> Every country in the world is trying to solve the same problem: how to preserve economic growth ...

Why is economic growth needed?

Because politicians whored for votes and "kept" their promises by creating ever more public debt, spending more than they made (usually while lining up their pockets and the pockets of their relatives, including their mistresses).

Politicians are so corrupt and so incompetent that none of them would even be accepted as president of a table tennis club.

Capitalism doesn't need endless growth to work. It's governments spending more than what they should that do.

If there's no economic growth in an aging country, that requires everyone to accept a gradual decline in their standard of living, which is an extraordinarily unpopular idea. (I've talked to people who say they're OK with it, but in my experience, their idea has always been that we'll sacrifice the goods and services they don't personally care about to ensure the ones they do care about remain accessible and affordable.)

Once you start to know the current generation of olds - world wide - you realize that they are just as rotten as the politicians they have put in charge. The difference is just opportunity.

Respect of the elderly is strangling humanity right now, but the olds have always nourished themselves by sucking the life blood of the young. It just has never been as obvious before. It's a vicious cycle, because each generation gets the opportunity to manipulate and bind the younger generations.

Loyalty used to lie with your family, then with your nation. Right now loyalty lies with the generation, and that has catastrophic consequences.