Well, the Japan’s population is declining and they’ve been in stagflation for the last 30 years.
Even the fears about the economy and government spending are bullshit. Notice the folks obsessing over birthrates always quote the retiree to worker ratio. They don’t talk about the dependent to worker ratio, and that’s what really matters. Yes, our populations are aging, and yes that means relatively more old people to take care of. But we in turn also have far fewer children to take care of. If we can adapt to the Baby Boom era, we can adapt to an aging population.
Further afield, fears about human extinction are total bullshit. No country is a monolith; every nation has groups within it with higher and lower relative birth rates. If the birth rate stays low and never recovers among the mainstream society, eventually the smaller groups end up composing most of the population, and then the birth rate recovers. The Amish inherit the Earth.
Or, if even that fails, ultimately technology loss alone stabilizes your birthrates. Eventually your population falls so low that you just can’t physically manufacture reliable birth control anymore. That’s a product of industrial production. It requires a certain minimum population size to run a factory. Below that and we just regress to earlier technological eras. Eventually we end up back in a mostly agrarian state, and suddenly having kids is once again economically beneficial.
now you know why weve had such a big anti abortion push
who will work unskilled jobs if there aren’t enough people to do them?
Immigrants usually
Also the financial ponzi schemes break all at once pissing off old people who vote in mecha-hitler to enslave everyone under 40 so their house prices and pensions stay high.
I mean, this is a pretty silly response. Is there a hidden population of Martians I’m not aware of, eager to immigrate to Earth to work our low skill jobs?
Huh? Global population is still growing. (More slowly now, but the slope is still strongly positive.) We haven’t hit peak human population yet and won’t any time soon. That means if the population of the US declines, we can just import more USians.
We’re talking about a global phenomenon here. It’s pretty racist to assume that other groups of human beings are somehow fundamentally different from your own. It’s pretty xenophobic to believe that the countries with high birth rates will just maintain them forever.
The problem isn’t the US running out of workers. The problem is the entire world running out of workers.
They are fundamentally different; the west is looting their country for resources and cheap labor, they will maintain high birthrates so long as neocolonialism prevents them from developing their own means of production.
Put down the socialist theory and look up actual demographic numbers. You’re just wrong.
Are you suggesting that birthrates don’t remain high in the global south?
You’re trying to move the goalposts. We’re talking about the future and how birth rates are trending. Now you’re trying to change the conversation to the present, “Are you suggesting that birthrates don’t remain high in the global south?” Obviously they’re higher in some countries, but those rates are collapsing like they are everywhere else. And there isn’t a good match between those countries and what is usually described as the global south.
Since you’re too lazy, I did your homework for you: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1034075/fertility-rate-world-continents-1950-2020/
You can look up more information here: https://www.birthrate.io/fertility
We’re talking about the future need for workers, not the present. So please don’t try to move the goalposts by asking the obvious question of are birth rates still higher in the SOME PARTS of the global south relative to the north.
But there’s a very clear trend here. Every single country undergoes a decline in birth rates as it industrializes. The global south is not an infinite source of labor you can rely on forever.
You need to let go of this myopic North/South, Imperialist/Colonized framework you seem to be trying to shoehorn into every problem. Here are the countries that have above replacement fertility rates (in green):
There’s no real connection here between these countries and “the global south.” Counties such as India, most of South America, Iran, SE Asia, etc are all below replacement rates.
Here’s what fertility rates are currently projected to look like in 2100:
We’re on track to have less than a handful of countries around the world with above-replacement fertility rates. The global south doesn’t have elevated fertility rates, the specific regions of Subsaharan Africa and Central Asia do. Even Somalia will barely be above the replacement rate.
You’re too lost in a surface-level understanding of “theory” (read: socialist memes) that it’s clouding your judgment. Within a generation, countries all over the world, including countries in the global south, will be fighting each other to attract immigrants.
Look what happened after the plague, 50% of the population was gone.
It broke the back of the Catholic church and feudalism. Peasants got their first pay raise… ever.
I think there’s a comic series about that.
Lower population is generally better for almost all sectors.
But lowering the population means killing people or restricting birthing rights.
Well, I dunno about you, but I’m in no hurry to get children.
People can also just stop breeding. Seems to be happening in a lot of developed countries. Might be slower but I bet the population will level off eventually. Or plummet dramatically from climate change/right wing political policies.
