(CNN) -- Indonesia's top rescue official says authorities believe the missing AirAsia jet is likely at the bottom of the sea, based on radar data from the plane's last contact. "(Because) the coordinate that was given to us and the evolution from the calculation point of the flight track is at sea, our early conjecture is that the plane is in the bottom of the sea," Bambang Sulistyo, head of Indonesia's national search and rescue agency, told reporters Monday. But searchers still don't know where the plane is, he said, and may need help from other countries for help with an underwater search. The search for AirAsia Flight QZ8501 resumed on Monday, a day after the commercial jet disappeared in Indonesian airspace with 162 people aboard. Ships, planes and helicopters are looking for the missing aircraft, Indonesian authorities said. It's unclear if weather played a role in the aircraft's disappearance, but rescuers say it could be a factor that influences how quickly they find the plane. AirAsia flight goes missing Plane was on common route AirAsia pilot requested to change route Large waves and clouds hampered the search for the plane on Sunday, the agency said. By Monday morning, weather in the area appeared to be clearing up, CNN International meteorologist Tom Sater said. Authorities say they're combing a "very broad search area." AirAsia says air traffic controllers lost contact with the aircraft at 7:24 a.m. Sunday Singapore time (6:24 a.m. in Indonesia). The missing plane, flying from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore, went missing as it flew over the Java Sea between the islands of Belitung and Borneo -- a heavily traveled shipping channel with shallow waters, according to Indonesian authorities, who are leading the search and rescue operations. Before the plane lost contact with air traffic controllers, one of the pilots asked to fly at a higher altitude because of bad weather , officials said. AirAsia statement on missing airliner In addition to Indonesia's teams, several other countries have joined the hunt for the missing plane. A C-130 plane from Singapore has been participating in the search, and the country's military says it's sending two more ships to the search area. Malaysia's transportation minister said his country has deployed three vessels and three aircraft to assist in the search. And the Royal Australian Air Force said Monday that it was deploying a patrol plane to help. And Indonesia has reached out to the United Kingdom, France and the United States for help with sonar technology that may be needed for an underwater search, Sulistyo told reporters Monday. Now that a day has passed since the plane went missing, investigators should have more data to help them find it, said Peter Goelz, former managing director of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. "They've had a full 24 hours now to gather all of the available radar data from all of the available sources," he said. "They should be able to put that together, along with any satellite data, and have a more precise location on where to target their search." Waiting and weeping After hours of waiting in anguish for any word about the passengers aboard the missing plane, several dozen of their family members met with airport and airline officials in a closed-door briefing Monday at the airport in Surabaya. As they waited for news before the briefing, some took cell phone pictures of a flight manifest posted on a wall. The black-and-white papers showed every passenger's name and seat number, but not their fate. Others simply sat and dabbed tears from their eyes. "Our concern right now is for the relatives and the next of kin," AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes said during a news conference in Surabaya. He confirmed that storm clouds caused the pilot to ask for a change in flight plan, but added, "We don't want to speculate whether weather was a factor. We really don't know." Once the aircraft is found, there will be a proper investigation, Fernandes said. Of the people on board the Airbus A320-200, 155 are Indonesian, three are South Korean, one is British, one is French, one is Malaysian and one is Singaporean, the airline said. Eighteen children, including one infant, are among the passengers, the carrier said. Seven of the people on board are crew members. Families of AirAsia flight passengers given support through the 'nightmare' Questions over pilots' communications Flight 8501 "was requesting deviation due to en route weather before communication with the aircraft was lost," the airline said. The flight's captain asked permission to climb to a higher altitude, the Indonesian Transportation Ministry's acting director general for air transportation affairs, Djoko Murdjatmojo, said, according to the national news agency. MH370 and AirAsia very different incidents Social media reacts to missing flight What is a black box anyway? According to flight tracking websites, almost the entire flight path of the plane was over the sea. What role did weather play? CNN aviation analyst Mary Schiavo said that if there was an onboard emergency, the pilots should have issued a mayday call or a pan-pan call. "Mayday means you're immediately in danger of losing the flight; pan-pan means that it is urgent but that you can continue the flight and request an alternate route or an alternate airport," said Schiavo, a former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation. "It's disconcerting in that the standard procedures for an emergency don't seem to have been deployed," she said. But Alan Diehl, a former Air Force and NTSB accident investigator, said pilots don't always make mayday calls in an emergency. "You know that the controllers can't really help you," he told CNN. "You and your co-pilot are going to have to solve this." It's too soon to know what happened to the missing plane, he said. Details released so far show some similarities, Diehl said, with an Air Algerie flight that disintegrated and crashed in July after changing its flight path because of bad weather. But there's also a chance that the AirAsia flight didn't crash after losing contact with air traffic control, he said. The Airbus A320 is equipped with a ditching switch, Diehl said, that essentially turns the plane's fuselage into a boat. "If they got the aircraft down on the water safely," he said, "it should be floating." 