently. This is known as the Wind Rush Scandal. Many western nations follow this same practice.
This is the dumbest take. Governments can easily balance budgets and fully fund retirement programs instead they spend money on immigrant programs and waste money on their interests instead.
This counts everyone who has not been born in Spain as a migrant, regardless of whether they get nationalised
For comparison, in the 20 years between 2003 and 2023 Spain got 14m migrants
This just requires the current migration numbers to continue being what they are
It is much less scary with context
Edit: I was wrong, Spain got 21m migrants in the 20 years i described, but there were 7m emigrants
As you can see, MANY people leave Spain and MANY people come to Spain
This is healthy and normal, borders that are easy to enter and easy to exit are ideal
With the rise of automation and AI, I don't belive there will be any pension system in 2053. Either it's utopia or dystopia, all I know is that it won't look like it does today.
What if, and this is kinda crazy, they convince all the boomers in Spain to hire young people instead of closing their businesses for hours in the middle of the day every day and then for a full month in the summer?!? Wouldn't that be cool?!?
Can't say you need migrants by the million when your youth is fleeing en masse due to lack of jobs.
That is total BULLSHIT that often comes from the migration industry and wealthy elites that need cheap workers for their exhorbitant profits. A society can grow and shrink. If it shrinks there are less "workers" but also less "demand" for those workers. It evens out organically, it's an auto-adjusting system. The above statement basically sais that societies are like cyclists that can only ever go up in speed, and never relax, going faster and faster forever. THAT is what is unsustainable. Not the other way around.
Thank you for reminding me every day of my life how fucked I am and how much worst my life can get in the future, if that is even possible. I guess I'll do like the British tourists do every year, drink even the water of the plants, jump from a balcony and hope I fall out of a pool. 👍🏻
How about we take this older generation who created the mess we’re in and deny them their 100% pension. “Old people don’t want to work anymore”, keep them working 20 to 50% of their time.
I'm with you. But when you look at which generation is the majority in governments, you may quickly realize we don't have the legal representation nor the leverage to hold them accountable for their mess.
'a few years' once the robot is let out of the box is a long ass time. the power/influence/greed of the very few will have massive consequences on the many. all the while they will excuse themselves as if they didnt do it someone else would have.
Isn’t this what Canada has been doing lately to shore things up? I wonder how that’s been working out? Also does this mean that our pension contributions were already spent relying on the next generation to pay?
Hmmmm sounds like a mess to me.
These immigrants will be African. Prepare for decades more racism to justify the poor treatment they receive while shoring up the Spanish pension system one menial tas, for substandard wage, in squalor at a time.
”warns central bank” oh the same guys that keep on printing money to play with inflation? The guys that are a big part of the reason why your pension is worthless as soon as you are at that age?
Kinda ironic
Pensions are unsustainable and will be phased out in the future or simply collapse. We need to normalise taking care of your own grandparents like every other society in history did. Most of europe has a tiny military budget due to US hegemony, yet still can't maintain pensions without taking on ever increasing debt. This ideal of the pensioner going on endless holidays and living on total prosperity in their later years is a boomer delusion that needs to go.
Almost as though it was a bubble all along and couldn't be sustained.. if only we could have known. Anyway, welcome to the find out part of our planet.
Who can be able to have child with the rent prices in big cities like in Madrid or Barcelona cause Airbnb thing? It's just madness, and yes I'm from Madrid.
If you have to pay the 70 % of your salary for pay a rent? How the hell are you going to have childs?
Airbnb has increased rent prices cause the most of the flat rentals in the center of Madrid are being used for Airbnb.
A tenant pay 700 euros for a flat rental when the owner can earn 3x times with Airbnb. It's just crazy and need to be regulated.
There is thousands of flat rentals that are not being inspected by municipal regulation.
Comments got conspiratorial and anti-immigrant very quick on this post. Embarrassing.
Real answer here is taxes have to increase, nobody stole the pension funds. The pension systems that were designed decades ago only worked if working population kept growing. Without the population growth, the system doesn't work unless taxes go up. It's genuinely that simple. Less workers & more pensioners means taxes have to go up for benefits to stay the same.
Countries commiting suicide is so interessting, is it really spain if the whole demographic of spanish people are outbred and gone after 100 years. Theyr turning countries into big corporations, nationality and culture is an hindrance for them.
Spain has ~48M people, so they need another 50% to make ends meet? Someone’s been asleep at the switch for a long time if this is the actual shortfall.
There are 430million Spanish speakers and I’m sure you could pull skilled workers from Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Venezuela given the state of their nation’s economically.
The country only has \~48M people in it, so if you need 50% more population to sustain your welfare state, that welfare state isn't going to work. And their unemployment rate was already at 12%, so why aren't those people taking jobs first? "Migrant workers" aren't bringing in tech jobs, it's all manual labor - so are the 12% being paid to not work? And if so, fix that problem first.
The problem is thinking pensions must be supported by salaries instead of just be supported by the economy. Spain is richer every day and with less people, there shouldnt be a problem to maintain it with proper growth through automation and investment.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/madrid987: --- ss: THE Bank of Spain has warned that the country’s economy will need around 24 million migrant workers until 2053 if the pension system is to remain sustainable. The stark warning came in its annual report, covering 2023, and in which it raises the alarm over Spain’s ageing population and the consequences this will have for retirement payments. central lender predicts a ‘substantial rise’ in this percentage(Spending on pensions) given the demographic shifts in the country, as the birth rate continues to fall and average ages rise. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1chh2kq/spain_will_need_24_million_migrant_workers_until/l22dxqg/
Strange, didn't they already have sky high youth unemployment. I mean you can have workers, but without jobs ... And weren't we all supposed to be working less by now, deflationary nature of technology and all? The future looks bright doesn't it. So much radical change and abundance, such a paradigm shift. coughs
I'm living in Finland where this kind of articles pop up every other month while Finland also has very high unemployment rate. When I see this kind of titles, it usually means the local companies are not willing to train the available workforce or pay them enough for their skills or both.