Or people just saying “nah”
Well no. That’s a wildly incorrect take.
Birth rates are already decreasing and are below replacement rate in many places already. Fertility rates are at an all time low. They naturally decrease as income and quality of life increases.
The global fertility rate is 2.2 births per woman. Which is just barely above replacement. In most developed nations, that rate is down in the 1.6 range, well below replacement.
Total Human population is excepted to peak within 50 years and then begun naturally declining, but many countries are already there. China has seen several consecutive years of population decline. India is seeing a leveling off of population growth and will soon decline. The US is increasing solely off of immigration. Japan has a decreasing population. Same with Korea. 8 EU countries have seen population declines over the last 20 years.
If you wanted to see population decline in the US specifically, banning immigration would do it and we’d see a decline in the next census.
The same people having the same offspring, but later, would lower the population.
So long as people die like regular you can stuff all those dreadful fantasies. Unfortunately, malice is not required for this number to go down.
Population is already lowering in developed nations
Thanos has entered the chat.
Yeah… It’s something that has to happen naturally or really slowly to not be eugenicist AF.
war kills people and is sometimes popular
Houses are already kept artificially empty to retain prices. Capitalism always finds a way to screw you over.
Okay, but retirement is based off there being more people working than not, so in countries with national pensions we’ll have to significantly raise taxes, and in countries without such a system, retirees who are invested into index funds, need publicly traded corporations to start underpaying their employees even more (it’s really eye-opening when you realize people over 55 own 73% of all the resources of the US, from money to stocks to real estate).
Hogwash. You forgot the other half of the equation. We don’t have as many children to support. Notice how people obsessed over birth rate always focus on the retiree:worker ratio rather than the dependent:worker ratio? The problem disappears once you realize we can simply take money that we were spending on childcare and shift it to eldercare.
Oh no not rich people having less money.
Sounds to me like we’ll have to do a communism, i.e banding together to help each other out more, to allow people to retire in comfort. The horror!
(Just in case it seems like I’m dismissing anything you said, I’m not, and thank you for your analysis. My main takeaway is that it seems an unavoidable problem)
This is not about communism vs capitalism, its about the ratios. If there are 5 old people for every young person then how are we supposed to take care of all the old people? There’s just not enough manpower.
Why do you care about the ratio of workers to old people? What matters is the ratio of dependents to workers. We have more retirees, but we also have fewer children. This isn’t that hard. If we could manage the Baby Boom of the 50s, we can manage this.
No, it’s about the scale of society and how we support ourselves in retirement, though. See, if retirement funds rely on, as the guy above me says 1. Companies underpaying their employees and 2. Governments taxing a group of more people in the below generations than there are to support in the top - then those are unsustainable sources of retirement comfort.
So what would be sustainable? Well historically, and in some countries today, old people need family to support them into old age. You would need either your own kid, with their own house big enough for you, or a rich little nephew with a house big enough for all you and your siblings to live in while retired.
Or… We just do the decent thing and take care of non-relatives. To ease the load on, say, retirement homes, we’d need to agree across society to bring the old people into communities of younger adults, and those younger adults would need to check on them regularly.
Sice this requires a community binding together, you might call it “communism.” Though it isn’t necessarily Marxism.
How do nursing homes do it?
Poorly is my understanding
Also the ratio is a lot higher in nursing homes. Yes you might have a ratio of x nurses to y old people, but you also need to consider the people indirectly contributing. Like the trades people who built the building, or the people who pay for the care through taxes or otherwise, the people working to route electricity, the pharmacists making all those medications that the old people need, etc.
Also, we need people to do jobs other than working in nursing homes. We can’t have all our workforce caring for the elderly.
Immigration!
Oh…
Population decline is a global phenomenon. You can’t offset this loss with immigration when the countries people are coming from are also experiencing a population decline. We (in the West) are currently using immigration to offset this loss now, but when the population decline really starts hitting other parts of the globe (as it is projected to do within the next few decades) then that will no longer be a solution.
And this is compounded by people living much longer…
Actually it is a communism vs capitalism thing. The problem arises in both, but the solutions available depend on the system. I reccomend you look up how China is handling its massive elderly population. For example the elderly there have huge public parks and get outside moving and socializing a lot. In big cities it’s common for them to have mid day slow dance meetings in the parks. This is only possible because the government’s priority is not producing profit for billionaires but caring for its people. So it maintains these things and the public transport required to get the elderly there, and the assistance to keep them fed and healthy.
