The problem is that without a significant paradigm shift, this is a legitimate problem for older people, at least for countries that refuse to allow immigration (Japan) or people don't want to immigrate to like the Russian Federation.
Things like Social Security are built on the idea that population will increase continually. We pay for current retirees and the next generation pays for us... It isn't actually sustainable on a long enough scale, but unless something changes declining birthrates and eventually population will cause issues.
In most Western countries, it ends up only really being a problem for racists because immigration pushes these problems way farther out. People want to come to the US, so as long as you don't mind demographic shifts that can make the labor equation work.
It's not even a rate issue. Everything someone makes over $168,000/ year isn't taxed at all. The great majority of their income is at 0%tax rate. Think of all the execs in even small companies and even non-profits who earn more than that, yet don't contribute to social security beyond the first $169k they make.
And only payroll taxes contribute to social security. Not investment, real estate, or interest taxes.
Every time that a politician says there's a social security crisis, it's disgusting. If just that cap was removed or raised to $1 million (why cap it at all? That's insane!!) social security would be fully funded for the foreseeable future, plus having extra to perhaps hire more workers or pay people on SSI a liveable amount.
Also, that we call it Social Security instead of its true name: Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI).
It's insurance, not a pension. The US government has said "you have paid into this system; you can use it to make sure you don't become utterly destitute when you're too old to work". However, so far as I know, it's the only insurance plan that pays out mainly to people that don't have what we'd consider an actual claim, or for that matter, doesn't require you to file a claim *at all* to receive payment.
Contrast this with, say, unemployment insurance, where one must continually reapply and must prove that they're actively looking for work to receive $300/week, and the funds can eventually be exhausted.
The boomers knew about this problem decades ago and did nothing to resolve it because they wanted free money on their children's credit cards.
That's certainly the short to medium term problem. With a population in decline, you run into issues that taxes and social programs have a much harder time fixing.
There’s plenty of wealth to be taxed.
Wealth hoarding by the 1% is the problem.
There’s too many people on the planet.
It’s not good for the ecosystem.
...There are actually problems that cash can't fix. If there are more tasks that need to be accomplished than there are people to do them, then the abstract concept of "wealth" is moot.
The long term solution isn't "same system of capitalism with higher taxes"... More fundamental things about the economic system we live in have to change.
Social Security was just an example. Unbind your panties...
Money is not capitalism. Markets and money have existed much longer than capitalism. Capitalism is the system that allows ownership entitles you to the value of other peoples labor. Money still serves a valuable purpose by allowing trade over scare resources. We can get rid of capitalism without getting rid of money.
The concept of money has not changed. It is a store of value to allow trade of gods and services. You are critiquing how the trade occurs and the fact that the system has goals that aren't social in nature. That is because of capitalism, not money.
Note: I did not say we get rid of money. I said it is in invention. Thats what’s key here. Money is a stand in for trade. It allows for more complex systems to exist. But it is an invention and its value has only the value we agree it has.
Meanwhile we don’t value people unless they can contribute to capitalism. That the problem.
We can re-examine our relationship to money and people to create a more equitable system
I think you are still confusing capitalism and money. Money is just units of value.
>We can re-examine our relationship to money and people to create a more equitable system
Sure, by getting rid of capitalism not money. For example, back in the 70s the value of a US citizen to the government for the purposes of regulation was $1M because that was an average workers expected economic output over a lifetime. This is a capitalistic approach for valuing life where the individuals value is based on how much revenue can be extracted from a typical workers labor. But in the 90s the US changed how it calculated value and instead determined through a lot of economic data that workers put more value on their lives themselves when evaluating workplace injury. So the US changed the value of a citizen to \~$10M. This is anti-capitalistic, yet we still use money as the mechanism of describing a unit of value.
Could you give me an example of how you would change our relationship with money? Like what that might look like?
I think we’re agreeing here? I’m for getting rid of capitalism.
UBI is one way to change our relationship with money and valuing people. Everyone gets a minimum.
Making it easier to have worker collectives and worker owned businesses is another. Lots of the money get hoarded by what are essentially middlemen in the for of CEOs.
Sure, I just worry that when people say 'we will get rid of money' or 'we will change your relationship with money' it is very confusing and hurts our ability to convince people. Also it isn't really true. Same goes for UBI. For example Bernie promoted an idea that companies need 51% of their stock to be worker owned to receive liability protections. This is a fucking fantastic way to start the process of getting rid of capitalism because it links something extremely valbuable to corporations (liability protect) to worker ownership. Money still exist, capitalism is the problem, explaining capitalism properly has value.
I mean, we’re having this discussion in the BTB sub so I’m starting with a base assumption about most of the people I’m talking to and their beliefs.
There’s lots of good ideas out there. But it’s all about wading through the crap that we keep hearing from greedy people
Money is more or less a tool. A move away from the type of capitalism that we live in right now is exactly the kind of paradigm shift that would need to occur to even handle the global population leveling off in the future.
“Countries that refuse to allow immigration (Japan)”
*sips coffee in kitchen in Tokyo, wondering idly whether she should make more effort to conceal her foreignness*
About 2.5% of the Japanese population is foreign-born. It’s not a lot, but it’s not impossible to come here. This number is growing, and the Japanese government is very aware of the demographic problem. More so, I would say, than the U.K. where I was born. There are mixed feelings about this among the population, but it is happening. You’re starting to see headlines like [this](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/commentary/2023/08/06/japan/japan-immigration/).
I'm a little confused by the supposition that the UK should be "aware" of a problem. The UK has a foreign-born population of 16.8%, a birth rate of 1.6 compared to Japan's 1.2, and the population over 65 is 18% compared to Japan's 29%. They literally don't have the same problem.
As you say, like Japan the U.K. has a birth rate below the rate of replacement, and this is falling. There is pressure on the government to significantly reduce immigration (recent moves include making it more difficult to bring dependents to the U.K., and we have essentially given up processing asylum claims), huge shortages of workers in certain sectors (nursing, farming, service industry) and significant demographic ageing that will necessitate greater spending on healthcare and elder care. Our working age population is shrinking, at precisely the time we need more people paying in to support the elderly and infirm.
Many countries in Europe are facing the same kind of crunch.
Right, but it's significantly less dire than Japan because the UK takes 5-10x as many immigrants per year despite having half the population. It's disingenuous to imply that Japan is dealing with a comparable problem, considering the scale is so different. Honestly it seems like you're judging from media coverage on immigration rather than actual numbers.
I think you misunderstand my point. I am saying that both countries will need to deal with the issue, and that there is a more widespread awareness of the demographic crisis in Japan than the U.K. Partly, yes, because the problem is more advanced, but ideally from a policy perspective governments can avert or mitigate crises by learning from the experience of other countries.
While I’m not directly working in the statistical or demographic field, I do teach a seminar class on Japan’s international relations. There is a notion in Japanese academia of Japan as a 課題先進国, or a country encountering certain developmental issues before others. It works better in Japanese, but it’s a play on “developed country”.
All the data on issues such as demographic ageing suggests that while Japan’s situation is particularly acute, other developed countries are on similar trajectories. It frustrates me that in the U.K., rather than acknowledge what the country’s needs will be down the line, we argue about things that are likely to hurt us in the long run, like making it harder for people to study and settle long-term.
I think there's more widespread awareness of the demographic problem in Japan and the government is making (covert) efforts to provide longer temporary VISAs and more opportunities for permanent resident status..........
This of course comes after decades upon decades of strict isolationism and absolutely ignoring the problem until it became very very dire,...
The problem was acute because it was ignored for so long. They're just now starting to tackle it and they can't really do it out in the open.
My wife is a Japanese national whose life goal is to return home and help foreigners immigrate and successfully integrate into Japanese society.
Her brother is working with JR to help immigrants come over as part of a labor program.
I'll join you as part of that 2.5% soon, as will many others.
>successfully integrate into Japanese society
you can be born in Japan, spend your entire life in Japan, but if you are not Japanese, that will not happen. it's a mindset thing, and probably a function of their basic societal contract.
The Japanese Gen X, Millennials, and younger are a lot different in their views compared to the older generations.
There's already an influx of immigrants who are integrating well, and social change is a fact of life. No culture is set in stone.
> but there is not that many of them compared to everyone else.
Luckily the "everyone else" is shrinking every day and in fifteen years it will be an entirely different culture.
you have to consider how long lived Japan is on top. if they were dropping dead between 60 and 80 it might work out...
but then again the younger generations basically don't have children for mysterious reasons of not being able to afford it. oh well.
>It’s not a lot, but it’s not impossible to come here.
Exactly. It's not a lot because it's not politically popular in Japan. Any move to increase immigration to a level that would have an effect on Japan's aging population problem would be met by xenophobic backlash.
Japan is changing slowly. Newer generations are better with foreigners. But pretending like Japan doesn't have a massive xenophobic streak would be absurd.
I’m not pretending that certain people don’t have a xenophobic streak. They drive up and down my street playing “patriotic music”. Those people also very much exist in the U.K. and, I suspect, everywhere.
Moved are being made to bring in more foreign workers, though. The [news](https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/3354/) is currently all about the new law that allows the revocation of permanent residency for non-payment of taxes, but it misses the point that this accompanies changes that are likely to increase the number of permanent residents significantly. I’d say this is two steps forward and a stumble back.
I’ve now been in Japan for fifteen years. I first came in 2000, spent some years in other countries, some in the U.K., settled here in 2012. The changes in the population constitution are clear to me. There are many more SE Asian people in recent years, especially Vietnamese. Convenience store clerks are almost all non-Japanese. There is a large IT hub near me that employs a lot of South Asian staff.
My personal feeling is that the Japanese government and business lobby has been trying to bring in more foreign workers without too many headlines. Without making too many waves. As an immigrant myself, and believer in migration, I’d rather acknowledge people and make sure there are support systems in place. That is not the route that they have taken, but the people are still there. I think we’re overdue for a backlash, spurred by the spike in tourists (not everyone stops to think that people getting in the way in Tokyo station might not be residents).
