- cross-posted to:
- workreform@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- workreform@lemmy.world
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We are humans and as such we have always adapted. We will adapt again. You can all live in fear re population decline if you like but I’m just getting on with it.
actually quite pragmatic 🤨
Who will pay to care for the aging population? Welp, whether you live in a socialised care country or the United hellscapes of America, the answer is: you will. Or your kids will, or whatever generation we’re talking about here.
Even if you do live in the US and have no elderly relatives, the insurance companies will have to hike the shit out of their premiums to remain profitable.
The fewer working age people there are compared to people past working age, the worse it will be.
Yep. There’s a big bowl of shit, and some day it must be eaten. The choice becomes: do you eat the shit, or do you add a little squirt and pass it to your kids?
Billionnaires.
“I guess we’ll have to increase wages”. Doesn’t work when there aren’t enough working people to maintain critical infrastructure.
World wide population decline is going to cause some serious problems. The US will need to establish a strong immigration policy to absorb people fleeing failing countries/geographies while continuing to provide food, and the transportation of that food, to the rest of the us.
The US will need to establish a strong immigration policy to absorb people fleeing failing countries/geographies
Why would anyone be running to the US? Do you think people dream of being forced into labor camps?
The US has a lot of space and a lot of farmland. Most countries don’t. As ocean transportation of food (amongst other resources) becomes less reliable due to lack of security, people will be fleeing their failed or failing country to one that’s more stable.
You’re right to think that the US has shit policies for immigration now but I think that will change once population decline starts affecting how much food is stocked at grocery stores.
I anticipate things being a lot worse than they are even now over the next 15 years. Multiple wars, state-sanctioned sea piracy, and a failure in the complex supply chain that creates advanced chipsets used for things like servers/workstations, satellites, weather prediction, stock markets, etc. leading to a mini-collapse as a best-case scenario.
My dude, it’s not just the shit policies for immigration, its the fact it’s rapidly turning into to the sort of country most migrants have fled from
I’m well aware. I think it’s temporary though. I believe that there will be significant problems when the cost of importing food skyrockets, the cost of domestic food skyrockets, and the farmers are telling their local news that they need immigrants back.
This might happen soon too, we just signed a deal with the devil to try to cap the exploding cost of diesel. That fuel is used to create and move food.
What’s the connection between population decline and tight knit communities and crime? I can’t see any
Mostly just less anonymity. In a large community, you can remain more-or-less unknown. In a town where everyone knows each other, you’re a known entity whether you like it or not.
Big anonymous city is better environment for crime than village of 50 where everyone knows each other by name.
Except in practice living in the city no one ever steals from me and all the folks I know who live in rural areas are like “watch out for methheads, they’ll steal your shit”
Population decline is fine. It’s the population boom driven by World War II panic that was the oddity instead.
In a matter of time, we might return to population levels from the 17th century, and if we do, then so what? A single individual will become all the more valuable, similar to how European nations valued labour more after the Black Death occurred. History likes to repeat itself, even if not necessarily by events like the plague.
Eugenics apologia.
100%. Weird that you’re catching downvotes for pointing it out
Considering how people struggle with the comparatively small hiccup that is the current Iran-US war, I find it hard to believe that all commenters here would be fine when global trade dwindles.
I however am built different and would simply survive economic and societal collapse.
Society is going to collapse anyway, the question is, how hard and how badly. The whole idea behind “not sustainable” is that it is not possible to sustain something. I personally rather hit the brakes than accelerate before hitting the wall.
The whole idea behind “not sustainable” is that it is not possible to sustain something.
-1 That is not “the idea!”, that is the definition. A recursive one at that.
-2 That doesn’t really follow from either your or OPs comments. What is not sustainable? The economy, society, global trade? Did you delete a sentence?I think your comment makes more sense if I was arguing for people to counteract population decline. I am not. I was simply pointing out that it won’t be sunshine and rainbows as OP and many commenters here seem to believe.
