Baby boom generation starting to retire in or around 2030

I wouldn't be so quick to blame Fine Gael. Pretty much every country is struggling with this.

Maybe. But as far as this country is concerned FG are to largely blame for where our current crises come from with regards to housing and health. Hey, you know what, chuck FF on the fire too, because they're no better.

I'm convinced that this will only get worse because it can. Like, if someone built 10,000 affordable 2-bed flats in Dublin tomorrow, they'd get hoovered up by hedge funds, vulture funds, and whatever else. The issue is political will as you've said and it's not going to improve.

Agreed. It can, and probably will, get much worse. In fact, the whole thing might go belly up again.

However, the issue is not just more dogboxes, it's homes that people can actually afford without the need to burden themselves with a debt that will still be around their necks when they're OAPs.

Frankly, I think we need to build more state housing, like the way Britain did after the war. State builds them, and you rent from the state.

Not some offshore bastard who's only interest is in their profit.

Highly skilled workers are already emigrating en masse. Australia is taking a load of our doctors and nurses and has moved on to recruiting our experienced Gards. The state launched a campaign to entice builders home. Increasing taxes on wages will only accelerate this exodus and dissuade multinationals from setting up here.

And the people that are left behind to pay these higher taxes will have less disposable income, so will have even less kids.

This sorta reminds me of a conversation I had with my cousin just before Christmas.

He is 42 and his girlfriend is 40 and they have one 5 year old. Its a medical impossibility for them to have ore children so they will only just have one and they had just got this news a few weeks before this conversation happened.

The conversation was full of regret and he was blaming himself for the situation. Some of the tings he said were that he only got started with his life really at 25 years old due to spending so long in education. He then went traveling for a few years and only came home when he was 30. He spent a few years sewing his wild oats using apps for hookups instead of dating. Then he met his gf at work and they went of traveling for a couple of years together. They came came and lived in my aunts for a few years not really saving much or not putting anything into pensions. Then she got pregnant by accident and they moved into a rented apartment. Now they have settled down and they want a house and more children and thy can have neither at this point in their lives.

It was a very tearful night but he was filled with regret about not engaging with life earlier and while he had a great time, the rest of his life is not going to be what he thought it was. I always thought after that conversation the mine and his generations usually do things the opposite way around to what our parents did. We go have a good time first and then struggle in the years when we should be nearly finished getting our nest and children raised (and having to spend 8 - 10 years more than your parents or grand parents did in education doesnt help either.)

Im in my early 30s, got my house recently and next will be children, but ive been putting money into a pension since i got my first job on my fathers advice. Parents generation would have left education much earlier, got married, saved and bought any old fixer upper they could afford. Then had their kids right away whether they could afford them or not (usually not, bu they got by) and then stop having kids, all of who would have been raised by the time they were 40. Got it all out of the way to they could relax in the twilight of their lives. And here is us only thinking about settling down and having kids mid 30s or 40s now. I wish I had of realized that in my early 20s, but it could be worse, at least i realized it a few years ago.

I'm sure you're right. But that's not a problem that will be solved by cutting or freezing the old-age pension or similar measures.

What it might do, at least in theory, is to encourage people who have reached retirement age, who own their own homes (i.e. their mortgage is cleared) and who still have adult children living with them to sell their homes, downsize to something considerably smaller as a retirement home for themselves, and give their kids a big wodge of cash towards the purchase of a home of their own. And if such a trend were to develop it would lead to an increase in the rate at which suitable family homes, as opposed to starter homes for childless young adults, come onto the market.

We've a transitional problem here.

The contributory old-age pension is an insurance scheme. (Hence the name "social insurance".) The risk that people face is living a long time with no earnings. By paying social insurance contributions they insure against that risk; they are guaranteed a modest retirement income for life and, if they live a very long time, the payments they receive will aggregate to a very large amount. This is of course cross-subsidised by those who paid the same social insurance contributions but die before retirement age, or shortly after retirement age; they get little or nothing out of the scheme, in financial terms. But everyone who participates in the scheme gets the assurance that, should this risk eventuate for them, they will be protected. That's how insurance works.

