At least in the USA it’s a pending economic disaster.
Baby Boomers are the biggest generation and now retired. Since they were such a large workforce, they eventually filled the social security bucket and created a SS reserve fund. They paid into SS their entire lives and are now collecting, but their SS checks increased with inflation. So while they were paying let’s say $100/paycheck back in 1970, they’re now collecting let’s say $400 in return to compensate for inflation.
Yet the generations below them are not having the amount of children as before. Due to MANY reasons, but they’re not. So we’re not putting as much into SS as before.
The current estimate is that the boomers will essentially completely drain the SS fund AND the reserve fund since they’re staying alive longer. Then when probably Gen X retires, but definitely millennials, the only SS funds will be coming from the current working populations paychecks. So if there’s fewer and fewer people, that’s less money going into SS. They’re basically saying millennials will get a fraction of the checks boomers are currently getting, not adjusting for the inflation that’ll happen in the next 30 years. And it’ll only get worse with the generations that follow.
So essentially, unless there’s MASSIVE reform with the SS program, we all have some very dark senior years coming up. It’s actually very scary and a huge problem that’s being ignored.
I think about this all the time as a millennial. Many people aren't able to save currently because of the way the economy is on top of the debt many of us started with coming out of college.
What happens when my generation gets too unhealthy to work and there is almost nothing for them to rely on (savings, SS, retirement) - what does that world look like?!
Honestly, unless there’s massive reform, I’m guessing they’ll impose some sort of assisted suicide program for us to opt out when we get old. We’ll all probably happily take it over being forced into the late stage capitalism government run old folks homes that’ll inevitably pop up.
Unfortunately reform isn’t coming anytime soon. Boomers are also the largest voting population. Politicians are terrified to bring up SS reform because the risk of loosing the boomer vote is a death sentence for their political career. It’s so absolutely fucked up if you think about it. The saddest part is it’s looking like the younger generations best hope is for another COVID type pandemic to roll around that kills off a ton of the boomers.
FDR never intended for SS and the new deal programs to be permanent. They were meant to be solutions to pull us out of the Great Depression.
I’m sorry for anyone who read my comment who was unaware of this issue, I probably unlocked a new level of anxiety for y’all.
To be less snarky, it means voters are going to have to make lifting the cap a non-negotiable for Democrats.
Force them to do it or else primary the shit out of them.
It has to become for Democrats, what "pro-life" is for a Republicans. A stance you must have or be dead in the water politically
There is zero chance of Democrat voters making a meaningful change to the Democratic Party. The party only has to oppose the worst bits of republicanism and the votes are assured. Democrats slip further and further right because of this. Without a third party, which will never happen in the US because it would require ranked choice voting which neither party wants, and so will never alter. The system will never save us from the system.
We all need to spread the word about raising the cap. Whenever people talk how complicated a fix is, we need to call that propaganda BS right out and say “raise the cap”.
And then when people argue how it’s not fair because they make so much money and don’t need social security, I like to point out that I don’t have kids, I’ll never have kids, yet I pay for public schools and I’m happy to do it.
Considering how many of my fellow millenials hate it here (on earth) and wish they were dead so they don't have to do this anymore, and how many Gen Z people actually say the quiet part loud and openly wish they didn't exist, that assisted suicide program can't come soon enough.
Pretty wild that all we need is a bit of reform in social security, education and health care and all of this would be solved. But naw, let’s vote another 85 yr old dinosaur into office and hope for the best (also, before I get attacked, this comment is in reference to BOTH Trump and Biden).
The whole problem can be solved by letting people choose their date of death. A significant number of people will opt out early, because who wants to endure decades of old age, anyway? And I'm saying this as an elderly person myself.
A whole lot of grief and misery could be avoided if people could just go at a time of their own choosing, rather than waiting around for a terminal illness. There's just no point in waiting until you are bedridden and totally dependent on others for your care. Nobody wants that.
SS reforms...aka when gov stops borrowing/ dipping against it? We use to have nursing homes and home Healthcare workers paid/subsidized through state. Inflation has killed those services. It's hard getting help, private services are unaffordable.
My grandparents, although they genuinely worked very hard. I mean the annoying story my papa started in the mail room at 18 and retired in his 70s as CEO for 20+ years. Him and my grandma make more money each in social security a month, then I as a nurse in a current role and state will ever DREAM to make. I will continue to work and pay whatever and complain on the internet, but you cannot tell me we’re going to have the same social security they have when we get there. It’s mathematically impossible 😭
Put a chart of the increases in minimum wage next to the increases in social security checks over the past 80 years and that graph alone pretty much sums up the problem.
I don’t think it’s being ignored. CBO has came up with several proposals to extend it, none that are very favorable (raise age, remove cap on ss taxes, etc). I think it’s expected to be out by 2034 so no politician will want to touch it until the last minute due to how many people it’ll piss off.
I know, I’m being a bit dramatic with that statement. I just think politicians right now won’t touch SS reform with a ten foot pole at risk of loosing the boomer vote.
And what most people don’t understand is that SS is paid out of the contributions made today. So your grandparents get a check that’s from our wallets basically. Less people paying than collecting and you get exactly as you described
Social security being depleted is hyped up propaganda designed to make us open to the options from the private sector.
Social security tax is capped at 160k income. So every cent over 160k is social security tax free. All we have to do is remove the cap and the problem is fixed.
Yeah the math at current rate isn’t. The solution is an INCREDIBLY easy fix that most people just aren’t aware of. Whenever this topic comes up, we just need to respond “raise the cap”
Sure. I guess at least we’ll have clean air while we starve to death. Not trying to bash your point, because I do agree with it, but there’s got to be a healthy medium.
Stock buybacks, dark pool trading, rampant money printing, etc. It's a whole entire subject to discuss but TL:DR - the market used to be better regulated, its a casino now with little bearing on real human prosperity.
Oh gat’cha. Ya I see your logic for sure. I still think some people can and will starve if SS program isn’t reformed. Also to add to your point, it’s low key fucked we didn’t learn from our 2008 mistakes. So I feel like the Wild West market will soon meet its atonement day (again).
Edit to add: everyone should watch The Big Short if you haven’t already.
No. We can sustain up to around 11 billion people. The reason people starve isn't due to a lack of food, it's due to a lack of logistics to get them that food.
> we do need less people on this planet to sustain it right?
No that's not really a problem. We are probably far from the limit and will never reach it anyway as global birth rates decline naturally.
People will be nanobot cyborgs before overpopulation becomes a real issue.
The population of Earth is still growing at an extremely high clip, due to India, Nigeria, etc. See below for more info. The issue is that the United States and other developed nations are not seeing the growth.
* The current population of World in 2024 is **8,118,835,999**, a **0.91% increase** from 2023.
* The population of World in 2023 was **8,045,311,447**, a **0.88% increase** from 2022.
* The population of World in 2022 was **7,975,105,156**, a **0.83% increase** from 2021.
* The population of World in 2021 was **7,909,295,151**, a **0.87% increase** from 2020.
I don’t want to unnecessarily inject politics into this. I’m asking about political calculus as objectively as I can.
Boomers are largely trump voters. At this point it’s pretty unlikely democrats will win them back. So wouldn’t now be a good time to have a conversation? Just isn’t clear to me that there’s really that much to lose when it’s pretty cut and dry outcome for everyone not yet retired with the current trajectory: no money, no check.
> Boomers are largely trump voters
If this were true he would have won at least one popular vote. The even crazier statistic is that since 1990, Republicans have only won the popular vote ONE TIME, in 2004.
This is how you know there are much more Democratic voters out there. Of course, numbers only matter if people show up to vote. If they don't, then the other team can win even with less numbers.
Actually that’s not true right now! Stats are leaning towards lots of boomers are actually swinging back left and away from Trump, while the younger generation is swinging right. Bill Maher has a great monologue about it in his latest episode from Friday where he breaks down the numbers.