This video is 15 years old: https://youtu.be/SvmV7GRRPq0
When people stay active and a part of their community into their old age instead of sitting in their huge houses alone or in a nursing home they require much less support to keep living.
Another great vid: https://youtu.be/RnCCY2YtVX0
isn’t that specifically the government pentions! social security and somewhat less important to those that have personal retirement accounts?
When the population was predicted to explode into the 21st century, the news said this was a big problem. Now the population is expected to gradually decline. The news is saying this is a big problem.
Both can be a problem
“Change is a problem”
The news is autistic?
I think you mean to say conservative. People hate change regardless of positivity or level of train knowledge
What News is saying this?
The Onion of course, onionguy!
That can’t be true, everything the onion publishes, goes through me first, I would’ve seen that, trust me, I’m an expert. So who is spreading this?
Not all news, per se, but I do recall seeing reporting on how a good handful of countries are trying to combat falling birth rates. Like in Far East and Far North countries.
They are problems for different reasons
Booms have market opportunity, and busts have market opportunity.
That said, having too many people to do the work is a lot less dangerous than not enough people to do the work.
The bust comes with a high risk of a total economic collapse. Those houses get cheap, but food, sanitary, and energy security are at risk. Living in a rotting infrastructure is very different than living in an expanding but underdeveloped infrastructure.
Leveling out or a slow population decline would be good in some scenarios. If we’re going from 2.5:1 down to 0.25:1, you’ll end up with another boomer wave, pissed off at the government, ripe for scenarios that make today’s problems seem like an annoying party.
The rotting infrastructure problem is made a lot worse by urban sprawl
What happens in the rural areas when the need for grocery stores halves, all the walmarts pull out, we have to re-invent logistics. I expect people will either have to go back to making everything themselves, or they’ll have to bunch back together around resources.
increase wages
Hahahaha oh. That’s cute.
If theres a shortage in the labor market, you either fill it with slavery or raise wages.
Americans track record seems to indicate the former waaayyyy before the latter
Raising wages fucks the people trying to retire because their stock holdings lose value. It’ll have to be slavery if you want to continue having retirement as a thing. Ideally colonialism + slavery, just import slaves from countries still experiencing population growth, such as many African ones…
Wait I think something about this idea might be problematic
If you can’t afford to tip, you can’t afford to eat out. Maybe you should get a second job that pays $2ph
I feel like this as well.
The people that want higher birth rates don’t care about higher wages, the environment, or people’s safety.
They just need workers they can milk them until they can’t work anymore. They need these workers to spend all their money so they have to keep working.
They also want to make sure people with a different skill color do not have more babies than them.
I think that’s actually the main reason.
And it never ever ever goes as planned because the bigots running the eugenics program are myopic twits.
Is skill coloured by the type of skill or by the level of skill?
By rarity.
The endgame of capitalism is slavery.
The early game of capitalism was slavery
Midgame pretty much unions, now mostly a speed bump in the rearview mirror.
Perhaps that should change.
you all going to say bullshit about retirement, like if fascist around the globe don’t want to take it from you already, no amount of canon fodders you spawn for billionaires won’t change that
8+ billion people on the planet and people complain about not enough people.
Ponzi schemes aren’t sustainable.
Yeah, people worried about “population decline” are actually concerned about their preferred race/religion losing political & cultural power.
It’s a dog whistle every time
It’s a dog whistle every time.
Population decline isn’t inherently a problem (unless you’re a racist worried about “your people” losing power). Too rapid population decline is a big problem. We’re already seeing the effects: When the sum of birth rates and working-age immigration fall fast enough, the ratio of working-age people to care-needing people also falls. I don’t think I need to explain why it’s a problem that every able-bodied working age adult will be responsible (directly or indirectly) for taking care of more people. It puts more pressure on everyone, and impacts societies ability to care for those in need of it.
A controlled, slow, population decline would probably just be a good thing at this point. However, that’s not what prognoses are pointing towards, and that’s why (non-racist) people are worried.
Easy solution, eliminate the boomers. Crisis averted.
I’ll acknowledge that saying it’s a dog whistle every time was slightly hyperbolic.
However, I’d argue that the claim that the global human population is declining too rapidly is actually pretty hotly contested. The world’s population is still growing — around 8.2 billion now, heading toward a peak near 10.3 billion in the 2080s.
