Latest news with #population
The Guardian
4 hours ago
- Business
- The Guardian
When are people too old to do their jobs?
Old people are making news. Just this past week in Denmark, the retirement age for collecting a government pension was increased to 70 years old, an issue that has caused much debate in that country. Here in the US, questions have been raised about former president Joe Biden's mental acuity while he was still in office. Warren Buffett announced his retirement at the age of 94 from Berkshire Hathaway. Donald Trump's behavior, at the age of 78, continues to raise concern, if not alarm. When are people too old to do their jobs? Recent regulations are encouraging workers to stay on the job by increasing the age for when people are required to start cashing out their 401(K) plans from 70 1/2 years to 75 years by 2033. However, a recent study found that over half of workers over the age of 50 have been pushed out of jobs before they would have retired willingly. US law prohibits forced retirement, but some well-known companies – like General Electric, Exxon, Intel and Apple – have age-based restrictions for their senior executives and board members. And yet, according to a recent report from the Federal Reserve, more than half of small businesses are owned by people over the age of 55, including 70% of firms with more than 50 employees. Should they still be in charge? It's a growing concern because the population of old people is growing. In the US, the number of people over the age of 65 was about 9% of the total population in 1960. Today it's closer to 18% and by 2054, 84 million adults ages 65 and older will make up an estimated 23% of the population. Life expectancy was less than 70 back in 1960. Now it's closing in on 80. People are living longer and working longer. We all know people in their 80s who are sharper than those who are half their age. How old is too old? Clearly you can't assign an arbitrary number that defines old age. Mick Jagger is 81. Bruce Springsteen is 75. Paul McCartney is 82. They're all still performing in front of countless fans. Tom Cruise – age 62 – is still jumping out of planes. Cher, 78, recently released a holiday album. Richard Branson, 74, continues to command the Virgin empire. Say what you want about Trump, but even at 78, he's running around like someone half his age. But do we really want a 78-year-old running the country? Or piloting a commercial jet? Or performing open heart surgery? Should someone that old be putting out fires, fixing roofs, driving trucks, working in a steel foundry, herding cattle? Probably not. In fact, when someone hits a certain age, everything needs to be re-evaluated. What age? 60. A 2023 study found that almost half of the Fortune 500 were run by people over the age of 60. However, only 28 companies were still being run by a CEO over the age of 70. Something happens during that time and a recent study from Stanford University may provide the clue. According to that research, which tracked thousands of different molecules in people aged 25 to 75, two major waves of age-related changes were detected at around ages 44 and again at 60 which helps explain why spikes in certain health issues including musculoskeletal problems and cardiovascular disease occur. This may account for the 'sudden accumulation of wrinkles, aches and pains or a general sensation of having grown older almost overnight'. It's not gradual. It's a burst. And while the study focused on physical effects, I believe there's something else going on once someone hits the age of 60: a loss of energy. I have a friend in his early 60s who used to run a bar in downtown Philadelphia and now works as a manager at a manufacturing firm. I asked him if he has any interest in running a bar in the future. 'Are you kidding?' he said to me. 'I just don't have the energy. I just want to play a little golf and spend time with my grandkids.' And that sums it up. Most people lose energy when they hit their 60s. Of course, we're still interested in the world. But work has become less of a priority. We prefer to do other, more fun things in the remaining years of our lives. We tire a little quicker. We go to bed earlier. We move a little slower. I was recently offered the opportunity to buy a competitor's business and I declined. Sounded interesting but, like my friend, I just couldn't imagine mustering the energy needed to make such a transaction successful. The thought exhausted me. It still does!
