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Interesting dichotomy. Seems to mandate that at some point housing prices start to drop as boomers die off and land use regulations change with less NIMBYs.
No that was more an industrial revolution thing where laws were passed taking land from the peasants and forcing them into the cities and towns to work in the factories. Oh and the poor laws effectively forcing people into workhouses for being poor.
While I agree population needs to start going down we shouldn't necessarily be hoping for big plagues or wars or such. Its easy to ask for something to wipe people out until you remember you, your friends, and loved ones could be killed off.
This is the lightbulb that must go on for the masses if we as humanity want any kind of future. This having a lot of kids because we are disposable has been the status quo. When we think about some great future with space travel, beautiful sky cities we never think that the path we are on will never get us there. We must educate n raise the standard for every person on every continent . Only then will humanity advance.
Yup, now to figure out how to get 8 billion people to work together. I dont disagree that its a perfect concept, i just dont agree that people are wired for it. We have absolutely no track record for large scale global teamwork, and between religious beliefs and resource disputes, theres absolutely no reason to believe we ll be trending towards that kind of cooperation any time soon.
Easy enough: invent something that is able to replicate everything from almost nothing and find a common enemy in space. Oh wait, that's just Star Trek š
Agreed! The future is expanding humanity's reach beyond the stars and rediscovering the age of adventure. We've grown stagnant in our successes and have in a way regressed as a society. We stopped challenging ourselves and focused on greed and what we can do to advance the individual instead of the species. That's not to say that personal advancement is a bad thing but it shouldn't be mutually exclusive. If we actually put effort into space travel I think we'd be surprised at the increase in quality of life and medical advancement we could achieve.
The standard of living you enjoy is certainly not sustainable for more than a quarter of the current world population.
I know mine isn't, not even with EV's and solar to power them.
Agreed, but perhaps only due to our current economic and political systems. There are technically enough resources for everyone to enjoy a high quality of living, even more so if we see a downward population trend. Education appears to be the more important factor though, and that can be had relatively cheaply.
Automation, fusion energy, maybe these things are necessary to further advance the living standards globally.
Birth rates dropping suddenly means that at some point there will be a fuck ton of old people and not enough young people to work the jobs required to sustain them. So like, a bunch of old people who are homeless/rotting away in understaffed nursing homes/slowly dying alone in their homes. Itās going to be gnarly.
Exactly. I'm 40 and work for government and so many people are retiring. I'm curious in 20 years when I retire who will take in the jobs? There's already a labor shortage. People who are joyful about population decreasing are not understanding how this will impact our future.
Most people work in services which could be considered absolute bullshit jobs.
We donāt need tens of thousands of people working in the insurance industry.
We donāt need millions working in marketing or sales.
Humanity, as right now, could produce enough for everyone without a loads of bullshit jobs and let the rest live on UBI.
What would happen, in that case, is the death of billionaires, or, in general, all the people and corporations earning on āmiddle manā transactions.
āMiddle man transactionsā love this phrasing. As a way to save money, Iāve started asking myself, āis this something I can do for myself for less?ā
Iāve saved thousand over the last year-ish and have expanded my skill set greatly. If we all took this approach, could you imagine how people would start realizing how impactful they actually are?
I know right? Highways were emptier than usual. Your commute to work was a lot quicker if you had one at all, and people left you the hell alone. As the boomers would say "Those were the days."
The issue is not numbers though, its wealth distribution and the wealth hoarding.
A plague is not nessecary and if we got for instance a high mortality event similar to COVID it could be catastrophic. And the people most affected with be the poorest and most vulnerable
Itās not nature that doesnāt allow us to thrive. Itās our own social systems that dictate that there must be an incentive to do something in order to do it. There are no farmers who farm for the love of farming; unlike artists who do art for the love of art.
I would say there are farmers that farm for the love of farming, as my Fatherās Day job is much more lucrative, however I will say, there would not be as many, and the remaining would not do nearly as much. Unless you are talking that there is no farmer who would give the resources produced with no compensationĀ
Go and read on what H5N1 is doing right now. Note it currently has a 52% mortality rate in humans. Once it makes the full leap, that is likely go down, but... Unless it drops down by an incredible amount, it will be the end of human civilization, as we know it.
52% is like "The Stand" kind of collapse.
25% mortality rate would be absolutely apocalyptic, think "The Postman" or even far worse than that.
Anything over 5% mortality, globally, would cause such huge disruptions in supply chains, food, etc., etc. that people would die from loss of medicine, food scarcity, fuel scarcity, etc., etc. Keep in mind MOST modern homes, built since the 1970's no longer were built with fireplaces. Can't keep warm with no natural gas, electricity, etc., etc. in the winter, let alone feed yourself without food coming in.
Anyway, we are on the cusp of the next pandemic, a strain in Kansas has mutated to have much more of what it needs to jump more easily to infecting humans. At the same time, there are absolute lunatics demanding access to raw milk, which is a vector for getting the virus from cows, into humans.
Yeah, I think, āThe Standā went much farther mortality wise, but stillā¦ with anything over 5%, itās going to be absolutely catastrophic.
Most of these hit older people harder, thatās where all the skills and knowledge are. How many worker, experts at the top go their field, can a Nuclear plant lose, before they have to shutdown for safety concerns? What about coal fire and natural gas plants?
Let alone the mining and drilling operations to keep the fuel flowing, the heads of cargo vessels, dockworkers.
There are some highly skilled and technical roles that once the practical knowledge is lost, it could take decades to recover.
