Radio broadcast by Gegenargumente Vienna March 29, 2009
The “demographic crisis”
The aging society:
An irrefutably natural reason for the increasing poverty of young and old
For years pensions have been reduced and the health sector increasingly asks people to pay with new or increased co-payments, while some services are being removed from the health insurance catalog altogether. This impoverishment has been the subject of public debate for years. However, cuts in pensions and the health care sector are not the topic today; rather, we want to deal with the ideology behind these cuts – the so-called “demographic crisis.” What does it consist of?
“The EU population is getting older and older. While the number of people under 65 will fall by 48 million by 2050, the number of people over 65 is set to rise by 58 million. The ratio of EU citizens of working age (15-64 years) to those over 65 will fall from 4 to 1 to 2 to 1.” (Press, February 14, 2006)
The number of people of working age is decreasing while the number of older people is increasing. We are told that this change in the population structure is plunging the financing of pensions and the healthcare system into crisis. The unanimous message from governments across Europe to their populations is that pension cuts and healthcare reforms are necessary because there are more and more old people and fewer and fewer working age people. Not only does impoverishment proceed apace, but the ideologies behind it are becoming ever more stupid and brutal. We are seriously called upon to recognize that the ongoing impoverishment is the result of a biological process. We are supposed to think that an inverted age structure of the national population is the cause of impoverishment. This biological picture is not only repeated by government officials every time there is a cutback. There is no one else in the entire republic who would oppose this biologically presented reason for impoverishment. At most, there is debate about the extent of the danger and the right way to deal with the “demographic crisis.” That’s why we want to look at this image of the “aging society” today.
Poverty as a result of age or people getting increasingly older
a.
The problem is supposed to be that people are getting older and older. Demographers predict that in 2050 there will be two employed people for every pensioner, instead of four as there is today. So what, you might ask? Why is this ratio of pensioners to employed people actually supposed to be insufficient? You are supposed to think: that can’t be good if so many people have to be carried along.The truth is stated very bluntly: the fact that people are getting older and older is not simply a nice thing, but – on the contrary – a nuisance for this society. The elderly are a burden on the healthcare system. It is not that the healthcare system exists to serve the elderly, but the elderly should not be a burden on the healthcare system. This shows that the society is not set up for these people if they are a burden. If it were about their well-being or at least about their livelihoods – during their active years and the years when they can no longer work – then taking care of this livelihood could not possibly be a burden. Something that you want and, because you want it, do it can never be a burden. After all, something only becomes a burden if you actually want something else.
Notice that the idea behind such statements is that people are actually only intended to be used. Then and only then is it a contradiction when they are no longer there for anything and nevertheless still have a legal right to receive care. The whole idea that pensioners are a burden shows how people are calculated with in our societ. Nevertheless, let’s take it seriously: Is it even true that people here and now are a burden because they are old? This is not true. And it is not just we who claim that; the state itself doesn’t see it that way.
b.
People are not a burden because of their age. Not even for the state. If old people are wealthy and have money, then nobody is bothered by their life expectancy. Then it’s perfectly all right for them to grow old. And although they are supposed to be just as much of a burden, according to the picture, the wealthy elderly are of course also supported by the work of the young, since they no longer work. Of course, the work of the active generation has to provide the food, housing and transportation that is needed by those who no longer work. That’s no different for wealthy or non-wealthy old people. In this respect, the whole image that it must be bad if half the population is no longer working is discredited by the fact that if this half of the population has money, nobody is able to find a problem.So it’s not true that the problem is that people don’t work. You can see that the whole idea in terms of use value – some people do the work and others do nothing and live all the same – doesn’t fit the relationship that has been established in this country. Capitalism works differently. It is not even a real problem that there are people who do not work. If they have money, it’s not a problem. Then they pay, then their consumption is precisely what’s needed, they create sales, profit, jobs, growth. Then they are useful in that they consume.
If you think of it in terms of use value, along the lines of how many old people can the younger generation support if it were only a matter of looking after the old, then there would be no problem. Every productive worker has long supported a whole army of unproductive people who contribute nothing to the availability of housing, food, or transportation. There’s no need to look at the elderly; you can just look at the active people: one farmer nowadays feeds at least 70 people. And even a bricklayer today creates many times more the living space than in the past, and so on.
On the other hand, there are also a lot of people in the active population who do not perform any productive activity, i.e. who procure what is needed for its use value: Insurance agents, employees in banks and public authorities, in the police and military, advertising agencies, stockbrokers, etc., etc. – and these are all professionals. Nobody talks about those who – because they are wealthy – live without working and still live well anyway. They are wealthy and therefore never a problem.
If it really were just a matter of a lot of old people needing to be fed and a decreasing number of young people: then it should be noted that the productivity of labor is now so giganatic that this would not be a serious problem. On the other hand, if it were really the case that there was a lack of working hours in the society, why shouldn’t 65 year olds, if they are still reasonably fit, perform some function for 3 or 6 hours a week? That wouldn’t be the problem either. It’s just that neither is possible. On the one hand, they can no longer feed themselves, but on the other hand, they can’t be invited into the factories because of the dominant method of calculation.
c.