The Sun
5 hours ago
- Business
- The Sun
Fears AI will leave Earth with population ‘the size of UK' by 2300 & turn entire countries into apocalyptic wastelands
EARTH will have a dystopian population of just 100million by 2300 as AI wipes out jobs turning major cities into ghostlands, an expert has warned. Computer science professor Subhash Kak forecasts an impossible cost to having children who won't grow up with jobs to turn to. 2 That means the world's greatest cities like New York and London will become deserted ghost towns, he added. Prof Kak points to AI as the culprit, which he says will replace 'everything'. And things will get so bad, he predicts the population will shrink to nearly the size of Britain's current estimated population of close to 70million. The Age of Artificial Intelligence author, who works at Oklahoma State University, told The Sun: 'Computers or robots will never be conscious, but they will be doing literally all that we do because most of what we do in our lives can be replaced. 'Literally everything, even decision making in offices, will be replaced. 'So it's going to be devastating for society and world society. There are demographers who are suggesting that as a consequence, the world population will collapse and it could go down to as low as just 100million people on the entire planet Earth in 2300 or 2380. 'Just 100million, right now it's around 8billion. "So the whole world will be devastated. As I discussed in my book, I think people really don't have a clue. 'The great cities of our modern times will be abandoned if you only have 100 million people in the whole world, which is just a bit more than the entire population of Great Britain right now.' He added: 'It's likely. I have all the data in the book. This is not just my personal opinion.' AI has advanced at a rapid rate in recent years. China & Russia will use drones 'the size of insects' to spy on UK & commit untraceable murders, ex-Google futurist warns Tools like ChatGPT, which launched in 2022, have now established themselves as essential for businesses and individuals. But the growth continues to spark alarm about the future of employment. In March, the chancellor Rachel Reeves said an increasing number of roles are being taken up by AI. She spoke as she unveiled plans to slash civil service jobs. Prof Kak, who also wrote Matter and Mind, said birth rates will plunge because people will be reluctant to have children who will likely be unemployed in adult life. He added: 'People have stopped having babies. Europe, China, Japan, and the most rapid fall in population right now is taking place in Korea.' He added: 'Now, I'm not saying that these trends will continue, but it's very hard to reverse them because a lot of people have children for a variety of reasons. 'One is of course social. In the back of your mind, you have a sense of what the future is going to be like. China's AI supercomputer by Millie Turner, Senior Technology & Science Reporter CHINA has reportedly begun assembling an AI supercomputer in space, which will eventually consist of 2,800 satellites in Earth's orbit. ADA Space, based in Chengdu, sent the first 12 satellites of its mammoth network last week, Space News reported. hese satellites are able to process the data they collect locally, rather than beaming it to stations on Earth to compute, according to ADA. Data stored onboard satellites is sent down to Earth in batches - but some of this information can get lost during transmission. Beyond being slow, "less than 10 per cent" of satellite data makes it to Earth due to things limited bandwidth and ground station availability, according to the South China Morning Post. Part of ADA's 'Star Compute' project, the satellites are reportedly in-built with super-fast AI processors that can communicate with sister satellites at up to 100GB per second using lasers. That is much faster than traditional satellites. 'If you sense that there will be no jobs for children. A lot of people have that sense. 'And that translates into extreme costs of child rearing, as is happening in the US right now.' Billionaire Tesla and X owner, Elon Musk, is among those who claim the human race could one day face extinction over AI and declining birth rates. And Prof Kak refuses to rule out that being a possibility. He added: 'Could humans go extinct? Who knows? 'That's what some people like Elon Musk are saying. Or there could be disease, it's not necessarily for psychological reasons. 'There could be a new pathogen created by some monster which could wipe off humanity. And so nobody knows. 'That's why Musk is saying maybe humans should go to space, maybe build colonies elsewhere, so that should such a tragedy hit Earth then it could be reseeded. 'This is all like science fiction. Nobody really knows what's going to happen. 'But what is absolutely certain is that there is a population collapse occurring right before our eyes.'
Daily Mail
17 hours ago
- Health
- Daily Mail
As diabetes cases surge 40 per cent in a decade, and one in ten of us will soon have the disease, experts discover a shocking risk factor doctors have missed
Failing to regularly brush your teeth increases the risk of developing diabetes, experts claim. Research suggests that the condition – where the body struggles to regulate blood sugar levels – can be triggered by gum disease, which is thought to affect about four in ten of the population.
Times
18 hours ago
- Business
- Times
Why punish mothers for staying with children?