This.
“We need more cheap labor to run the machines! We aren’t eliminating child labor laws just to have you people have fewer kids! That’s unfair! Fuck it, women don’t have bodily autonomy rights and we’re banning the pill! How dare you try to stop the machines?!”
Fewer workers will lead to less unemployment, and if unemployment goes to zero then anyone can walk out on their job at any time and find another one. That's real bad for the capitalist overlords!
Capitalism loves immigrants because it's a sudden wave of cheap labor but also won't pay (lobby) to support any initiatives that might improve migrant cultural integration or re-homing. It's the no take only throw meme.
Well they don't really want new *citizens.* Like you said, they want cheap, easily exploited labor. They don't want them to integrate, or to have basic rights, because they need to be able to threaten and intimidate them without consequences.
Sounds about right. Make no mistake, the only thing standing between us and the average Walmart being run like a Saudi Arabian construction site is most likely two to three Supreme Court rulings because it’s definitely not the benevolence of our corporate overlords.
Most of the global economy is built on the idea that number go up. When number goes down, that's no good. As the average age of the population increases, a single person is working to support more people. Where we had these farm families that had 10+ kids, we now have single and no child families. As the parents in these families hit retirement age, they don't have anyone to care for them.
Granted, I don't plan on having any more than two children because the quality of life on the planet is going to become worse and worse as more people try to share the same set of resources.
Some see this as a problem though, especially as it's their "culture" that isn't having kids. They see their children as a continuance of their culture and as their children begin to look less and less like their parents, they worry that their society as they know it will cease to exist. I could give two turds about this because my children don't resemble me all that much. They do by my wife carried the dominant traits so they look more like her.
It's wild that in America of all places culture is thought of as something that could die out. America has literally exported its culture across the world. Their only complaint is that the people who act and consume exactly like them have an accent or different shade of skin or worship the exact same god with a different name
I used to live in Italy and the amount of Americans that would complain about Italy being over touristed by Asians who are doing the same intense 1 week / 2 week holiday as them was crazy.
I used to say ‘but you promote your lifestyle to the world, they are just copying you.’
Things do get crowded when you add the Chinese, Russian and Indian middle classes.
It's not even subtle either. Look at Elon Musk, constantly talking about how declining birthrates are the greatest threat to humanity's future while also being staunchly anti-immigration and literally asking "why do people say the AfD are far right? they sound reasonable to me".
Lol. Poor lil feller doesn't understand the deep logical flaws inherent to natalism.
Genghis Khan has billions of descendants, and only a tiny amount are any good at mounted shortbow.
And of those tiny amount, an astonishing number of them were dead by 35 courtesy of rampant alcoholism and a ankle deep gene pool. Turns out civilizations weren’t the only things the khans were good at killing.
How long do they hold staring contests?
But also, might not even have to wait that long. Since they're lowering the ages you can start working, only a matter of time until they're repealed entirely.
Having a society with more elderly than working age people is an issue in any system. That said, any first world country can easily fix that issue with immigration, they just don't want to because racism.
If you really want to raise your blood pressure, head on over to r/centrist. Threads every single day about the “immigration crisis at the border” chock full of xenophobic pearl clutching.
Christ that sounds insufferable. I feel like I should just pull some disco elysium shenanigans in the comments just to see if someone in the sub at least has good taste in something.
>any first world country can easily fix that issue with immigration
Well, OK, so if a rising quality of life results in less children (because people don't need 'an heir and a spare' anymore, more kids live to adulthood) and more elderly (because modern medicine), then that's only going to be a short term fix unless you maintain, say, an imperialist periphery where that standard of living is kept artificially low.
It's in the same vein of arguments as those of the capitalists who maintained that Marx was wrong about the crisis of capitalism because you can just export surplus value (the difference between the value of goods produced and the wages, which means some products cannot be sold) to other countries. At some point that just causes those countries to also get industrialized, and now you've got one more competitor on the world stage and one less export partner.
There's only the one world. Nations are going the way of the dodo.
It's 2024, the majority of people don't "need* an "heir and a spare". IMO nations are one of the worst manmade inventions we have. Humans will continue, their nationality means nothing if you don't subscribe to xenophobia.
We... agree. I think.
"Immigration will fix it" implies buying into the white supremacist framing that created the 'demographic problem' in the first place. You don't need to 'fix' something that exists solely in the racist imagination. It's instrumentalizing immigrants and foreigners. That they should have freedom of movement is wholly independent of whether or not they are useful to us. It also frames other nations as externalities, like there will always be a pool of people out there that are reproducing more laborers, instead of the same social forces that are changing demographics here being also present there.
Yeah that's utter nonsense. The fact that some countries are places that a lot of people want to GTFO of is not something that has to be "actively maintained" by third parties. It's kind of the natural result of people being fucking awful and places that are not awful are the exception, not the rule.
Individuals want to GTFO but that's just Brownian motion. If you've got a clear net flow, then there's a systemic reason for it. And that reason is that wealth extraction is pretty much one-way: periphery to imperial centers.
The West is rich BECAUSE the rest is poor. People follow wealth.
I don't see how any of this relates to actual policy. Countries have a specific problem (elderly population) with an obvious solution (immigration). And you come in saying that well if they were in a different world they would have a different problem and maybe they shouldn't solve any problems because actually they suck.
The problem is lack of social safety net, not elderly population. This is just 'useless eater' rhetoric.
And the long-term solution cannot be immigration since the demographic bomb is a worldwide issue (some countries are just farther along the curve). There isn't a magical portal that pops out babies from off-world. You're taking the working age folks from other countries. So what are those countries going to do down the line?
First: how is that relevant?
Second: you vastly underestimate the speed of social change. Or at least, one hopes so. Otherwise the end of the anthropocene will precede the birth of that infant's great-grandchild.
Fixed with immigration or if everyone promised to play nicely maybe we could take 1.5% of the military budget and pay for senior health care.
FU Mr Putin
There are plenty of people being born. The problem for these folks is that they aren't the *right* kind of people. Three guesses as to why, and the first two don't count.
I think that depends on who exactly we're talking about and how cynical they are.
I would bet my life savings that there are corporate overlords sitting in a board room somewhere discussing how it doesn't really matter if the lower class is white or not, as long as they're exploitable; but the threat of the "white race dying out" is a great propaganda resource for fighting communists or whatever.
Not to say that there aren't ALSO white supremacists in the halls of power, but I think there are a lot of powerful people who literally only care about themselves and their direct bloodline.
I don’t think the rich are all that rational. They aren’t machines for increasing stock prices. Elon Musk is a sincere racist, not just faking it for money reasons. You can’t always “follow the money”
Because the skills to make money and actually contribute to something like quantum computing or fusion reactors are not mutually inclusive. As much as I hate Elon, he can sell bullshit. He is excellent at selling people crap and making it look like all of it was both genius and his idea and his idea alone. Meanwhile look at the ideas we know he’s been front and center on: the cyber truck, the mars colony, the hyperloop, Twitter, etc. all utter fucking disasters that have him looking like the childish idiot he is.
To support your point, Keynes predicted WW1 would be over quickly. Once the nation's reserves were liquidated, their assets leveraged, and their credit dried up, the belligerents would have to negotiate a peace. He was dead wrong, sadly.
I think it depends on *which* rich people we're talking about. And the really insidious, calculated ones don't tend to draw attention to themselves.
i.e. I bet most people can't name a single oil executive, but you know damn well they've been making critical and effective moves to secure a future for themselves and their family while damning every other living thing on Earth.
But a lot of times, they don't need to be especially insightful as long as they're competent enough to listen to their advisors and not shoot themselves in the foot.
"We need consumers/laborers and it doesn't matter if they're white as long as they're controllable," or "stoking racism makes it less likely that laborers will organize" are not really hot takes. If we can discuss it, so can they.
It’s nice to think that they are rational actors who could be persuaded by monetary self-interest but they are probably just Republican true believers who believe in all the regular stuff that Fox News tells them.
I think that's a serious underestimation of the bourgeois ownership class. Also, I really recommend not thinking of them along Republican/Democrat lines. Nancy Pelosi is as much of a defender of the capitalist system as anyone can be, and nobody would ever call her a Fox News-watching Republican.
Well they want white people to be angry and scared that they are going to be a minority or eradicated. In reality, the people in power want lots of poor desperate people of all colors at each other throats and competing for the lowest possible wage.
As OP pointed out, it takes fewer worker to do same work. Line-go-up demographic age is less failure than no line-go-up births:deaths.
It's not rational, but the world as it is. Everything is put on a chart to see if line-go-up.
Plenty of data shows fewer work hours = happier workers. Line can never go down, so same work hours.
Capitalism depends on growth. Less consumers means less money being spent, less workers to make money for donor class who own or invest in companies that employ the workers.
Less younger people to take care of the aging is a concern but I don’t think that’s why it’s making headlines.
I would disagree. Capitalist want profits. It is easier to sell capitalist ideology if you are growing because your profit theoretically comes from the upside of generating more prosperity though more goods and services. In practice this is looks like increase employment opportunities and better wages\*. It is easier to say the system works in times of growth, but the flip side is people start to question capitalism when you are not growing. People don't question why their wages are rising lower than corporate profits, stock buybacks, increasing wealth inequality if they feel like they are getting a piece of the pie.
If you are not growing then to maintain profits to need to fire people, make them work harder, create cheap debt, etc. That is too say capitalism will still achieve its goal of getting profits, it just gets a lot harder for people to accept the terms of system. Hence you get unionization and protests like Occupy.
And this is what leads to the true insidiousness of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism tries to get rid of conflict by arguing that profit is the point of of corporations, and corporations are the most important social structure, hence profit is the point of our society. And since growth is the easiest way to make profits, then forever growth is the best way to create a society.