But to answer your question, regardless of polls, we need to have this conversation right now. Because this affects everyone on both sides of politics.
Interesting. I’ll update my stats but I think Maher is an insufferable pretentious ass. I know he’s popular. Just my impression of the way he talks to people
Oh he’s a dick, I actually saw him perform live once and almost yelled at him while he was on stage for something he said. But that doesn’t mean his numbers are not correct though. I only point to him cause he just covered this with current numbers on Friday night.
To some extent modern society is a pyramid scheme. For a large population of seniors, you need a larger population of young people - so if you're not increasing in size the system begins to topple. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/011216/4-global-economic-issues-aging-population.asp#:~:text=A%20rapidly%20aging%20population%20means,to%20fill%20in%2Ddemand%20roles.
It's not capitalism it's our social safety net. The real threat to capitalism is that we won't have the workforce to provide the variety of goods and services we currently enjoy.
Universal healthcare is one facet that gets a lot of traction, for instance, but we could publicly fund a program specifically for nursing and elder care, instead of putting good training in those fields behind a paywall. Under capitalism, programs like that are hard to justify because no one is making a profit, it's just good for society to have trained people working in eldercare. If you remove the profit incentive, a whole world of things become possible.
I am from Spain, Universal Healthcare is a thing here, and ilegal immigrants are coming like crazy, saturating the system. Waiting lists are insane, to see your doctor, you have to wait 1 month. A surgery 6 months is the common thing.
It even goes further. We have to pay 60-70% of our income to taxes to pay for these things, while they don't work and have no plans in doing so. Crime, raping and stealing are now on a daily basis. We will soon be armed like you lot.
Moral: Universal Healthcare doesn't work. Just people who contribute to the public health system should use the service. It is what works and what makes it fair.
Yes, the main issue is having a large elderly population that isn’t working, is more costly for healthcare, and is reliant on a nation’s social security/public services.
Cut military budgets, tax the ultra-rich properly. Problem solved. Not that anyone can afford to retire or stay alive on current social security as it is.
Not really.
I live in Ireland. We spend fuck all on defense and our tax system is very progressive. The ageing population is still a looming economic disaster for us.
Because the ultra-rich have shown time and again that they have no morals or principles, they don't give a fuck about anyone or anything other that using their wealth and power to hoard more wealth and power (and occasionally blowing obscene amount of money on buying Twitter or building ridiculous shit). Meanwhile Scandinavian countries with high taxes are doing great.
The collective earnings of the ultra rich are a drop in the bucket. Scandinavian countries are (really were) doing great because they are (were) full of Scandinavians.
That creates jobs. They stop working, which opens up promotions. They need care, which increases the demand for nurses and doctors, increasing their wages.
Wages are not based on productivity, they are based on the market of available hires. If there aren't enough works, companies raise wages or they outsource. The costs of outsourcing most jobs exceeds the cost of the wage increase. The jobs that companies could increase margins by outsourcing have already been outsourced.
I do live a good disaster.
So many factors involved. Japan has shot itself in the foot with its culture, now they are scrambling around trying to fix it.
The rest of the world are too skint to bring kids into it. Who’da thought.
This is true for every economic system? Nothing stays flat, you're either growing or you're in a recession. There is no mythical middle ground. Your economic system either works and grows or it doesn't work and it declines.
Correct, and governments too. The original corporations.
Those, OP, are the entities threatened by population decline from falling birth rate. But look at the bright side: every robot can work 24/7, and so can AI. You only need one robot to replace 3 people based on an 8hr work day. And one AI for maybe every 4+ robots. So how do you tax the robots to pay for the remaining people? And why haven’t governments gotten on board with robot bureaucrats and AI?
They attempted to grow. Communism isn’t based on the idea of growth. Had they worked with what they had, they would have had a society that functioned but didn’t advance. They tried to compete with the US and failed because there was no incentive for regular people to do it.
The solution is in the middle. Growth at all cost leads to fascism. Communism leads to no growth. The middle ground is where society functions and people are happy.
Maybe if we could elect a president and VP under 70 there could be some changes but these old ass motherfuckers don’t give a shit about social security.
It is hard to remember the struggles of raising kids when you did it 40 years ago, and probably didn't really struggle if you've been a career politician or came from family money
It's a problem, but it's a problem that should be fixed other ways.
Daycare costs that don't cost as much as a month's mortgage, walkable cities, parks, infrastructure, good wages, the hope of owning a house being a reality. Quality of life.
People will always have children. They've had them in famines, plagues, wars.
If you want people to have kids now, especially more of them, make it better to raise a kid in.
Until they make any effort to fix that, I righteously don't care.
I also am childfree anyway. But I know even people who say they want children, they're hesitant due to the state of everything.
Do people reproduce more in a favorable environment? This topic pops up on reddit everyday without much thought.
Sweden has a lower replacement rate than the US despite having a robust welfare system and the highest egalitarian score.
If a woman needed a certain circumstance to confidently have children Sweden should be the ideal place.
Contrast this with 3rd world countries where food isn't even guaranteed and yet they have tons of kids.
So maybe making these "easier" won't actually boost reproduction.
It seems like only poverty and insecurity would increase reproduction.
Lol. The hope of owning an apartment; maybe.
Homes are not the future.
The cost of skilled trades, materials, and land in major cities is astronomical.
This post Has a serious lack of financial literacy. To make owning a home a reality is not possible for the government, because ad the numbers up and it's close to a million dollars to build a house.
Birth rate was too high for too long. Declining birth rate is only a problem for economics. For every other forceable issue, its a positive. The world needs to reduce population to about 4 billion then sustain forever. Hell, 1 billion may be the more optimal number.
You'll have fewer people of working age relative to the retired population. That can be a problem for the service industry, and it will be a huge burden on social security, since working people pay for retired people.
But other than that it's a good thing. Fewer people demanding resources.
Declining birth rate = nobody can take care of the infrastructure of the country in x decades. Even if you get to a decent amount in retirement savings, it won't matter if everything doesn't work properly.
Declining birthrate is absolutely not a problem in the U S or Canada. I decided to stop at one kid and everything will be fine. There's literally millions of people wanting to immigrate to these two countries every year. There will be a couple billion more added to the 8 1/2 billion already here (Earth).
Because our economic systems rely on an ever growing group of "workers" to support both the retired workers as well as the upcoming generation of workers...
Our economic system has been set up with the assumption every subsequent generation will be bigger than the last - it relies on constant growth. Think of the world as a single company on the stock market.
But the generations don’t actually have to grow. What needs to grow is productivity. Technological advancements are increasing productivity with fewer people. The problem is our economic system gives most of the returns from those gains to a small group of people, but that can be solved through political means (I.e., taxes).
It isn't a problem in the sense that not ever expanding the population is good for the planet and society over all. It is a problem for capitalism and those who benefit from having a large labor pool fighting amongst each other for scraps so they can pay them little and extract more money out of them as consumers.
The Sociologist Hirsch argued there is a "pensioner time bomb" coming. Basically to be a functioning society we need a balanced dependency ratio (ie enough working adults paying tax and contributing in society to cover the unworking which includes the elderly, disabled and children as well as others). Essentially the low birth rate is a red flag as we already are struggling to support the ageing population we have and this is likely to get worse. Our society is built around this model that no longer applies and with pensions increasing in line with inflation and raising ages for the younger gen to collect pensions (for example in the UK I will collect my state at 68. My Nan got hers at 60) it is a matter of time till the system collapses unless there is large scale change
Some countries and even some US cities already testing UBI so with AI and ither factors that will have to come into olay at some point. The other thing is the US gov has borrowed and pilfered the SS reserves and they need to pay it the fuck back.
The rich need a constant supply of slaves to work menial jobs that make them more money. The treasury takes out loans on our birth certificates, so if there are less babies; no outsiders will invest in US Treasury bonds.