Right. Someone who retires today has already paid all the social insurance contributions. This is a done deal. You can't turn around now and tell them "Sorry, we've changed our minds. This insurance arrangement is cancelled, and you're not getting the cover we promised you."

Which means that, even if you decide to terminate the contributory retirement pension tomorrow, you're still going to have to pay out all the pensions that people have accrued with the contributions they have paid up to today. And it will take many, many decades to run off that liability.

Which, in turn, means that if you terminate the contributory retirement pension and terminate or reduce social insurance contributions, you're going to have to replace the lost revenue by putting up some other tax, to fund the pensions that still have to be paid. So you still have a situation where currenttaxpayers have to support current retirees.

Of course, you don't have to do that by putting up income tax — any tax will do. And if you want to link this to the housing crisis, one possibility is to impose a US-style annual property tax, of a significant amount, on the value of everybody's home. That would encourage people at retirement, when their income is going down, to downsize to smaller, less valuable homes, so as to reduce the demands which property tax makes on their modest retirement income. This would mean more houses would come on the market. It would also tend to drive down house prices; as the financial liabilities attached to an asset increase, the value of the asset declines.

The people of working age who would buy all the family homes coming on to the market would then have to pay the swingeing property tax, so you'd still have people of working age paying tax to fund retirement income for their parents' dgeneration — it would be property tax rather than social insurance contributions, but a euro of property tax costs the same as a euro of social insurance contributions.

paying nothing for the asset?

how did they manage to acquire the asset for nothing

boomers, you really need to take a few weeks off the internet

This anecdote, and @Shelga's testimony - along with the parallel thread on early retirement - demonstrate the overwhelming success of marketing, where everything is turned into a cost-benefit financial equation. On the one hand, we (in the developed world) are promised that we can have everything - greate job, nice house, happy family, long life and good health ; but on the other, we're threatened that The World Will End if we don't spend-save-spend-spend-save-spend money as fast as we earn it.

Where once people bought houses because they wanted a decent place to live, now the process is treated as "the most important investment you'll ever make" ; then they saddle themselves with the maximum amount of debt the bank will give them, for the longest period of time, so that they can - in Ireland, at least - bid against other wannabe homeowners to drive the price to ridiculous heights.

Now, when people think about having children, they cite the "cost of raising a child" as a deciding factor ; yet much of that cost is driven primarily by voluntary consumption of entirely insubstantial services. As can be seen on this forum (and I see it with my Irish-resident siblings and cousins), parents spend what are to me (non-resident) incomprehensible sums on supervised/coordinated activities for their children, and even more astronomical sums on holiday experiences for no real benefit to either parent or child.

Except, perhaps, to convince them that they - like @SharkMX's friend - can have it all as soon as they leave college … and find that perfect job … and keep that perfect job, bearing in mind that they're going to be treated by their corporate employer as nothing more than an economic unit that has to fall on the right side of the cost-benefit equation. And then they're told that they're going to need a pension pot of 2 million to be "comfortable" if/when they retire, so they vote for the politicians that promise to protect whatever wealth they can ferret away, thus ensuring the whole system becomes increasingly ricketty.

Funnily enough, the majority of "baby boomers" I know are already long retired, or at least working entirely at their own rhythm; and myself and my "Gen X" peers are definitely not waiting till 2030 to start retiring. Something we all have in common is that we never let the cost of some future life stop us from making the most of the life we had at the time.

Where once people bought houses because they wanted a decent place to live, now the process is treated as "the most important investment you'll ever make" ; then they saddle themselves with the maximum amount of debt the bank will give them, for the longest period of time, so that they can - in Ireland, at least - bid against other wannabe homeowners
to drive the price to ridiculous heights.

And we desperately need to get away from that mindset. Unfortunately, over the last few decades, people have been primed to look at homes as "assets" or "property". A tradable commodity. Something that's merely a saleable object and not what it used to be. A place to actually live in, put down roots and raise a family. The next generation.

