May 2006
Guest Opinion: Are We Aging Responsibly?
Doug Sposito, Dasco Quality
SACA Board of Directors
We are an aging population. That's why growth is mandated for the proper maintenance of our community. But what is responsible, organized and sustainable growth?
Our elected officials should be fighting for employment opportunities. They should do everything in their power to make housing affordable to young people. This is responsible growth.
They should be working with our builders to reduce fees and land costs and increase availability. This is organized growth. They should look to ensure alternate sources for our limited natural resource supply. This is sustainable growth.
As Baby Boomers (born 1944-1964) begin to retire, there will be a population shift. They will become non-taxpayers, dependent on governments for assistance.
This enormous retirement bubble will affect every aspect of our lives.
With fewer people paying taxes and more expecting to be served, governments will be forced to resolve this issue. Education, poverty reduction programs, infrastructure maintenance, and all government programs will suffer.
The Boomer retirement bubble is coming. It will come whether military bases close or rivers dry up. We must have an even larger, younger, hard-working tax base that can support it.
Editor's Note: The above article was published in the May 2006 SAHBA Blue Print Newsletter. It was excerpted from a longer document by Sposito, reprinted in part below:
A stable, economically sustainable population can be compared to a triangle. You want the base area to represent the large number of working, tax-paying citizens.
As the triangle narrows, there should be fewer people unable to work who are dependent upon governments. Finally, the top should be the most in need of government services and the fewest in number.
As our population ages, our triangle could resemble a square. This shape shift could be exacerbated by a relatively low native birth rate. In other words, there will be fewer taxpayers able to replace the rapid rate of retirees moving upwards in our triangle.
This will cause our triangle to expand at the top, and narrow at the bottom.
Our triangle must change size proportionally. This proportional change will allow economic stability through this period.
The goal is simple: maintain the triangular shape of our population as we go through this unprecedented Boomer bubble. The impact of increased taxes can be minimized for our children and the impact of service cuts can be reduced for our parents.
Since the Boomer retirement bubble is a fact, so is growth.
The rate of retirement is picking up speed. The current local response has been to stop growth or at least slow it. Various people, for different reasons, have demanded isolationist approaches, from building physical barriers at our borders to stop immigrant growth to building economic barriers with restrictive resource allocation to stop local native growth.
While these short-term solutions appease certain groups, ultimately they cannot work.
No matter how the communities are isolated, whether you support building a fence at our border or demand governments restrict access to water or land resources creating economic fences, all citizens, inside your seemingly protective isolation, will ultimately grow old, stop paying taxes and look to governments for care. Your triangle will invert. Your economy will collapse.
Protectionism also has substantial negative effects on our population triangle. Reducing access to water or allowing governments to use taxpayer monies to take vacant land off the market only increases the cost of the remaining land. People who can afford to purchase homes or land are typically older, will retire soon, and will stop paying taxes.
We are a destination of choice for aging snowbirds. Isolating us from the rest of the world leaves us no replacement workers or taxpayers.
That is why government leaders need to plan today for responsible, organized and sustainable growth. We cannot accept intentional or unintentional barriers to growth. As isolationists will argue, there are not enough resources to support a growing population.
But, anti-growth policies in the face of a certain, rapidly aging population make us a bulls-eye for an economic tsunami of catastrophic magnitude.
When we stand reeling from the impact of population shifts and government miss-action, we will certainly be pointing our fingers at our elected officials and demanding: Why didn't you prepare us?
Comments: Sposito at (520) 455-9326.