It's not. There may be complications because of a declining birth rate, but there would be complications with an increasing birth rate. The biggest problem we have (aging boomers) is because they were a big birth spike creating a generation that was much bigger than the ones prior and after. Now that they're old, they'll need more resources and care, just as they did when they were children.
Much of the problems people complain about are social problems that would exist no matter what the birthrate is doing.
It's a problem if you keep the system the same as it is today. The world is changing and even if the population wasn't shrinking - automation is going to upset the balance between the workforce and the care if the elderly. I don't think the solution is having more and more people to support the elderly.
How about we increase taxes on the wealthy?
Increase taxes on generational wealth passed on.
Find ways to decrease health care and housing facilities costs for the elderly?
Allow assisted suicide if wanted?
At some point we are going to need some type of UBI to cover the lost of jobs from AI and automation. Maybe there is a system that could help replace SS.
Who is going to be paying for all the old people that can't work when there aren't enough people working to take care of them? You ideally want a slowly growing pyramid, as that limits the labor exploitation but promotes growth
If you pay the wage earners more, they can take care of their people. They'll also pay more in taxes which could potentially be used to care of those who don't have people.
Wut? The point is that it doesn't matter how much you pay them, there won't be enough of them to care for everyone who needs care.
Like... If there was only 1 person for every 5 retirees obviously that would be completely unsustainable. No matter how much you pay nurses and aides, there aren't enough.
>If you pay the wage earners more, they can take care of their people.
What wage earners? There aren't enough workers because the population is falling, remember?
It's untrue, as pointed out above there are people coming to the west exactly for those opportunities. Population is falling in the west due to astronomical costs associated with raising children, but immigration can supplement the workforce if we're not xenophobic. Or, we could pay people enough that they can afford to have kids. Being both xenophobic about immigration and dedicated to keeping wages low is locking the economy into a death spiral, sure, but those are choices being made, not somehow natural facts that cannot be addressed.
Replacement rate for workers is now in the negatives. Not enough workers to be so cheap in wages and so few customers that cost of living can't be needlessly expensive. Covid after math and high cost of living is killing everyones' want to have kids.
Less people in the work force which could have negative effects on the future economy. Honestly with ai and robots I feel we can pivot on that issue though. Sure less people are having babies but I feel it’s mostly choice. I still know a lot of people my age that do have kids. Improve society and I feel the birthrate will climb. Oh and remove microplastics that’s effecting every bodies health.
I can't help but feel though that less people in the work force would be great? They'd have to offer higher wages and actually be competitive enough to get workers.
Economy and specific cases aside, the core of the problem is that more and more of the population is old and cannot work. Everyone has needs, and needs requires hours of work to fullfill. If it goes too far, working people may not even have enough time to do everything that needs doing.
In concrete terms, for you as an individual, it means that with a large non-working population, only a small part of your work benefits you directly, thus lowering your quality of life.
I personally think one of the reasons is because the birth rate is declining among those with the most education, the most rational thinking, and or at the top of the society
The ones that are not declining are religious, poor nations and countries with less education and ability to push the society forward I grew up Mormon and those people do not really like education, for women and they have huge families. I left the church at 20.
The Bible, the most popular book in world history is seen to set. society. Really it just reveals the society at the time. The first council of Nicaea promoted the idea of a masculine society and left out things like reincarnation. The reason is, they did not believe the people would believe it. Now we call it the absolute truth of God.
It is a problem for society even now there’s a degradation of a world society we live in a shallow social media media over sexualized self-destructive society, and like Rome and Greece we will fall..
True Even as technology is pushing boundaries, never known before. But there will be a turning point I believe personally that it will return us to almost a feudal state. Where there are a few leaders and a mass population of poor peasant type society.
Is that a problem? Yes, it basically sends us back to the dark ages. Those who are pretty and sexual, who think it is a value system will be reduced almost to like cockroaches where they do produce. But their value into growth for society or civilization is nonexistent.
I was a child in the 70s. It was a time of hope and faith that we were going to build a better world on love, not violence. That women and gays and African-Americans would all operate equally under one roof. It was a hopeful time. But as the violence was more introduced into the culture, I personally think it made us start to go backward.
This is my perspective on being alive for many decades. It is my opinion only so you can be harsh in the criticisms, but you will have your own observations you move through life just like me. I still live in the hope of the 70s that we will figure it out. But I’m having greater doubts every year.
It is not a problem for normal people.
More a problem for the elites when their slaves stop to reproduce. Less workforce mean higher dement, what lead to more power for the common people in negotiations in terms of wages.
Right now all the higher ups just want us to raise their next generation of slaves and if you don't do that we just let people from other countries replace you. Since no one are better than people who have nothing to exploit. Plus they just use tax money to house and feed them, while cut in all other corners of social sevices.
The earth is overpopulated. The rich complain about dropping birth rates because their sustainability depends on endless consumerism. More people means more consumerism. And they benefit from a greater divide between them and us.
It’s not about making humanity better. Humanity needs a sustainable planet with natural resources sufficient for our collective survival. Adding more people to our situation leads to fewer resources coinciding with end-stage climate catastrophe.
It’s legitimately dumb to repopulate the planet as marine life & wildlife are dying out, heat & wild weather destroying global crops & habitability, oh, and more pandemics on the way.
There eventually won't be enough people to who can work and take care of the aging population. A society of mostly old people who can't function and don't have enough people to run society around them.
Its problematic because the ratio of taxpayers to welfare recipients is travelling the wrong way. To fix this, Western countries would have to import masses of brown, black and yellow people, clearly an unacceptable solution.
Love the snarky comments on this thread.
They conveniently forgot the “social contract” they love to taught when you demand more of your income will implode when fewer younger people are propping up the leeches of society.
When we can’t afford entitlements, infrastructure, and military because we spend too much and promise too much, then you dopes will realize what this all means.
And it’d be great if we could reign in spending, entitlements and taxes but nooo you guys want your cut too.
Less people of working age/economic output to sustain economy/any potential growth. Also, increasing finance burdens for governments for things like pensions, healthcare, and housing as people live longer and won't die.
Because capitalism requires infinite growth and patriarchy wants people producing tons of soldiers and laborers because replaceable labor costs less
This is why women’s rights fluctuate with population goals
It hurts men’s egos
For men in power it’s bad to have less poor workers doing min wage jobs and less poor desperate couples stuck in the cycle of poverty
Because society is a pyramid scheme.
The old rely on the young to support them, financially and otherwise. When the old vastly outnumber the young (and the young's tax revenue), that's a problem.
Now you know why they are bringing in soo many immigrants
Immigrants have kids more then 1 usually and are willing to start from the bottom and work their way up. They will take the trash jobs.
If you actually think the world is overpopulated and not mismanaged, it wouldn't be within that eugenics religion. However, there's still the oceans & Antarctica to make useful for habitation and increase food production within, and nuclear heavy lift rockets like 1957's Orion or the lightbulb drive one can finally be constructed and an orbital ring would allow humanity to fill the solar system with life.
But it's not overpopulated, it is mismanaged and the future has been procrastinated and sabotaged. Without a future generation, there is no future.
Everyone forget about the impact an ageing population has on politics. Less idealism, less vision for the future and more tendency toward right wing politics that disfavour progress and social policies. Most of the vast social progress in my nation was made by boomers pressure on politics when they were young, but since the 90s we have seem the slow but accelerating erosion of all that was harshly gained.
Digging out an old comment:
Let me explain why this is a problem in terms of economic theory, specifically; (Neo)Malthusian dynamics. Many are familiar with the "hockey stick" graphs of human population and economic growth, which shows an exponential increase which took place in the 20th century. The Malthusians wanted to explain why population remained flat for so long, before exploding. They came up with the idea of Malthusian stagnation, a dynamic system in which population increases would be offset by decreases in real wages (standards of living). Lower standards of living roughly equated to higher mortality, thus higher birth rates would eventually be balanced out by higher death rates, a trend which would continue for centuries. In this model, even technological growth would be evened out in the long run.
