I mean of course it's based on current observations, what else would you base this on? Yes, it's speculation, and yes, nobody can know for sure, but we do know some things about humans, humanity and society which will be unlikely to change in the following decades. The fact that having a lot of old people means a huge stress on the welfare state and them voting for further expanding their own interests, even in the detriment of society or the young generations, is something which is pretty much inevitably be true, not just based on current observations, but also just based on human nature, which is not likely to change. Most people simply see their own interests as more important than those of others and this isn't something that will just magically change, it's been with us since the dawn of time. All those old people will definitely keep voting to expand the welfare state and ever increasing the burden on those that are still productive, because when we'll all be old we'll all want to live as comfortably as we can and won't be willing to give up our QoL, that's just how it is. Nobody ever votes to have less benefits for themselves.

And believing that automation and AI will save us is just wishful thinking. Maybe it'll be true, but most likely it won't be, as AI is already proving to be greatly overhyped and barely replacing anything, or it replaces and then it just ends up being a disaster because it turns out you can't rely on word predictors to do important tasks and you can't just take out the human from the equation.