I see old people begging because lack of jobs - that's native Swedes, not just EU-migrants these days. Didn't see that 10 years ago.
Parents discourage their children from engaging in potentially risky activities (eg. entrepreneur, startups, etc) because that puts their (the parents') future well-being in substantial jeopardy.
The weight of that jeopardy is best conveyed by the fact that there are ~300 families in Singapore that are receiving welfare, and each of those are handled on a case-by-case basis.
Caveat -- my understanding is based on the information provided by a friend living in Singapore, working in the tech industry, having spent some years trying to engender a startup culture. Apparently things are changing now, but that's the (recent) history.
HK is doubtless more complicated.
Five-ish years ago I was living in Singapore too but I don't recall ever seeing it there, especially nothing compared to Hong Kong.
However, I meant the actual labouring. I saw a lot of elderly people working McDonalds and cleaning tables. By elderly, I mean 70+.
http://www.etc.se/inrikes/utforsakrade-johan-maste-tigga-iho...
Johan isn't alone. Go by the Göta Lejon theatre entrance, you will see Swedish homeless sleeping there. There of course also EU-Migrants nearby in the subway, but you can make out the difference I am sure.
Swedes sleep in their bubbles, thinking everything will be awesome while the government is going bat-shit crazy with (islamic) blasphemy laws, insane migration and allowing Jihadis into the government. Good luck with the pension and and credit-bubble.
Just read that Sweden gave asylum and permanent residency to an ISIS-rapist who tortured a man on camera. They even had a confession.
You can see this playing out in China right now.
Both of my parents are from Chinese families and grew up in Malaysia. Dad is one of eleven siblings and Mum is one of eight siblings. Back then, it wasn't from the government welfare, it was for the kids to look after the elderly parents. Of course, several things need to be in place for this to play out. The kids needs to be working in a relatively well paid job, the kids needs to have quite a smallish family, the kids must also subscribe to the same mindset as well. Some work out, but the majority does not work out as the mindset of the younger generation starts to shift.
The article kindly submitted here mentions an issue of age imbalance in the population. "The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and World Health Organization forecast Hong Kong will have the highest share of population aged 65 years and over in Asia by 2050 with 42 percent, outpacing Japan's 39 percent." That's an exceptionally skewed age ratio for any place in the world. If people cease working at age 65 in such a place, a large proportion of the population (both children and the elderly) have to be supported by a not very large proportion of the population at working age. That's difficult to do whether support for the elderly comes from their own children or from taxpayers in general.
What's happening in many countries, of course, is that people are living far longer into old age than they imagined they possibly could decades ago.[1] Life expectancies at adult ages (say, 40, or 65) are increasing steadily all over the developed world. If people retire at the same age as decades ago, in much better health and with many more years of remaining life ahead, it's not surprising that their personal savings may run out. The response is to keep the proportion of working years over a whole lifespan a more or less constant proportion of healthy life years.
[1] http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n3/box...
Ignoring that this is anecdotal, but you're comparing across generations, upbringings, etc.
Our society is prolonging the lives of our weakest members, not our strongest. We've got centennials whose only visit to a hospital has been for childbirths.
My grandmother has outlived her fraternal twin by over a half century, plus a couple other siblings. My mother hasn't outlived any siblings.
Our grandparents are of a generation when vaccines were just beginning, and our parents are mostly of the generation where they were well in place and widely used. My grandad was born before penicillin was discovered.
Comparing between generations isn't possible, because we compare between vastly different medical practise. It's highly improbable that a child born at 30 weeks will live as long as a child born at 40 weeks.
A less healthy individual is more likely to take retirement early due to poor health. It's then poor logic to go on to claim retiring makes you less healthy.
Poor health makes retirement more likely. No one in ill health who could retire is going to work into their deathbed when they can retire and spend more time with their family members and doing their hobbies.
One of my neighbours retired after her kids finished school and moved out. She's in far better health than her husband who worked until retirement age. So anecdotes are really irrelevant. He survived the Russian invasion of Prussia.
If work related stress shortens your life span, and even isolated high stress incidents are correlated with shortened life span. What effect does having your farm commandeered by German Artillery and then shelled into rubble by Russians have on your lifespan? My guess is, not good.
I don't think there's any doubt the Hong Kong government needs to do a better job with affordable housing, but I also don't like the fact that my nephew was born with a $20K debt while 50% of my mother's pension is being payed by taxpayers.
Inter-generational debt can and does destroy both societies and governmental systems. I'd argue that over the next 40 years, it's probably the biggest problem the western democracies are facing.
I didn't want to dive too much into the political side of this, but I found your comment to be a little too flip given the nature of the topic. One of the major advancements in civilization was the idea that parents _cannot_ pass their debts down to their children. That worked great for many decades, but we seem to have found away around that by collectivizing it. Not good.
Robots and automation may actually be the way we can get off the addictive economic treadmill of having the you g pay for the old by an ever expanding population. It is unsustainable.
They have already done so through increased worker productivity, but may ultimately replace young people as the "breadwinners" for those who can't or won't work.
This is to be welcomed, as we can economically support a shrinking population that grows wealthier over time. The traditional refrain of wealth redistribution being from "productive" members of society to the non productive will be upended. Many people will be consumers, producing things most people won't pay large amounts of money for.
Their lack of tax diversity is also one of the main reasons why housing is so damn expensive, because the government make money there.