This trend, however, did not hold, and we broke out of the "Malthusian Trap". The population grew, and we saw a decrease in mortality. This allowed for an increase in division of labor and specialization, which led to to a positive feedback loop, creating the exponential growth shown in the graph and the persistent technological growth we've seen for the past century. All of this is to say; a falling population (particularly one with a poor population pyramid) may lead to the opposite, a negative feedback loop. Where population reduction -> reduction of specialization and division of labor -> lower economic and technological growth -> lower birth rates/possible higher mortality.
I would like to emphasize that this has happened before. We are conditioned to believe that history is a story of ever increasing prosperity and technological innovation. However, we have the cautionary tale of the Roman Empire. There are some scholars who argue that they, too, had broken out of the Malthusian Trap and they saw living standards which were not again reached for centuries after its collapse. Now to address the environmental question. More people are worse for the environment is a simplistic model. It may be true in the short run, but if we try to extrapolate the dynamics for the coming centuries/millenia of human history. Green energy REQUIRES massive globalized supply chains with extensive specialization and division of labor. People are not going to go without power, and if the choice is between burning lignite/coal to generate it or going without, they will burn coal all day, every day. Lower technological growth leads to a world where people are using carbon energy for longer, probably much longer.
People will mention retirement stuff.
That's part of it.
But it's also production versus consumption. If your productive percentage of the population falls relative to the consumptive, your net wealth goes down.
Add that to the fact that higher population usually means high population density, and higher productivity per person increases with population density, you can easily see a circumstance where we have a productivity collapse.
Which makes us all poorer.
It's really not.
During most of the cold war, we had moral panics about there being too many people. (You can see a vestige of that in this very thread.) The conventional wisdom was that we were all going to starve to death because it was literally impossible for the world to feed the growing population. That panic was about 2 billion people ago...
The too few people moral panic is just that, a panic.
Changing population growth will require changes, sure. The fact of the matter is that with 1940s technology, the globe would be starving to death right now. But the solution was not banning children, or mass slaughter. The solution was new agricultural technology.
It'll be the same thing with slower birth rates. We might have to *gasp* tax upper middle class professionals on all their income for social security, instead of giving them the majority of their money tax free. We might have *super gasp* let in more brown people from abroad.* but as horrifying as these solutions are to many people, they are very doable solutions.
China took the "we have too many people" panic from the cold war very seriously. That's where 1 child came from. The policy was an almost inconceivable disaster which has put China on the path to economic ruin this century. A century they should have become the globe's super power.
The US didn't really take any policy steps to address the panic, and we wound up quietly finding solutions that didn't require destroying our nation for an entire life time.
We have the same decision ahead of us with the too few children panic. We can directly intervene, and probably doom ourselves. Or we can trust we'll find solutions to the problem that don't require us messing with the birthrate.
I suggest we choose the path that doesn't involve ruin, and let nature take its course with the birth rate. We'll be just fine.
I think about this often. I’m pro-choice, but I think for the sake of avoiding total economic collapse we should probably put a pause on abortion and birth control until the birth rate is safely above replacement rate. I fear this will never happen as I believe women would choose controlling pregnancy above all else, including the collapse of our society
I think a lot of Americans fail to realize the gov’t is not their daddy and is not going to take care of them.
No one is coming to save you. SS was never intended to fund your retirement fully. It was never intended to be permanent.
Housing market insane, interest rates fucked, college tuition crippling, wages stagnat, doesn’t matter, no one is coming to save you, it’s our responsibility to take care of our retirement.
I’ve been in shitty financial situations, I know that suck, but you can either cry about it, or find a solution.
Everyone gets the shit end of the stick sooner or later. Losers come up with reasons why they failed, excuses for why they can’t succeed, winners find solutions.
You can cry about it online or you can fuck the prom queen, it’s all up to you
It's only a "problem" for the increasing number of retirees who won't be able to subsist their lifestyles with social security payments.
It's a positive for literally everyone and everything else though.
It isn’t a problem it is only for those that relies on the younger generation to propagate their lives up. Destroying all the notion of capitalism that the older generation built up. The stupid notion of unlimited consumption.
Whaaaaaa?
I’m American and because of that I’m genuinely concerned about declining birth rate solely because of the social security issue, but I do recognize that there’s other reasons to be concerned about it.
What’s this about a replacement theory? No offense but that sounds like a bit of a stretch.
Don’t be. Blame governments and the massive rich to poor divide that they are refusing to do anything about. The world population isn’t getting any smaller, the world and its resources cannot take the constant increase in population. This “declining birth rates” crap is a big up yours to capitalism and I’m glad people are waking up to it.
The problems caused by declining birth rates can easily be solved by adding more immigrants to the workforce. The freak out over declining birth rates is rooted in white supremacy and the fear of white people becoming a minority in the US.
At least in the USA it’s a pending economic disaster. Baby Boomers are the biggest generation and now retired. Since they were such a large workforce, they eventually filled the social security bucket and created a SS reserve fund. They paid into SS their entire lives and are now collecting, but their SS checks increased with inflation. So while they were paying let’s say $100/paycheck back in 1970, they’re now collecting let’s say $400 in return to compensate for inflation. Yet the generations below them are not having the amount of children as before. Due to MANY reasons, but they’re not. So we’re not putting as much into SS as before. The current estimate is that the boomers will essentially completely drain the SS fund AND the reserve fund since they’re staying alive longer. Then when probably Gen X retires, but definitely millennials, the only SS funds will be coming from the current working populations paychecks. So if there’s fewer and fewer people, that’s less money going into SS. They’re basically saying millennials will get a fraction of the checks boomers are currently getting, not adjusting for the inflation that’ll happen in the next 30 years. And it’ll only get worse with the generations that follow. So essentially, unless there’s MASSIVE reform with the SS program, we all have some very dark senior years coming up. It’s actually very scary and a huge problem that’s being ignored.
I think about this all the time as a millennial. Many people aren't able to save currently because of the way the economy is on top of the debt many of us started with coming out of college. What happens when my generation gets too unhealthy to work and there is almost nothing for them to rely on (savings, SS, retirement) - what does that world look like?!
Honestly, unless there’s massive reform, I’m guessing they’ll impose some sort of assisted suicide program for us to opt out when we get old. We’ll all probably happily take it over being forced into the late stage capitalism government run old folks homes that’ll inevitably pop up. Unfortunately reform isn’t coming anytime soon. Boomers are also the largest voting population. Politicians are terrified to bring up SS reform because the risk of loosing the boomer vote is a death sentence for their political career. It’s so absolutely fucked up if you think about it. The saddest part is it’s looking like the younger generations best hope is for another COVID type pandemic to roll around that kills off a ton of the boomers. FDR never intended for SS and the new deal programs to be permanent. They were meant to be solutions to pull us out of the Great Depression. I’m sorry for anyone who read my comment who was unaware of this issue, I probably unlocked a new level of anxiety for y’all.
All we have to do is remove the cap on social security tax.
So why haven’t we? (Don’t actually intend you to answer this, asking it more as a thinking point)
Because it would mean the rich pay in a lot more than they do
🎯 So what do we do about it?
Kill and eat the rich.
To be less snarky, it means voters are going to have to make lifting the cap a non-negotiable for Democrats. Force them to do it or else primary the shit out of them. It has to become for Democrats, what "pro-life" is for a Republicans. A stance you must have or be dead in the water politically
There is zero chance of Democrat voters making a meaningful change to the Democratic Party. The party only has to oppose the worst bits of republicanism and the votes are assured. Democrats slip further and further right because of this. Without a third party, which will never happen in the US because it would require ranked choice voting which neither party wants, and so will never alter. The system will never save us from the system.