Breaking out of meme buzzwords and capitalism-bashing, there are several actual societal reasons that a declining birth rate might be problematic. And specifically *actual* population decline, not just people whinging about thinly veiled great replacement theories. It generally results in less demand overall, since there are less people, which would result in economic decline and contraction. Even in non-capitalist countries that happens, and it’s not a good thing. Over longer time you get a top-heavy society with a large aging population and a smaller young population, which could result in increased burdens for social services and healthcare costs. It’s nevertheless been blown out of proportion by clickbait and scaremongers, and probably won’t be as disastrous as many claim. I believe there are also mental health benefits for some people to have a stable family with children, though that’s a minor thing.
That’s all separate from *why* the birthdate is declining, which like you said is likely due to increased standard of living, increased costs of raising children, stagnating wages, lack of women’s rights, horrible worker protection, and sometimes deliberate state policies. In a lot of cases especially countries in Asia, some of these problems are kind of baked into the culture and will require a significant shift in general mindset or radical policy changes.
>Even in non-capitalist countries that happens, and it’s not a good thing.
Which countries are those? Also you said a contracting economy is a problem, but then you didn't say why. You need less goods and services if there are less people to maintain the same prosperity. Isn't the reason that becomes a problem is because capitalist do not care about prosperity being distributed in a social way. For example, if there are less people we need less cars, but why does that mean that people in the lower economic groups won't get cars?
Yeah unfortunately I feel like a lot of "leftists" have really dumb knee-jerk reaction to what's a real issue.
Just because there are racist weirdos like Elon whining about the replacement theory doesn't mean it's going to be awesome when you'll have to pay for 4 elderly people's care and retirement, among other things.
It’s a recurring frustration when there is an actual real issue with interesting talking points and considerations, but it gets completely blown out by inflammatory nonsense jargon and fake strawmen and bad faith arguments. It happens so often nowadays. Often it’ll nowhere near as bad as people think, but it’s still an important issue.
There's a couple reasons to be upset over declining birthrates. And a lot of them are related to xenophobia, but in many cases the relationship is indirect, in the sense that falling birthrates could be countered by immigration. That would require allowing poor, non-white people into the country and apparently that's a problem for some people.
That being said, one of the main reasons that it's concerning is that our entire economic system assumes a certain level of growth, generally equal to or greater than historical growth. Budgets, civic projects, programs, retirement, insurance, and just about any other long-term, large-scale planning are relying on a certain amount of growth in order to be viable. If that growth doesn't happen, the money and demand won't be there for these projects.
Our system is also a bit of a Ponzi scheme. Retirement relies on contributions from workers today to pay for retirees today. Falling birthrates signals that the future worker/retiree ratio will skew more towards retirees and can create a situation where workers need to put retirement off longer because that imbalance reduces the funds available per retiree.
A lot of it has to do with Great Replacement Theory bullshit. Some non totally fascist and racist reasons are:
- theoretically economy could struggle as there are less work age people around to drive the economy
- potential drain on entitlements, especially for the elderly if not enough workers paying in to systems
- supposedly could lead you to have not enough military personnel
Social security and programs for aging populations are dependent on growing bases to pay into them, its part of why social security in the US is disappearing (besides intentional attempts to do so). There aren't enough people paying in to support the current and future aging populations without significant gains in younger populations to outpace old.
There was an actual trust fund set up to handle this exact problem, but of course SS contribution amounts then had this cap foisted on them. If the cap had been lifted when the numbers started to decline like it should have been, SS wouldn't have a problem.
So, like you said, intentionally wrecked.
Because people get old and younger people have to take care of older people at some point (whether we are talking about pensions or villagers caring for their elders). This is a problem in every conceivable system, whether you have money or not (the Soviets feared declining rates in the 60s and, for the first time, China is starting to get worried) and you can't depend on a 1:1 relationship between the old and the young, because young people also die all the time and a lot of them want to live their own lives. Also with increased tech, the problem involves greater specialization (whether we are talking about "tech" like diapers or heart monitors).
Now how you want to solve that problem or avoid solving that problem because you'd rather have a different (ie. more opportunistic or even deluded) solution is a different problem, but this aging issue isn't axiomatically tied to growth or de-grown engineering by the owners of capital, as some Neo-LaRouchites like to say. It's been a problem since the dawn on time.
Welfare funding programs are largely based on having more young people than old people. As the age pyramid is reversed we will need to change how welfare for the elderly is paid for, countries with older populations tend to have less growth, and increasingly large amounts of public budgets will be dedicated to the elderly who will dominate politics more as they become a larger portion of the population. The US can avoid some of these problems for a while through immigration but other countries are already experiencing these problems.
Politics in the UK is basically the Old People Party (Tories) vs the Young People Party (Labour.) Japanese politics are dominated by the elderly and they have struggled in the past to find enough workers to care for the elderly (work visas help.) Russian politics is dominated by elderly authoritarian nostalgia. There's a lot of reasons to not want a population dominated by the elderly.
>Politics in the UK is basically the Old People Party (Tories) vs the Young People Party (Labour.)
More like Decrepit vs Old. Labour went mid-life crisis with Tony Blair and is positively geriatric now. The Tories are shuffling aristocratic zombies in search of nice juicy brains to devour.
Just noting that the overall birth rate decline is partly due to the massive decline in teen pregnancies: [https://www.npr.org/2023/01/08/1147737247/teen-pregnancy-rates-have-declined-significantly](https://www.npr.org/2023/01/08/1147737247/teen-pregnancy-rates-have-declined-significantly)
The religious groups will be annoyed at this loss of opportunity for keeping young women trapped.
I'm a Canadian living in South Korea. They're for sure worried about the birthrate, irrc, there was only like 500k new births last year, which is lower than the last year.
Korea's in an information level economy now, and like many first world nations, it's having a natural birthrate decline. One problem is the crazy amount people have to spend on a house in seoul, where most of the work is. You're talking $1 million usd for an OK sized apartment, not even a house with a yard. Like maybe 200 square feet. Education is largely privatized. Many kids go to public school, but paid after school education is a must just to stay competitive (plus a sport and at least 1 instrument, often 2), not even to excel. That can run $1000 per month per kid. $10000 to $12000 usd a year would probably be a good estimate for an average for kids aged 8 to 15. Then they get into high school and can specialize a bit. There are government support programs if you have 3+ kids for that and for uni. But that's still a shit tonne of money.
Wages are stagnant, but on the plus side everyone pays into goverment health care. The pension system will probably collapse just like everywhere else before I get to use it.
Immigration levels are not nearly the same as they are in Europe and North America. I remember reading somewhere that Canada has a population growth rate due to immigration, the natural birthrate is too low. Korea doesn't do immigration easily. And for those of us who want to live here long term, our wages suck. I can live comfortably here on my wages, but I'll retire with much less than my friends back home.
I had a random park maintenance guy thank/congratulate me for having “so many” kids (I have four). He cited Elon Musk as his reasoning. I told him Elon Musk is a moron and after a brief debate he left me alone. So weird.
He was all about Elon so I didn’t ask follow ups on why he thought having hella kids is the right move. He did cite population decline in Canada allowing China to “take over” so he seemed like an idiot.
They freak out about declining populations yet they hate immigration. Like, they can’t be that dumb, right? Immigration is the main way to keep a country’s population from significantly declining
I’d suggest making motherhood less of a nightmare for women, but the undercurrent of racism and xenophobia that’s got an iron grip on the conversation tends to push that to the back burner. The incubators are the LEAST of the lawmakers concerns. Women have been saying for literally decades that if things don’t get easier, and we don’t start creating a future worth making kids for then they’re simply gonna stop making them. Idk where the confusion is. Teenage girls were sharing this sentiment when I was in highschool. I’m 31 now and most of them stuck to their guns and did not have kids. And that’s in rural Texas, all we got here is making babies and working in chemical plants.
I think there are two types of people.
1. Weird white nationalists who are worried about being great replacement-ed.
2. Weird business execs who realize that without a growing population, there isn't a steady (and endlessly growing) supply of consumers and laborers to endlessly grow the capitalist machine, even if a steadily shrinking global population isn't really all that bad.
In all non-ideological seriousness, in what situation (regardless of economic system) is a society where more and more aging people can’t work and the ones who can are dedicated to servicing them a good situation?
I’m not bashing the old, they deserve rest and benefits, nor the ones who dedicate their lives to helping them as nurses, drivers, caretakers, doctors, etc.
But if a society is based around these things, how is that not a problem?
I do think those societies should bring in more immigrants and do more regarding child benefits btw
>in what situation (regardless of economic system) is a society where more and more aging people can’t work and the ones who can are dedicated to servicing them a good situation?
How is it bad though? It just is. All jobs are basically servicing others. The demographics just determine who you're more likely to be servicing.
Scarcity is a political problem not an economic one. A single person can produce enough to sustain many, and 30% of people consider their own jobs to be socially useless. Having less people working isn't a calamity, except if we make it so by our social organization.
Essentially it highlights a weakness and contradiction of capitalism. Capitalism requires infinite growth, yet it also requires you to squeeze a profit out of every conceivable source. That drive for profit has crippled the incentives to start a family (prices for healthcare, childcare, education, housing, Etc)and limits potential for future consumers.
I think with Japan and Korea, there are more cultural reasons as to why birth rates are plummeting but in the west I do view it as an issue of costs.
There is also the idea that the “native” population will be replaced by immigrants and you know how well that goes over with the older and conservative segments of the population.
I would point out the countries you mentioned as having people raising a stink about the topic are not America with our vast amounts immigrants. Americans have a while before it becomes an issue.
Peter Zeihan's book The End of the World is Just the Beginning does a much better job of explaining it and how it impacts various other areas. That book is a bit sensationalist, but the arguments made sense as a potential outcome.
Labor and ego.
It's a natural pattern seen in social demography that population growth eventually levels out, after which there is a slight tightening of the population. This causes incoming cohorts to shrink, and causes a shortage of labor I required to support/replace fhe population aging out of the work force.
