not my photo…
This, is the MOST pressing issue at hand right now, from the Front Page Sections, translated…
In just a matter of a few short months, the citizens of Taiwan will be voting for a new president, awhile ago, I wrote about FOUR subject areas that we can’t dodge from since last decade or son: First, how do we up our competitive edge as a nation, as we’re about to exit the stage of having positive growth rate? Secondly, what kind of plans for elderly care can we come up with, seeing how the younger generations are leaving home to make a living for themselves? Thirdly, how, do we deal with the consequences of the expansions of higher education happening too quickly in the past? And lastly, how do we resolve the financial crises of the various kinds of government-responsible insurance coverages
All of these four areas of interests are all tied to the migrating patterns of the population here, known as the decreasing birth rate and the population aging! And, this situation had long been occurring in Europe and Japan, it’d hit Taiwan a bit later, but, at a very fast tempo! And, although these issues had been existing for at least ten years up to twenty years total, but, it’d not been, brought out, on the “tables” for discussion in these past ten year’s time!
With the changes in the society, the changes in the formations of the family units, the functions of the societies and the families also declined, and the function of education had long been replaced by the external forces already, and now, with the shifts in employment patterns, the younger generations needed to work away from their hometowns, and, the young and the elderly who were left at home are not only lacking assistance in care, the hours of care had also, increased as well. And, the issues of caretaking became the “hot potato”, and, the public kept hollering out to the government to help share the burdens, “long-term care” and “nurseries” are the two most apparent examples of this.
But, there’s NO superman called “Government” in this society that we reside in, if people are having difficulties, caring for their own family members, how would the government able to manage the same things?
Turns out, we’d turned in our times sheet to the government, and the government would look for people to care for our families. The more taxes the government collected, the more the government can do, to help us out. But unfortunately, the tax rate of this country is among the lowest of the nations, and, it would be, next to impossible, for us, to become a country offering the best kinds of benefits to the citizens! And, even IF the government upped the tax rates, what path should Taiwan take, to approaching making this work? Would the country that offered its citizens the best kind of benefits be our role model then?
The Scandinavian countries have very high tax rates, due to the culture of their Viking ancestors’ ways of life, you can call them “pirates” or “sailors”, they’d gained the core values of “cohesiveness as a culture” and “sharing all the wealth together”, in this tradition, the citizens were willing to give almost half of what they’d earned to the government, setting up a social welfare system based off of the views of “from the cradle to the grave”. And, although the people there have the securities to live their lives easily, and are envied by a lot of the citizens from other nations, but, can this system continue to work forever? They’re in doubt themselves!
And, all of these countries with amazing benefits also had higher rates for employment, especially for women, no longer are they all trapped, to stay at home, playing the role of the caretakers anymore, in other words, they’re, giving their children to someone else to look after, and, looking after someone else’s children, everybody walks out of the family, and everybody has a job, everybody’s making contributions to the GDP, not only are they able to gain their dignities, the employment rates are also, increased as well!
And still, in order to continue this sort of high employment rates, the key is that the money I make for taking care of someone else’s child must be higher than the cost of my own children, in other people’s cares, and, the differences are made up, by the taxes paid into the governments. Of course, in reality, not everybody works in the childcare industries, but a million different occupations, not only are these jobs different, the wages are also, very different as well, and so, this system also emphasize the dispersing of wealth as well.
If the structure of the population is stabilized, and the number of those retiring evens out with the number of people who are currently working, maybe, this system could just work. But, the world is still changing, and, the lifespan of humans is getting longer and longer, and, if the birthrates are declining now, the foundation of this system would surely crack! In recent years, the population of the elderly in Scandinavia is as high as eighteen percent (it’s twelve percent for Taiwan), and although there’s the support from the higher taxes, the system is still, pushed toward the cliffs by the tsunami of how quickly the population is aging.
The Taiwanese culture is different from Scandinavia’s, and naturally, we have a differences of migration patterns and the rates of which the population ages, in the past twenty years, the benefits of the country took off, although the country had, marched forward for a bit, the prices for this improvement is quite high, the overreliance on the benefit is one of the most apparent condition, which causes great worries! What’s weird was, the traditional family systems who were labeled “needy”, in existing above the poverty lines, in recent years, they saw the social security benefits, waving at them from the western nations, using the flames of the family values in the Eastern cultures, to illuminate their side of the cliff, across the seas! Taiwan is now, standing at a crossroad, looking, deciding which way to turn, why not first, contemplate about our own core values first, then, we can decide, to either turn right or left.
From this, you see a trend, of how quickly the population is aging, across the nations, not just here in Taiwan, but everywhere else as well, and, this country is only beginning to realize how pressing the issues of the aging community is, and that, is why as a population, we’d become, panicky, look everywhere, to find a solution, an example that we can take, to use on ourselves, without realizing, that hey, maybe what works for you may not work as well for me, that I need to find what works for myself, but, we don’t have the time, because this trend of the populations, aging quickly is hitting us, too quickly, and, we will all, drown in this ocean here.
and here it is, in statstica form…
Life, the Obstacle Course 