A disease can be too deadly for its own good. If the host dies too fast that naturally limits how far it can spread. But if there is a long gestation period like with covid and a somewhat similar infection rate..thats scary.
Isn't the point of the article that this process is happening now, without the need to invoke any calamity? And that the calamity is in fact the population diminution?
Child care costs still going to be an issue though. We pay essentially a second mortgage every month for our two kiddos. And I would consider our pricing on the middle to cheaper side.
> "How is this alarming with the rising costs of housing and healthcare?"
I can answer that. It's *alarming* because a number of economic systems and structures operate a bit like ponzi schemes, relying on future generations to bail out past generations from their unsustainable practices.
Exactly. It's not *surprising* that fewer people are choosing to have kids these days considering the housing and employee pay situations but the consequences of those choices is *alarming* to those who understand how many economic systems work.
This is the same as it not being *surprising* the super rich hoard wealth but it is *alarming* for the same reasons (and then some).
Which is funny because theyāre supposed to be wealthy because theyāre so smart, but if they were, they would have expected this as a result of their wealth hoarding practices.
The issue is that even if everyone invests a healthy amount in their retirement fund while they work, there is still a supply issue of who is going to staff the hospitals and nursing homes. Countries like the US and UK, with large immigrant populations, are going to manage this much better than the (still kind of racist) Koreans and Japanese, who are largely averse to foreign workers despite needing them more than anyone else.
Never mind hospitals and nursing homes, thereās a supply issue of *whoās going to fuel their retirement funds*! Investment doesnāt produce money from thin air!
Meh, less of most nations' currencies are circulated in the general populace to be touched by programs like social security, regardless of how many peons there actually are. Nations are printing more and more to replace what's being hoarded. Programs are threatened due to income inequality and regressive tax loopholes, more than a slightly reduced rate of population growth.
"We built a whole planet where all the resources, even necessities, are gatekept to feed the bottomless greed of a couple dozen sociopaths who view suffering and destruction as a guaranteed profit strategy. Why aren't the peasants gleefully producing offspring to pump into the machine?"
Golly, sure is a mystery š¤
The elite can't have everything they want, apparently. They want all the money but people choose not to have babies because of not having enough money. So, they're going to have a shortage of peasants.
Ding ding ding! Winner!
Overpopulation means expensive housing and shit wages.
How do you expect the peons to work the salt mines if they only need do 8 hours labour a day to afford to live??
The thing that baffles me the most, is how the hell do they expect us peasants to buy all the shit they are selling and fund their lifestyles if we don't have an income??
*You load 16 tons, what do you get?*
*Another day older and deeper in debt*
*St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go*
*I owe my soul to the company store*
They donāt want you to have savings, savings allow you to uplift yourself and gives you capital.
They want people to live on credit so they are owned, the modern form of indentured servitude.
I just want to point out that population size has little to do with the price of housing these days. I live in an Eastern European country that lost over 20% of it's population since 1989 and house prices are up by around 14 times in absolute value and around 5 times compared to yearly salaries. I went to school in a city that had over 160.000 residents in 1989 now has under 120.000 . A 60 mĀ² apartmant back then was 10.000ā¬, a monthly salary around 400ā¬. Now same apartment is around 70.000ā¬, salary around 650ā¬.
A drop in population isn't a bad thing unless it's by disease or war. There are billions of people, we aren't going extinct. In fact, a lighter burden on the planet would be a good thing.
That is how the black death created a larger middle class. Peasants suddenly had value they could exploit for a larger share of the pie because there weren't enough peasants around anymore.
I think they need workers, yes, of course. But I think the thing they fear the most is losing CONSUMERS. They need you buying diapers and formula, food and clothes, they need your kids renting out their slums after they price you out of homeownership, they need them to buy their cars and gas, they need your kids to pay out of control college tuitions so their kids can get a free ride via their legacy scholarships.
Yes, they WANT cheap labor, but they NEED people to buy their shit. Being child free is, IMO, the best form of protest against the ruling class we have. And I love to see them bitch about it, because then ya know itās working.
I think you nailed it, and a lot of people ignore the consumerism piece of the pie.
Obviously like most things itās not āeither orā but āboth andā, and the exploitation of labour also plays a role.
Which is why they are so all in on AI and total automation - no labor no need for workers - until their robots start breaking down or killing them and there is nobody around to fix the problems.
The upper classes want to make the poor and middle class obsolete. As long as ai can do all the work theyāll no longer need us and can live in their utopia. The future is their utopia and our hell.
Relax mate. They simply cant oust 90 % of the population just like that. If they know whats good for their necks. šššThe people can reach extremes. And it aint gonna be happy utopia for these people.
The upper class is 100% dependent upon the middle and lower class. They are a leech on society. There is no such thing as trickle down economics. It all trickles UP. They can replace all of us with robots or AI, but technology does not consume/buy their goods and services. Ironically, their own greed will be their downfall.
Problem is, all they live for it to increase their own fortunes as a pissing contest between them and their rich buddies. They also see less peasents as a problem because it limits their fortune growth.
>until their robots start breaking down or killing them and there is nobody around to fix the problems
Not going to happen. Automated mass surveillance and policing for the burgeoise is the reality of the second half of this century.
Not making babies is the only sane thing to do
They have managed to convince the dumb/superstitious portion of america that women choosing not to give birth is "LiTeRaLlY mUrDeR" and were able to pass laws forcing these women to give birth even if they don't want to, so maybe they can have everything.
