Thread

1. shoobiedoo · 1789687401 · focus · HN ↗

   This article calls it a "quiet emergency" but even as a foreigner living in Japan there are alarm bells everywhere. And the government buying 150 F35's is just a slap in the face when there's a massive chunk of the population that is, very quickly, going to need extra care.

   I looked into becoming a care aid myself as I'm tired of office culture in Japan and have some experience in that field. I was shocked to see that they start at less than 10USD, and working your way up takes years, decades even.

   Continuing to kick this can down the road is going to be an absolute disaster.

   1. rightnutwingjob · 1789689669 · focus · HN ↗

      [dead]

      1. PorciiVorbesc · 1789690719 · focus · HN ↗

         >Why do people think The Government™ is able to, should, or can, solve everyone’s problems?

         Where do you see them demanding the government solve $ALL their problems?

         >The Government™ probably can solve defence.

         Agree.

         >It probably can’t solve your lack of desire to do the right thing and look after your aging parents.

         Is there a lack of desire? Or a lack of resources resulting as a consequence of how the modern developed economy works, where youth need to move away from the family to get a college education and skilled jobs, and in return the government taxes you to take care of your parents and your kids so that you can focus on maximizing your skilled productivity at work? Isn't this the modern (faulty) social contract?

         Sure, I can move back with my parents to take care of them, but then I won't have a job to earn money because all the industry in that town was hollowed out and moved abroad (also thanks to government actions of maximizing shareholder value).

         Now , if the government admits it can't solve elderly care and wants us to take care of our parents on our own dime, the it should also stop taxing us for a welfare state it can't provide and just focus on what it can, like defense. IIRC Switzerland works like that.

         Unfortunately, in our modern post-industrial economy we can't all go back to tribal/village lifestyles of our ancestors where we all lived on farms in multi generational households and we all took care of each other and lived only off the land. That would sound nice in theory, but it's not feasible anymore the way nations and economies are set up to work and compete against each other, unless we can somehow agree to fight wars from now on only with bows and arrows like our ancestors, instead of AI drones and cruise missiles needing cutting edge chips and SW made by singles with phds and no kids. We built this faulty societal system and now we're forced to live by it whether we want to or not.

         1. WalterBright · 1789701076 · focus · HN ↗

            > maximizing shareholder value

            Minimizing shareholder value will flatten the economy.

            Do you really want to live in a pre-industrial agrarian society? Not me. I like central heating, flush toilets, hot & cold running water, and Led Zeppelin music.

            1. [deleted] · 1789752602 · focus · HN ↗

               [deleted]

            2. nrr · 1789858644 · focus · HN ↗

               > Minimizing shareholder value will flatten the economy.

               Will it though? I'm curious what the empirical basis is for this causal claim, especially given that it ignores the wealth of gray area in between these two extremes. (That goes notwithstanding that I have zero idea what is meant by either "minimizing shareholder value" or how a flattened economy could look as an operationalized outcome. Neither of these are accepted terms of art with precise definitions.)

               There are some obvious counterexamples to look at, wherein a hypothetical firm doesn't intentionally maximize shareholder value or chooses explicitly not to:

               - A firm can choose to pursue long-term productivity gains;

               - A firm can pay higher wages or provide better working conditions and still generate substantial shareholder gains;

               - A firm can keep its earnings rather than pay dividends to have cash on hand for capital improvements; or

               - A firm can accept a haircut on its margins to expand along some axis, like manufacturing capacity or market share.

               Shareholder value is usually taken to be a function of the firm's expected future cash on hand (or, more precisely, the equity claims on that expected future cash on hand) and its exposures to various risks to that cash on hand (optionally quantified by people like me!), and the idea of maximizing shareholder value needs to be understood as having some kind of time horizon. Commonly, in the post-Jack Welch era, this time horizon is three months.

               On a much longer time horizon, however, sacrificing short-term shareholder gains for long-term productive capacity can very well be analyzed as shareholder value maximization.

               > Do you really want to live in a pre-industrial agrarian society?

               This seems to treat the grandparent post's social insurance and institutional design argument that shareholder primacy has contributed to the institutional arrangement that makes intergenerational care difficult as though it means, what, capitalism is bad, so we should return to farming.

               I'm unsure that I can draw a comparison between these two arguments. They're very different, and the parent post's reply doesn't establish the premise it needs. Industrialization and shareholder primacy aren't binary choices, and the mere existence of modern industrial prosperity doesn't establish the fact that our particular institutional arrangement producing it is in fact necessary for that prosperity.

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