> The hard question would be how to maintain the existing programs that provide social assistance to the elderly without a larger population of working people to pay the taxes to fund them. The existing solution is to run preposterously large deficits every year, which seems problematic/unsustainable.

This boils down to “how much GDP are you willing to burn to keep the elderly cohort comfortable.” How each country handles this demonstrates their ingenuity and character. Can you be both compassionate and efficient? I think so.

Unfortunately in a democracy it also demonstrates how large a percentage of likely voters are elderly, which also seems like it could cause serious problems during that sort of demographic shift. (Notice that almost everywhere, people over 65 get a vote but people under ~18 don't.)

Who was that Scottish economist that had a famous quote about something like once the citizens in a democracy realize they have the keys to the treasury they grant themselves services/money?

Economists have enough trouble trying to predict economic behavior, they probably should be more restrained when branching out of their field into predictive political science.

Economists study many things other than "the economy". Quite often they are involved in political or policy studies because many systems act as an economy.

> Economists study many things other than "the economy".

And, even moreso than is already notoriously the case with the economy, their predictions on those many other things tend to be based on conclusions drawn by abstract reasoning from ideologically-motivated assumptions with little empirical basis that are poor predictors of behavior of the real world.

If that's the way you see it, then who do you look for to data?

Seems like you can't trust anyone if you can't trust your own evaluation of an individual paper based on statistics.

> If that's the way you see it, then who do you look for to data?

The subject of discussion wasn't data, but an abstract behavioral generalization that isn't drawn from data.

But I wouldn't generally look to economists as my first source of data on things that aren't the economy, either.

> Seems like you can't trust anyone if you can't trust your own evaluation of an individual paper based on statistics

When did I ever say anything to which that would even approximately be relevant?

Economists publish papers and studies about the topics we are discussing - The article that is the parent for all these comments is referring to a study done by economists.

You may have a problem with how a particular study is done (like I do with this study). I really don't think you should be just dismissing entire professions based on your own uniformed generalizations (with no data yourself!).

Alexander Tytler, although apparently it may be misattributed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Fraser_Tytler,_Lord_....