Our property woes has its seeds in the Celtic Tiger, when this country first got a bit of money and we lost the bloody run of ourselves in many respects. House prices started to go through the roof, when before they were pretty stable, on the whole. Buying a home was attainable for anyone, if you had a job and put a bit by. Nowadays, for many people, it doesn't matter if you're working (and even if your partner's working), because you've been priced out of a "market".

I grabbed my other half by the hand as she was passing in a niteclub and pulled her into me, trapping her between myself and the wall. I said something drunken too her and we had a dance and a shift. And the rest is history. We now have bought a house together and are going to get married and start a family in the next year or two.

That wasnt too long ago. And if I was to do that now i'd be in jail and she would be cancelled if she even attempted to say I wasnt a sexual predator. So it would have never happened and we would never have met in the first place.

there are very few people I know who dont have kids, for every 10 its 1 person, so there is plenty of interest

the consensus is enjoy life before having kids rather than after, that is more suitable to men than women, but it has been embraced wholesale in ireland

Theres also too much put on how hard having kids is. Its a joy, do it. Those first years of life are special and nothing is better than that, is it harder than not having kids, of course, but its not even a discussion

Maybe some of the former has droned out the latter

I seriously doubt there isn't more interest in being a dad than ever before but that it has changed massively

Where did I complain about politicians?

Both of your requests happen already.

LT care is means-tested: Fair Deal scheme

Medical card is means-tested. (GP Visit card is not, it is universal for all over 70)

I also don’t think people view having children as some kind of cost/benefit calculation; it is rather the case that a decent person will give serious consideration to what is the biggest decision they will ever make.

Can I provide this child/children a safe and pleasant home environment? Can I pay for crèche fees and after school care for approximately 10-12 years because I can’t afford to give up work because my house costs so much and also it took me a really long time to get to this place in my career? (This is one that still weighs heavier on women than on men)

Can I teach this child how to be a good person? Can I afford clothes for it, a cot, nappies, a buggy, a car seat, etc? What will the climate be like when the child is 30? Is there going to be a land war in Europe? Is social media rotting kids’ brains these days and could I protect my child from its toxicity? Will I be able to afford to move to a bigger house in a few years as the child grows?

The list goes on and on and on. Now, of course you could overthink it to death and never make a decision, but a lot of people don’t feel this deep-seated existential pull to have children, nor are they completely against it- I think lots of people are in the middle.

Then there is the factor of having children because that’s just the next thing you do in life and is a box to be ticked- this is definitely a factor for some people. Then there are concerns of having a very sick or disabled child, and the supports not being available in Ireland, as we’ve heard repeatedly in recent years.

Wouldn’t most decent people give serious consideration to these things before just jumping in? I actually don’t think it’s a cost/benefit thing at all, it’s about ensuring you can provide everything a child needs, before you ever get to after-school activities and holidays and all the rest of it. Yeah, people spend money on a lot of crap, but just the basics cost insane amounts of money these days.

Perhaps, if the age at which you could draw your OAP was raised to 75 or 80

How many 75 or 80 year olds do you know could do a full time job? Or even a part time one for that matter. It's all well and good for some people in some professions to say we should raise the pension age to such and such. But the reality is that most people in the old age bracket simply wouldn't be able to function in the workplace and an awful lot of people don't have the types of jobs that provide luxury down time and rest periods.

In addition, and this is the biggest issue, ageism is a very real thing in the area of work. The biggest ism, especially in Ireland and the UK, is classism. But the next biggest is ageism. Once you reach a certain age, many employment opportunities are simply closed off to you. When someone reaches their mid 50's, they'll often find themselves in a position where it becomes harder and harder to get work, so raising the pension age to something like 75 means consigning a lot of people to the wilderness for a period of about 20 years.

How many 75 or 80 year olds do you know could do a full time job? 

I know dozens of 75- and 80-year olds who are still in good working order, mentally and physically, and invest a huge amount of time - and decades of experience - into non-salaried activities because they want to. They could do a full time job, but they wouldn't - no more than myself, and I'm a while off that age yet. There's no need, financial or otherwise.