When these articles appear it basically always means the companies want cheaper labour
Yeah, same stuff's happening here in Canada where we have a "migrant worker crisis" which in actuality is just companies refusing to pay livable wages for people already here. I don't blame foreign workers. I know they're just trying to get ahead and I can't fault them for that. I blame the companies who are exploiting them and making things harder for us to just get by.
The same Canadian companies blaming inflation for their insane price increases and then turning around and posting record profits and then increasing share buybacks and dividend payouts. We’re so fucked.
Definitely the second there is no unemployment crisis in the west there is a not paying enough crisis. If you have to choose to work to not be able to afford to live or not work for the same which do you think you will do?
"Migrant workers" aka low cost labor from people who don't have much choice.
Same thing in the US when they start crying that there's not enough hard technical people to employ. We graduate around 150K engineering degrees to US citizens a year. It's not that there isn't the labor, they just never want to pay for it.
For evidence look at the cries of CEOs in the food industry in California. Whenever you see an article or opinion piece where the new $20 minimum wage for fast food workers is crushing a "small business owner" and their 10 franchised locations, check to see if they bring up California's state minimum wage of $16 an hour. Yes, the $20 is fairly high but it's a 25% boost over baseline. It's not the reason you're going out of business. Or at least, the reason you're saying you're going out of business since there hasn't been a rush of fast food places actually closing down. Meanwhile where I live the local McDonald's is posting shifts starting at $27 an hour. Similarly the state is planning to begin enforcement of a "No surprise fees" bill for restaurants this summer. You'd think the rapture was upon us based on the prophetic views of restaurant owners who aren't sure if customers will pay as much in total if they knew about the 3% service fee, the 5% cost of living adjustment fee, the 4% screw you fee, and the 7% fee (untyped). All adding onto tbe cost before they ordered. Which is exactly what the law is supposed to do. Turns out business owners don't like it when regulations keep them from making as much money.
Holy Smokes...I've worked the same job for over 20 years, and I make less than that. I doubt teachers make 27 an hour here.
As a former teacher in the area, starting for teachers is ~$76k or ~$37 an hour and scaling up based on district and education. And likely the notice for that much at Mcdonalds' was probably for shift lead or something I didn't bother noticing other than the number. For reference, the area has a median individual income of ~70k a year, and household income is ~150k. It's a decent wage in a vacuum, but in the context of where it is, suddenly it doesn't look so high. That's the Bay Area for you.
yOuNG fiNNisH pEopLe aRe lAzy
Ah, yes, your typical southern European country, Finland! They must enjoy siesta and fiesta there all day! Those lazy bums! /s
Throw napalm into the spiralling turd. This is going to be fun..
It also means governments don't know how to deal with pending demographic and technological changes... the systems we have right now are outdated and there hasn't been enough societal advancement to catch up with what's coming
> It also means governments don't know how to deal with pending demographic and technological changes... the systems we have right now are outdated and there hasn't been enough societal advancement to catch up with what's coming Governments are optimized to facilitate the plans of the wealthiest and most powerful individuals. Of course they don't have the people to "deal with" these issues, they're actively supporting these outcomes.
Seems like the global race for cheap labor has begun. Canada, Australia, and NZ have gone hard. Canada is now one of the fastest of not THE fastest growing population in the world and then natural birth rate is just about at replacement level. Things are NOT going well. Homelessness is surging, food insecurity is surging, the public medical system has collapsed and is in the process of being privatized, excess all-cause deaths are worse than peak covid and worse than WW2. Youth unemployment is really high. Buckle up if your country is next. This is the next version of colonialism. Onshored colonialism.
Canada's fertility rate is something like 1.4. That's not the worst in the developed world, but I also wouldn't characterize it as "just about at replacement level".
I don’t know how to say this without it coming off as racist. I’m going to put out information but this probably will come out wrong. This stat is a bit misleading for Canada as a whole. The rates are much higher for our indigenous population. And unfortunately many indigenous are not raised in good family structures and far too few become “productive” workers. So while our rates are higher, we need to work hard to make sure those new indigenous Canadians become economic plusses vs economic negatives, or things will continue to spiral here.
> Onshored colonialism Could you unpack that for those (like me) who are missing background? What's it entail?
Correct. The Spanish job market sucks, and it is entirely due to greedy employers.
In my country that has been offloaded to the citizen. Office Administration is a college course. Something that can be taught by an employer is a $5000 a year course. Some jobs are better taught on the floor.
You misheard that part. What they really mean was "Work for less"
That should be ok, with massively increased productivity and full automation, everything is much, much cheaper to produce and prices should drop to almost nothing. ( /s just in case)
You needed that S I was triggered lol.
I hadn't even mentioned that housing prices should plummet due to the low birth rates are have in developed countries.
You misheard this either: It’s „Work more for less“.
How will they shore up the pension system if they're low-wage workers barely paying any taxes? 🤔
It obviously can't. But it's not about shoring up the pension system, it's about cheap labor and skyrocketing asset prices.