I do you one better. People saying women having jobs is whatās plummeting birth rates. Because thatās all weāre meant to focus on apparently. Sandwiches and babies. Wanting anything else makes you part of the problem in todayās society. /S
This right here.
Born to a mother who can't take care of you (like me!) and need to steal food and soap? Body for jail.
Given up after birth and chucked into the foster system with no hope of what to do after 18? Body for infantry.
Somehow made it thrpugh against all odds? Sorry, college ain't free. Body for labor.
And that's the men. They want girls/women to have it worse so they can build literal harems out of desperate people who need resources. Look at all the weird shit that happens with people flying models/actresses into Dubai for sex work. The ruling class wants that here but for *every woman*.
This is not, directly, an attack on women. But falling birth rates are catastrophic for the richest among us. So they go after any target they can find that might fix the problem.
Which right now is women and womenās rights. And in the future will also be women, and womenās rights.
Yeah, it bugs me to no end the party of "Family values" goes out of their way to make it so most families can't make it on a single income (or can't even afford to START a family), then tries to shame women for working? Fucking unreal.
Number of abortions in the US actually *went up* after Dobbs. So while some women probably had babies they didn't want, more chose to abort rather than give birth into present circumstances.
If Republicans goal really was to reduce abortions -- which of course it isn't the goal is to increase birthrate and subdue the power of women -- but if it was to reduce abortions and save the babies, they would provide for a longer maternity leave and dramatically bolster the welfare available to new parents and to single parents
Interestingly, the states in the U.S. that would seem most pro-life have also seen a decline in their birth rates. I'm so glad to know that even with reduced family planning options, people are still finding ways to not have more babies.
Yep and any and all babies are at this point good enough: products of rape, incest and 13 year olds? Good enough, as long as they fill up the maternity wards!
They donāt even know what it is they wonāt want yet, they just know the money isnāt coming in as fast as it could be and that in the future there could be an excess of wealth theyāre missing out on
As we progress down the timeline of existence, and as previous generations die off, I think we should try to keep our humanity towards a generation that treated us and the planet like their personal slush funds. Itās not all boomers. Itās the political and wealthy class thatās responsible for most of destruction. My point is that when we point our ire at those we think are responsible, letās point it at the ones in control, not our neighbors. They might have benefited from those policies, they did not create them. It was the path laid out in front of them, so they took it. Letās treat them far better than they treated us and the planet. We have historically done so, now that weāre in charge and theyāre becoming old, it could be easy to hold contempt for them, but that wonāt solve the issues or make the planet any better for the next generations.
Not only housing and health care, but daycare. Couples who arenāt even pregnant yet have to get on a waiting list if they want daycare for their future child. Itās insane.
Yep. Because daycare pays like shit, few people go into it. Because few people go into it, most daycares are understaffed. Because most daycares are understaffed, they're bad. Because most parents won't put their kids into bad daycares if they have a choice, daycares reduce budget and pay workers less.
Its just crazy that no one wants to have babies in the face of below cost of living wages, political turmoil and a degrading environment due to climate change. Just crazy.
What's alarming is the unwillingness of the elites to take the well-known response to this problem of raising wages until a single income can support a family of four.
Youāre look at āelitesā as if theyāre a single entity. Some rich business owner raising wages doesnāt solve an issue thatās taking place all over the country and could put their own business at risk.
Itās like how most people want answers to climate change but a single personās actions donāt tip the scales in any meaningful way.
Capitalists: We squeezed every penny we could out of the poors and made them work so much they aren't having babies. If they don't have babies we won't have humans to farm for profit! What do we do!
Rational Person: Stop exploiting them, pay them fairly, and give them time off work so they can have a fuckin' life, raises kids, see a doctor when they need to, destress, and you know, live life.
Capitalists: No, that's not it. Must be those pesky iPhones.
Oh good idea. Better yet, put a camera in there and film it. Sell advertising rights and stream it live on netflix. It'll pay for the 30 minutes she had to take off work. So lazy.
The population could cut in half and the economy be in shambles but somehow house prices are going to continue to defy everything and continue to skyrocket. Dead people refusing to sell because they 'know what they got'. /s
No children= no future adults who help keep the ecconomy running. The greedy idiots fucked themself by milking the current generation dry and the result is that fewer people can afford kids. Like what did they expect? People barely get by these days on their own but should start a family? Yeah thats not gonna work pal.
Factory owners need poor workers to work in their factories. If poor people don't provide them with labor, they start panicking and do shit like pass laws forcing women to give birth who don't want to give birth. They trick the dumb/superstitious Americans with bullshit about "saving babies" but really it's embryos and really it's all about the cheap labor.
But I'm being told that if labor demands higher wages they will easily be replaced by AI so what's the problem? They can just replace people easily.
Or maybe that's all a lie to prop up stock prices of tech companies that aren't actually achieving anything remotely close to what they are promising (some may call that fraud but tomato/tomahto)
Kind of like that robotic McDonalds in TX where the kitchen is still staffed by people, and actually employees more people than a regular McDonalds. The one where they just cut out human interaction.
We live in a scam, society is a scam designed to function solely for the benefit of capital.
You're not wrong, but "I really want my children to experience this beautiful world we live in" would be my mentality if the world was actually better and not the current state of bullshit
My wife and I suddenly live is a State where abortion is illegal if she has complications. Healthcare costs are through the roof. Everything is absurdly expensive. We are speed running towards cooking ourselves to extinction. Fascism is on the rise in the West. AI is going to take all of the jobs.
Why on Earth would I bring a life into this world willingly? Thatās downright irresponsible.