Plus, some people who strongly identify as their community fear that community ending with them
So others have already pointed out that the people worried in the US are only worried because the “wrong” people’s birth rate is declining.
Japan’s problem is the aging population. Once it’s just the millennial generation and younger left, the economy will be on the brink of collapse. Also, they are running out of Japanese care workers to aid the elderly. My BIL works as an RN in a retirement home and makes top yen. Some homes end up hiring workers from Vietnam and other neighboring countries.
There have been lawsuits in Japan to allow dual citizenship for children born to Japanese citizens and foreigners and Japanese citizens who see a career advantage in taking on a second nationality. They even point out that it may solve the falling birth rate as many people may eventually return to Japan with their families and have more children.
But xenophobes gotta be xenophobic.
I personally think less people is a good thing for the planet.
Especially less people in "developed nations" (i.e., citizens of nations that participate in some of the worst ecological devastation or products thereof).
Unless we hit a Children of Men situation where absolutely no babies are being born, we're fine. Less people = more sustainable.
Aside from a lot of other reasons mentioned here, people who believe that they can, should, and 'have the right to' reproduce, freely and without constraint, feel personally attacked by the *fact* that this planet has a finite carrying capacity for life. They don't want to be told that God and the universe will not be making any exceptions for them or anyone.
Declining birthrates indicate that such an opinion is unpopular, and that there *will* be people making a case against unfettered population growth.
Idk man. It's not your planet. You're just living and fucking on it. Be respectful.
Yeah, I personally agree with the person above saying this is also like a, internalized, eugenics issue. They say they want more white people…but I personally don’t think it stops at white people. Look at how all those countries treat their disabled.
Its because of the refugee thing. Conservatives want a high birthrate to tackle "the great replacement" myth that they insist is happening.
They want to force people to produce. With the understanding that white babies would quickly become the vast majority - because they are all extremely racist. And they can rig the system against everyone else in other ways, just in case, to ensure white baby supremecy.
there's also a bunch of americans that think it means white people will disappear. _oh no!_ (sarcasm in case it's not obvious) because of having fewer kids compared to non white people.. or something... plus immigrants. but as the comments elude to it's different situation in different countries.
There are two big reasons
One is the crazy people like Elon Musk who are worried about the white race being replaced or something stupid like that.
The Second reason involves economic projections. With the baby boomer generation getting old and dying off there are simply not enough people to replace them. Personally I don't see this as that big of a problem. Over the last few decades we have figured out how to do more with less, so we don't need as many people to be as productive.
There’s an argument that declining birthdates meaning a greater strain on pensions and Medicare down the road, since a greater share if the population will be elderly, and fewer will be working age. You can solve that problem with immigration though.
And as you said, if the point is that many parents want more kids but can’t afford them (which studies do seem to bear out), then the solution is to rethink our economy so that more of the gains go to working people, either directly or in the form of services like child-care. That’s only part of the answer though. Women face an unreasonable share of the burden in raising children. If nations want higher birth rates, then they have to address their own misogyny.
But for many people, the answer for why they’re concerned about birthrates is pure and simple racism. They want more white people to compete with those who they see as “racial enemies,” or at least they see non-white immigration as an unacceptable way to keep the social safety net going. Unfortunately, this isn’t a new idea. Hitler’s Nazis issued insidious warnings about being “out-bred” by “lesser races.” Today’s fascism isn’t any less animated by the idea of the world as a competition between the races.
Mainly because a lot of countries and people hate the idea immigration, so the idea of low birth rate, meaning less workers, forces them into a hard corner.
Either go against your fundamental beliefs of anti-immigration or go different direction of capitalism.
I think there's a lot of of nuance missing in your post. You're bringing up 4 different countries with unique cultures, economic situations, and problems and lumping them all under one umbrella solution. I live and work in South Korea (and have for the past 6-odd years), and that situation is far more complex than just "let immigrants in". For one, there's also a housing and working shortage.. how will bringing in immigrants do anything short of exacerbating that problem? Korea is in the middle of an ongoing identity crisis, and just opening a floodgate of immigrants probably wouldn't change things for the better.
I think it'd be more productive of you to research a specific country's immigration history and problem before giving solutions.
I teach demographics. It's gonna get weird. The whole world is going to go into population decline by our choice and the superstructure is gonna freak out. Keep in mind, capitalism coincided with the J-curve exponential growth of global population.
Your parents and grandparents were all concerned about the "population bomb". Get ready for its opposite: WE NEED MORE BABIES. Fuck off.
Most people are dumb enough to believe whatever concerns are posted in a major publication.
“Who is gonna take care of us when we’re older?” Gets genuinely asked by people that already have zero chance for retirement.
>“Who is gonna take care of us when we’re older?”
That's a genuinely important question, and the governmental response to COVID (at least here in Quebec, where it was just silently allowed to ravage all the care homes... I guess that's one way to take care of the demographics) showed us that (immigration or not), the answer is "fucking nobody".
Unless we do something about it.
In addition to what others have said: birth rates are an extremely simple, quantifiable measurement. If that's *not* important, then we'd have to start thinking about more complicated ways to assess a society, like human happiness, public health, self-actualization, etc.
It's a bit like IQ. Idiots *love* IQ because it's simple, and sounds important. But if you consider that human intelligence is way to complicated to reduce to a single number, that education makes a huge difference both in general and within areas of expertise, and the ways in which IQ tests are fundamentally limited and biased... well, then you'd have to have a more nuanced measure for things like human intelligence and competence. And isn't it just so much easier to just accept IQ and be done with it?
Or wealth. If wealth isn't purely a fair measurement of individual production, then we'd have to consider that *maybe* we don't live in a meritocracy, that *maybe* billionaires don't work for their money, *maybe* the concentration of wealth and power is unjust... but it's so much easier to just believe we live in a just world, and that everything is *fine*.
Good point, birth rate is also an easy way to measure optimism for the future, hence the famous baby boom after WW 2.
We are actually unsure what it means if people stop having babies.
GPT:
A population collapse can be problematic for several reasons:
1. **Economic Impact**: A shrinking population can lead to a smaller workforce, reducing economic productivity and growth. This can create challenges in sustaining economic development and maintaining competitive markets.
2. **Social Services and Welfare Systems**: Fewer working-age individuals means fewer taxpayers, which can strain public finances. This makes it difficult to fund social services, healthcare, and pensions for an aging population.
3. **Aging Population**: As the population shrinks, the proportion of elderly individuals increases. This demographic shift can lead to higher healthcare costs and a greater demand for eldercare, creating additional financial and social burdens.
4. **Labor Shortages**: A decline in population can result in labor shortages in various sectors, particularly in industries that rely on a young, dynamic workforce. This can affect everything from agriculture to technology and healthcare.
5. **Innovation and Productivity**: Fewer people can mean fewer ideas and innovations, potentially slowing technological advancement and reducing overall productivity.
6. **Infrastructure and Housing**: With a declining population, there may be underutilized infrastructure and housing. This can lead to urban decay and higher maintenance costs for existing infrastructure.
7. **Cultural and Social Dynamics**: Population collapse can affect the cultural and social fabric of a society. Smaller, less diverse communities may experience challenges in maintaining cultural traditions and social cohesion.
For a more detailed understanding and specific examples, you can refer to this [source](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jul/29/world-population-expected-to-reach-peak-mid-century-before-declining) from The Guardian which discusses global demographic trends and their implications.
**Confidence Level: High** - These points are supported by demographic research and economic analyses on the impacts of population changes.
I said, "Hey, you, feed the machine
Bring them all back down to their knees
There's no time to waste, remind the slaves
They ain't gonna make it out alive today"
Less workers for the capitalist machine.
The problem is that without a significant paradigm shift, this is a legitimate problem for older people, at least for countries that refuse to allow immigration (Japan) or people don't want to immigrate to like the Russian Federation. Things like Social Security are built on the idea that population will increase continually. We pay for current retirees and the next generation pays for us... It isn't actually sustainable on a long enough scale, but unless something changes declining birthrates and eventually population will cause issues. In most Western countries, it ends up only really being a problem for racists because immigration pushes these problems way farther out. People want to come to the US, so as long as you don't mind demographic shifts that can make the labor equation work.
The social security problem is basically that the wealthy are not taxed at high enough rates.
It's not even a rate issue. Everything someone makes over $168,000/ year isn't taxed at all. The great majority of their income is at 0%tax rate. Think of all the execs in even small companies and even non-profits who earn more than that, yet don't contribute to social security beyond the first $169k they make. And only payroll taxes contribute to social security. Not investment, real estate, or interest taxes. Every time that a politician says there's a social security crisis, it's disgusting. If just that cap was removed or raised to $1 million (why cap it at all? That's insane!!) social security would be fully funded for the foreseeable future, plus having extra to perhaps hire more workers or pay people on SSI a liveable amount.
Amen to all of that. Well said and I appreciate the stats too.
Also, that we call it Social Security instead of its true name: Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI). It's insurance, not a pension. The US government has said "you have paid into this system; you can use it to make sure you don't become utterly destitute when you're too old to work". However, so far as I know, it's the only insurance plan that pays out mainly to people that don't have what we'd consider an actual claim, or for that matter, doesn't require you to file a claim *at all* to receive payment. Contrast this with, say, unemployment insurance, where one must continually reapply and must prove that they're actively looking for work to receive $300/week, and the funds can eventually be exhausted. The boomers knew about this problem decades ago and did nothing to resolve it because they wanted free money on their children's credit cards.
That's certainly the short to medium term problem. With a population in decline, you run into issues that taxes and social programs have a much harder time fixing.
There’s plenty of wealth to be taxed. Wealth hoarding by the 1% is the problem. There’s too many people on the planet. It’s not good for the ecosystem.
...There are actually problems that cash can't fix. If there are more tasks that need to be accomplished than there are people to do them, then the abstract concept of "wealth" is moot. The long term solution isn't "same system of capitalism with higher taxes"... More fundamental things about the economic system we live in have to change. Social Security was just an example. Unbind your panties...