'Very good' safety reputation As word spread of the missing plane, the airline changed the color of its logo on its website and social media accounts from red to gray. Indonesia's President Joko Widodo said his nation was "praying for the safety" of those on board. Pope Francis also prayed for the missing, according to Vatican Radio. AirAsia is a Malaysia-based airline that is popular in the region as a budget carrier. It travels to about 100 destinations, with affiliate companies in several Asian countries. The missing plane is operated by AirAsia's Indonesian affiliate, in which the Malaysian company holds a 48.9% stake, according to its website. AirAsia has a "very good" reputation for safety, CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest said. Flight 8501's captain has a total of 20,537 flying hours, with 6,100 of them with AirAsia Indonesia on the Airbus A320, the airline said. The first officer has a total of 2,275 flying hours, AirAsia said. The plane's last scheduled maintenance was on November 16, it said. The French Foreign Ministry said the first officer is the French citizen who is on the plane. A state-run company in Indonesia that manages airports identified the first officer as Remi Emmanuel Plesel. Airbus said the plane had "accumulated approximately 23,000 flight hours in some 13,600 flights." The aircraft manufacturer said it would provide full assistance to authorities in charge of investigating the missing plane. The loss of contact with the AirAsia plane comes nearly 10 months after the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which dropped off radar over Southeast Asia on March 8 with 239 people on board. The Malaysia Airlines plane, a Boeing 777-200ER, lost contact with air traffic control over the South China Sea between Malaysia and Vietnam. Searchers have yet to find any debris from Flight 370, which officials believe crashed in the southern Indian Ocean after veering dramatically off course. But some aviation experts don't think the search for Flight 8501 will be as grueling as the search for MH370. "We are not talking about the deep Indian Ocean here," Quest said. "We are talking about congested airspace around Southeast Asia. There will be much better radar coverage. There's certainly better air traffic control coverage."
America's Demographic Cliff: The Real Issue In The Coming, And All Future Presidential Elections Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/18/2012 15:30 -0400 BLS Bureau of Labor Statistics Census Bureau Congressional Budget Office default Department of Justice FBI Gallup Germany Gross Domestic Product Japan Medicare None Obamacare Unemployment In four months the debate over America's Fiscal cliff will come to a crescendo, and if Goldman is correct (and in this case it likely is), it will probably be resolved in some sort of compromise, but not before the market swoons in a replica of the August 2011 pre- and post-debt ceiling fiasco: after all politicians only act when they (and their more influential, read richer, voters and lobbyists) see one or two 0's in their 401(k)s get chopped off. But while the Fiscal cliff is unlikely to be a key point of contention far past December, another cliff is only starting to be appreciated, let alone priced in: America's Demographic cliff , which in a decade or two will put Japan's ongoing demographic crunch to shame, and with barely 2 US workers for every retired person in 2035 , we can see why both presidential candidates are doing their darnedest to skirt around the key issue that is at stake not only now, be every day hence. Sadly, the market which due to central-planner meddling, has long lost its discounting capabilities, and is now merely a re active mechanism, will ignore this biggest threat to the US financial system until it is far too late. After all it is the unsustainability of America's $100+ trillion in underfunded welfare liabilities that is the biggest danger to preserving the American way of life, and will be the sticking point in the presidential election in 80 days. However, don't expect either candidate to have a resolution to the demographic catastrophe into which America is headed for one simple reason. There is none. The problem in a nutshell: the first wave of Baby Boomers, born between the years of 1946 and 1964, officially reached retirement age in 2011. There are a whole lot of Baby Boomers - just under 76 million, to be exact - that will depend on new money flowing into the system to help keep the entitlements coming. According to the latest Social Security and Medicare Board of Trustees 2012 Annual Reports Social Security now pays out more than it takes in, and is expected to do so for the next 75 years. And while the market, and its "discounting" may now be largely irrelevant, those who care to be educated about the facts behind America's Demographic Cliff, here