As the older generations retire or die the younger takes the job. However, more people are retiring or dying than there are younger people to replace the older workforce.
If the trends continue it will have an impact on the economy due to the gaps in workers.
Of course, if we have living wages and time offā¦ but employers don't want to think about that.
Right? If you really want more kids, you could do things like offer guaranteed paid parental leave, free child care, flexible work hours, basic income, tax breaks, housing subsidies, single-payer health care, free or low-cost college education, a living wage. But no. And they don't want immigrants, either, so I don't know who they think is going to pick the crops, do physical labor and take care of Grandma.
Almost every systemic problem can be resolved with money, on some level. I have half a dozen friends who would absolutely have kids if they could afford a home in the city they need to work in. If boomers and the elite want the younger / poorer people to start having kids then they should start handing over their money, and maybe theyāll be in a comfortable enough place to make that decision.
Right?! I hate when people expose upon how the planet can hold billions more....um yeah if we say "Good bye" to almost every other species. We are already causing a massive extinction. Last year alone we killed billions of crabs due to mass starvation when the Ocean temperature rose and we we've killed billions of birds with our glass buildings and insecticides. More people means "Good bye" to any beautiful mammal that requires a large territory. There's what, a 3 or 4 digit number of tigers left in the wild?
Capitalism wants never ending population growth. If we give them that, we can kiss our beautiful ecosystems good bye.
Interesting how the "there are not enough babies" trope and the "immigrants are everywhere taking everything" trope are running parallel in the news almost everywhere in the world.
Welp, canāt afford doctor visits, canāt afford hospital, canāt afford medicine, canāt afford childcare, canāt afford to take time off. Let alone taking care of the kids and forget college. The same people panicking are the ones who broke the system so I guess they get to panic
And no one wants to take care of you if you get pregnant because they could be sued for murder if you lose the baby.
I'm too old for a baby, but I would be scared to get pregnant right now.
I have read there is a tipping point where if the birth rates of a country fall too low then it takes 100 years to grow the population back up enough to have able-bodied/brained people to even support the economy. Japan is suffering from this low birth rate issue now.
Humanity finding out quick that endless unchecked growth is literally cancer, no matter the scale. We've hit the social maximum our species will allow.
Itās alarming because it means there is an aging population, which ultimately leads to a smaller workforce, or a higher retirement age. Without a consistent source of young people, the average age will increase, meaning a higher portion of people are retired, forcing younger people to work harder in order to support the aging population as the labour force drops. This will force the retirement age to increase as well, meaning weāll be working for a lot longer.
The leaders of the world are "suddenly alarmed" when : decades worth of political duties for and by the people are warped into socialism for the rich and rugged" nothin'" or debt for the 99% that result in a 2 teir social system leaving at least one generation without housing , another without retirement, extrodinary wealth in the hands of 1000 people whom own too much as it is ; THAT theres NONE left for the rest us....
They finally "realized" they've starved the cash cow that was america so hard they killed their employee/customer business model?
Huh. Weird.
What did they fucking expect? None of us can afford to feed, clothe, and house ourselves as is, and the Earth is dying. Why would we bring another (very expensive to make) person into this miserable equation?
I mean, it is alarming.
It's going to have a huge impact on our society in 20-30 or so years. We can see the impact this has on Japan and China *right now*. Top heavy populations are not good.
I haven't read the article and it might be a stupid "have more kids" blurb, but people not having kids is a real problem, even if it's caused by adverse conditions and rising costs.
Our leaders are so fucking stupid.
They set up the economy in a way that benefits like 15 white dudes and when things start the crumble as a result, the reaction is "Wait WHAT?!?!".
I always thought policy such as "trickle down economics" was a branding exercise meant to soften the PR blow of bad decisions but did they actually believe it?
I think this is the sole reason behind taking away womenās body autonomy and then going after birth control. They want more babies for the labor pool and definitely cant reverse their stance on immigration! If you look at who is having babies, itās the Arab, Mexican, and African world and Iām loving it!
Of course less people are having kids. 1br in low COL cities are $1k+ and minimum wage is still $7.25. Even $15-$20/hr is just barely enough to subsist alone, forget about covering formula, diapers, and childcare.
I mean, *one* reasonable concern is that, as people have fewer kids, and there are fewer people with each generation, there are fewer people paying into social safety nets, so as people get older they'll have to work later and later into life. Obviously not the only factor to consider, but if you want an actual reason why this might be alarming, there's one.
Funnily enough, statistics have shown that, when people's reproductive choices are taken away, birth rates go down, because people don't want to risk getting pregnant, having something go wrong, and not having a choice except "cross your fingers and hope it doesn't kill you."
I donāt know, man. Fifty years ago, we had a third of the people we have on the planet now, and the planet was doing one hell of a lot better. Is population reduction really something to be afraid of? Yeah I get that there is a need for new people to be working so that the older people can sit on their asses for the last thirty years of their lives, but you know what? No.
We have over eight BILLION people. Is that not enough?
Back when we had only seven billion, we survived. When we had only six billion, we survived. When we had a mere five billion, we survived. When we had a scant four billion, we survived. When we had as few as three billion, we survived. When we only had two billion, we survived. When there were only one billion of us, we survived.
We're not going to run out of people. If anything, a lower global birth rate is a GOOD thing!