That's kind of the point: why does anyone need to work full time from about the age of 45-50 onwards? Right now, only because they've put off having children until they're already in their 30s and 40s, and because they've locked themselves into a 30-year mortgage also starting in their 30s. If you knew in your 20s that you might get 5 years of a full pension, chances are you'd arrange voluntarily arrange to curb your working life well before then, and maybe make significant life choices that made that easier.

But I doubt any politician is ever going to propose such a scheme because (a) self-centred voters have convinced themselves that they're entitled to a long and happy retirement, paid for by someone else ; and (b) way too much of the country's tax revenue is sucked out of salaried employees - so as to leave unearned wealth and corporate profits alone - for any government to want to upset that particular apple cart.

Politicians and voters alike want to keep the status quo, regardless of any warnings of impending collapse.

ahh jaysus, who wants to work till they are 75 or 80, able or not.

It's an interesting subject.

It seems to me that the fundamental issue is that the government has far, far less power than people think. It doesn't get to tell people how many children to have, or when to have them. It can't stop people emigrating, although it has some control over immigration. It can't make people want to get married, or want to have children, nor can it stop people having 10 children if they want to. It can't make people downsize, or make older people move in with their children. All it can do is tinker with tax and social welfare, in a feeble attempt to nudge things one way or the other. Nor does the government get to control what happens in the outside world, not does it have a crystal ball to predict the future. Most politicians are just desperately trying to get reelected, i.e. trying to keep their job while providing for themselves and their families. Rocking the boat is not a good strategy for most of them.

When I was leaving school in the 80s, Ireland was a poor country with too many young people chasing too few jobs. Everybody was leaving, myself included. Who could have predicted the 90s, the celtic tiger, the financial crisis, Covid, etc?

If you had told me then that 40 years later adults in their 30s would be living with their parents, I would have struggled to believe it.

When the EU accession states were given access there was a massive influx of people, but who (at the time) was prepared to put the brakes on, when it seemed the economy had never been so good? Who could have predicted how many would stay, or many would return to their home country? Who would have predicted Brexit?

Governments are made of people not that different from the voters who elect them. They tend to be cautious, and to react slowly instead of boldly. If they try anything too ambitious or progressive the voters will easily turn on them.

And the people themselves are not exactly blameless, as they want multiple contradictory things.

They want to own their own house and not have the government tell them it's under-utilised, nor to pay anything more than a token amount of property tax - it's their house, their castle, they paid for it, so f*ck off. If they have managed to buy multiple houses they want to be able to rent them or leave them empty as they see fit. If the government suggests something that might cause property prices to fall, half the country is delighted and the other half is horrified.

People don't want to pay much inheritance tax, they want their own family, and only their own family, to benefit from any accumulated wealth. Yet they complain about income tax.

Most of the problems we are seeing are simply emergent behaviour. The root causes of those problems are the economic model and culture and neither of those are going to change in a hurry. If we want anything to be dramatically different, we will have to change how we think, and change what we value, and be prepared to make some sacrifices. And deep down, most people simply don't want to change. They want other people to change. Other people to pay more tax, or leave their houses, or whatever, to solve the problems they themselves are facing.

Are we, as a county, prepared (for example) to pay much more property tax? To (hypothetically) have our houses or land CPO'd with fewer restrictions? To pay way more inheritance tax? To have big financial penalties for leaving a house empty? If not, then maybe we are not being realistic about what "the government" can do to improve things.

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The financial aspects of having children are really concerning to me. I already worry about money so much. If my house had cost even 20-30% less than it did, and I didn't have to take out a home improvement loan, this wouldn't matter so much. Everything comes back to the astronomical cost of housing. Then you add creche fees and all the items kids need on top of that, and it's really worrying. I feel less well off on a day-to-day basis at 36 than I did at 26, and I think that's the case for lots of people.

Everything comes back to the astronomical cost of housing.

We don't all get what we want. Many 75 year olds who rent will have to work at least part time so survive. I

You'll only believe what you want to believe.

But whether you accept it or not, many people will cite cost as being the prohibiting factor on whether they have babies or not.

If people are not given their state pension till 75, you will see a lot of people opt to live their lives on social and never work, especially thise now in lower middle class, who effectively earn the same as those on welfare when everything is factored in.