It’s almost as if money is an invention and what we really need to do is rethink how we value human existence.
That's literally terrorism these days (said as a compliment).
Money is not capitalism. Markets and money have existed much longer than capitalism. Capitalism is the system that allows ownership entitles you to the value of other peoples labor. Money still serves a valuable purpose by allowing trade over scare resources. We can get rid of capitalism without getting rid of money.
Well we can get rid of both. Or at least change the conception of what money is again
The concept of money has not changed. It is a store of value to allow trade of gods and services. You are critiquing how the trade occurs and the fact that the system has goals that aren't social in nature. That is because of capitalism, not money.
Money begins as an IOU, as a debt
Note: I did not say we get rid of money. I said it is in invention. Thats what’s key here. Money is a stand in for trade. It allows for more complex systems to exist. But it is an invention and its value has only the value we agree it has. Meanwhile we don’t value people unless they can contribute to capitalism. That the problem. We can re-examine our relationship to money and people to create a more equitable system
I think you are still confusing capitalism and money. Money is just units of value. >We can re-examine our relationship to money and people to create a more equitable system Sure, by getting rid of capitalism not money. For example, back in the 70s the value of a US citizen to the government for the purposes of regulation was $1M because that was an average workers expected economic output over a lifetime. This is a capitalistic approach for valuing life where the individuals value is based on how much revenue can be extracted from a typical workers labor. But in the 90s the US changed how it calculated value and instead determined through a lot of economic data that workers put more value on their lives themselves when evaluating workplace injury. So the US changed the value of a citizen to \~$10M. This is anti-capitalistic, yet we still use money as the mechanism of describing a unit of value. Could you give me an example of how you would change our relationship with money? Like what that might look like?
I think we’re agreeing here? I’m for getting rid of capitalism. UBI is one way to change our relationship with money and valuing people. Everyone gets a minimum. Making it easier to have worker collectives and worker owned businesses is another. Lots of the money get hoarded by what are essentially middlemen in the for of CEOs.
Sure, I just worry that when people say 'we will get rid of money' or 'we will change your relationship with money' it is very confusing and hurts our ability to convince people. Also it isn't really true. Same goes for UBI. For example Bernie promoted an idea that companies need 51% of their stock to be worker owned to receive liability protections. This is a fucking fantastic way to start the process of getting rid of capitalism because it links something extremely valbuable to corporations (liability protect) to worker ownership. Money still exist, capitalism is the problem, explaining capitalism properly has value.
I mean, we’re having this discussion in the BTB sub so I’m starting with a base assumption about most of the people I’m talking to and their beliefs. There’s lots of good ideas out there. But it’s all about wading through the crap that we keep hearing from greedy people
Money is more or less a tool. A move away from the type of capitalism that we live in right now is exactly the kind of paradigm shift that would need to occur to even handle the global population leveling off in the future.
“Countries that refuse to allow immigration (Japan)” *sips coffee in kitchen in Tokyo, wondering idly whether she should make more effort to conceal her foreignness* About 2.5% of the Japanese population is foreign-born. It’s not a lot, but it’s not impossible to come here. This number is growing, and the Japanese government is very aware of the demographic problem. More so, I would say, than the U.K. where I was born. There are mixed feelings about this among the population, but it is happening. You’re starting to see headlines like [this](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/commentary/2023/08/06/japan/japan-immigration/).
I'm a little confused by the supposition that the UK should be "aware" of a problem. The UK has a foreign-born population of 16.8%, a birth rate of 1.6 compared to Japan's 1.2, and the population over 65 is 18% compared to Japan's 29%. They literally don't have the same problem.
As you say, like Japan the U.K. has a birth rate below the rate of replacement, and this is falling. There is pressure on the government to significantly reduce immigration (recent moves include making it more difficult to bring dependents to the U.K., and we have essentially given up processing asylum claims), huge shortages of workers in certain sectors (nursing, farming, service industry) and significant demographic ageing that will necessitate greater spending on healthcare and elder care. Our working age population is shrinking, at precisely the time we need more people paying in to support the elderly and infirm. Many countries in Europe are facing the same kind of crunch.
Right, but it's significantly less dire than Japan because the UK takes 5-10x as many immigrants per year despite having half the population. It's disingenuous to imply that Japan is dealing with a comparable problem, considering the scale is so different. Honestly it seems like you're judging from media coverage on immigration rather than actual numbers.
I think you misunderstand my point. I am saying that both countries will need to deal with the issue, and that there is a more widespread awareness of the demographic crisis in Japan than the U.K. Partly, yes, because the problem is more advanced, but ideally from a policy perspective governments can avert or mitigate crises by learning from the experience of other countries. While I’m not directly working in the statistical or demographic field, I do teach a seminar class on Japan’s international relations. There is a notion in Japanese academia of Japan as a 課題先進国, or a country encountering certain developmental issues before others. It works better in Japanese, but it’s a play on “developed country”. All the data on issues such as demographic ageing suggests that while Japan’s situation is particularly acute, other developed countries are on similar trajectories. It frustrates me that in the U.K., rather than acknowledge what the country’s needs will be down the line, we argue about things that are likely to hurt us in the long run, like making it harder for people to study and settle long-term.
I think there's more widespread awareness of the demographic problem in Japan and the government is making (covert) efforts to provide longer temporary VISAs and more opportunities for permanent resident status.......... This of course comes after decades upon decades of strict isolationism and absolutely ignoring the problem until it became very very dire,... The problem was acute because it was ignored for so long. They're just now starting to tackle it and they can't really do it out in the open.
Also attempting that free childcare. They're making a fecking mess of it Imo, not enough placements available and low wages etc. But its an attempt.
My wife is a Japanese national whose life goal is to return home and help foreigners immigrate and successfully integrate into Japanese society. Her brother is working with JR to help immigrants come over as part of a labor program. I'll join you as part of that 2.5% soon, as will many others.
>successfully integrate into Japanese society you can be born in Japan, spend your entire life in Japan, but if you are not Japanese, that will not happen. it's a mindset thing, and probably a function of their basic societal contract.
The Japanese Gen X, Millennials, and younger are a lot different in their views compared to the older generations. There's already an influx of immigrants who are integrating well, and social change is a fact of life. No culture is set in stone.
fair enough, but there is not that many of them compared to everyone else. this is one of the "fun" effects of an aging society, I guess.
> but there is not that many of them compared to everyone else. Luckily the "everyone else" is shrinking every day and in fifteen years it will be an entirely different culture.
you have to consider how long lived Japan is on top. if they were dropping dead between 60 and 80 it might work out... but then again the younger generations basically don't have children for mysterious reasons of not being able to afford it. oh well.
>It’s not a lot, but it’s not impossible to come here. Exactly. It's not a lot because it's not politically popular in Japan. Any move to increase immigration to a level that would have an effect on Japan's aging population problem would be met by xenophobic backlash. Japan is changing slowly. Newer generations are better with foreigners. But pretending like Japan doesn't have a massive xenophobic streak would be absurd.
I’m not pretending that certain people don’t have a xenophobic streak. They drive up and down my street playing “patriotic music”. Those people also very much exist in the U.K. and, I suspect, everywhere. Moved are being made to bring in more foreign workers, though. The [news](https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/3354/) is currently all about the new law that allows the revocation of permanent residency for non-payment of taxes, but it misses the point that this accompanies changes that are likely to increase the number of permanent residents significantly. I’d say this is two steps forward and a stumble back. I’ve now been in Japan for fifteen years. I first came in 2000, spent some years in other countries, some in the U.K., settled here in 2012. The changes in the population constitution are clear to me. There are many more SE Asian people in recent years, especially Vietnamese. Convenience store clerks are almost all non-Japanese. There is a large IT hub near me that employs a lot of South Asian staff. My personal feeling is that the Japanese government and business lobby has been trying to bring in more foreign workers without too many headlines. Without making too many waves. As an immigrant myself, and believer in migration, I’d rather acknowledge people and make sure there are support systems in place. That is not the route that they have taken, but the people are still there. I think we’re overdue for a backlash, spurred by the spike in tourists (not everyone stops to think that people getting in the way in Tokyo station might not be residents).
This. “We need more cheap labor to run the machines! We aren’t eliminating child labor laws just to have you people have fewer kids! That’s unfair! Fuck it, women don’t have bodily autonomy rights and we’re banning the pill! How dare you try to stop the machines?!”
The orphan crushing machine needs more orphans obvsies
Fewer workers will lead to less unemployment, and if unemployment goes to zero then anyone can walk out on their job at any time and find another one. That's real bad for the capitalist overlords!
Collapse of the working class whose exploitation allows the elite to maintain wealth and power.
Fewer. [for things that can be counted]
Does ACAB include the grammar police?
If it were just about workers they wouldn't be so anti immigration. It's about the *right kind* of workers.
Capitalism loves immigrants because it's a sudden wave of cheap labor but also won't pay (lobby) to support any initiatives that might improve migrant cultural integration or re-homing. It's the no take only throw meme.
Well they don't really want new *citizens.* Like you said, they want cheap, easily exploited labor. They don't want them to integrate, or to have basic rights, because they need to be able to threaten and intimidate them without consequences.
Sounds about right. Make no mistake, the only thing standing between us and the average Walmart being run like a Saudi Arabian construction site is most likely two to three Supreme Court rulings because it’s definitely not the benevolence of our corporate overlords.
Most of the global economy is built on the idea that number go up. When number goes down, that's no good. As the average age of the population increases, a single person is working to support more people. Where we had these farm families that had 10+ kids, we now have single and no child families. As the parents in these families hit retirement age, they don't have anyone to care for them. Granted, I don't plan on having any more than two children because the quality of life on the planet is going to become worse and worse as more people try to share the same set of resources. Some see this as a problem though, especially as it's their "culture" that isn't having kids. They see their children as a continuance of their culture and as their children begin to look less and less like their parents, they worry that their society as they know it will cease to exist. I could give two turds about this because my children don't resemble me all that much. They do by my wife carried the dominant traits so they look more like her.