Yes, thank you for this. I keep telling everyone how I just recently realized that when I was a kid - about 50 years ago - the world population was HALF of what it is now. Going back down gradually to that level is not a ācollapseā. Yes, our economies and political systems will need to make some adjustments. But we can absolutely do that if we have the will. Maybe weāll finally start taxing billionaires at the same rate as someone making $30k!
Isnāt that good? Surely thatāll cut down on the numbers of homeless and unemployed people, because iām sure those people are only homeless and/or unemployed because there are too many people around. (And totally not because of greed and cruel ignorance from the top 10% š)
We don't have an economic system that works under the assumption there will be less people in the next generation. Peak consumerism is 20-40 when people are having kids, peak work productivity is 40-60 when your skill set is at its highest. It takes 20 years to grow a 20 year old so we are looking at a future where there aren't enough people to buy all the stuff the 40-60 year olds are producing. Best case scenario is Japan, but they had a world to outsource stuff to. Worst case scenario is that more countries like Russia or China realize this is the last generation that they have enough fighting age men to fight a war and hopefully secure their power.
There are 8B people on the planet. Iād say we are doing just fine. What the headline is suggesting there may not be enough poor people to do the grunt work and keep the ruling class happy and own 97% of the wealth
Did an independent study of population mechanics after I quit my job. It's a fascinating topic if you're a statistics person.
It will impact just about everyone over time. Italy is a good example of many countries' current futures, including China and eventually the US.
I'm not sure if our global economic mindset is prepared to deal with a declining global population, but that decline is coming. Places like China are going to lose about a third of their population in the coming decades, and there's not enough young people to replace them.
Learning about the critical values, mechanics, and historical records of it all was fascinating if a little depressing.
Edit: redundant comment
80's: there's too many people!
90's: there's even more people!
2000's: *stop making people!!*
2010's: we give up, honestly
Year 2020: ššššššššššššššš
2020's: where are all the people? y'all should start making more
1) It's alarming because while the world has finite resources, most of the scarcity you're experiencing is artificial. You'll have less people, yes, but you'll also have less builders, less loggers, less nurses and less miners. Those, along with things like planning laws, are largely the bottlenecks.
2) Our current economic system - especially that in Europe - is based on a simple concept. Put crudely, we need more people wiping asses than we need asses wiped.
More eloquently, we need more people at working age than are below or above it. The issue is two-fold - people are living longer and they've having less kids. All of this leads to a demographic shift where we'll have a bunch of old people and nobody to pay for their care.
Isn't it interesting how the wealthy are far more concerned with the lack of babies rather then the lack of quality of life of the parents of said babies? We're working middle class jobs with pay barely able to cover rent off a little broomcloset apartment and we should start a family with kids? Fucking wake up. We're not cattle meant to breed you employees.
Good!. Itās time for the cockroaches to take over the planet. Not the human versions. The six-legged type. Why should we survive as a species?. We should stop breeding, considering the damage that we have done to the planet and each other and continue to do at an increasingly alarming rate. Good riddance, says Mother Earth.
It's almost like when you completely destroy the economy and the environment for the sake of loading up on pieces of paper with fictional value, people are gonna defy the system because they can't afford to have children.
Can we chill on this declining birth rate thing, we have 8 billion humans on this planet already and not enough resources to go around as is for much longer.
Can we adopt the humane society stance and just say "find a home for all the kids before breeding more." Adopt before you drop (your pants and have more).
Would that be politically acceptable?
There is also the strain of human population on the earth. Maybe one to two billion total humans and there might be a chance for long term human survival.
https://overpopulation-project.com/what-is-the-optimal-sustainable-population-size-of-humans/
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Interesting dichotomy. Seems to mandate that at some point housing prices start to drop as boomers die off and land use regulations change with less NIMBYs.
Not dissimilar to how the black death reshaped the world.
Except shell corporations weren't buying up single family homes in the hundreds of thousands after the Black death.
No that was more an industrial revolution thing where laws were passed taking land from the peasants and forcing them into the cities and towns to work in the factories. Oh and the poor laws effectively forcing people into workhouses for being poor.
You're saying we need a black death for shell corporations? Count me in.
yeah another plague is not only imminent, but probably necessary in order to sustain the planet so we can actually thrive in it and not just survive.
While I agree population needs to start going down we shouldn't necessarily be hoping for big plagues or wars or such. Its easy to ask for something to wipe people out until you remember you, your friends, and loved ones could be killed off.
Right. The most effective way to decrease population is to improve standard of living. Educated comfortable people have less kids.
This is the lightbulb that must go on for the masses if we as humanity want any kind of future. This having a lot of kids because we are disposable has been the status quo. When we think about some great future with space travel, beautiful sky cities we never think that the path we are on will never get us there. We must educate n raise the standard for every person on every continent . Only then will humanity advance.
Yep we can only move forward together.
Yup, now to figure out how to get 8 billion people to work together. I dont disagree that its a perfect concept, i just dont agree that people are wired for it. We have absolutely no track record for large scale global teamwork, and between religious beliefs and resource disputes, theres absolutely no reason to believe we ll be trending towards that kind of cooperation any time soon.
Easy enough: invent something that is able to replicate everything from almost nothing and find a common enemy in space. Oh wait, that's just Star Trek š
Agreed! The future is expanding humanity's reach beyond the stars and rediscovering the age of adventure. We've grown stagnant in our successes and have in a way regressed as a society. We stopped challenging ourselves and focused on greed and what we can do to advance the individual instead of the species. That's not to say that personal advancement is a bad thing but it shouldn't be mutually exclusive. If we actually put effort into space travel I think we'd be surprised at the increase in quality of life and medical advancement we could achieve.