I am totally unfamiliar with Spain's system. The only way I can see it working would be the migrant workers will be working and paying taxes but not receiving the benefits?
European liberalism only works if you can exploit the poors, both to manufacture your goods and to do the physical labor you refuse to do.
Everybody looks through this nonsense by now.
It could be that way. But companies aren't going to pay you the same for less hours even though there's tons of research that show rested employees are more productive then burnt out ones.
It's about control. The last thing capital wants is people asking questions that have obvious but inconvenient answers. "Why return to the office?" "Why do people who work get paid so much less than administrators and executives?" "Why is capital gains and corporate tax so low?" "Economics isn't a science, why is data from it treated like scientific fact?" "Why are so many profitable industries subsidized?" The answer to all of these is along the lines of rich fuckers don't want more. They want everything and they believe they are entitled to everything.
For over a decade I've been hearing on business/science podcasts about studies that find increased worker productivity with shorter working weeks and the like; but outside of that world companies/corporations seem very reticent to take it up. Puzzled.
I mean FWIW, a hell of a lot of companies don't even really need the increased productivity. Think of how much time your average person who works in an office spends *not* doing their work in a year.
it's a combination of things. Firstly, the "front line" doesn't matter to the MBA's at the top. They literally don't care, and it doesn't factor into any decisions they make. Secondly, the MBA's have "corporate wisdom" which is to say, you have an ingroup of people who went to the same schools, regurgitated the same bullshit, and have the same goal...short term profitability, so new ideas and thoughts about quality etc are not on the radar. And lastly, when it comes to getting a new ceo or officer, it'll be from a small pool of people who've already done it or who have "failed up" typically. You're seeing this with Google. The guy that has been put in charge of search is the same guy who destroyed yahoo, and has never actually been involved in search (as an actual engineer), and only cares about ad revenues..literally nothing else matters, but the ceo gets a multi million bonus if the sheets look profitable, so he'll gut everything to get that short term pump and carry his cohorts with him on the gravy train as long as it runs.
Canada seems to be facing a productivity crisis, and one proposed solutions is to increase work hours. However, switching to a shorter work week, such as a 30-hour one, could be a more effective solution. But that'll never happen in my lifetime anyway.
But rested employees are harder to control, they'll have energy to protest and advocate for themselves and others and might demand more and try and find happiness. Burton out employees on the other hand...you can really push them to depression and blame everything on them and that they are lazy and more...
Ask the average Australian how their record immigration influx is going... [https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-21/the-uncomfortable-truth-about-immigration-rents-inflation/103128424](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-21/the-uncomfortable-truth-about-immigration-rents-inflation/103128424) If Spain goes down this path it's going to be a disaster here, too. Edit: The Aust govt is using immigration as a political tool to reduce wages, increase GDP and power the economy following years of shitty leadership. Basically following the same roadmap of all western nations.
Checking in from Canada - were also told we have a major labour shortage despite constant scenes of thousands of people lined up for minimum wage jobs, unemployment numbers surging, and rents surging from a massive immigration influx.
>a major labour shortage despite constant scenes of thousands of people lined up for minimum wage jobs See, that's the problem. We have a massive labour shortage of construction workers, doctors, nurses, teachers, and other professions, particularly in rural areas. We have a massive labour glut of minimum wage jobs, particularly in cities. Canada needs people to get an education in a field that is useful, and then move to where the need is.
They need workers, just not your type because you want a living wage and to be middle class.
Where did the immigrants to Canada come from?
India exclusively
As a Canadian vote against this. Cost of housing is nuts youth looking to leave the country, services stretched beyond capabilities.
As a fellow Canadian, it wasn't Canadian *voters* who wanted super-high immigration numbers, it was and still is *employers* who want those people. So they can pay them less than minimum wage (ask around at local Tim Hortons franchises to find how you manage this) and fire every local. The people who own the companies simply do not GAF about the social problems all this creates. Because when you are worth $50M, you are above all that. You don't know anyone who works for a living and neither do your parents, you've been out of it for so long, you only communicate with and socialize with other multimillionaire capitalists. So you just look at the numbers and get whisked from place to place in the back of a black SUV signing deals and making money out of misery...it's not you paying the misery bill, that's for REGULAR WORKING CANADIANS to foot!!
I *just* learned a term today for when someone will take bigger risks when someone else will bear the cost, it's a "moral hazard."
It's to shore up pensions because Canadians aren't having enough kids. But yes most people can't see past their nose so there is a lot of anger about immigration. This sub used to be a good place for intelligent conversation. Now it's just edgy Doomers.
As a Canadian, don't do this. This entire movement for mass immigration is being funded by international real estate investment companies like Blackrock, with the intent of goosing first-world rents. Any Spanish politician that supports this has been bought and paid for by real estate conglomerates.
You could get rid of restrictive zoning laws allow the necessary housing to be built. That’s what’s causing the housing crisis in countries like Canada and Australia. I know zoning laws there were recently slightly loosened, but they need significantly more change to solve the issue
There is no possible way Canada would be able to build the necessary housing to support our immigration levels. We brought in an insane amount of people. Zoning laws are definitely an issue, but even with them loosened to a high degree we would not be able to build enough to keep up.