If society is constantly getting richer every single year and has for decades… Why are people still struggling? Either poor people are unreasonable/irrational, we don’t actually care about reducing cost of basic necessities,or the wealth increases are being siphoned out elsewhere.
Population decline would be a non-issue in a functioning economy, because a small shrinkage of the economy would be a non-issue.
I always hate it when someone says that we would need to reduce our standard of living to remain sustainable. It’s 100% bullshit predicted on using a definition of “standard of living” that nobody understands (roughly speaking I think it’s only used to compare two different persons or groups in an idealized snapshot in time). We waste so much food. Some of it’s necessary, but, 40%??
yes! If there wasn’t so much overconsumption by a small set of very rich folks everyone could live a comfortable life sustainably, it’s so frustrating
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.
Well, the Japan’s population is declining and they’ve been in stagflation for the last 30 years.
Japan is a whole other mess caused by the exotic monetary policy used to cushion the real estate crash and a risk adverse corporate culture unwilling to properly make use of it, causing investment to stagnate.
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.
It broke the back of the Catholic church and feudalism. Peasants got their first pay raise… ever.
You’re missing maybe the most important part of this: …eventually. It was at least 40 years after the plague hit, and probably more like 70-100, depending how exactly you’re counting. AKA it might get better after we’re all dead
That seems…obvious?
Why would the effects of reduced population happen before the population is reduced?
I think feudalism carried on for 200 more years
I think there’s a comic series about that.
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.
Houses are already kept artificially empty to retain prices. Capitalism always finds a way to screw you over.
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.
“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
Both can be a problem
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.
Yeah. But people won’t change willingly. A lot of the suburbs around my city are pretty rich areas. I don’t expect those people to willingly move to the denser inner city anytime soon. More likely they’ll petition city hall to keep their subdivisions running until the city goes bankrupt from the financial burden of supporting a subdivision that does not bring in enough property taxes to support itself
“Nicer” cities are growing in almost all parts of the world, right? If anything, rural infrastructure will dwindle as people move to the cities for opportunities and amenities.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
We should be in a situation where people need to take in like 5 non-relative old people into their homes and provide them constant care (which they cannot do if they are at work). It’s not sustainable no matter your economic system.
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.
What matters even more is total productivity per citizen. It does not matter if a house is built by 20 builders with shovels or 5 builders with excavators. What matters is the house being built. And productivity per worker has massively risen and is, in my opinion, going to rise further.
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That’s an interesting point but I’m not sure if the numbers really add up. As I understand it, the number of dependents will be greater from population decline (primarily due to an aging population) than it was during the baby boom
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.
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.
Username checks out… I am not particularly happy about many of the things china does, and I don’t think “but they are not the US” is an excuse for authoritarianism and imperialism, they got a way better culture of how to deal with old people than the west, both in traditions and in institutions.
If I had praised the the EU for their open border policy and talked about how freedom of movement has had multiple positive impacts on the nations in it would you have felt the need to jump in and be angry and start bringing up french neo-colonialism in west africa, and german munitions support for israel, and their mistreatment of immigrants/rising far-right movements? I don’t think you would have. Maybe you should do a bit of introspection and try to figure out why seeing China mentioned in a positive light causes you to have such a reaction?
If you notice also, critiquing them here was done using specific examples. Not vague terminology with no concrete real world example of what you mean. I genuinely do not know what imperialism you are talking about in regards to China the only guess I can make is that sometimes people call the BRI imperialistic, which I think is a bit silly. And as for authoritarian it’s a useless term. Yes, China has laws. These laws restrict what people can do there. That is Authoritarian. Yet so do all nations. You do not disagree with their use of authority. You disagree with how they use it.
Another great vid: https://youtu.be/RnCCY2YtVX0
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…
Oh no not rich people having less money.
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.
Children live with parents. If retirement becomes burden of your offspring this will have interesting consequences.
Re resource shift: in my country we managed to increase total employment in education while birthrates continue to dwindle
isn’t that specifically the government pentions? social security and somewhat less important to those that have personal retirement accounts?