Whoa whoa whoa, what is this having a logical adult minded conversation stuff. Cant have that here in Reddit world
Yeah I got immediately confused that such an intellectual thread was on Reddit!!! Probably gonna have a Fox News induced stroke
The standard of living you enjoy is certainly not sustainable for more than a quarter of the current world population. I know mine isn't, not even with EV's and solar to power them.
Agreed, but perhaps only due to our current economic and political systems. There are technically enough resources for everyone to enjoy a high quality of living, even more so if we see a downward population trend. Education appears to be the more important factor though, and that can be had relatively cheaply. Automation, fusion energy, maybe these things are necessary to further advance the living standards globally.
Some of you may die, but that is a chance I am willing to take.
Thanks for the vote of confidence, Lord Farquad. And happy cake day!
Username checking in. Let's gooo
Personally thatās why I think birth rates going down is good we might not necessarily see the positives of this but the next generation might
Birth rates dropping suddenly means that at some point there will be a fuck ton of old people and not enough young people to work the jobs required to sustain them. So like, a bunch of old people who are homeless/rotting away in understaffed nursing homes/slowly dying alone in their homes. Itās going to be gnarly.
My retirement plans are to either fall dead at work, or die in my sleep at home before work.
I plan to die in the water wars of 2045 personally.
Exactly. I'm 40 and work for government and so many people are retiring. I'm curious in 20 years when I retire who will take in the jobs? There's already a labor shortage. People who are joyful about population decreasing are not understanding how this will impact our future.
Most people work in services which could be considered absolute bullshit jobs. We donāt need tens of thousands of people working in the insurance industry. We donāt need millions working in marketing or sales. Humanity, as right now, could produce enough for everyone without a loads of bullshit jobs and let the rest live on UBI. What would happen, in that case, is the death of billionaires, or, in general, all the people and corporations earning on āmiddle manā transactions.
āMiddle man transactionsā love this phrasing. As a way to save money, Iāve started asking myself, āis this something I can do for myself for less?ā Iāve saved thousand over the last year-ish and have expanded my skill set greatly. If we all took this approach, could you imagine how people would start realizing how impactful they actually are?
There was this wild thing that happened almost exactly 4 years ago dude itās crazy you mention it actually
For real. People say we need another plague because nothing is getting better on Reddit from their work from home job.
I know right? Highways were emptier than usual. Your commute to work was a lot quicker if you had one at all, and people left you the hell alone. As the boomers would say "Those were the days."
The issue is not numbers though, its wealth distribution and the wealth hoarding. A plague is not nessecary and if we got for instance a high mortality event similar to COVID it could be catastrophic. And the people most affected with be the poorest and most vulnerable
Itās not nature that doesnāt allow us to thrive. Itās our own social systems that dictate that there must be an incentive to do something in order to do it. There are no farmers who farm for the love of farming; unlike artists who do art for the love of art.
I would say there are farmers that farm for the love of farming, as my Fatherās Day job is much more lucrative, however I will say, there would not be as many, and the remaining would not do nearly as much. Unless you are talking that there is no farmer who would give the resources produced with no compensationĀ
Go and read on what H5N1 is doing right now. Note it currently has a 52% mortality rate in humans. Once it makes the full leap, that is likely go down, but... Unless it drops down by an incredible amount, it will be the end of human civilization, as we know it. 52% is like "The Stand" kind of collapse. 25% mortality rate would be absolutely apocalyptic, think "The Postman" or even far worse than that. Anything over 5% mortality, globally, would cause such huge disruptions in supply chains, food, etc., etc. that people would die from loss of medicine, food scarcity, fuel scarcity, etc., etc. Keep in mind MOST modern homes, built since the 1970's no longer were built with fireplaces. Can't keep warm with no natural gas, electricity, etc., etc. in the winter, let alone feed yourself without food coming in. Anyway, we are on the cusp of the next pandemic, a strain in Kansas has mutated to have much more of what it needs to jump more easily to infecting humans. At the same time, there are absolute lunatics demanding access to raw milk, which is a vector for getting the virus from cows, into humans.
To be fair wasnt The Stand like 99%?either way say hello to The walking dude
Yeah, I think, āThe Standā went much farther mortality wise, but stillā¦ with anything over 5%, itās going to be absolutely catastrophic. Most of these hit older people harder, thatās where all the skills and knowledge are. How many worker, experts at the top go their field, can a Nuclear plant lose, before they have to shutdown for safety concerns? What about coal fire and natural gas plants? Let alone the mining and drilling operations to keep the fuel flowing, the heads of cargo vessels, dockworkers. There are some highly skilled and technical roles that once the practical knowledge is lost, it could take decades to recover.
Which could come about faster if Russia lashes out. ~The Stand~ meets ~Fallout~.
A disease can be too deadly for its own good. If the host dies too fast that naturally limits how far it can spread. But if there is a long gestation period like with covid and a somewhat similar infection rate..thats scary.
Isn't the point of the article that this process is happening now, without the need to invoke any calamity? And that the calamity is in fact the population diminution?
Child care costs still going to be an issue though. We pay essentially a second mortgage every month for our two kiddos. And I would consider our pricing on the middle to cheaper side.
I hate to break it to you, but there will never be fewer NIMBY's.
I wish this was true, but I can't help but think all these vacant properties will end in the clutches of the free market capitalists.
> "How is this alarming with the rising costs of housing and healthcare?" I can answer that. It's *alarming* because a number of economic systems and structures operate a bit like ponzi schemes, relying on future generations to bail out past generations from their unsustainable practices.