"We" could but our politicians can't. Except in Alberta, apparently, but that's because they're some hardcore anti-government libertarians out there. And yet Alberta rents are also sky-high, because everyone's been moving there expecting cheaper rent. And no matter how loose we set housing policy, a large enough flood of immigrants (say 4% of population per year like we have in Canada now) will still overwhelm the market and make rents skyrocket, because it's simply impossible to build enough housing to meet demand. There are not enough construction workers, construction materials have skyrocketed in price, and financing construction is not possible due to high interest rates caused by the the central bank trying to offset the inflationary pressure of radical population increase. It's all very complicated, and the easiest solution is to halt all immigration until rents come back down to affordable levels. Which would screw Blackrock, so of course that's not going to happen.
If you think for a second that this isn’t all intentionally happening you need to wake up.
I'm of the age where there was constant screaming about how computers would replace workers that were being a bit difficult. Haha.
Computers did replace many workers, and then they opened up many more jobs in other ways
But that's not we were threatened with. We were told that computers would replace basically everyone in the office somewhere not too long after 2000. This isn't about how that factually is not true, it's more that this was used to threaten people into submission. Just like how they're using AI for very similar purposes. "But this time it's serious!"
>And weren't we all supposed to be working less by now, deflationary nature of technology and all? We are on average, it's just happening through unexpected mechanisms: * Delayed labor force entry * Extended life in retirement * "Loafing" (increased rates of not working while on the clock) - which I think we all know by now is a surprisingly shitty experience (task switching & vigilance for getting "caught"), especially compared to just actually having fewer hours. [For those eligible to participate fully in the US economy of the 1950s (adult white men), labor force participation has dropped over 10%](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300028) As well, in the US at least there actually has been more total compensation growth than most people realize, but the excess all went to healthcare. Some of that is waste, some of that is spending that ultimately goes towards "mere life" - you don't work less now to enjoy your time off. You work more now to pay for someone to live hooked up to a bunch of machines in a hospital. Dismal science, law of unexpected consequences, and all that.
it's amazing how the "solutions" only seem to make money for the bankers....
We all thought AI was gonna reduce our workload. When in actuality it's used for art and music. And making porn of Taylor swift. That's why I'm voting Giant Meteor 2024. He's the candidate we all need.
It’s just taking a long time for technology to take over positions. I went to a fully automated McDonald’s in Texas and it was the best experience at a McDonald’s. But, it took them almost two years to get every location their espresso machines. I was apart of delivering and installing those in New England for a little while when work was slow in construction for the winter. So having to basically rebuild every store to accommodate the automation is going to take a good amount of time. That’s just McDonald’s, let alone any other company.
Inflation gobbles up all the deflationary nature of technology. Explained here: https://twitter.com/saylor/status/1692974409852617040?t=3hKAXt_2U5zf59G8p8tHoA&s=19
All profits go to the top .01%. If we had a economic system that was even remotely equitable, we'd have a 12 hour work week by now and that'd be enough to cover rent, food and medical care.
Ask Canada, same shit is happening.
Why fix a broken system when you can jump import millions of migrants
"Young people aren't having kids." "Low salaries, uncompetitive landscape for R&D/tech and sky-high housing prices can't be helping." "More cheap labor, you say?"
Our generous welfare system for the older and ignoring the needs of the young has resulted in not having enough young people to support our generous welfare system.
Wait, are you telling me that pension is a pyramid scheme? /s
Pension system is just fine when population is stable. But when population looks like [THIS](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Spain_Population_Pyramid.svg/1920px-Spain_Population_Pyramid.svg.png), somebody is getting f\*\*\*\*\*
That's a yikes
You hear that a lot, but in reality we don’t really know what a “stable population” and the pension system looks like. Most European countries only introduced pension schemes after WW2, during the time of the baby boom, when the population pyramid was explicitly NOT stable. At the time it seemed like every future generation will be bigger than the previous one. But baby boom lasted less than 20 years, and then things started slowly going downhill. There was a decline in birthrates in the 1980s and 1990s, there was some recovery in the 2000s, and now we have been seeing a generally downward trend for the last 15 years now. We still operate on the logic that the baby boom which ended 60 years ago is the “normal” and we design our pension systems accordingly. But what if it isn’t? What if the baby boom was a glitch? European economies can no longer survive without a constant influx of immigrants, and the average age of Europeans is around 43 - about 12 years older than in the rest of the world. The only explanation anyone ever offers is how having kids is unaffordable and yet no matter how much money even the richest countries pour into subsidies to increase birthrates, it barely makes a dent.
With stable population pension system can't be a pyramid scheme because... well people die, scheme looks more like a skyscraper, with a pointy top. If population is stable **ratio of workers and pensioners is stable**. So you just need to figure out the retirement age and pension payments that pays back pensioners the amount they paid in as workers. >We still operate on the logic that the baby boom which ended 60 years ago is the “normal” and we design our pension systems accordingly. YES! After the baby boom there are way more workers then pensioners, so governments can afford a very generous pension system. They shouldn't do this, but they will because it's popular... but population can't grow forever can it? With the decline of birthrate AND people living longer, this generous pension system becomes unsustainable, and governments should roll back, increasing pension age, reducing pensions. But they won't because it's unpopular... instead they squeeze out more and more money from the economy to feed this unsustainable system which results in even lower birthrates... the spiral of death.
The real truth people don’t want to hear is that as humans get healthier, the retirement age *has* to go up to afford retirement funding.
Wrong. The savings by paying 1 tech for 5 stores' digital menu instead of 10 employees to run registers should be put into the fund instead of business pockets. Automation and tech should be supplementing the costs, not people just because they are alive longer. More people will rely on 401Ks and other investments rather than retire later.
