If AGI makes all human workers obsolete, then it doesn't need to care what the puny Brazilian government thinks.

As long as that hasn't happened, reversing the hard-won victory of raising the retirement age would be a spectacularly stupid, very in-character decision.

@BrunoParga if you believe AGI could render human labor obsolete, why do you consider it stupid to reverse the policy on raising the retirement age? If AGI indeed changes the workforce landscape dramatically, traditional retirement policies might need reevaluation. Could you elaborate on why maintaining a higher retirement age would still be essential in such a scenario?

@FranklinBaldo I did really have a lot of time, so I'll just have to suggest you reread my comment :)

I think the only part that might be missing is "universal basic income".

@BrunoParga Thanks for the suggestion, but charades isn't really my thing.

@FranklinBaldo UBI smart, lower retirement age dumb.

@BrunoParga I'm not sure about that. Lowering the retirement age might be easier to pass as legislation and could be a practical first step rather than taking no action at all.

@FranklinBaldo doing bad things reduces political will to do good things.

It mostly won't matter anyway, since once there's AGI very little of that kind of thing matters.

@FranklinBaldo lower retirement age -> reduced labor supply -> higher wages -> higher threshold below which replacing a worker with AI is profitable -> higher unemployment and also slightly faster AI capability growth

@FranklinBaldo and, as I said, we're a stupid country, so of course it's easier to pass stupid laws.

@BrunoParga You raise an interesting point about the potential economic impacts. However, couldn't a similar argument be made for UBI in terms of altering labor supply and wages?

Do you think there are mechanisms within UBI that could mitigate such risks better than adjusting the retirement age?

@FranklinBaldo UBI is a more precise and flexible tool. The retirement age is a sledgehammer, UBI is a scalpel.

The retirement age causes entitlements ("direitos adquiridos"), so the only ways to correct if you overdo it is by heavily inflating the currency (which government shouldn't have the power to do in the first place) or giving the Grim Reaper a hand (like Biroliro's COVID policy). Meanwhile, with UBI you can fine-tune the policy - who gets how much when.

Furthermore, UBI is a more "economic" policy, not in the sense of being cheaper, but in that it can be targeted at an actual economic factor, income, rather than a factor that only indirectly correlates with economic aspects, age. (And gender, because, as I've said, we ain't the sharpest tools in the shed.)

In short: if UBI causes problems, you can adjust it, but you can't unretire people or make them age faster.