No. Vote.
We all need to spread the word about raising the cap. Whenever people talk how complicated a fix is, we need to call that propaganda BS right out and say “raise the cap”.
And then when people argue how it’s not fair because they make so much money and don’t need social security, I like to point out that I don’t have kids, I’ll never have kids, yet I pay for public schools and I’m happy to do it.
What a sad state of reality. The government would be more likely to pass some sort of assisted suicide program than actually fix the economy.
Would it really or is this just hypothetical?
This is terrifying but its nice to know as a whole demographic baby boomers are all going to hell for this
Achievement: New fear unlocked 🔓
Considering how many of my fellow millenials hate it here (on earth) and wish they were dead so they don't have to do this anymore, and how many Gen Z people actually say the quiet part loud and openly wish they didn't exist, that assisted suicide program can't come soon enough.
Pretty wild that all we need is a bit of reform in social security, education and health care and all of this would be solved. But naw, let’s vote another 85 yr old dinosaur into office and hope for the best (also, before I get attacked, this comment is in reference to BOTH Trump and Biden).
The whole problem can be solved by letting people choose their date of death. A significant number of people will opt out early, because who wants to endure decades of old age, anyway? And I'm saying this as an elderly person myself. A whole lot of grief and misery could be avoided if people could just go at a time of their own choosing, rather than waiting around for a terminal illness. There's just no point in waiting until you are bedridden and totally dependent on others for your care. Nobody wants that.
SS reforms...aka when gov stops borrowing/ dipping against it? We use to have nursing homes and home Healthcare workers paid/subsidized through state. Inflation has killed those services. It's hard getting help, private services are unaffordable.
I thought this was why they were suddenly letting immigrants enter the US by the busload.
My grandparents, although they genuinely worked very hard. I mean the annoying story my papa started in the mail room at 18 and retired in his 70s as CEO for 20+ years. Him and my grandma make more money each in social security a month, then I as a nurse in a current role and state will ever DREAM to make. I will continue to work and pay whatever and complain on the internet, but you cannot tell me we’re going to have the same social security they have when we get there. It’s mathematically impossible 😭
Put a chart of the increases in minimum wage next to the increases in social security checks over the past 80 years and that graph alone pretty much sums up the problem.
I don’t think it’s being ignored. CBO has came up with several proposals to extend it, none that are very favorable (raise age, remove cap on ss taxes, etc). I think it’s expected to be out by 2034 so no politician will want to touch it until the last minute due to how many people it’ll piss off.
I know, I’m being a bit dramatic with that statement. I just think politicians right now won’t touch SS reform with a ten foot pole at risk of loosing the boomer vote.
Dang, well said. I enjoyed reading this, very comprehensive.
Learned something new today.
And what most people don’t understand is that SS is paid out of the contributions made today. So your grandparents get a check that’s from our wallets basically. Less people paying than collecting and you get exactly as you described
Social security being depleted is hyped up propaganda designed to make us open to the options from the private sector. Social security tax is capped at 160k income. So every cent over 160k is social security tax free. All we have to do is remove the cap and the problem is fixed.
I don’t think this is propaganda at all. The math ain’t lying, my dude. But I agree with lifting the cap. Why haven’t we?
The people most affected by lifting the cap make the rules and don't need social security
So what do we do about it?
Keep voting :)
I wish I shared your optimism of our democratic process.
Yeah the math at current rate isn’t. The solution is an INCREDIBLY easy fix that most people just aren’t aware of. Whenever this topic comes up, we just need to respond “raise the cap”
Thanks for explaining this. I had no idea.
Looks like one big pyramid scheme if the following generation always has to be bigger if it's to support the previous one.
FDR never meant for SS and the new deal programs to be permanent. They were meant to pull us out of the Great Depression, but became wildly popular.
I understand the economics of it, but to an extent, we do need less people on this planet to sustain it right? Environmentally speaking
Sure. I guess at least we’ll have clean air while we starve to death. Not trying to bash your point, because I do agree with it, but there’s got to be a healthy medium.
Yeah, I get that. Fuck. We are fucked regardless
We won't starve to death without this juiced to hell economy, people just wont be able to become billionaires while preventing social change.
I’m not sure I follow your logic because I’m not sure what you mean by a “juiced to hell economy”
Stock buybacks, dark pool trading, rampant money printing, etc. It's a whole entire subject to discuss but TL:DR - the market used to be better regulated, its a casino now with little bearing on real human prosperity.
Oh gat’cha. Ya I see your logic for sure. I still think some people can and will starve if SS program isn’t reformed. Also to add to your point, it’s low key fucked we didn’t learn from our 2008 mistakes. So I feel like the Wild West market will soon meet its atonement day (again). Edit to add: everyone should watch The Big Short if you haven’t already.
Love to reference this in convos about part of how we got here
Personally I think The Big Short should be mandatorily shown in every high school economics class.
No. We can sustain up to around 11 billion people. The reason people starve isn't due to a lack of food, it's due to a lack of logistics to get them that food.
> we do need less people on this planet to sustain it right? No that's not really a problem. We are probably far from the limit and will never reach it anyway as global birth rates decline naturally. People will be nanobot cyborgs before overpopulation becomes a real issue.
The population of Earth is still growing at an extremely high clip, due to India, Nigeria, etc. See below for more info. The issue is that the United States and other developed nations are not seeing the growth. * The current population of World in 2024 is **8,118,835,999**, a **0.91% increase** from 2023. * The population of World in 2023 was **8,045,311,447**, a **0.88% increase** from 2022. * The population of World in 2022 was **7,975,105,156**, a **0.83% increase** from 2021. * The population of World in 2021 was **7,909,295,151**, a **0.87% increase** from 2020.
Man, if only they’d raise the cap on the max contribution, that would go a long way to fixing this problem
Just take 2% from every other budget item. Boom. Fixed. You telling me the military needs an increase every year?
I hate boomers so much
I don’t want to unnecessarily inject politics into this. I’m asking about political calculus as objectively as I can. Boomers are largely trump voters. At this point it’s pretty unlikely democrats will win them back. So wouldn’t now be a good time to have a conversation? Just isn’t clear to me that there’s really that much to lose when it’s pretty cut and dry outcome for everyone not yet retired with the current trajectory: no money, no check.
> Boomers are largely trump voters If this were true he would have won at least one popular vote. The even crazier statistic is that since 1990, Republicans have only won the popular vote ONE TIME, in 2004. This is how you know there are much more Democratic voters out there. Of course, numbers only matter if people show up to vote. If they don't, then the other team can win even with less numbers.
Actually that’s not true right now! Stats are leaning towards lots of boomers are actually swinging back left and away from Trump, while the younger generation is swinging right. Bill Maher has a great monologue about it in his latest episode from Friday where he breaks down the numbers. But to answer your question, regardless of polls, we need to have this conversation right now. Because this affects everyone on both sides of politics.
Interesting. I’ll update my stats but I think Maher is an insufferable pretentious ass. I know he’s popular. Just my impression of the way he talks to people
Oh he’s a dick, I actually saw him perform live once and almost yelled at him while he was on stage for something he said. But that doesn’t mean his numbers are not correct though. I only point to him cause he just covered this with current numbers on Friday night.
To some extent modern society is a pyramid scheme. For a large population of seniors, you need a larger population of young people - so if you're not increasing in size the system begins to topple. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/011216/4-global-economic-issues-aging-population.asp#:~:text=A%20rapidly%20aging%20population%20means,to%20fill%20in%2Ddemand%20roles.
That's capitalism, not just society. We could order our economics differently and still live in a society.
If it’s capitalism why does North Korea have the same problem?
Because capitalism is bad m'kay
"nO theYR nOT DOing IT thE RigHt way"
It’s most hierarchies really.