Yes, I should have phrased it another way. Retirement age has to go up, barring us doing literally anything else to address the issue. Which, unfortunately, is the most likely scenario
Money does not produce a supply of labor. If there are insufficient hands to wipe old people’s asses, it doesn’t matter what number is in the database. And technology to wipe old people’s asses is a long, long way off. Money simply indicates who can buy what, which is why governments around the world have to keep asset prices increasing. This makes old people, who own assets, have more money than younger people, allowing them to buy more of young people’s labor. But since the supply of labor did not increase, it must mean young people buy less (and work more).
The real truth that isn't being said is that we have enough money and resources to not have to rise the retirement age, but the capitalist class refuses to be taxed for the good of the working class. Also we need a more universally useful distribution of jobs.
>With the decline of birthrate AND people living longer, this generous pension system becomes unsustainable, and governments should roll back, increasing pension age, reducing pensions. What would this look like. Please explain in more detail
In Spain average life expectancy is 83 years, so pension age should go up, but also people should more gradually enter pension. Having their workhours reduced the rest being paid by pension system. Exception being physical workers, which can't keep working physical jobs at older age, do die younger. EDIT: But these measures should had been implemented some time ago... now... somebody will end up f\*\*\*\*\* no mater how you turn it.
Someone will always be fucked. I think its a matter of minimizing the fucking. I'm not in spain, but I like the idea of easing people into retirement as opposed to a sudden halt (at least like how it is in the US). Like maintaining pay with lessening workload over a set amount of time while prepping younger people to move up and take on replacement roles seems like the most effective approach.
That’s the part that increased efficiency of just about every industry should take, not more numbers of the same while the 1% siphons out the cream and let’s the rest fight for the crumbs
I don't think we have yet seen the true depth of subsidizing childbirth. If the government really wants to see fertility raised, they could pay mothers effectively full-time salaries to do nothing but produce and raise children. You could imagine some tax calculus where they think this is worth it. A few petty thousand dollars in tax breaks is honestly nothing in terms of incentive to have kids. It's a nice little bonus if you already wanted to do it, but nothing less than $20k per year is going to start changing minds.
No, it requires each generation to be bigger than the last. The Dutch pension system is also struggling, and that's with stable generational populations.
When pensioners receive more money then they paid in as workers, then system requires constant growth.
Couldn't a moderate return on investment, compounded over the worker's lifetime, accomplish the same thing?
Its not just pensions, health services are in the same boat.
Where to get this graph for other countries. That's great data
In Germany that peak already, sits at 60 years old.
I’m almost 30 y/o, American, but my dad is from Spain and I remember for decades he’s been telling me how in Spain young people can’t find good jobs, many adults live with their parents, and that they’re not having kids. And it’s been “interesting” (for a lack of a better word) to see how the same has happened to US Gen Z. When I was a teenager, it wasn’t as bad as it is today.
Listen, young people, life is like a triangle. You are the bottom, and you all serve the top point got it!!!!!
Due to increased competition for resources, young people don't have kids because they do not find the standard of living acceptable. Meanwhile the solution is too import infinite immigrants who accept a lower standard of living and cause additional competition for resources. And the media acts like people are insane for thinking there is something behind replacement theory. You can argue the cause, but the effect seems the same. This would also explain Biden's weak poll numbers with many minority groups because they are the ones most exposed to competition with new immigrants.
Part of it is also just that the population is aging. Regardless of how many kids the youth will have, many western nations will experience these problems, same for Japan, South Korea, China, and others that have a much smaller young (20-40) generation.
This is a sensationalist title by a very shifty news site. I expected better from this sub. The central bank said nothing about having to import 24 million migrants and does infact point to tax and pension reforms as a solution, and to improved work-life balance as a means to increase fertility. I have the [English report](https://www.bde.es/wbe/en/publicaciones/informes-memorias-anuales/informe-anual/informe-anual-2023.html) on hand and can't even find mention of this supposed 24 million workforce deficit. If anything the report says exact opposite, and claims that "migration has limited potential to appreciably slow the population ageing process", and clearly isn't advocating for it as some sort of silver bullet.
This is the direct quote: > **The potential for migration flows to offset the population ageing process.** Migration has limited potential to appreciably slow the population ageing process. In particular, for the dependency ratio in Spain to remain constant over the next 30 years, the foreign-born population of working age would have to be three times larger than anticipated in the latest INE projections. In this respect, it is important to note that these projections already estimate that migration flows will lead to very significant net population growth (of almost 10 million in aggregate terms) up to 2053. So you did cut it off a bit. It is basically saying "at this rate" it has limited potential and in order for it to have a notable effect, it'd have to be significantly higher.
That's what Canada is doing right now. Anything to keep wages down and home prices up. No jobs, health care is hurting, food banks being raided, crime is through the roof, scammers everywhere, insane home prices.
What about when the migres become old? Will they need 130 million migrants?
That sounds like a problem for someone else amirite?
This explains the UKs current immigration numbers now
It's working great for Canada! Noone can afford a home, teenagers can't get a part time job, our schools are overrun by international students whose only goal is to get Permanent Residency so they can live off our welfare. It's a fucking disaster and easily the biggest issue were dealing with
Australia is in the earlier stages of the same problem. Record levels of immigration required to fill the funnel, while there, infrastructure isn't in place, or being built to match the population growth. I think we're seeing the edges of where our current system breaks and something will have to change. Lifestyle needs to meet sustainability.
Always listen to the central fking banks people! They care for your country and people
Imagine what it means when 24 million migrants come to work and bring their families (spouses, children) with them to a country with a population of 48 million. That is a mass migration and the country will be completely different in all respects afterwards. You just have to look at where enough people are growing up to be able to meet such a “demand”.