That being said, in some countries there will be a surplus of retirees and not enough workers to fund them through the existing tax structure, which is a legitimate problem. But it’s a problem best remedied through better social safety nets, not by popping out more babies.
The biggest contention I have with the concern over population decline is that population decline doesn’t matter at all if we don’t adequately address climate change within the next decade. If someone’s house is actively on fire and they express concern to me that their roof should be re-shingled, I’m not going to give a shit about their roof shingles until I’m certain their roof will survive the fire.
I was gonna say we could start pushing people out on ice floes when they get past 60, but climate change is ruining that for us too.
Hegemony is the word you’re looking for.
Yeah, always a dog whistle.
Why would I care about how many people are the same race as me? It could only be a problem if you keep racism.
it’s almost like you have your answer already
Worry about population decline isn’t about wanting more people. It’s about wanting there to be enough working-age people to cover the retirement and medical payments of the ones no longer working. We know exactly how many 30-year-olds we’ll have in 20 years and it’s simply not enough. Something has to give and usually the first to go is the benefits for the people who most need them.
Why the obsession with only retirees? What matters is the dependency ratio.
The dependency ratio counts the total number of dependents, not just the retirees the eugenicists like to focus on. By the end of the century, globally we’ll have a dependency ratio similar to the level it was in the mid-20th century.
That falls back to “ponzi schemes aren’t sustainable”
It’s broken.
The problem with calling it a ponzi scheme is that this would apply in all contexts, even in very basic economies without money. If you have a tribe of hunter gathers and suddenly they have a sharp decrease in their birth rate, they too would have a hard time taking care of their elderly/children.
Or maybe the something that has to give is a minority class of people (the .1%) getting a few percent higher tax “burden”
I highly doubt that would be anywhere near enough even if the issue was only limited to the country with the highest number of ultra wealthy people which it isn’t.
Elon Musk could end world hunger. Full stop. He wouldn’t even notice the dip in his finances. (He offered once, claiming if someone gave him a concrete number, he would pay it, and a nonprofit took him up on it. Surprise, surprise, the whiny little snit backed out.)
They totally could fix the problem. But to those rich shitheads, it’s not a problem. It’s a feature.
Sort of depend on perspective, hunger only exists because there’s no political will to remove it.
We produce more food globally than we consume, and we can multiply it several times with the same cost of space by swapping more meat for vegan crops.
We have plenty of space for everyone to have shelter, the problem is largely due to the issue that most people want to live in a metropolitan area. So the price for living in a highly sought out location increases to unmanageable levels.
A key factor is the big difference between the kinds of jobs you can get in a more rural location compared to the bigger urban centers. Everyone are forced to move to urban locations to study, causing most people to form their first adult social and professional circles around whichever urban location they studied at.
There’s a lot of minor things that needs to be done, what exactly differs by country. But making the rural regions more accessible to live in should be considered across most countries. One simple first step, would be to make remote capable jobs offer their workers to do it all remotely. Government office workers, could quite easily spearhead such an initiative; I bet some people would move closer to nature, if they could hold onto their bread
usually the first to go is the benefits for the people who most need them.
Then this way of life is not worth saving.
When do they teach ‘carrying capacity’ and what happens after it’s exceeded these days?
Ya know, I have vague memories of reading an argument somewhere that the black plague killed off so many peasants that the surviving ones had materially less shitty conditions for a little while, due to scarcity and all that.
Great news, we’re bringing the plague back too!
The actual disease caused by pest bacteria is easily treatable nowadays.
Facilitated by such space age concepts as washing your fucking hands and not drinking the corpse-water.
That’s “prevention” you’re talking about, not “treatment”, generally considered better, but still.
deleted by creator
You must have missed the news. They’re making a new stronger plague now
:)U mean the one in Russia where one of the researchers recently died?
Specifically, the peasants had more bargaining power for better conditions because the absolute decrease in their number made each of them more valuable to the ruling class as individuals. There was an increase in peasant revolts and concessions to the peasantry following the black death partly for this reason.
Peasants only got the ability to leave the land they were bound to to seek better employment elsewhere after the black plague.
This is true in places. There are also acounts of places where all the nobility died and the peasants threw weeks long parties.
Yup, labor scarcity meant higher wages and bargaining power.