But if the problem is not the elderly per se, then what is it?“The aging and constantly rising number of pensioners, whose life expectancy after retirement is still around 20 years, are causing the non-working population to become increasingly dependent on the working population to finance the pay-as-you-go system.” (Harald Ettl, “Is there a generational contract?” in Future Forum Austria)
In truth, the problem is not the old people at all, but the old people who are dependent on social security insurance. And why are they the problem? They are the problem because they live for another twenty years after they retire. The gap between the time employees stop working and the time they die is clearly too long. They just live too long. The pension system is not designed for this and nothing should change about this. That’s how brutal the thinking of the politicians is.
Capital’s increasing demands in terms of health, productivity, cheapness
Firstly, this is because performance requirements in factories and offices have risen so dramatically that nobody in a position of responsibility will expect companies to employ a 55-year-old. On the one hand, people are often ill in old age due to the strain and stress of their working lives. They are simply exhausted; that’s part of it. They are no longer fit for the performance demands placed on employees in the companies.
On the other hand, they are more expensive than the young. The old have a shortcoming that has nothing to do with their work performance; the remuneration system in many industries is such that those who work longer also earn a little more. And then the employer compares the long established 55 year old with someone he could get straight out of school who has not yet acquired any seniority, and he is simply cheaper than the old worker. Now the old worker is worse because he gets paid more. This has nothing to do with his performance in the sense of activity. But that’s not what productivity is in capitalism. It is measured by the monetary effect per euro paid. In terms of this criterion, the elderly are worse simply because they get paid a little more in wages. The consequence is that there are hardly any people over 55 in the companies any more.
An achievement of medicine: Worn-out, broken down, even mentally exhausted people no longer die so quickly
The other half of the reason why the gap between the end of active working life and death is so long is the achievement of medicine. Sick, broken down, exhausted people, often mentally exhausted as well, simply don’t die as easily any more. There are lots of aids for heart rhythms, blood pressure, etc., and then they don't die. This combination of actively exhausting people, throwing them out early, and on the other hand providing them with medical care so that they do not die is the quality of the problem that our society is struggling with at the moment.
The further impoverishment that has already been implemented and is still being planned is not due to the increasing age of the population. The problem that politicians are constantly trying to solve does not arise from a problem of supplying use values. But what is the problem then?
The problem is that for those who rely on a state pension, there really isn't enough money. In other words:
d. Wages are not enough for old age!
First of all, there is not enough money for the elderly because the wages paid by employers are not paid to last a worker’s entire life. The employer pays wages for work to be done. And he pays as little as the market will bear for the desired labor. It is not calculated on the basis that the money has to last over a worker’s lifetime.Workers essentially do not save their money either, but use it up. The state has to force them to provide for their old age. They pay into compulsory funds, and where there are compulsory funds it is clear that the state assumes the workers would not do this if they were free to do so. Otherwise there would be no need to force them to. If there are compulsory funds, it is an acknowledgement that people cannot actually save, but must save. Therefore, 22.8% is compulsorily deducted for pensions from a salary that is not calculated so that you can live on it, and certainly not for the time when you are no longer earning anything. And that's not the end of the deduction, as other social security contributions are still added on top of that. But 22.8% is deducted for the pension.
The contributors are credited with these deductions as insurance contributions. For the contributor, the pension is organized in this respect like a private relationship with an insurance company. An insurance company that only offers them benefits in return according to the contributions they make. An employee must show forty-five years of contributions before he or she can enjoy the maximum pension available. The charm of this petty calculation is that in many cases it is not the theoretically achievable maximum pension that has to be paid, but something far lower. Anything in the individual’s biography that deviates from the prescribed ideal is turned against the person concerned and is reflected in an aliquot reduction in their pension – studying longer than permitted, being sent into early retirement by their company, etc., are all reasons for reduced pensions. The pension is therefore no longer related to what you need to live on. The definition applies the other way around: people who have earned little also need little in old age. After all, they paid little in, so having little in old age corresponds to their earnings. According to this, the state-organized pension fund takes the form of an insurance policy.
When it is a matter of what the insurance is equipped from, it then seems that it is not insurance at all. This is because the pension is paid as a pay-as-you-go system from the current wages paid to the current wage earners. When it comes to financing the acquired pension entitlements, the question is: where does the money for this actually come from? And then it concerns the fact that people who have been depositing into it for a lifetime no longer have a source of money. This means: it was paid to the pensioners during the time you were active.
In the disbursement of the pension, a compulsory class solidarity takes place. A redistribution within the wage takes place at the time of payment for the total collective of wage earners, that is, through the contributions of those who are currently working. And this makes it clear that the pension is not only always scarce because the financial resources are diverted from the wage, which is not intended for this purpose in itself, but also that secondly the pension fund becomes increasingly scarce the more the total wage of the class decreases. The more the wage decreases, the less the workforce as a whole collects.