is ConvergEx and " Talkin' 'bout your generation " According to the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, about 40.2 million people – 13% of the entire US population – are 65 years or older and eligible to receive government entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security. At current levels, spending on these entitlements make up about 8.7% of GDP – about $1.3 trillion. While this may sound sustainable over the short term, in coming years the amount of entitlement outlays necessary to keep up with retiring Baby Boomers is going to send spending through the roof. By 2030, for example, a full 19.3% of the population will be claiming SSI and Medicare benefits, based on the Census Bureau’s population projections (the CB uses an adjustment factor for the age cohorts based on mortality rates, foreign-born immigration, and life expectancy). For simplicity’s sake, here’s a decade-by-decade look at where the aging population – and expenditures – will be in the years to come, courtesy of the Census Bureau and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO): In 1900, 4.1% of the US population was 65+. By 1950, this number had almost doubled to 8.1%. As the chart following the text shows , the Baby Boomers (now ages 48-66) represent the most significant population wave in US history. According to the CBO, the population aged 65 and over will increase by 87% over the next 25 years as Baby Boomers enter retirement, compared to an increase of only 12% in those aged 20-64. This year, 13% of the US population is 65+ and entitlement spending accounts for 8.7% of GDP . And that number only includes SSI and Medicare, not Medicaid and future Obamacare subsidies which add to these outlays. In 10 years (2022): 16.1% of the population will be 65+, entitlement spending estimated at 9.6% ($1.5 trillion, based on 2011 US GDP) 2037 (25 years on): 20 % of the US population will be 65+, entitlement spending estimated at 12.2% of GDP ($2.0 trillion) Not surprisingly, there will be far more women than men in the 65+ population . Women currently live about five years longer than their male peers, on average. Accordingly, the Census Bureau estimates that in 2030, there will be about 8 million more women than men that are 65 and older by 2030: 27.8 million versus 35.7 million. It’s a pretty tough picture, to say the least; as the population ages, we’re looking at more and more money dedicated to retirement benefits with a smaller workforce to fund the spending. We’re not the only ones, either: Japan is in worse shape than the US, with 23.1% of the population already over 65. In 2050, government statistics forecast that number to be 39.6%. Europe’s in the same boat: 17.4% of the population in EU countries was 65+ in 2010, and it’s expected to be about 30% by 2060. The developed world, essentially, is facing a demographic “Fiscal cliff” with no clear-cut strategies for how to fund the liabilities inherent in an entirely predictably aging population . Are there any social positives that might mitigate this plethora of indisputable financial concerns ? The math is the math, as quants are fond of saying, so I don’t expect that there are overwhelming offsets to the problem of an aging population. But there are some notable “Positives” which don’t get the attention they deserve because they offer such a lightweight counterbalance to the challenges I outlined above. Still, here are a few thoughts: Stronger voter turnout/greater engagement in the political process . The 65+ age group has beaten out every other age cohort in voter turnout in every Presidential and Congressional election since 1980. In the latest presidential election, 68.1% of those aged 65+ went to the polls, versus and average of 51.2% for the rest of the voting-age population. The reason for this differential is straightforward: it easier for retired persons to vote given fewer time restrictions, allowing the higher turnout rate. But given an average turnout of 58.2% overall in 2008 for Obama’s election, compared to an average of 70-80% in other developed countries (Japan, Germany, Canada, Spain), the growing 65+ population will certainly help the U.S. come closer to its developed country peers on this metric. The stronger turnout of these voters, and their sheer numbers, are also likely to have an important impact on US political races in the years to come . They’re going to be the biggest voting bloc in American history, if patterns hold: 68% of them is almost 52 million, larger than the entire Black/African American voter population, for example. And like other older generations, according to a study by the Pew Research Center done in late 2011, Boomers have become slightly more conservative as they’ve aged, and slightly more of them (45% vs. 51%) intend to vote for Governor Romney in the upcoming election. However, given that one of their main concerns is the maintenance of entitlement spending, it seems unlikely that Boomers will continue to support a party that recommends reducing the deficit by cutting entitlements. All candidates, then, and especially the GOP, will need to take a hard look at the wants and needs of the Boomers. The 2012 Presidential election – and many others afterwards - will quite literally depend on their votes. Lower crime rates . The younger population is by far the more crime-prone age cohort, according to the Department of Justice and the FBI Uniform Crime report. The DOJ publishes an annual report on arrests by age, the first occurring in 1980 and the latest in 2009. Over these years, the number of total arrests has increased by 30.9% for the entire population; for