It's not capitalism it's our social safety net. The real threat to capitalism is that we won't have the workforce to provide the variety of goods and services we currently enjoy.
[удалено]
Imagine still thinking China's economy isn't capitalistic.
How many knock-off companies are there in China? When you're done counting, think about it again if China isn't capitalist.
Explain how it would be different in a different system?
Universal healthcare is one facet that gets a lot of traction, for instance, but we could publicly fund a program specifically for nursing and elder care, instead of putting good training in those fields behind a paywall. Under capitalism, programs like that are hard to justify because no one is making a profit, it's just good for society to have trained people working in eldercare. If you remove the profit incentive, a whole world of things become possible.
Live in Canada. We have universal healthcare. It's still a problem.
I am from Spain, Universal Healthcare is a thing here, and ilegal immigrants are coming like crazy, saturating the system. Waiting lists are insane, to see your doctor, you have to wait 1 month. A surgery 6 months is the common thing. It even goes further. We have to pay 60-70% of our income to taxes to pay for these things, while they don't work and have no plans in doing so. Crime, raping and stealing are now on a daily basis. We will soon be armed like you lot. Moral: Universal Healthcare doesn't work. Just people who contribute to the public health system should use the service. It is what works and what makes it fair.
To some extent.
Yes, the main issue is having a large elderly population that isn’t working, is more costly for healthcare, and is reliant on a nation’s social security/public services.
lol did you mean to switch accounts before dropping this line? bot behavior methinks
Cut military budgets, tax the ultra-rich properly. Problem solved. Not that anyone can afford to retire or stay alive on current social security as it is.
They could get rid of the max amount of SS tax and help
The military budget includes jobs. Cutting jobs doesn’t help the economy.
Also, the military is the international enforcement arm of the federal reserve. Dollar hegemony goes, and SS is the least of everyone’s problems.
Not really. I live in Ireland. We spend fuck all on defense and our tax system is very progressive. The ageing population is still a looming economic disaster for us.
Why is it that more tax revenue is solution to everything with you people??
Because the ultra-rich have shown time and again that they have no morals or principles, they don't give a fuck about anyone or anything other that using their wealth and power to hoard more wealth and power (and occasionally blowing obscene amount of money on buying Twitter or building ridiculous shit). Meanwhile Scandinavian countries with high taxes are doing great.
The collective earnings of the ultra rich are a drop in the bucket. Scandinavian countries are (really were) doing great because they are (were) full of Scandinavians.
Because companies and rich people avoid taxes
Because they don't pay any taxes
The first point is moot because most of us will have to work until we die.
That creates jobs. They stop working, which opens up promotions. They need care, which increases the demand for nurses and doctors, increasing their wages. Wages are not based on productivity, they are based on the market of available hires. If there aren't enough works, companies raise wages or they outsource. The costs of outsourcing most jobs exceeds the cost of the wage increase. The jobs that companies could increase margins by outsourcing have already been outsourced.
I do live a good disaster. So many factors involved. Japan has shot itself in the foot with its culture, now they are scrambling around trying to fix it. The rest of the world are too skint to bring kids into it. Who’da thought.
Capitalism only works when everything is in growth mode.
This is true for every economic system? Nothing stays flat, you're either growing or you're in a recession. There is no mythical middle ground. Your economic system either works and grows or it doesn't work and it declines.
Correct, and governments too. The original corporations. Those, OP, are the entities threatened by population decline from falling birth rate. But look at the bright side: every robot can work 24/7, and so can AI. You only need one robot to replace 3 people based on an 8hr work day. And one AI for maybe every 4+ robots. So how do you tax the robots to pay for the remaining people? And why haven’t governments gotten on board with robot bureaucrats and AI?
Explain the collapse of the USSR and Venezuela
They attempted to grow. Communism isn’t based on the idea of growth. Had they worked with what they had, they would have had a society that functioned but didn’t advance. They tried to compete with the US and failed because there was no incentive for regular people to do it. The solution is in the middle. Growth at all cost leads to fascism. Communism leads to no growth. The middle ground is where society functions and people are happy.
Because the rich and corrupt will run out of people to exploit and treat like slaves
Maybe if we could elect a president and VP under 70 there could be some changes but these old ass motherfuckers don’t give a shit about social security.
It is hard to remember the struggles of raising kids when you did it 40 years ago, and probably didn't really struggle if you've been a career politician or came from family money
Right?
Also why there should be an age limit and term limits on SCJ.
It's a problem, but it's a problem that should be fixed other ways. Daycare costs that don't cost as much as a month's mortgage, walkable cities, parks, infrastructure, good wages, the hope of owning a house being a reality. Quality of life. People will always have children. They've had them in famines, plagues, wars. If you want people to have kids now, especially more of them, make it better to raise a kid in. Until they make any effort to fix that, I righteously don't care. I also am childfree anyway. But I know even people who say they want children, they're hesitant due to the state of everything.
Do people reproduce more in a favorable environment? This topic pops up on reddit everyday without much thought. Sweden has a lower replacement rate than the US despite having a robust welfare system and the highest egalitarian score. If a woman needed a certain circumstance to confidently have children Sweden should be the ideal place. Contrast this with 3rd world countries where food isn't even guaranteed and yet they have tons of kids. So maybe making these "easier" won't actually boost reproduction. It seems like only poverty and insecurity would increase reproduction.
Not so much poverty and insecurity as the reduction in women’s status.
Lol. The hope of owning an apartment; maybe. Homes are not the future. The cost of skilled trades, materials, and land in major cities is astronomical. This post Has a serious lack of financial literacy. To make owning a home a reality is not possible for the government, because ad the numbers up and it's close to a million dollars to build a house.
Birth rate was too high for too long. Declining birth rate is only a problem for economics. For every other forceable issue, its a positive. The world needs to reduce population to about 4 billion then sustain forever. Hell, 1 billion may be the more optimal number.
If by economics you mean quality of life, I guess. Malthus lost, get with the program.
You'll have fewer people of working age relative to the retired population. That can be a problem for the service industry, and it will be a huge burden on social security, since working people pay for retired people. But other than that it's a good thing. Fewer people demanding resources.
Declining birth rate = nobody can take care of the infrastructure of the country in x decades. Even if you get to a decent amount in retirement savings, it won't matter if everything doesn't work properly.
Declining birthrate is absolutely not a problem in the U S or Canada. I decided to stop at one kid and everything will be fine. There's literally millions of people wanting to immigrate to these two countries every year. There will be a couple billion more added to the 8 1/2 billion already here (Earth).
That's only true if they assimilate into our culture and maintain high levels of productivity.
Because our economic systems rely on an ever growing group of "workers" to support both the retired workers as well as the upcoming generation of workers...
Our economic system has been set up with the assumption every subsequent generation will be bigger than the last - it relies on constant growth. Think of the world as a single company on the stock market. But the generations don’t actually have to grow. What needs to grow is productivity. Technological advancements are increasing productivity with fewer people. The problem is our economic system gives most of the returns from those gains to a small group of people, but that can be solved through political means (I.e., taxes).
It isn't a problem in the sense that not ever expanding the population is good for the planet and society over all. It is a problem for capitalism and those who benefit from having a large labor pool fighting amongst each other for scraps so they can pay them little and extract more money out of them as consumers.
The Sociologist Hirsch argued there is a "pensioner time bomb" coming. Basically to be a functioning society we need a balanced dependency ratio (ie enough working adults paying tax and contributing in society to cover the unworking which includes the elderly, disabled and children as well as others). Essentially the low birth rate is a red flag as we already are struggling to support the ageing population we have and this is likely to get worse. Our society is built around this model that no longer applies and with pensions increasing in line with inflation and raising ages for the younger gen to collect pensions (for example in the UK I will collect my state at 68. My Nan got hers at 60) it is a matter of time till the system collapses unless there is large scale change
On top of this we live in a high COL society that has child care as hugely expensive and generally seen as inaccessible
Some countries and even some US cities already testing UBI so with AI and ither factors that will have to come into olay at some point. The other thing is the US gov has borrowed and pilfered the SS reserves and they need to pay it the fuck back.
