On Jan 15, 7:30 pm, Steve Hayes <hayesm[49]...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
I'm late on this im****tant thread !
> > The poor matric results show that much is still wrong with our teacher
> > training, even after 14 years of democracy.
>
> > Can anything be done about it?
>
> > Is anything being done about it?
Peter H.M. Brooks wrote:-
> I had an interesting discussion with somebody in the teaching
> business today.
>
I'd like to discuss with someone like that.
> He pointed out that, in South Africa, around 50% of teachers,
> engineers, doctors etc. etc. are in their 50s. So the problem is only
> just beginning. The demographic time bomb will go off in 5 years
> time as the first cohort of the baby boomers retire. For the next ten
> years things will get steadily worse as the rest retire. Then, in
fifteen
> years time, things will be really bad.
>
Yes, such analysis are publicly discussed in more matured societies.
Perhaps it's the nice weather which makes 'africans' so childish:
having a very short time-span-view.
Like the electricity crisis, which was predicable years ago is
getting big attention only after it shows.
> Fixes? Well, it isn't that easy to see. A large ****tion of the
> population is less than 30. There is an unfillable gap of people in
> the two decades between 30 and 50. They are the people who
> should now be growing into the shoes of the senior people about
> to retire. But they are not there.
>
> It is a pretty bleak picture - particularly as the missing two decades
> of people are those who are supposed to be paying the pensions and for
> the healthcare of those that have retired.
>
> You could take comfort in the thought that things will be a good deal
> worse in China...
>
No ! The demographic time-bomb eg. in Japan/Germany where the
'numbers employed/producing are insufficient to sup****t the
increasing pensioners' is a fallacy. As is seen by the other self
cancelling problem of increasing unemployment -- and growing
obesity. When one effect off-sets the other you have self regulation.
OTOH, at the other extreme of the demographic bulge: afro-arab;
where there are too many non-productive kiddies to allow the GPD
per capita to increase to educate..to reduce the birth rate...,
there's a self sustaining disaster, where the feedback comes from
early death, like in the natural world. Zimbabwe is a good example.
>
> The situation may, also be worse than that. It isn't clear how AIDS ,
> malaria and drug resistant TB will work at making the demographics
> even more skewed.
>
Well, after consuming resources for education, they die off in their
early twenties, before replacing the resources by production.
Skills flight [somewhat countered by skills influx eg. from Zimbabwe]
is also very significant.
> There aren't many obvious fixes. The retirement age will be increased,
> of course, but that's just a tem****ary fix, eventually people get too
> old to work or die.
>
No it's not tem****ary. The equilibrium level is raised.
If the working life is increased from 65-20=45, to 70-20=50,
that's a (50-45)/45 = 5/45 = 11% increase.
> There might be some technological fixes to help train all the younger
> people to do effective work - but the current signs are not, as you
> point out, very optimistic.
Yes, technology too can permanently change the 'equilibrium level'.
BTW. it seems there's no news-group for 'demogra*'.
I guess it's a branch of sci.econ ?
== Chris Glur.
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