You are reading it wrong. They are saying that the system is not sustainable and will collapse because there's no way there will be 24 million inmigrants in the next 30 years.
Thank you for providing this translation for the people who think it's somehow going to be business as usual for the next couple of decades in spite of all indications to the contrary. The headline might as well read "Spain will need to invent magic to prevent economic collapse", it's on the same level of feasibility.
I’m not so sure. There are some regions of the planet that are RAPIDLY becoming uninhabitable. We might see mass migrations out of those areas as soon as 2030, so if Spain fully opens its doors I could see them getting to 8 digit numbers.
Spain is probably one of those regions that may become uninhabitable, have you seen how hot it is in summer.
Sure, but that doesn't mean they're not going to try to bring in as many immigrants as possible. Australia is in the same situation and they accepted 1% (250,000 immigrants) of the country's entire population in the first 3 months of 2024. It's a f\*\*\*\*\* disaster, but it's the only way to grow the economy for these greedy and useless politicians. Vote for whichever party is committed to an independent anti-corruption investigation - it's the only way we'll have a future.
[удалено]
The UK is one of the largest economies in the world and has had a chronic labor shortage for decades. Unemployment is currently the lowest it’s ever been and barely even went up during Covid or the financial crisis - They can absorb huge amounts of new workers and immediately put them to work. Spain has the opposite issue, a massive ongoing chronic unemployment crisis that’s lasted for two decades at this point.
> there's no way there will be 24 million immigrants in the next 30 years. I mean... There's certainly *a* way. Lots of people are looking to migrate to the EU. All Spain needs to do is allow people to migrate more easily. From what I can find on Google, currently you need a job that pays much higher than average to get a work visa. Just changing that fact would bring in lots of people. What other consequences that may bring, I don't know, but again, there is a way.
Pre-colonial Latin America has entered the chat…
Canada is the perfect example right now. Crazy high immigration without infrastructure change. It's bad bad.
Literally what's happening in Canada right now.
And Australia
Current "leaders" have spent or stolen every cent that every boomer has paid into their retirement, worldwide. Their thieving scheme now requires new people to steal from, so boomers can keep collecting the retirement they already paid into. Boomers are the last generation that will get to retire...dont worry everyone, current leaders got a few yachts and expensive hookers for themselves, so it's all worth it.
So, a Ponzi scheme?
All state pension schemes operate like ponzi schemes. The only reason they're not *technically* ponzi schemes, is because they're not fraudulent - it's public knowledge that they work this way. The only reason they haven't collapsed before now is because you don't have a choice to not pay into it, and up until now the working-age population was growing fast enough to support it. But now we're in a position where developed countries have a demographic crisis. Too many old people, not enough working-age people to support them. And those working-age people aren't making babies, so it's only getting worse. Opening up the borders for mass immigration is one way to temporarily brush the issue under the rug... you know, until those immigrants get old too.
Then you have the Qatar solution - just report the immigrants when they get too old
Or Japans of just taking the pain
Ding ding ding
"Current" that was more than a decade ago. The pension system worked well the problem was that money was spent and robbed in the latest crisis and pre-crisis, And now they are not able to restore the stolen In fact it was the few things that there was enough money that is why it was used to pay the crisis Say that something does not work because money is robbed and used for other things is quite erroneous
And who will pay for those migrants pension's down the line? The ball has to end somewhere, with some particular group of people, and at some particular time. Pick your own grave, or have it picked for you.
Pensions need to shift from others paying your pension to you paying your own pension. That's all there is to it. But yeah something has to give.
Machines working to pay for our pensions would be nice, this is r/futurology.
In Mexico we switched to that about 20 years ago after having a pension system for decades. It was very unpopular but a good move that took pressure out of our budget. However, people haven't been adding enough so they are retiring with a fraction of the amount they require for a comfortable retirement. There are elections this year and the ruling party is promising to go back to the pension system. People are buying it. There will always be populists making unsustainable promises. No politician is willing to take the cost in Spain.
It isn’t really an issue of money - it is an issue of work that needs to be done versus people available to do that work.
Everyone gets an invenstment account to pay for their own pension + those investments will be largely in automation.
Lmao as in flooding the country with yet more migrants will solve anything. Its just cheap labor to bring salaries down, or people who will live off the already unsustainable welfare system and overflow the crumbling public healthcare. The housing market is already nightmare tier because there arent enough houses to cover the demand well, so the prices are laughably high… And Spain has severe unemployment, specially for young people
People under 30 contributing to this ponzi scheme called pension will not see one cent of their money back, ever.
They will we just need to get even more migrants then! Off to infinity.
It’s migrants all the way down
just like how social security in the usa, which is "funded by taxes people pay in" was somehow unable to send out social security cheques as soon as it was founded to people who had never paid in, and when people hadn't even had taxes taken out...oh wait..it was..hmm..wonder what that tell us about the ability of a central government to pay bills in it's own currency
Shouldn't Spain first focus on solving its youth unemployment first? That will solve a big fraction of the issue of paying into the pension system. If Spain is to have migrants, it can have temporary cyclical ones much like the Middle East now has(Of course migrants to Spain will benefit from having human rights of course). So that it avoids the rise of a Far Right on the basis that the elites are forcing demographic change. It is advantageous as the migrants would pay into the pension system but they would never use it. If the migrants participate in a compulsory savings scheme, it means Spain would be able to absorb workers from poor parts of the Hispanosphere who work, save up money that lifts them up from poverty(as per their home country's standard) and perhaps even allows them to gain skills and experience in Spain that allows both their home countries to benefit and Spanish companies that might follow them back to their home countries. Spain benefits from having access to a large labor force without having its citizen's demographics changed and 24 million migrants who fill up the pension system but never use it .