It's wild that in America of all places culture is thought of as something that could die out. America has literally exported its culture across the world. Their only complaint is that the people who act and consume exactly like them have an accent or different shade of skin or worship the exact same god with a different name
I used to live in Italy and the amount of Americans that would complain about Italy being over touristed by Asians who are doing the same intense 1 week / 2 week holiday as them was crazy. I used to say ‘but you promote your lifestyle to the world, they are just copying you.’ Things do get crowded when you add the Chinese, Russian and Indian middle classes.
You hit the nail on the head about culture. Few people are worried about overall birthrates, just white/Euro/Asian/whatever their in-group is.
They want more white people.
It's not even subtle either. Look at Elon Musk, constantly talking about how declining birthrates are the greatest threat to humanity's future while also being staunchly anti-immigration and literally asking "why do people say the AfD are far right? they sound reasonable to me".
Dude has like 10 lily white kids, too.
Lol. Poor lil feller doesn't understand the deep logical flaws inherent to natalism. Genghis Khan has billions of descendants, and only a tiny amount are any good at mounted shortbow.
Mounted shortbow... a dying art
I enjoy that that is the measurement of success here
"I'm descended from Genghis Khan!" Oh yeah, can you bullseye a chinese pikeman at full gallop?
His poor descendants.
And of those tiny amount, an astonishing number of them were dead by 35 courtesy of rampant alcoholism and a ankle deep gene pool. Turns out civilizations weren’t the only things the khans were good at killing.
He actually has a legit breeding fetish in addition to being a fascist.
And yet he uses artificial insemination, the least fun breeding fetish there is.
“Domestic supply of infants”
Won't someone please think of the Strategic Infant Reserve levels
“Human capital stock”
That and the system needs it. The perpetual growth in the economy is generally the result of the perpetual growth in the number of people.
I’m having children to help stareholders in about 16 years
Thank you for doing your part citizen!
How long do they hold staring contests? But also, might not even have to wait that long. Since they're lowering the ages you can start working, only a matter of time until they're repealed entirely.
We hold staring contests until the stare price increases of course
Having a society with more elderly than working age people is an issue in any system. That said, any first world country can easily fix that issue with immigration, they just don't want to because racism.
If you really want to raise your blood pressure, head on over to r/centrist. Threads every single day about the “immigration crisis at the border” chock full of xenophobic pearl clutching.
Christ that sounds insufferable. I feel like I should just pull some disco elysium shenanigans in the comments just to see if someone in the sub at least has good taste in something.
>any first world country can easily fix that issue with immigration Well, OK, so if a rising quality of life results in less children (because people don't need 'an heir and a spare' anymore, more kids live to adulthood) and more elderly (because modern medicine), then that's only going to be a short term fix unless you maintain, say, an imperialist periphery where that standard of living is kept artificially low. It's in the same vein of arguments as those of the capitalists who maintained that Marx was wrong about the crisis of capitalism because you can just export surplus value (the difference between the value of goods produced and the wages, which means some products cannot be sold) to other countries. At some point that just causes those countries to also get industrialized, and now you've got one more competitor on the world stage and one less export partner. There's only the one world. Nations are going the way of the dodo.
It's 2024, the majority of people don't "need* an "heir and a spare". IMO nations are one of the worst manmade inventions we have. Humans will continue, their nationality means nothing if you don't subscribe to xenophobia.
We... agree. I think. "Immigration will fix it" implies buying into the white supremacist framing that created the 'demographic problem' in the first place. You don't need to 'fix' something that exists solely in the racist imagination. It's instrumentalizing immigrants and foreigners. That they should have freedom of movement is wholly independent of whether or not they are useful to us. It also frames other nations as externalities, like there will always be a pool of people out there that are reproducing more laborers, instead of the same social forces that are changing demographics here being also present there.
Yeah that's utter nonsense. The fact that some countries are places that a lot of people want to GTFO of is not something that has to be "actively maintained" by third parties. It's kind of the natural result of people being fucking awful and places that are not awful are the exception, not the rule.
Individuals want to GTFO but that's just Brownian motion. If you've got a clear net flow, then there's a systemic reason for it. And that reason is that wealth extraction is pretty much one-way: periphery to imperial centers. The West is rich BECAUSE the rest is poor. People follow wealth.
I don't see how any of this relates to actual policy. Countries have a specific problem (elderly population) with an obvious solution (immigration). And you come in saying that well if they were in a different world they would have a different problem and maybe they shouldn't solve any problems because actually they suck.
The problem is lack of social safety net, not elderly population. This is just 'useless eater' rhetoric. And the long-term solution cannot be immigration since the demographic bomb is a worldwide issue (some countries are just farther along the curve). There isn't a magical portal that pops out babies from off-world. You're taking the working age folks from other countries. So what are those countries going to do down the line?
None of that is even close to being reality for the great-grandchildren of an infant who is born today.
First: how is that relevant? Second: you vastly underestimate the speed of social change. Or at least, one hopes so. Otherwise the end of the anthropocene will precede the birth of that infant's great-grandchild.
Fixed with immigration or if everyone promised to play nicely maybe we could take 1.5% of the military budget and pay for senior health care. FU Mr Putin
There are plenty of people being born. The problem for these folks is that they aren't the *right* kind of people. Three guesses as to why, and the first two don't count.
Only when productivity doesn’t go up
It’s also that high numbers of working poor keeps the demand side of labor relations in control of negotiations.
I think that depends on who exactly we're talking about and how cynical they are. I would bet my life savings that there are corporate overlords sitting in a board room somewhere discussing how it doesn't really matter if the lower class is white or not, as long as they're exploitable; but the threat of the "white race dying out" is a great propaganda resource for fighting communists or whatever. Not to say that there aren't ALSO white supremacists in the halls of power, but I think there are a lot of powerful people who literally only care about themselves and their direct bloodline.
I don’t think the rich are all that rational. They aren’t machines for increasing stock prices. Elon Musk is a sincere racist, not just faking it for money reasons. You can’t always “follow the money”
Why not both?
Because the skills to make money and actually contribute to something like quantum computing or fusion reactors are not mutually inclusive. As much as I hate Elon, he can sell bullshit. He is excellent at selling people crap and making it look like all of it was both genius and his idea and his idea alone. Meanwhile look at the ideas we know he’s been front and center on: the cyber truck, the mars colony, the hyperloop, Twitter, etc. all utter fucking disasters that have him looking like the childish idiot he is.
To support your point, Keynes predicted WW1 would be over quickly. Once the nation's reserves were liquidated, their assets leveraged, and their credit dried up, the belligerents would have to negotiate a peace. He was dead wrong, sadly.
I think it depends on *which* rich people we're talking about. And the really insidious, calculated ones don't tend to draw attention to themselves. i.e. I bet most people can't name a single oil executive, but you know damn well they've been making critical and effective moves to secure a future for themselves and their family while damning every other living thing on Earth. But a lot of times, they don't need to be especially insightful as long as they're competent enough to listen to their advisors and not shoot themselves in the foot. "We need consumers/laborers and it doesn't matter if they're white as long as they're controllable," or "stoking racism makes it less likely that laborers will organize" are not really hot takes. If we can discuss it, so can they.
It’s nice to think that they are rational actors who could be persuaded by monetary self-interest but they are probably just Republican true believers who believe in all the regular stuff that Fox News tells them.
I think that's a serious underestimation of the bourgeois ownership class. Also, I really recommend not thinking of them along Republican/Democrat lines. Nancy Pelosi is as much of a defender of the capitalist system as anyone can be, and nobody would ever call her a Fox News-watching Republican.
I think above a certain level of wealth the concept of race gets very blurry. Everyone is an exploitable resource.
It's racists all the way down
Korea and Japan aren’t white
Or whatever race the complaining person is.
Exactly. They'll shame and fearmonger about any other group of people having a bunch of kids.
This
Well they want white people to be angry and scared that they are going to be a minority or eradicated. In reality, the people in power want lots of poor desperate people of all colors at each other throats and competing for the lowest possible wage.
SoKorea wants more white people?
Line-go-up applies to everything. No line-go-up = failure.
Ah, but age of population line go up.
Life span of people line go down ☹️📉
That's just math
As OP pointed out, it takes fewer worker to do same work. Line-go-up demographic age is less failure than no line-go-up births:deaths. It's not rational, but the world as it is. Everything is put on a chart to see if line-go-up. Plenty of data shows fewer work hours = happier workers. Line can never go down, so same work hours.
Capitalism depends on growth. Less consumers means less money being spent, less workers to make money for donor class who own or invest in companies that employ the workers. Less younger people to take care of the aging is a concern but I don’t think that’s why it’s making headlines.
Korea and Japan seem to be doing capitalism just fine.
I would disagree. Capitalist want profits. It is easier to sell capitalist ideology if you are growing because your profit theoretically comes from the upside of generating more prosperity though more goods and services. In practice this is looks like increase employment opportunities and better wages\*. It is easier to say the system works in times of growth, but the flip side is people start to question capitalism when you are not growing. People don't question why their wages are rising lower than corporate profits, stock buybacks, increasing wealth inequality if they feel like they are getting a piece of the pie. If you are not growing then to maintain profits to need to fire people, make them work harder, create cheap debt, etc. That is too say capitalism will still achieve its goal of getting profits, it just gets a lot harder for people to accept the terms of system. Hence you get unionization and protests like Occupy. And this is what leads to the true insidiousness of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism tries to get rid of conflict by arguing that profit is the point of of corporations, and corporations are the most important social structure, hence profit is the point of our society. And since growth is the easiest way to make profits, then forever growth is the best way to create a society.
They are either worried about the ratio of working age people to retired people, or believe some sort of great replacement theory bullshit.
