It’s not fewer people that’s the problem, but fewer people too fast. A society needs labor to provide the goods and services people need. If the share of people who do labor (working age) to people who don’t (children and the elderly) becomes too lopsided, the burden on those who work becomes unsustainable. (The Boomers had the opposite: they had a smaller older generation and didn’t have many children, so during their prime years the working age population was much larger than dependants on both ends of the age pyramid. That’s part of the reason why they were so prosperous.)
Going by total fertility rate (children per woman):
2.1 is enough for replacement. No problems.
1.8 means every generation is 10 % smaller than the previous. We can deal with that.
1.5 means every generation is 25 % smaller than the previous. This starts to cause problems.
1.0 means generation size halves every generation. This is not sustainable.
If the share of people who do labor (working age) to people who don’t (children and the elderly) becomes too lopsided, the burden on those who work becomes unsustainable.
Except that raising children requires more time and resources than caring for elderly. So having less children frees up more resources to care for the elderly. Into the next generation there are now less people which require even less resources which means you need fewer workers to produce those resources.
History provides evidence for this. After every major war there were economic booms. This is despite wars killing off the able bodied workers leaving only the sick and elderly.
The only people who suffer from a lower population are the ownership class. They live by skimming a little of the productivity off of every worker.
Except that raising children requires more time and resources than caring for elderly.
Source on this? Doesn’t sound right at all. According to my findings after a quick search, LTC (long-term care) takes a significantly higher fraction of OECD countries GDP than e.g. childcare+early education.
It is a pyramid scheme. We have an economic system based on continuous growth. When it doesn’t grow, it’s a huge panic, such as during the pandemic or 2008 economic crisis. Now the number of workers and consumers, the base of the whole system, is starting to shrink and nothing much van be done without changing the essence of the system.
Of course those that became rich and powerful because of the system don’t want to change the system that keeps them rich and powerful. But without change the system might not survive.
Is less people really such a bad thing? We’re at a point where everyone’s already complaining about housing and climate change.
We can blame the 1% and we can say the elderly will suffer but something’s gotta give. I feel we’re all buying into a pyramid scheme.
It’s not fewer people that’s the problem, but fewer people too fast. A society needs labor to provide the goods and services people need. If the share of people who do labor (working age) to people who don’t (children and the elderly) becomes too lopsided, the burden on those who work becomes unsustainable. (The Boomers had the opposite: they had a smaller older generation and didn’t have many children, so during their prime years the working age population was much larger than dependants on both ends of the age pyramid. That’s part of the reason why they were so prosperous.)
Going by total fertility rate (children per woman):
Except that raising children requires more time and resources than caring for elderly. So having less children frees up more resources to care for the elderly. Into the next generation there are now less people which require even less resources which means you need fewer workers to produce those resources.
History provides evidence for this. After every major war there were economic booms. This is despite wars killing off the able bodied workers leaving only the sick and elderly.
The only people who suffer from a lower population are the ownership class. They live by skimming a little of the productivity off of every worker.
Source on this? Doesn’t sound right at all. According to my findings after a quick search, LTC (long-term care) takes a significantly higher fraction of OECD countries GDP than e.g. childcare+early education.
https://www.oecd.org/els/soc/PF3_1_Public_spending_on_childcare_and_early_education.pdf
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/cb584fa2-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/cb584fa2-en
I’ll dig up more sources but you compared public spending on childcare (which is minimal in the US) to private long term care costs.
The average cost to raise a child to age 18 is $310,000.
https://www.investopedia.com/how-much-to-save-for-college-4782579
I think that’s slippery slope or presumptive, at best. Birth rates shift and flow and there will always be people that have kids.
I have more respect for people that see the trend and don’t want to create wage slaves.
If governments addressed real issues instead of maximizing corporate interests, they might create a stable birth rate.
It is a pyramid scheme. We have an economic system based on continuous growth. When it doesn’t grow, it’s a huge panic, such as during the pandemic or 2008 economic crisis. Now the number of workers and consumers, the base of the whole system, is starting to shrink and nothing much van be done without changing the essence of the system.
Of course those that became rich and powerful because of the system don’t want to change the system that keeps them rich and powerful. But without change the system might not survive.
People aren’t so much the issue as policy.
If politicians didn’t try to make everything dependant on fossil fuels and embrace renewables we’d probably be carbon neutral already.
The “problem” is that other parts of the world are more than making up for the declining birth rates in the developed world