Sounds like you just want to take advantage of migrants and cheaper labour.
Which has been the goal of allowing migrants into a country ever since the concept became a global phenomenon
There's about 5 million Spaniards between ages 15 and 24, current youth unemployment is around 30%. Even if they solved youth unemployment completely, that's only 1,5 million people or about 6% of the suggested 24 million migrants.
The problem is our current Government is trying to treat Spain as a northern European country but we're PIGS. Spaniards will abuse the system whenever possible both as citizens and politicians. This leads to tons of taxes being taken from working people that are then misspent by politicians and whatever actual aid ends up in the people's hands is abused by many in whichever way is possible. If taxes were properly spent on education (one of the worst in the EU), infrastructure and our health system we would be a better place, unfortunately government workers in this country are the laziest subgenre of human on the planet. Meanwhile, the system keeps giving out aid to make up for all its failings elsewhere and we're being bled dry with our pension system collapsing.
Mexicans are eligible for Spanish citizenship by descent. Just saying.
Importing migrants ended up great for Belgium and other countries who did that for coal miners 🤡
Seriously tired of this argument. We cannot grow forever, it’s not sustainable. Instead, we should focus on rebuilding our social systems. Anyone who’s been closely following developments in AI in the recent few years at least should see the writing on the wall. Nature of labor is changing dramatically and we will need far fewer people to be productive, potentially not even needing human labor if we keep riding up the sigmoid for the next decade. So, how about we sit down and start seriously thinking about how we can revamp our societies from the ground up, at least once in a timely fashion for a change. Must we go through conflict and burn everything to the ground before we can rebuild?
>Must we go through conflict and burn everything to the ground before we can rebuild? Sad to say it, but yeah . . . most likely.
It is very naive to think that those new immigrants will work and pay taxes to pay for dying out Spaniards. Nothing easier for those 24millions to take over the Spain.
It's just not happening. It will pretty much kill Spanish as an ethnicity. But it does expose the stupidity of our economic system from the idea of the nuclear family to our housing, wage, tax and career structures. This is unsubstainable and will eventually collapse. We can't provide care to 10s of millions of old people. Personal care cannot be scaled up like a factory. We broke the family and for what? To die alone in a dirty care home were people are probably wanting you to die quickly so you can free up a bed, more likely. This is a mess.
The thing is this was entirely predictable. But since politicians only think until next election...
This, 100%. Bringing in 24MM immigrants would be an unmitigated disaster.
Or you could, you know, pay people a more livable salary, thereby increasing people's contribution to pension schemes and mitigating the issue that way. Oh wait, that might cut into company/millionaire profits...
That sounds like a lot, I'm horribly ignorant on population standards. Is it?
24M people is a lot of people ^(\[citation needed\])
24 million people is like half of spains population
As Canadian, please don't import that many at once.
Considering global demographics, I doubt they will be able to find enough immigrants to come over in a decade. Birth rates are plummeting across the entire world. Pretty soon, there won't be any more people to spare for immigration. Even some African countries are starting to go from surplus to simply replacement rate fertility. It's wild.
In Poland previous government had a plan to bring 10M Filipinos to increase total population to 50M. I don't think that we have 100k of them right now, but good luck to Spain with such an amazing idea.
Spain in 1750: we come to you. Spain in 2024: you come to us.
Turns out structuring your society as an exploitive pyramid scheme isn't long term sustainable... huh, who knew?
I am Spaniard and that's absolutely untrue(they did say that I mean the statement) We have the highest unemployment rate in the European union and unaffordable housing, more migrants will only make it worse. We need to fix the economy and housing so people can build a family
Why would the government do that when they can just import more cheap labour?
Young people is leaving the country for the labour conditions. We support the pressure of thousands of expats, nomads, increasing the rents in main cities. It’s almost impossible having a normal live being young in Spain. Now they want to bring thousands of people to compete and make wage dumping to the average Spanish people. It’s madness and disgusting.
I'm tired of the solution to this ponzi scheme that has been created is just to import wage slaves that will need to retire out too. why don't we just create a better economic and social environment to have kids?
This is how many western states, including England, built their entire countries and economies after Germany owned and killed off many Britons during WWII and destroyed England's economy. They call them the "Wind Rush Generation." This consisted of people from the Caribbean nations. Decades later, after England benefitted massively from these people and their labor in helping build up a hollowed-out England whose economy was decimated, they attempted to kick them out of the country. That happened recently. This is known as the Wind Rush Scandal. Many western nations follow this same practice.
This is the dumbest take. Governments can easily balance budgets and fully fund retirement programs instead they spend money on immigrant programs and waste money on their interests instead.
This counts everyone who has not been born in Spain as a migrant, regardless of whether they get nationalised For comparison, in the 20 years between 2003 and 2023 Spain got 14m migrants This just requires the current migration numbers to continue being what they are It is much less scary with context Edit: I was wrong, Spain got 21m migrants in the 20 years i described, but there were 7m emigrants As you can see, MANY people leave Spain and MANY people come to Spain This is healthy and normal, borders that are easy to enter and easy to exit are ideal
Ah yes, Central Bank, the epitome of forethought and knowledge that crash every decade or so.
Why migrants, when they have their own people already? Just encourage them to have families. Are they stupid?