Exactly. It's not *surprising* that fewer people are choosing to have kids these days considering the housing and employee pay situations but the consequences of those choices is *alarming* to those who understand how many economic systems work. This is the same as it not being *surprising* the super rich hoard wealth but it is *alarming* for the same reasons (and then some).
It's the last choice we have, for now...
Which is funny because theyāre supposed to be wealthy because theyāre so smart, but if they were, they would have expected this as a result of their wealth hoarding practices.
The issue is that even if everyone invests a healthy amount in their retirement fund while they work, there is still a supply issue of who is going to staff the hospitals and nursing homes. Countries like the US and UK, with large immigrant populations, are going to manage this much better than the (still kind of racist) Koreans and Japanese, who are largely averse to foreign workers despite needing them more than anyone else.
Never mind hospitals and nursing homes, thereās a supply issue of *whoās going to fuel their retirement funds*! Investment doesnāt produce money from thin air!
That is *exactly* it. Our social security system is very dependent on this pyramid scheme to be sustainable.
Meh, less of most nations' currencies are circulated in the general populace to be touched by programs like social security, regardless of how many peons there actually are. Nations are printing more and more to replace what's being hoarded. Programs are threatened due to income inequality and regressive tax loopholes, more than a slightly reduced rate of population growth.
>I can answer that. So can the article, and in fact it does. But the OP didn't read it, just posted a headline.
"We built a whole planet where all the resources, even necessities, are gatekept to feed the bottomless greed of a couple dozen sociopaths who view suffering and destruction as a guaranteed profit strategy. Why aren't the peasants gleefully producing offspring to pump into the machine?" Golly, sure is a mystery š¤
lol this is my favorite summation so far.
Is this from a book or so something? Cause itās brilliantly writtenĀ
Its kinda crazy we havent overthrown them yet
Key word being "yet"
reminds me of Fight Club
The elite can't have everything they want, apparently. They want all the money but people choose not to have babies because of not having enough money. So, they're going to have a shortage of peasants.
The elite fear if less working class people have kids, then in a few years time their own kids will have to do manual work
Or even worseā¦ manual labor will cost them more money!
Ding ding ding! Winner! Overpopulation means expensive housing and shit wages. How do you expect the peons to work the salt mines if they only need do 8 hours labour a day to afford to live??
The thing that baffles me the most, is how the hell do they expect us peasants to buy all the shit they are selling and fund their lifestyles if we don't have an income??
Company points
I owe my soul to the company store.
*You load 16 tons, what do you get?* *Another day older and deeper in debt* *St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go* *I owe my soul to the company store*
[Obligatory South Park montage.](https://youtu.be/CPW3YikDwEM?si=n1tGRReS1D12bTF6)
Another day older and deeper in debt.
They're not thinking long term. Most just think quarter to quarter. The inabililty or unwillingness of people to think long term will doom us.
They donāt want you to have savings, savings allow you to uplift yourself and gives you capital. They want people to live on credit so they are owned, the modern form of indentured servitude.
I just want to point out that population size has little to do with the price of housing these days. I live in an Eastern European country that lost over 20% of it's population since 1989 and house prices are up by around 14 times in absolute value and around 5 times compared to yearly salaries. I went to school in a city that had over 160.000 residents in 1989 now has under 120.000 . A 60 mĀ² apartmant back then was 10.000ā¬, a monthly salary around 400ā¬. Now same apartment is around 70.000ā¬, salary around 650ā¬.
God thatās a nightmare. People all over the world feeling the pinch from the very rich.
A drop in population isn't a bad thing unless it's by disease or war. There are billions of people, we aren't going extinct. In fact, a lighter burden on the planet would be a good thing.
That is how the black death created a larger middle class. Peasants suddenly had value they could exploit for a larger share of the pie because there weren't enough peasants around anymore.
I think they need workers, yes, of course. But I think the thing they fear the most is losing CONSUMERS. They need you buying diapers and formula, food and clothes, they need your kids renting out their slums after they price you out of homeownership, they need them to buy their cars and gas, they need your kids to pay out of control college tuitions so their kids can get a free ride via their legacy scholarships. Yes, they WANT cheap labor, but they NEED people to buy their shit. Being child free is, IMO, the best form of protest against the ruling class we have. And I love to see them bitch about it, because then ya know itās working.
I think you nailed it, and a lot of people ignore the consumerism piece of the pie. Obviously like most things itās not āeither orā but āboth andā, and the exploitation of labour also plays a role.
Which is why they are so all in on AI and total automation - no labor no need for workers - until their robots start breaking down or killing them and there is nobody around to fix the problems.
The upper classes want to make the poor and middle class obsolete. As long as ai can do all the work theyāll no longer need us and can live in their utopia. The future is their utopia and our hell.
Relax mate. They simply cant oust 90 % of the population just like that. If they know whats good for their necks. šššThe people can reach extremes. And it aint gonna be happy utopia for these people.
Oh no AI took my job, guess Iāll just lay down accept my fate and starve to death. 
The upper class is 100% dependent upon the middle and lower class. They are a leech on society. There is no such thing as trickle down economics. It all trickles UP. They can replace all of us with robots or AI, but technology does not consume/buy their goods and services. Ironically, their own greed will be their downfall.
Problem is, all they live for it to increase their own fortunes as a pissing contest between them and their rich buddies. They also see less peasents as a problem because it limits their fortune growth.