Everyone loves babies, don't they? Not enough, it seems. Or at least not across the developed world, where reproduction is well below the so-called replacement rate of 2.1. In the UK the rate is 1.4 children per woman (sorry to be basic). That is about the European average. In South Korea and Taiwan it has fallen well below 1, a population implosion driven by individual choice rather than the historic causes of famine or war. For coves like Sir David Attenborough, who see human population growth as a planetary catastrophe, this is wonderful; for governments facing the consequences of an ever smaller proportion of people of working age, it is terrifying. Enter, stage right, Nigel Farage. Last week the Reform UK leader said he wanted to encourage 'young, working British people … to have more children'. To that end he proposed an end to the cap that limits universal credit to covering two children per household. And he promised (if he became PM) to allow married couples to transfer between each other up to £5,000 of their annual tax-free personal allowance. Farage was not clear about how a Reform administration would fund these latest proposals, on top of his earlier commitments, which The Economist worked out would add £200 billion a year to the public sector borrowing requirement, but, as I wrote last month, his approach makes Liz Truss seem a fiscal puritan. So-called natalist policies have already been tried across the world, as governments have confronted the 'baby bust'. They have been almost entirely ineffectual. The Japanese quadrupled state expenditure on encouraging family formation through childcare provisions and tax credits; the fertility rate fell further. Similarly in South Korea, which spent more than $200 billion on its own version. Even in Hungary, whose government has, in its own boast, 'structured its entire state and economy around family', the birth rate has fallen since 2019, from 1.55 to 1.38. The forces driving down fertility — above all, individual choice by women, who understandably want to defer motherhood while their work career is being established — are greater than any government can counter. And in the UK the cost, including that of the additional housing space required, of bringing up a child to the age of 18 has been estimated at almost a quarter of a million pounds. Even Farage is not promising that as a handout. However, the British system is actually antinatalist. That is, we have had a tax system which, in contrast to those of other European countries, actively penalises families in which one of the parents wants to stay at home and look after the children. This was something my father, Nigel Lawson, tried to deal with as chancellor, but he was thwarted by Margaret Thatcher (as she had every right to do, being, she would remind him, 'first lord of the Treasury'). • Kemi Badenoch: 'Parenting is a two-person job. Where are the dads?' A bit of history. In 1986 my father published a green paper, 'The Reform of Personal Taxation'. Until then, married women were essentially treated as chattels in fiscal terms — all allowances were in law given against the husband's income, which in tax returns included any income contributed by his wife. My father set up a new system of independent taxation, which he saw as providing a better deal for families. This was because he also proposed that a spouse who did not have sufficient income to use up his or her own tax allowance could transfer the balance to the marital partner. As the think tank Tax and the Family put it, the idea was that 'the tax system should not discriminate against families where one spouse wished to remain at home to care for young children'. But Mrs T consistently blocked this element, which led to the situation in which today, when a household's income is £70,000, if it is earned entirely by one of the couple, that family will pay over £10,000 more in income tax than one in which the two partners are earning £35,000 each. This even gives couples an incentive to live apart, which is hardly ideal for children. As my father remarked many years later: 'I was only able to get half the job done. Margaret jibbed at the transferable allowances … her sympathies were always with women 'who go out to work'. But I never considered married women who stayed at home to look after their children as not working. They were working much harder, very often, than their husbands who went out to work.' In fact he succeeded in setting up a married couples allowance, but it was gradually whittled down under the coalition government, to his great disappointment, not least because David Cameron had promised a 'family test' under which 'every single domestic policy that the government comes up with will be examined for its impact on the family … Nothing matters more than family.' But then, on calculations by Tax and the Family, it would cost the exchequer about £6 billion a year to have fully transferable tax allowances between couples; the Cameron government had taken over when, in the words of the note to his successor from the outgoing Labour chief secretary to the Treasury, Liam Byrne, 'There is no money.' The true extent of — and reason for — Margaret Thatcher's opposition to transferable tax allowances within marriage came out most clearly in the wonderfully written memoir, Cold Cream, by her former head of the No 10 policy unit, Ferdinand Mount. At that time Geoffrey Howe was chancellor. He too had tried to persuade the PM of the merits of making the tax allowance fully transferable, as it is in most other countries. Mount recalled the extraordinary exchange between his boss and Howe, which he personally witnessed. 'It's much too expensive, Geoffrey. I simply can't let the mill girls of Bolton down.' 'I don't quite follow you, Margaret.' 'Well, there are these girls getting up at dawn and working all the hours God gives, and then they see these women in the home counties playing bridge and getting the same tax allowance. I can't have it.' Mount then records, as Mrs T became 'unrelentingly rude' to the dolefully persistent Howe: 'It was too late to point out that there weren't any mill girls in Bolton because there weren't any mills. I began to feel the depths not only of Mrs Thatcher's loathing of sloth and privilege but of her indifference to family life.' Anyway, when my father made a similarly doomed attempt to persuade Thatcher, it was not in the spirit of the modern-day natalists determined to increase the size of families. This was not the state intruding into the bedroom. It was just meant to be fair, rather than discriminate against households in which only one of the couple is working. Not such a bad idea, really.
Bloomberg
2 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Peak Humanity, House Prices and Why UK Pubs Are Vanishing
Here's a thought for the weekend. You are living in (or at least very close to) peak humanity. Populations in countries including Japan and China are actually shrinking, with China losing more than a million people a year net. At this rate, it will see its population halve by the end of the century. Japan's population fell by almost a million people last year and its government projects it will be down 40% by 2100. Across the sea in South Korea, the fertility rate is down to 0.72—that's one third of what's called the replacement rate (2.1 babies on average per woman). Fertility is also collapsing across Europe, and there's even a baby bust underway in Latin America. Here in the UK, the fertility rate is down to 1.44.