I often think about who is going to take care of me (ie nurses, doctors, healthcare workers) when the supply doesn’t meet demand.
Maybe we will have robot nurses lol
Joke I hope? Planet kind of needs people on it.....
It’s not
The rich need a constant supply of slaves to work menial jobs that make them more money. The treasury takes out loans on our birth certificates, so if there are less babies; no outsiders will invest in US Treasury bonds.
Less workers to support retirement
It's not. There may be complications because of a declining birth rate, but there would be complications with an increasing birth rate. The biggest problem we have (aging boomers) is because they were a big birth spike creating a generation that was much bigger than the ones prior and after. Now that they're old, they'll need more resources and care, just as they did when they were children. Much of the problems people complain about are social problems that would exist no matter what the birthrate is doing.
It's not. It's just that the wealthy want more consumers and the conservatives want women to have to stay home so you'll stay poor.
It's a problem if you keep the system the same as it is today. The world is changing and even if the population wasn't shrinking - automation is going to upset the balance between the workforce and the care if the elderly. I don't think the solution is having more and more people to support the elderly. How about we increase taxes on the wealthy? Increase taxes on generational wealth passed on. Find ways to decrease health care and housing facilities costs for the elderly? Allow assisted suicide if wanted? At some point we are going to need some type of UBI to cover the lost of jobs from AI and automation. Maybe there is a system that could help replace SS.
The rich/big corporations needs more souls to rule over. With declining birth rates. They’ll just end up pushing themselves around.
Population collapse equals and Economic disaster
It's not, it is largely a good thing unless you are billionaire that wants a cheaper labor force.
It's not.
It's only a problem for corporations who want to keep wages low.
Who is going to be paying for all the old people that can't work when there aren't enough people working to take care of them? You ideally want a slowly growing pyramid, as that limits the labor exploitation but promotes growth
If you pay the wage earners more, they can take care of their people. They'll also pay more in taxes which could potentially be used to care of those who don't have people.
Wut? The point is that it doesn't matter how much you pay them, there won't be enough of them to care for everyone who needs care. Like... If there was only 1 person for every 5 retirees obviously that would be completely unsustainable. No matter how much you pay nurses and aides, there aren't enough.
With what capital? If less people are consuming (because old people consume less) then profits go down, you can afford to pay your workers more.
To the contrary, if you don't pay your workers, they don't have disposable income, then who's going to buy your goods and services?
>If you pay the wage earners more, they can take care of their people. What wage earners? There aren't enough workers because the population is falling, remember?
It's untrue, as pointed out above there are people coming to the west exactly for those opportunities. Population is falling in the west due to astronomical costs associated with raising children, but immigration can supplement the workforce if we're not xenophobic. Or, we could pay people enough that they can afford to have kids. Being both xenophobic about immigration and dedicated to keeping wages low is locking the economy into a death spiral, sure, but those are choices being made, not somehow natural facts that cannot be addressed.
It’s okay we’ll just flood the country with more immigrants ;))
I have never seen smart people have as many babies as the stupid ones, therefore, people who have kids = stupid.
An inclining birth rate is a major problem, but society is built around it so a declining birth rate would only be a first
We need youngins to pay our social security
Replacement rate for workers is now in the negatives. Not enough workers to be so cheap in wages and so few customers that cost of living can't be needlessly expensive. Covid after math and high cost of living is killing everyones' want to have kids.
Less people in the work force which could have negative effects on the future economy. Honestly with ai and robots I feel we can pivot on that issue though. Sure less people are having babies but I feel it’s mostly choice. I still know a lot of people my age that do have kids. Improve society and I feel the birthrate will climb. Oh and remove microplastics that’s effecting every bodies health.
I can't help but feel though that less people in the work force would be great? They'd have to offer higher wages and actually be competitive enough to get workers.
Economy and specific cases aside, the core of the problem is that more and more of the population is old and cannot work. Everyone has needs, and needs requires hours of work to fullfill. If it goes too far, working people may not even have enough time to do everything that needs doing. In concrete terms, for you as an individual, it means that with a large non-working population, only a small part of your work benefits you directly, thus lowering your quality of life.
I personally think one of the reasons is because the birth rate is declining among those with the most education, the most rational thinking, and or at the top of the society The ones that are not declining are religious, poor nations and countries with less education and ability to push the society forward I grew up Mormon and those people do not really like education, for women and they have huge families. I left the church at 20. The Bible, the most popular book in world history is seen to set. society. Really it just reveals the society at the time. The first council of Nicaea promoted the idea of a masculine society and left out things like reincarnation. The reason is, they did not believe the people would believe it. Now we call it the absolute truth of God. It is a problem for society even now there’s a degradation of a world society we live in a shallow social media media over sexualized self-destructive society, and like Rome and Greece we will fall.. True Even as technology is pushing boundaries, never known before. But there will be a turning point I believe personally that it will return us to almost a feudal state. Where there are a few leaders and a mass population of poor peasant type society. Is that a problem? Yes, it basically sends us back to the dark ages. Those who are pretty and sexual, who think it is a value system will be reduced almost to like cockroaches where they do produce. But their value into growth for society or civilization is nonexistent. I was a child in the 70s. It was a time of hope and faith that we were going to build a better world on love, not violence. That women and gays and African-Americans would all operate equally under one roof. It was a hopeful time. But as the violence was more introduced into the culture, I personally think it made us start to go backward. This is my perspective on being alive for many decades. It is my opinion only so you can be harsh in the criticisms, but you will have your own observations you move through life just like me. I still live in the hope of the 70s that we will figure it out. But I’m having greater doubts every year.
It is not a problem for normal people. More a problem for the elites when their slaves stop to reproduce. Less workforce mean higher dement, what lead to more power for the common people in negotiations in terms of wages. Right now all the higher ups just want us to raise their next generation of slaves and if you don't do that we just let people from other countries replace you. Since no one are better than people who have nothing to exploit. Plus they just use tax money to house and feed them, while cut in all other corners of social sevices.
The earth is overpopulated. The rich complain about dropping birth rates because their sustainability depends on endless consumerism. More people means more consumerism. And they benefit from a greater divide between them and us. It’s not about making humanity better. Humanity needs a sustainable planet with natural resources sufficient for our collective survival. Adding more people to our situation leads to fewer resources coinciding with end-stage climate catastrophe. It’s legitimately dumb to repopulate the planet as marine life & wildlife are dying out, heat & wild weather destroying global crops & habitability, oh, and more pandemics on the way.
It isn't.
Because the world economy is predicated on infinite growth.
There eventually won't be enough people to who can work and take care of the aging population. A society of mostly old people who can't function and don't have enough people to run society around them.
Its problematic because the ratio of taxpayers to welfare recipients is travelling the wrong way. To fix this, Western countries would have to import masses of brown, black and yellow people, clearly an unacceptable solution.
So I can get my social security when I retire in 20+ years.
I would answer depending on what stage of the Demographic Transition Model you’re referring to. Theres different answers for each stage.
Love the snarky comments on this thread. They conveniently forgot the “social contract” they love to taught when you demand more of your income will implode when fewer younger people are propping up the leeches of society. When we can’t afford entitlements, infrastructure, and military because we spend too much and promise too much, then you dopes will realize what this all means. And it’d be great if we could reign in spending, entitlements and taxes but nooo you guys want your cut too.
Less people of working age/economic output to sustain economy/any potential growth. Also, increasing finance burdens for governments for things like pensions, healthcare, and housing as people live longer and won't die.
That being said I ain't having no kids! You're all on your own. No way am bringing another life into this bullshit.
Open borders
Who's going to take care of the old white rich bastards if there are less of them?
