“Global trade is a much larger portion of total economic activity than ever. If the global division of labor breaks down through trade wars, it could get really ugly, especially for deficit nations like the US.”

I was surprised that you thought trade wars would be especially bad for deficit countries. Although trade wars hurt everyone, I usually think of them hurting the trade surplus (i.e. exporting) nations the most, since they are so dependent one exports for economic activity. Whereas, trade deficit countries are not dependent on imports in nearly the same sense.

Is there some effects of trade wars on trade deficit countries that I am missing?

Woe to any retired person who doesn’t take this into consideration, starting with the cost of essentials like utilities, cost of transportation, and ending with trends in property taxes. The state I live in (NJ) has devastated retired people of even moderate means in that respect. Since property taxes are a major portion of municipal/state revenue, what will happen down the road? Nobody seems to be talking of the impact of property tax on the marginal home owners teetering on the edge. How many are pushed into foreclosure when property tax becomes the final straw?

I see taxes of all and any kind rising for as far as the eye can see. Not a happy scenario for retirement or our kids.

My guess is that global population peaks in 2050, and starts shrinking. Aside from a few African and Arab countries, few nations are significantly above replacement (for me, defined as 3 kids per woman completing her childbearing years).

But to the degree that populations shrink, retirement ages have to rise, maintaining ratios of those working to those supported by work. It’s that simple.

The marginal cost of children in a modern urban society is huge both in terms of direct financial costs and intangible opportunity costs to socializing. Obviously the latter is is not true for everyone (such as the Merkel’s , but the data suggest this is true for more than most.

I don’t know where we go from here, but it’s probably going to be a tough transition. I don’t know of a historical precedent for an inverted demographic pyramid. Perhaps Japan is telling us something in this regard?

First, to have your children support you, you need to have many of them; i.e. you need to have them at more than the replacement rate, especially as death rates have dropped. Regardless of how much of a problem you think overpopulation is, it is clearly unsustainable in the long term.

Second, in the past early retirement was not about “having and easy time of it”, it was about having worked a life of hard labor and being unable to continue past a certain age. Now this has changed quite a bit; many fewer people have those kinds of jobs these days, but what about those who do?

However, you are clearly correct about the difficulty of funding pensions/SS in a world of less rapidly expanding population. So how do you solve that problem in a population neutral fashion?