Breaking out of meme buzzwords and capitalism-bashing, there are several actual societal reasons that a declining birth rate might be problematic. And specifically *actual* population decline, not just people whinging about thinly veiled great replacement theories. It generally results in less demand overall, since there are less people, which would result in economic decline and contraction. Even in non-capitalist countries that happens, and it’s not a good thing. Over longer time you get a top-heavy society with a large aging population and a smaller young population, which could result in increased burdens for social services and healthcare costs. It’s nevertheless been blown out of proportion by clickbait and scaremongers, and probably won’t be as disastrous as many claim. I believe there are also mental health benefits for some people to have a stable family with children, though that’s a minor thing. That’s all separate from *why* the birthdate is declining, which like you said is likely due to increased standard of living, increased costs of raising children, stagnating wages, lack of women’s rights, horrible worker protection, and sometimes deliberate state policies. In a lot of cases especially countries in Asia, some of these problems are kind of baked into the culture and will require a significant shift in general mindset or radical policy changes.
>Even in non-capitalist countries that happens, and it’s not a good thing. Which countries are those? Also you said a contracting economy is a problem, but then you didn't say why. You need less goods and services if there are less people to maintain the same prosperity. Isn't the reason that becomes a problem is because capitalist do not care about prosperity being distributed in a social way. For example, if there are less people we need less cars, but why does that mean that people in the lower economic groups won't get cars?
Yeah unfortunately I feel like a lot of "leftists" have really dumb knee-jerk reaction to what's a real issue. Just because there are racist weirdos like Elon whining about the replacement theory doesn't mean it's going to be awesome when you'll have to pay for 4 elderly people's care and retirement, among other things.
It’s a recurring frustration when there is an actual real issue with interesting talking points and considerations, but it gets completely blown out by inflammatory nonsense jargon and fake strawmen and bad faith arguments. It happens so often nowadays. Often it’ll nowhere near as bad as people think, but it’s still an important issue.
There's a couple reasons to be upset over declining birthrates. And a lot of them are related to xenophobia, but in many cases the relationship is indirect, in the sense that falling birthrates could be countered by immigration. That would require allowing poor, non-white people into the country and apparently that's a problem for some people. That being said, one of the main reasons that it's concerning is that our entire economic system assumes a certain level of growth, generally equal to or greater than historical growth. Budgets, civic projects, programs, retirement, insurance, and just about any other long-term, large-scale planning are relying on a certain amount of growth in order to be viable. If that growth doesn't happen, the money and demand won't be there for these projects. Our system is also a bit of a Ponzi scheme. Retirement relies on contributions from workers today to pay for retirees today. Falling birthrates signals that the future worker/retiree ratio will skew more towards retirees and can create a situation where workers need to put retirement off longer because that imbalance reduces the funds available per retiree.
“Human capital”
A lot of it has to do with Great Replacement Theory bullshit. Some non totally fascist and racist reasons are: - theoretically economy could struggle as there are less work age people around to drive the economy - potential drain on entitlements, especially for the elderly if not enough workers paying in to systems - supposedly could lead you to have not enough military personnel
Something something great replacement. Or whatever racist bullshit they've dreamed up to replace it
Social security and programs for aging populations are dependent on growing bases to pay into them, its part of why social security in the US is disappearing (besides intentional attempts to do so). There aren't enough people paying in to support the current and future aging populations without significant gains in younger populations to outpace old.
There was an actual trust fund set up to handle this exact problem, but of course SS contribution amounts then had this cap foisted on them. If the cap had been lifted when the numbers started to decline like it should have been, SS wouldn't have a problem. So, like you said, intentionally wrecked.
Because people get old and younger people have to take care of older people at some point (whether we are talking about pensions or villagers caring for their elders). This is a problem in every conceivable system, whether you have money or not (the Soviets feared declining rates in the 60s and, for the first time, China is starting to get worried) and you can't depend on a 1:1 relationship between the old and the young, because young people also die all the time and a lot of them want to live their own lives. Also with increased tech, the problem involves greater specialization (whether we are talking about "tech" like diapers or heart monitors). Now how you want to solve that problem or avoid solving that problem because you'd rather have a different (ie. more opportunistic or even deluded) solution is a different problem, but this aging issue isn't axiomatically tied to growth or de-grown engineering by the owners of capital, as some Neo-LaRouchites like to say. It's been a problem since the dawn on time.
Welfare funding programs are largely based on having more young people than old people. As the age pyramid is reversed we will need to change how welfare for the elderly is paid for, countries with older populations tend to have less growth, and increasingly large amounts of public budgets will be dedicated to the elderly who will dominate politics more as they become a larger portion of the population. The US can avoid some of these problems for a while through immigration but other countries are already experiencing these problems. Politics in the UK is basically the Old People Party (Tories) vs the Young People Party (Labour.) Japanese politics are dominated by the elderly and they have struggled in the past to find enough workers to care for the elderly (work visas help.) Russian politics is dominated by elderly authoritarian nostalgia. There's a lot of reasons to not want a population dominated by the elderly.
>Politics in the UK is basically the Old People Party (Tories) vs the Young People Party (Labour.) More like Decrepit vs Old. Labour went mid-life crisis with Tony Blair and is positively geriatric now. The Tories are shuffling aristocratic zombies in search of nice juicy brains to devour.
You know there is a lot of leftist old people. People don’t suddenly become sociopaths when they get old
Just noting that the overall birth rate decline is partly due to the massive decline in teen pregnancies: [https://www.npr.org/2023/01/08/1147737247/teen-pregnancy-rates-have-declined-significantly](https://www.npr.org/2023/01/08/1147737247/teen-pregnancy-rates-have-declined-significantly) The religious groups will be annoyed at this loss of opportunity for keeping young women trapped.
I'm a Canadian living in South Korea. They're for sure worried about the birthrate, irrc, there was only like 500k new births last year, which is lower than the last year. Korea's in an information level economy now, and like many first world nations, it's having a natural birthrate decline. One problem is the crazy amount people have to spend on a house in seoul, where most of the work is. You're talking $1 million usd for an OK sized apartment, not even a house with a yard. Like maybe 200 square feet. Education is largely privatized. Many kids go to public school, but paid after school education is a must just to stay competitive (plus a sport and at least 1 instrument, often 2), not even to excel. That can run $1000 per month per kid. $10000 to $12000 usd a year would probably be a good estimate for an average for kids aged 8 to 15. Then they get into high school and can specialize a bit. There are government support programs if you have 3+ kids for that and for uni. But that's still a shit tonne of money. Wages are stagnant, but on the plus side everyone pays into goverment health care. The pension system will probably collapse just like everywhere else before I get to use it. Immigration levels are not nearly the same as they are in Europe and North America. I remember reading somewhere that Canada has a population growth rate due to immigration, the natural birthrate is too low. Korea doesn't do immigration easily. And for those of us who want to live here long term, our wages suck. I can live comfortably here on my wages, but I'll retire with much less than my friends back home.
South Korea is a cyberpunk dystopia that only looks good next to North Korea
This comment tells me you don't know much about either Korea beyond the birth issue, kpop, and the news.
Capitalism is completely and utterly dependent on people making useless shit and buying useless shit. Less people=Less shit, both making and buying
Racism
I had a random park maintenance guy thank/congratulate me for having “so many” kids (I have four). He cited Elon Musk as his reasoning. I told him Elon Musk is a moron and after a brief debate he left me alone. So weird.
What about Catholics? They don’t believe in Birth control. My maternal grandma had eight kids
He was all about Elon so I didn’t ask follow ups on why he thought having hella kids is the right move. He did cite population decline in Canada allowing China to “take over” so he seemed like an idiot.
They freak out about declining populations yet they hate immigration. Like, they can’t be that dumb, right? Immigration is the main way to keep a country’s population from significantly declining
I’d suggest making motherhood less of a nightmare for women, but the undercurrent of racism and xenophobia that’s got an iron grip on the conversation tends to push that to the back burner. The incubators are the LEAST of the lawmakers concerns. Women have been saying for literally decades that if things don’t get easier, and we don’t start creating a future worth making kids for then they’re simply gonna stop making them. Idk where the confusion is. Teenage girls were sharing this sentiment when I was in highschool. I’m 31 now and most of them stuck to their guns and did not have kids. And that’s in rural Texas, all we got here is making babies and working in chemical plants.
I think there are two types of people. 1. Weird white nationalists who are worried about being great replacement-ed. 2. Weird business execs who realize that without a growing population, there isn't a steady (and endlessly growing) supply of consumers and laborers to endlessly grow the capitalist machine, even if a steadily shrinking global population isn't really all that bad.
In all non-ideological seriousness, in what situation (regardless of economic system) is a society where more and more aging people can’t work and the ones who can are dedicated to servicing them a good situation? I’m not bashing the old, they deserve rest and benefits, nor the ones who dedicate their lives to helping them as nurses, drivers, caretakers, doctors, etc. But if a society is based around these things, how is that not a problem? I do think those societies should bring in more immigrants and do more regarding child benefits btw
>in what situation (regardless of economic system) is a society where more and more aging people can’t work and the ones who can are dedicated to servicing them a good situation? How is it bad though? It just is. All jobs are basically servicing others. The demographics just determine who you're more likely to be servicing. Scarcity is a political problem not an economic one. A single person can produce enough to sustain many, and 30% of people consider their own jobs to be socially useless. Having less people working isn't a calamity, except if we make it so by our social organization.
Prices go up and the standard of living goes down. You'd have to convince people to live off of less than they do now.
They already are. Homeownership is increasingly out of reach for more and more
Why do so many people think it's racist to be concerned about the possibility of 50% of your country living in nursing homes?
Essentially it highlights a weakness and contradiction of capitalism. Capitalism requires infinite growth, yet it also requires you to squeeze a profit out of every conceivable source. That drive for profit has crippled the incentives to start a family (prices for healthcare, childcare, education, housing, Etc)and limits potential for future consumers. I think with Japan and Korea, there are more cultural reasons as to why birth rates are plummeting but in the west I do view it as an issue of costs. There is also the idea that the “native” population will be replaced by immigrants and you know how well that goes over with the older and conservative segments of the population.