The fact that this total wage provides less and less pension benefits, however, has absolutely nothing to do with any alleged “demographic crisis in 20 years.”
In fact, the more productive labor becomes, the lower the nation’s total wage will be. The easier it becomes to produce everything possible in terms of use values, the less effort is required to produce the means of life for young and old, the smaller the share of the country’s wealth that the labor force collects as wages, and the smaller the pension fund. Absurd! How does that work, how does that come about?
In capitalism, productivity increases are only carried out for one purpose; not to save the workers work, nor simply to make the work more productive, and certainly not to increase wages, but productivity increases are carried out solely to make every single hour of work more productive for the entrepreneur, to secure him more output per hour of work. Entrepreneurs reduce their costs, i.e. increase their profit per unit, by making work more productive, getting more out of the paid working hour and paying for fewer hours. And that is synonymous with less pay per product. In other words, the purpose is to reduce unit labor costs.
One consequence of this increased output per working hour is that those who remain in the company have to do the work of those who are made redundant. Lay offs are the other side of this. Anyone who is made redundant is no longer on the payroll as a wage cost.
That’s why this really insane development, which is peculiar to capitalism, comes about: entrepreneurs are making work more and more productive and thus making the working class more and more productive: by the fact that fewer people are paid a wage overall, and secondly, by the fact that the entrepreneurs do not miss an opportunity to lower the wages of the remaining workforce.
If, however, the total care of the elderly has to be paid out of the nation’s constantly reduced wage fund, then it quickly seems as if pension contributions will have to constantly be increased if pension payments are to be maintained. The poverty of the active workforce forces the poverty of its non-active part.
If the wages of the active workforce are already an obstacle to the attractiveness of a location for capital investments, then the part of the wages paid to the elderly is already far too high.
That’s why, and only why, the wages are not enough for the elderly. If wages are the negative factor in the economy, then pensions are even more so.
And all this should be thought of as: well, if people are getting older and older, it’s no wonder that pensions have to be lowered!
The biological ideology of social hardship
The social debate that says people are too expensive has been around for quite some time, but so far it has had completely different arguments. It has been argued that non-wage labor costs, which are always too high, are leading to the danger that capital will migrate to neighboring countries because wages are lower there, and so on. And now this biological argument, this biological image for socially produced hardships. What’s going on here?
It is the image of an absolute necessity – a necessity that can’t be escaped – for something socially produced, which is not at all necessary. It is pure finger-pointing. Nobody talks about capital, jobs and growth anymore. Any reference to economic relationships, to the market and money, or even any reminder of influencing factors such as productivity, is erased when it is said that there are too many old people and too few young people. It assigns blame to the people. If pensioners do not get out of the way, politicians make it clear that they have brought their poverty on themselves through their longevity. If people are thought of in this way, if they are counted as biological parts of their people, then this is a point of view which calculates with people as a resource. A brochure published by the Chamber of Commerce in 2003 states accordingly:
“A sufficient supply of the national economy with the production factor labor seems less and less guaranteed. The factor of labor may become a limiting factor in economic growth in the future.” (Social systems until 2050: Megatrends and needs for reform; Strategies of the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber; 2003)
However, a calculation is made with people not only as an economic resource. If the problem of an aging society were viewed in purely economic terms, it could certainly be solved – by the immigration of workers from developing countries. But this solution is by no mean endorsed. The people of a nation are at the same time the resource of states. And this is where the biological idea of a resource ultimately becomes racist.
“It is illusory to look for a solution to the problem in migration policy alone. The purely mathematical number of migrants required to maintain the population size and a politically desired age structure would place an unacceptable burden on the population’s ability to integrate.” (Social systems until 2050: Megatrends and need for reform; Strategies of the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber; 2003)
From the state’s point of view, it’s not the same whether it lets foreigners in because workers are needed or whether it has native workers. In the quote, the Chamber of Commerce expresses this as: well, the Austrians wouldn’t tolerate that. As if they were so squeamish about other things. The political maxim – then one just has to explain it to them – apparently doesn't apply here. The native’s point of view is the idea of the biologically defined citizen, the idea of a human being who by blood and birth cannot do anything but serve this community loyally, to be at the disposal of this state. Everyone else who is brought in or allowed in does so because they think it will be an advantage for them. Yes, he can earn more money in Europe, in the EU, than in Morocco or Chad. So he emigrates here.
The unconditional citizen is reliable without conditions – that might not be true, after all, everyone is free to think of something new, and then he is no longer reliable – but states do think like that. They want subjects who are absolutely loyal, and blood and birth are the best guarantees. A native citizen is not here out of calculation, is not here because he expects an advantage, but simply because he was born here and has nowhere else to go, so he can’t easily leave. He is unconditionally available and the state needs people like that.
These are all conclusions, projections, which are included in this image of the “aging republic” – the false explanation of social hardships, then new ones, in tones such as: we need more children. And then the racism of the state – it’s all included in this thing.