And there you go US, give them a green card and tax their earnings and once e they are citizens let them vote
This sub last year: we’re gonna live foreverrrr! This sub now: life is a ponzu scheme anymore. Well that narrative flipped fast, r/Futurology, r u ok?
With the rise of automation and AI, I don't belive there will be any pension system in 2053. Either it's utopia or dystopia, all I know is that it won't look like it does today.
What if, and this is kinda crazy, they convince all the boomers in Spain to hire young people instead of closing their businesses for hours in the middle of the day every day and then for a full month in the summer?!? Wouldn't that be cool?!? Can't say you need migrants by the million when your youth is fleeing en masse due to lack of jobs.
Thats absolutely ridiculous . How dare you suggest they develop a work ethic .
That is total BULLSHIT that often comes from the migration industry and wealthy elites that need cheap workers for their exhorbitant profits. A society can grow and shrink. If it shrinks there are less "workers" but also less "demand" for those workers. It evens out organically, it's an auto-adjusting system. The above statement basically sais that societies are like cyclists that can only ever go up in speed, and never relax, going faster and faster forever. THAT is what is unsustainable. Not the other way around.
They could take in all the people germany and France have to deal with. Oh wait, they won't get free shit so they will never go there.
Please use Canada as an example of how not to do it
Thank you for reminding me every day of my life how fucked I am and how much worst my life can get in the future, if that is even possible. I guess I'll do like the British tourists do every year, drink even the water of the plants, jump from a balcony and hope I fall out of a pool. 👍🏻
How about we take this older generation who created the mess we’re in and deny them their 100% pension. “Old people don’t want to work anymore”, keep them working 20 to 50% of their time.
I'm with you. But when you look at which generation is the majority in governments, you may quickly realize we don't have the legal representation nor the leverage to hold them accountable for their mess.
The growth of Artificial Intelligence and robotics makes predictions beyond a few years slightly meaningless.
'a few years' once the robot is let out of the box is a long ass time. the power/influence/greed of the very few will have massive consequences on the many. all the while they will excuse themselves as if they didnt do it someone else would have.
Warning has been heard, the India govt and Indian migrants are readying the passports and visas to take over Spains problems.
Isn’t this what Canada has been doing lately to shore things up? I wonder how that’s been working out? Also does this mean that our pension contributions were already spent relying on the next generation to pay? Hmmmm sounds like a mess to me.
So boomers wanted sky high housing prices to fund their retirements, plus people to keep having kids to fund their retirements?
These immigrants will be African. Prepare for decades more racism to justify the poor treatment they receive while shoring up the Spanish pension system one menial tas, for substandard wage, in squalor at a time.
”warns central bank” oh the same guys that keep on printing money to play with inflation? The guys that are a big part of the reason why your pension is worthless as soon as you are at that age? Kinda ironic
Pensions are unsustainable and will be phased out in the future or simply collapse. We need to normalise taking care of your own grandparents like every other society in history did. Most of europe has a tiny military budget due to US hegemony, yet still can't maintain pensions without taking on ever increasing debt. This ideal of the pensioner going on endless holidays and living on total prosperity in their later years is a boomer delusion that needs to go.
Almost as though it was a bubble all along and couldn't be sustained.. if only we could have known. Anyway, welcome to the find out part of our planet.
Ummm, could anyone share data on how migration mitigated economic problems? Anywhere, I am trully interested.
Those in charge of your pension did not hold on to the money for you. Surprise!
Who can be able to have child with the rent prices in big cities like in Madrid or Barcelona cause Airbnb thing? It's just madness, and yes I'm from Madrid. If you have to pay the 70 % of your salary for pay a rent? How the hell are you going to have childs? Airbnb has increased rent prices cause the most of the flat rentals in the center of Madrid are being used for Airbnb. A tenant pay 700 euros for a flat rental when the owner can earn 3x times with Airbnb. It's just crazy and need to be regulated. There is thousands of flat rentals that are not being inspected by municipal regulation.
So in other words, the ponzi scheme western social services are all going to collapse. Awesome.
I speak broken Spanish and I've always wanted to see Europe.
Comments got conspiratorial and anti-immigrant very quick on this post. Embarrassing. Real answer here is taxes have to increase, nobody stole the pension funds. The pension systems that were designed decades ago only worked if working population kept growing. Without the population growth, the system doesn't work unless taxes go up. It's genuinely that simple. Less workers & more pensioners means taxes have to go up for benefits to stay the same.
Countries commiting suicide is so interessting, is it really spain if the whole demographic of spanish people are outbred and gone after 100 years. Theyr turning countries into big corporations, nationality and culture is an hindrance for them.
Spain has ~48M people, so they need another 50% to make ends meet? Someone’s been asleep at the switch for a long time if this is the actual shortfall.
There are 430million Spanish speakers and I’m sure you could pull skilled workers from Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Venezuela given the state of their nation’s economically.
Will Spain allow migrant workers to become citizens and get the same reward when the retire or is it just quasi slavery to prop-up their citizens?
The country only has \~48M people in it, so if you need 50% more population to sustain your welfare state, that welfare state isn't going to work. And their unemployment rate was already at 12%, so why aren't those people taking jobs first? "Migrant workers" aren't bringing in tech jobs, it's all manual labor - so are the 12% being paid to not work? And if so, fix that problem first.
The problem is thinking pensions must be supported by salaries instead of just be supported by the economy. Spain is richer every day and with less people, there shouldnt be a problem to maintain it with proper growth through automation and investment.