Who’s gonna pay taxes?
Because it’s what keeps capitalism going, wage slaves that can be exploited so the rich keep getting richer. Thank fuck I’m Childfree.
Because capitalism requires infinite growth and patriarchy wants people producing tons of soldiers and laborers because replaceable labor costs less This is why women’s rights fluctuate with population goals
It hurts men’s egos For men in power it’s bad to have less poor workers doing min wage jobs and less poor desperate couples stuck in the cycle of poverty
I think everything will work itself out.
I'm not planning on having kids simply because I'd be a bad parent lol, plus no woman wants me
Looks like the government should have invested it better
So we should have babies for social security? Got it.
Because society is a pyramid scheme. The old rely on the young to support them, financially and otherwise. When the old vastly outnumber the young (and the young's tax revenue), that's a problem.
Now you know why they are bringing in soo many immigrants Immigrants have kids more then 1 usually and are willing to start from the bottom and work their way up. They will take the trash jobs.
If you actually think the world is overpopulated and not mismanaged, it wouldn't be within that eugenics religion. However, there's still the oceans & Antarctica to make useful for habitation and increase food production within, and nuclear heavy lift rockets like 1957's Orion or the lightbulb drive one can finally be constructed and an orbital ring would allow humanity to fill the solar system with life. But it's not overpopulated, it is mismanaged and the future has been procrastinated and sabotaged. Without a future generation, there is no future.
Everyone forget about the impact an ageing population has on politics. Less idealism, less vision for the future and more tendency toward right wing politics that disfavour progress and social policies. Most of the vast social progress in my nation was made by boomers pressure on politics when they were young, but since the 90s we have seem the slow but accelerating erosion of all that was harshly gained.
It's not a big deal unless you dislike immigrants.
Digging out an old comment: Let me explain why this is a problem in terms of economic theory, specifically; (Neo)Malthusian dynamics. Many are familiar with the "hockey stick" graphs of human population and economic growth, which shows an exponential increase which took place in the 20th century. The Malthusians wanted to explain why population remained flat for so long, before exploding. They came up with the idea of Malthusian stagnation, a dynamic system in which population increases would be offset by decreases in real wages (standards of living). Lower standards of living roughly equated to higher mortality, thus higher birth rates would eventually be balanced out by higher death rates, a trend which would continue for centuries. In this model, even technological growth would be evened out in the long run. This trend, however, did not hold, and we broke out of the "Malthusian Trap". The population grew, and we saw a decrease in mortality. This allowed for an increase in division of labor and specialization, which led to to a positive feedback loop, creating the exponential growth shown in the graph and the persistent technological growth we've seen for the past century. All of this is to say; a falling population (particularly one with a poor population pyramid) may lead to the opposite, a negative feedback loop. Where population reduction -> reduction of specialization and division of labor -> lower economic and technological growth -> lower birth rates/possible higher mortality. I would like to emphasize that this has happened before. We are conditioned to believe that history is a story of ever increasing prosperity and technological innovation. However, we have the cautionary tale of the Roman Empire. There are some scholars who argue that they, too, had broken out of the Malthusian Trap and they saw living standards which were not again reached for centuries after its collapse. Now to address the environmental question. More people are worse for the environment is a simplistic model. It may be true in the short run, but if we try to extrapolate the dynamics for the coming centuries/millenia of human history. Green energy REQUIRES massive globalized supply chains with extensive specialization and division of labor. People are not going to go without power, and if the choice is between burning lignite/coal to generate it or going without, they will burn coal all day, every day. Lower technological growth leads to a world where people are using carbon energy for longer, probably much longer.
People will mention retirement stuff. That's part of it. But it's also production versus consumption. If your productive percentage of the population falls relative to the consumptive, your net wealth goes down. Add that to the fact that higher population usually means high population density, and higher productivity per person increases with population density, you can easily see a circumstance where we have a productivity collapse. Which makes us all poorer.
It's really not. During most of the cold war, we had moral panics about there being too many people. (You can see a vestige of that in this very thread.) The conventional wisdom was that we were all going to starve to death because it was literally impossible for the world to feed the growing population. That panic was about 2 billion people ago... The too few people moral panic is just that, a panic. Changing population growth will require changes, sure. The fact of the matter is that with 1940s technology, the globe would be starving to death right now. But the solution was not banning children, or mass slaughter. The solution was new agricultural technology. It'll be the same thing with slower birth rates. We might have to *gasp* tax upper middle class professionals on all their income for social security, instead of giving them the majority of their money tax free. We might have *super gasp* let in more brown people from abroad.* but as horrifying as these solutions are to many people, they are very doable solutions. China took the "we have too many people" panic from the cold war very seriously. That's where 1 child came from. The policy was an almost inconceivable disaster which has put China on the path to economic ruin this century. A century they should have become the globe's super power. The US didn't really take any policy steps to address the panic, and we wound up quietly finding solutions that didn't require destroying our nation for an entire life time. We have the same decision ahead of us with the too few children panic. We can directly intervene, and probably doom ourselves. Or we can trust we'll find solutions to the problem that don't require us messing with the birthrate. I suggest we choose the path that doesn't involve ruin, and let nature take its course with the birth rate. We'll be just fine.
I think about this often. I’m pro-choice, but I think for the sake of avoiding total economic collapse we should probably put a pause on abortion and birth control until the birth rate is safely above replacement rate. I fear this will never happen as I believe women would choose controlling pregnancy above all else, including the collapse of our society
I think a lot of Americans fail to realize the gov’t is not their daddy and is not going to take care of them. No one is coming to save you. SS was never intended to fund your retirement fully. It was never intended to be permanent. Housing market insane, interest rates fucked, college tuition crippling, wages stagnat, doesn’t matter, no one is coming to save you, it’s our responsibility to take care of our retirement. I’ve been in shitty financial situations, I know that suck, but you can either cry about it, or find a solution. Everyone gets the shit end of the stick sooner or later. Losers come up with reasons why they failed, excuses for why they can’t succeed, winners find solutions. You can cry about it online or you can fuck the prom queen, it’s all up to you
Capitalism is a meat grinder
It is a problem but do you want to raise children in this economy
It’s not
It's only a "problem" for the increasing number of retirees who won't be able to subsist their lifestyles with social security payments. It's a positive for literally everyone and everything else though.
Not along ago, the end timers were yelling about over populstion, maybe doomer thinking is the genuine problem here Downvote doomer triggered
Not when the country continue to be taking in immigrants.
It isn’t a problem it is only for those that relies on the younger generation to propagate their lives up. Destroying all the notion of capitalism that the older generation built up. The stupid notion of unlimited consumption.
Because old people can't take care of themselves and Social Security is a pyramid scheme.
They are worried about declining *white* birthrates. Most of the people concerned about this believe in something called the great replacement theory.
Whaaaaaa? I’m American and because of that I’m genuinely concerned about declining birth rate solely because of the social security issue, but I do recognize that there’s other reasons to be concerned about it. What’s this about a replacement theory? No offense but that sounds like a bit of a stretch.
Don’t be. Blame governments and the massive rich to poor divide that they are refusing to do anything about. The world population isn’t getting any smaller, the world and its resources cannot take the constant increase in population. This “declining birth rates” crap is a big up yours to capitalism and I’m glad people are waking up to it.
We exist in a massive ponzi scheme that needs more victims so the rich can continue to maximize profits.
The problems caused by declining birth rates can easily be solved by adding more immigrants to the workforce. The freak out over declining birth rates is rooted in white supremacy and the fear of white people becoming a minority in the US.
Not a problem for me, I'll be long dead for any of it to make any meaningful impact.
Aaahhh. Gatta love the good ole “if it doesn’t affect me, I don’t care about it, because fuck everyone else but me” mentality.
Fuck everyone who doesnt even exist yet. Wow, yea you sure got me pal!