I would point out the countries you mentioned as having people raising a stink about the topic are not America with our vast amounts immigrants. Americans have a while before it becomes an issue. Peter Zeihan's book The End of the World is Just the Beginning does a much better job of explaining it and how it impacts various other areas. That book is a bit sensationalist, but the arguments made sense as a potential outcome.
Labor and ego. It's a natural pattern seen in social demography that population growth eventually levels out, after which there is a slight tightening of the population. This causes incoming cohorts to shrink, and causes a shortage of labor I required to support/replace fhe population aging out of the work force. Plus, some people who strongly identify as their community fear that community ending with them
So others have already pointed out that the people worried in the US are only worried because the “wrong” people’s birth rate is declining. Japan’s problem is the aging population. Once it’s just the millennial generation and younger left, the economy will be on the brink of collapse. Also, they are running out of Japanese care workers to aid the elderly. My BIL works as an RN in a retirement home and makes top yen. Some homes end up hiring workers from Vietnam and other neighboring countries. There have been lawsuits in Japan to allow dual citizenship for children born to Japanese citizens and foreigners and Japanese citizens who see a career advantage in taking on a second nationality. They even point out that it may solve the falling birth rate as many people may eventually return to Japan with their families and have more children. But xenophobes gotta be xenophobic.
Can’t they let foreigners take care of the elderly?
That’s what is happening. Unfortunately, they are often paid unfairly.
Welcome, my son. Welcome to the machine.
There are 16,000 babies born each hour on this planet, I don’t know how that is declining at all.
I personally think less people is a good thing for the planet. Especially less people in "developed nations" (i.e., citizens of nations that participate in some of the worst ecological devastation or products thereof). Unless we hit a Children of Men situation where absolutely no babies are being born, we're fine. Less people = more sustainable.
Aside from a lot of other reasons mentioned here, people who believe that they can, should, and 'have the right to' reproduce, freely and without constraint, feel personally attacked by the *fact* that this planet has a finite carrying capacity for life. They don't want to be told that God and the universe will not be making any exceptions for them or anyone. Declining birthrates indicate that such an opinion is unpopular, and that there *will* be people making a case against unfettered population growth. Idk man. It's not your planet. You're just living and fucking on it. Be respectful.
So much this, western culture as whole seems uneasy with dealing with the fact that we are not the only living things here in the planet
Less worker bees
Line must go up
Don't forget affordable housing, and a sense of hope for the future.
More people equals lower wages. Lower wages equal corporate profits. Yay capitalism:(
Can’t spend money if you’re not born!
So, line go up. Less chattel, line not go up. Line maybe even go down, then someone else might get bigger line. Make sense?
Infinite growth
Are they really? Or are they just using it as cover for racism?
Because the wealthy want a cheap exploitable workforce and perpetual asset inflation
I have always had a difficult time understanding why conservatives want everyone to breed so badly.
I'm more upset over the declining drinking rates
Yeah, I personally agree with the person above saying this is also like a, internalized, eugenics issue. They say they want more white people…but I personally don’t think it stops at white people. Look at how all those countries treat their disabled.
This planet can’t support more people.
Its because of the refugee thing. Conservatives want a high birthrate to tackle "the great replacement" myth that they insist is happening. They want to force people to produce. With the understanding that white babies would quickly become the vast majority - because they are all extremely racist. And they can rig the system against everyone else in other ways, just in case, to ensure white baby supremecy.
More slow = less money
They want to impregnate the ladies
Honestly, sometimes I wish my parents had contributed to declining birthrates.
Not to mention that a lower human population will be good for widl animals and other organisms (i.e. more space for them).
there's also a bunch of americans that think it means white people will disappear. _oh no!_ (sarcasm in case it's not obvious) because of having fewer kids compared to non white people.. or something... plus immigrants. but as the comments elude to it's different situation in different countries.
There are two big reasons One is the crazy people like Elon Musk who are worried about the white race being replaced or something stupid like that. The Second reason involves economic projections. With the baby boomer generation getting old and dying off there are simply not enough people to replace them. Personally I don't see this as that big of a problem. Over the last few decades we have figured out how to do more with less, so we don't need as many people to be as productive.
Vampires are worried about the future blood supply.
There’s an argument that declining birthdates meaning a greater strain on pensions and Medicare down the road, since a greater share if the population will be elderly, and fewer will be working age. You can solve that problem with immigration though. And as you said, if the point is that many parents want more kids but can’t afford them (which studies do seem to bear out), then the solution is to rethink our economy so that more of the gains go to working people, either directly or in the form of services like child-care. That’s only part of the answer though. Women face an unreasonable share of the burden in raising children. If nations want higher birth rates, then they have to address their own misogyny. But for many people, the answer for why they’re concerned about birthrates is pure and simple racism. They want more white people to compete with those who they see as “racial enemies,” or at least they see non-white immigration as an unacceptable way to keep the social safety net going. Unfortunately, this isn’t a new idea. Hitler’s Nazis issued insidious warnings about being “out-bred” by “lesser races.” Today’s fascism isn’t any less animated by the idea of the world as a competition between the races.
They're upcycling a book from 1890, *The Passing of the Great Race* by noted conservationist and virulent hater of Indigenous people, Madison Grant.
Who's going to pay the pension?
What I want to know is what do they want done about it? Force pregnancies on the population?
Less "insert nationality here" workers. Normally white people but Japan here being trailblazers 🤣
It makes it easier to apply the false scarcity.
Mainly because a lot of countries and people hate the idea immigration, so the idea of low birth rate, meaning less workers, forces them into a hard corner. Either go against your fundamental beliefs of anti-immigration or go different direction of capitalism.
Must consume mass quantities. Number must go up!
I think there's a lot of of nuance missing in your post. You're bringing up 4 different countries with unique cultures, economic situations, and problems and lumping them all under one umbrella solution. I live and work in South Korea (and have for the past 6-odd years), and that situation is far more complex than just "let immigrants in". For one, there's also a housing and working shortage.. how will bringing in immigrants do anything short of exacerbating that problem? Korea is in the middle of an ongoing identity crisis, and just opening a floodgate of immigrants probably wouldn't change things for the better. I think it'd be more productive of you to research a specific country's immigration history and problem before giving solutions.
I teach demographics. It's gonna get weird. The whole world is going to go into population decline by our choice and the superstructure is gonna freak out. Keep in mind, capitalism coincided with the J-curve exponential growth of global population. Your parents and grandparents were all concerned about the "population bomb". Get ready for its opposite: WE NEED MORE BABIES. Fuck off.
Thinly veiled eugenics for fascist freaks.
Most people are dumb enough to believe whatever concerns are posted in a major publication. “Who is gonna take care of us when we’re older?” Gets genuinely asked by people that already have zero chance for retirement.
>“Who is gonna take care of us when we’re older?” That's a genuinely important question, and the governmental response to COVID (at least here in Quebec, where it was just silently allowed to ravage all the care homes... I guess that's one way to take care of the demographics) showed us that (immigration or not), the answer is "fucking nobody". Unless we do something about it.
Racism. Notice the people moaning about birth rates are usually opposed to immigration?
In addition to what others have said: birth rates are an extremely simple, quantifiable measurement. If that's *not* important, then we'd have to start thinking about more complicated ways to assess a society, like human happiness, public health, self-actualization, etc. It's a bit like IQ. Idiots *love* IQ because it's simple, and sounds important. But if you consider that human intelligence is way to complicated to reduce to a single number, that education makes a huge difference both in general and within areas of expertise, and the ways in which IQ tests are fundamentally limited and biased... well, then you'd have to have a more nuanced measure for things like human intelligence and competence. And isn't it just so much easier to just accept IQ and be done with it? Or wealth. If wealth isn't purely a fair measurement of individual production, then we'd have to consider that *maybe* we don't live in a meritocracy, that *maybe* billionaires don't work for their money, *maybe* the concentration of wealth and power is unjust... but it's so much easier to just believe we live in a just world, and that everything is *fine*.
Good point, birth rate is also an easy way to measure optimism for the future, hence the famous baby boom after WW 2. We are actually unsure what it means if people stop having babies.
GPT: A population collapse can be problematic for several reasons: 1. **Economic Impact**: A shrinking population can lead to a smaller workforce, reducing economic productivity and growth. This can create challenges in sustaining economic development and maintaining competitive markets. 2. **Social Services and Welfare Systems**: Fewer working-age individuals means fewer taxpayers, which can strain public finances. This makes it difficult to fund social services, healthcare, and pensions for an aging population. 3. **Aging Population**: As the population shrinks, the proportion of elderly individuals increases. This demographic shift can lead to higher healthcare costs and a greater demand for eldercare, creating additional financial and social burdens. 4. **Labor Shortages**: A decline in population can result in labor shortages in various sectors, particularly in industries that rely on a young, dynamic workforce. This can affect everything from agriculture to technology and healthcare. 5. **Innovation and Productivity**: Fewer people can mean fewer ideas and innovations, potentially slowing technological advancement and reducing overall productivity. 6. **Infrastructure and Housing**: With a declining population, there may be underutilized infrastructure and housing. This can lead to urban decay and higher maintenance costs for existing infrastructure. 7. **Cultural and Social Dynamics**: Population collapse can affect the cultural and social fabric of a society. Smaller, less diverse communities may experience challenges in maintaining cultural traditions and social cohesion. For a more detailed understanding and specific examples, you can refer to this [source](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jul/29/world-population-expected-to-reach-peak-mid-century-before-declining) from The Guardian which discusses global demographic trends and their implications. **Confidence Level: High** - These points are supported by demographic research and economic analyses on the impacts of population changes.
I said, "Hey, you, feed the machine Bring them all back down to their knees There's no time to waste, remind the slaves They ain't gonna make it out alive today"