the 65+ population, it’s gone up 0.3%. Moreover, the Baby Boomer generation (in 2009, ages 45-53) accounted for only about 7% of all crimes. What were their most “Popular” crimes? Drunkeness and DUI. Violent crimes are almost exclusively the MO of the 18-29 cohort, who account for almost half (44%) of all arrests. It’s not too far of a stretch, then, to think that as our population ages, we can expect less and less violent crime across the country – though you may want to be careful on the roads. Lower resource consumption. The older population tends to cut down on resource consumption after retirement, particularly in the case of gasoline. Once they no longer need to commute to work and move into smaller, more affordable houses, the amount of fuel needed for transportation and heating/cooling should drop, perhaps significantly. Take motor gasoline usage as a benchmark . Just under 60 million Baby Boomers consider themselves a part of the labor force, according to BLS data. 85% of all Americans drive to work, according to a late 2010 Gallup poll, with an average commute of 30 miles round-trip – about 45 minutes – and an average of 20mpg (courtesy of the Bureau of Transportation Statistics). Using these estimates, we can calculate that the average Baby Boomer commuter uses about 33 gallons of gas each month; assuming that 85% of them drive every day, that’s about 1.7 billion gallons of gas being used per month. As they retire, there are actually fewer new entrants into the workforce to replace them, meaning fewer drivers and less fuel consumption. Growing domestic service economy . An older population becomes more and more dependent on services as they age, particularly in the realms of healthcare and transportation. More and more people will be needed to fill the void in these service areas as the Boomers retire. Luckily for the US workforce, these are jobs that can’t be outsourced: healthcare especially depends on on-site care and personal service. In fact, as the population has begun to age, the US has already seen some steady growth in service-related positions . The BLS’s Occupational Employment data logs the number of occupations across the US in major industry sectors as well as almost 800 detailed occupations. According to the survey, the US has seen a -3.3% drop in job growth overall. Healthcare and “Personal Care”, however, have grown 13% and 11% each since that year. Occupations such as physician’s assistants, pharmacy technicians, and home health aides are in high demand, and will most likely continue to be so as the population ages and begins to rely more heavily on these services. Declining unemployment and increased labor force participation for this segment of the workforce . One of the most unique aspects of today’s aging population is their continued presence in the workforce. According to the BLS, 23.4% of Americans age 65+ were in the labor force as of June 2012, making up a full 4.5% of the total civilian labor force. They also had a below-average unemployment rate of 6.9%. If this trend continues, we’re likely to see more productivity from the upper end of the age spectrum in years to come as Boomers delay retirement in favor of working. On the flip side, as more of the aging population retires and leaves the workforce, more job opportunities will open up for those who are currently unemployed. The youngest members of the workforce, ages 18-24, will be the biggest beneficiaries of this shift, as they typically seek the same kind of jobs that the older population currently occupies. When these positions are vacated by the older group, then, and refilled by the younger groups, we may see a decline in youth unemployment rates. The older workforce also opens an interesting opportunity for some employers . The younger half of the Baby Boomer generation is tech-savvy, experienced, and definitely needs the money. This set of skills won’t go unnoticed in the labor market. Unfortunately, these societal “benefits” are only a thin silver lining on a very, very dark cloud. Social Security and Medicare spending are projected to grow exponentially as healthcare costs explode and the biggest population wave in the history of the US starts to enter retirement. The Congressional Budget Office expects spending to increase by 150% over the next 25 years, which is hardly sustainable with barely 2 workers for every retired person in 2035... there’s a storm a comin’ Sources here: http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/06-05-Long-Term_Budget_Outlook.pdf http://www.census.gov/prod/2010pubs/p25-1138.pdf http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/elections/voting-age_population_and_voter_participation.html http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_cons_wpsup_k_w.htm http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_304.htm http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_04_23.html http://www.openleft.com/diary/13242/the-future-of-the-electorate-age-and-party-id http://www.people-press.org/files/legacy-pdf/11-3-11%20Generations%20Release.pdf http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=datoolsurl=/arrests/index.cfm# Average: 4.77778 Your rating: None Average: 4.8 ( 9 votes) Tweet Login or register to post comments 7833 reads Printer-friendly version Send to friend Similar Articles You Might Enjoy: The Ever-Increasing Age Of Retirement Japan's Demographic Death Rattle In 3 Charts And 333 Words The twin lost decades in housing and stocks What The US Government Spends Its Money On Inside America's Economic Machine - An Infographic
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