养老金、房价与人口危机：政府能救我们吗？

昨天是六一儿童节，小区里按照惯例，组织了一些游艺活动，让小朋友们玩游戏，可以领一些价格低廉的小礼品。这个活动重点不是奖品价值，而是活跃气氛，让业主对小区更有归属感，也更容易肯定物业的工作。我也带着小宝贝去参加了，作为一个观察者，我觉得有一些发现，当然，也可能是我的偏见。

我们小区平常里面能看到的小孩不多，甚至还没老年人多，而这次六一活动，基本上集齐了小区里的所有儿童。按照现场来看，儿童依然是少数，大人占多数。这似乎就是现在中国社会人口结构的一个缩影。

前几天，我偶然在央视新闻上看到一个节目，平时我也不主动看央视新闻，不过这个节目吸引了我，因为它讨论了一个比较热门又敏感的话题——养老金亏空。现在网上都在说，养老金是不可持续的，00后都不结婚，年轻人口持续萎缩，将来交养老金的人就会更少。80、90后交养老金，退休后，很可能领不到养老金，这个逻辑没问题。

受这类消息的影响，有些自由职业者或失业人员主动取消了社保，也许是这个说法的影响已经很大了，央视必须出来辟谣。央视的说法是，除了疫情期间的2022年，养老金收入小于支出外，其他每年都有结余。而且，除了人们缴纳的养老金，政府还有一个备用的池子，里面有上万亿的资产。然后央视找了一个大数据专家来分析养老金不足谣言的传播特性与正常的新闻的传播特性不同，放出一堆不知所谓的分析图表，暗指有人故意散播谣言。

不过，我觉得凡事都要从逻辑出发，不要一味地认为传播消息的人别有用心，更不要一味地认为消息是假的。央视新闻都前一段的确是在从逻辑出发反驳养老金不足，但这个逻辑不够完整。首先，过往的历史不能代表将来，之前每年都有结余，不代表以后也有，而且这个结余的量到底有多大？如果养老金的缴纳出现大幅的下降，之前的结余能够补上这个窟窿吗？没有具体的数字。还是很难解决人们的疑虑，至于第2个还没有启用的备用养老金资产池。它的运行效果如何？每年的收益有没有跑赢通胀?现在有几万亿。10年20年后的价值。这还剩多少呢？虽然数字在那里，但是货币需要贬值的，特别是在一个较长的时间段上，贬值的幅度会相当的大。所以说最关键的问题都被回避了。

养老金要能持续发放，唯一的方式是要有足够的人口，并保持经济增长。现在年轻人躺平不结婚，结婚的也都是少子化，人口成了无解的问题。其实人口问题很大一部分是因为房价太贵，而如今房地产市场疲软，正是房价回归合理价格的好时机。但政府却非要维持高房价，这不是在进一步扼杀人口的增长吗？

古代的思想家称贤明的统治者为“圣人”，是因为他们希望统治者有长远的眼光，能看到普通人看不到的远景，做出对长期有利的事。好让所有人都过上更好的生活，但这只是理想。现实中的政府和统治者，他们的时间偏好都惊人的短，在房价回归、让年轻人买得起房这条可持续的道路和拯救房地产市场之间，他们选择了后者，因为他们只关注眼前的困难，考虑财政收入和银行房贷坏账的问题。为了眼前，放弃了社会更长远的人口增长。所以，我们不能指望官员——这个时间偏好高得惊人团体会做出任何有利于社会长远发展的事情。网上说历史进入垃圾时间，也有一定的道理。

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Yesterday was June 1 Children's Day, the community in accordance with the practice, organized some fun activities, let the children play games, you can get some inexpensive small gifts. The focus of this activity is not the value of the prize, but the atmosphere, so that owners have a greater sense of belonging to the community, and it is easier to affirm the work of the property. I also took the little baby to attend, and as an observer, I feel that there are some findings, of course, and possibly my bias.

Our community usually can see not many children, even less than the elderly, and this June 1 activity, basically gathered all the children in the community. According to the scene, children are still a minority, and adults are the majority. This seems to be a microcosm of the demographic structure of Chinese society today.

A few days ago, I happened to see a program on CCTV News. I don't usually watch CCTV news, but this program attracted me because it discussed a hot and sensitive topic - pension deficit. Now the Internet is saying that pensions are not sustainable, post-00s are not getting married, the young population continues to shrink, and there will be fewer people to pay pensions in the future. After 80, 90 to pay pensions, retirement, is likely to get no pension, this logic is no problem.

Affected by this kind of news, some freelancers or unemployed people have taken the initiative to cancel social security, perhaps the impact of this statement has been great, CCTV must come out to dispel rumors. CCTV's statement is that except for 2022, during the epidemic period, pension income is less than expenditure, and there is a surplus every year. And, in addition to people's pension contributions, the government has a back-up pool with trillions of dollars in assets. Then CCTV found a big data expert to analyze the spread characteristics of pension shortage rumors and normal news transmission characteristics are different, released a bunch of unknown analysis charts, implying that someone deliberately spread rumors.

However, I think everything should be based on logic, and do not blindly think that the people who spread the news have ulterior motives, let alone that the news is false. CCTV news in the previous paragraph is indeed from the logic to refute the lack of pension, but this logic is not complete. First of all, the past history cannot represent the future. The fact that there has been a surplus every year does not mean that there will be one in the future. If pension contributions fall sharply, will the old balances be able to make up the shortfall? There are no specific numbers. It is hard to resolve concerns about a second pool of untapped pension assets. How well does it work? Do annual returns beat inflation? Now there are trillions. The value in 10, 20 years. How much of this is left? Although the numbers are there, the currency needs to depreciate, especially over a longer period of time, and the depreciation can be quite large. So the most important questions are being avoided.

The only way for pensions to be sustainable is to have a sufficient population and keep the economy growing. Nowadays, young people are not getting married, and those who are married are having fewer children, and the population has become an unsolvable problem. In fact, a large part of the population problem is because housing is too expensive, and now the weak real estate market is a good time for housing prices to return to reasonable prices. But the government insists on maintaining high housing prices, which is not further stifling population growth?

Ancient thinkers called wise rulers "saints" because they wanted them to have a long-term vision, to see what ordinary people could not see, and to do what was good for the long term. So that everyone can have a better life, but that's just the ideal. Real governments and rulers have surprisingly short time preferences, and given the choice between a sustainable path of home price recovery and affordability for young people and saving the real estate market, they have chosen the latter, because they have only focused on the immediate difficulties, considering fiscal revenues and bad loans of banks. For the sake of the present, they give up the longer term population growth of society. So we can't expect officials, a group with a surprisingly high time preference, to do anything that will benefit society in the long run. The Internet has a point when it says history goes into garbage time.