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Dont like the average age? Kill yourself
I was reading a debate about Japans ageing population in which someone said that Japan basically needed immigrants because their population is getting older and who will pay for their pensions etc. I've heard this argument many times before and it sounds pretty good untill I heard this:
The bottom line is that in an affluent society (low risk of premature death) with stable population (hopefully, about optimum level), the average age is about half of the average life expectancy. (In other words, if life expectancy in the U.S. is 76 and the idiotic population growht stops then the average age is about 38.) So the longer we live the older our society becomes. If you don’t like it then why don’t you die young?
Of course in truth only people that are older than the mean will help the average by killing themselves but most people that in Japan that want more immigration are elite politicians and rich people and they are over the average so still sounds like a good argument to me. The flip side to this is to say then that a population with the lowest average age is good then you would be looking at Kenya or something where the average is in the 20's or lower because of so much death and obviously no one would suggest that is preferable.
To me that pretty much settles this argument.
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