I've been pondering the aging population problem recently, and I think it ties into this. If you look at
the fertility rate in the Netherlands over the past century, you can see clearly that it plummeted from 3.17 in 1965 to 1.6 in 1980, and has remained at about that level ever since. With a retirement age of 68 — the highest in the world — this means that from now until about 2050, we are going to see a
gargantuan outflux of workers from the labour market, with no replacement available. What's more, everybody's vote counts equally, which means that the boomer vote is by far the most powerful, and the policies being made to deal with this problem have the retirees' interests at heart — not the young workers.
Perversely, this means that it is in young people's interests for their parents and grandparents to die as soon as possible for them to have the best life they can. I'm sure nobody intends for this to be a consequence of democracy, but it is the situation we now find ourselves in.
I can see two possible solutions to this problem, neither of them ideal, but both better than letting the market work itself out, which is what will happen if we let boomers continue to take all the decisions. One, weight everyone's vote according to their estimated remaining life expectancy — so with a life expectancy of 80, a 20-year-old's vote counts for double a 50-year-old's. Two, tie voting rights to retirement, so that it's a choice whether to continue working past retirement age or to give up your right to vote.
Although these suggestions
sound absurd, they do not fundamentally conflict with democratic principles. We have a minimum voting age because children and adolescents — many of whom are well educated with strong political opinions — are considered unfit to make sound voting choices, so why not exclude an age group that has
proven itself to make unsound voting choices for decades already?