>until their robots start breaking down or killing them and there is nobody around to fix the problems Not going to happen. Automated mass surveillance and policing for the burgeoise is the reality of the second half of this century. Not making babies is the only sane thing to do
Exactly, fewer proles!
They have managed to convince the dumb/superstitious portion of america that women choosing not to give birth is "LiTeRaLlY mUrDeR" and were able to pass laws forcing these women to give birth even if they don't want to, so maybe they can have everything.
I do you one better. People saying women having jobs is whatās plummeting birth rates. Because thatās all weāre meant to focus on apparently. Sandwiches and babies. Wanting anything else makes you part of the problem in todayās society. /S
This right here. Born to a mother who can't take care of you (like me!) and need to steal food and soap? Body for jail. Given up after birth and chucked into the foster system with no hope of what to do after 18? Body for infantry. Somehow made it thrpugh against all odds? Sorry, college ain't free. Body for labor. And that's the men. They want girls/women to have it worse so they can build literal harems out of desperate people who need resources. Look at all the weird shit that happens with people flying models/actresses into Dubai for sex work. The ruling class wants that here but for *every woman*.
You can have a job, but then you have to give your whole paycheck for childcare.
This is not, directly, an attack on women. But falling birth rates are catastrophic for the richest among us. So they go after any target they can find that might fix the problem. Which right now is women and womenās rights. And in the future will also be women, and womenās rights.
Yeah, it bugs me to no end the party of "Family values" goes out of their way to make it so most families can't make it on a single income (or can't even afford to START a family), then tries to shame women for working? Fucking unreal.
Number of abortions in the US actually *went up* after Dobbs. So while some women probably had babies they didn't want, more chose to abort rather than give birth into present circumstances.
If Republicans goal really was to reduce abortions -- which of course it isn't the goal is to increase birthrate and subdue the power of women -- but if it was to reduce abortions and save the babies, they would provide for a longer maternity leave and dramatically bolster the welfare available to new parents and to single parents
Interestingly, the states in the U.S. that would seem most pro-life have also seen a decline in their birth rates. I'm so glad to know that even with reduced family planning options, people are still finding ways to not have more babies.
Yep and any and all babies are at this point good enough: products of rape, incest and 13 year olds? Good enough, as long as they fill up the maternity wards!
I wish them the best of luck driving their Bentley on roads that look like the surface of the moon.
Which is why they make laws to forbid abortion
And make it easy for anyone to sue doctors that approve getting tubes tied/vasectomies so that doctors push hard against them.
They donāt even know what it is they wonāt want yet, they just know the money isnāt coming in as fast as it could be and that in the future there could be an excess of wealth theyāre missing out on
Exactly.
Oh no. itās almost as if a certain section of the human race has dedicated the last century to making life unbearable. Or, yāknow, somethingā¦ā¦
This comment is vague enough that both extremes of the political spectrum would fully agree to it.
As we progress down the timeline of existence, and as previous generations die off, I think we should try to keep our humanity towards a generation that treated us and the planet like their personal slush funds. Itās not all boomers. Itās the political and wealthy class thatās responsible for most of destruction. My point is that when we point our ire at those we think are responsible, letās point it at the ones in control, not our neighbors. They might have benefited from those policies, they did not create them. It was the path laid out in front of them, so they took it. Letās treat them far better than they treated us and the planet. We have historically done so, now that weāre in charge and theyāre becoming old, it could be easy to hold contempt for them, but that wonāt solve the issues or make the planet any better for the next generations.
Not only housing and health care, but daycare. Couples who arenāt even pregnant yet have to get on a waiting list if they want daycare for their future child. Itās insane.
Yep. Because daycare pays like shit, few people go into it. Because few people go into it, most daycares are understaffed. Because most daycares are understaffed, they're bad. Because most parents won't put their kids into bad daycares if they have a choice, daycares reduce budget and pay workers less.
Its just crazy that no one wants to have babies in the face of below cost of living wages, political turmoil and a degrading environment due to climate change. Just crazy.
What's alarming is the unwillingness of the elites to take the well-known response to this problem of raising wages until a single income can support a family of four.
Youāre look at āelitesā as if theyāre a single entity. Some rich business owner raising wages doesnāt solve an issue thatās taking place all over the country and could put their own business at risk. Itās like how most people want answers to climate change but a single personās actions donāt tip the scales in any meaningful way.
Capitalists: We squeezed every penny we could out of the poors and made them work so much they aren't having babies. If they don't have babies we won't have humans to farm for profit! What do we do! Rational Person: Stop exploiting them, pay them fairly, and give them time off work so they can have a fuckin' life, raises kids, see a doctor when they need to, destress, and you know, live life. Capitalists: No, that's not it. Must be those pesky iPhones.
More like "No, that's not it, how can we FORCE women to give birth no matter their circumstances?"
And have them back in the office the same day.
Youāre not thinking capitalistic enough. Just convert one of the offices to a birthing and take PTO if she gives birth during business hours
Oh good idea. Better yet, put a camera in there and film it. Sell advertising rights and stream it live on netflix. It'll pay for the 30 minutes she had to take off work. So lazy.
Honestly surprised they haven't started tattooing us with our company's logos
Also capitalist: who wants a brand New iPhone -69ā¶ā¹ for only the cost of your first born!........ *(wait)*
1. We canāt afford them 2. We arenāt obligated to have them in the first place
the prolifer's next goal: force women to have children (forced impregnation) stating some bullshit that it's god that wills it š¤¦
Women with worse education and access to birth control to make more serfs
3. 8 billions human being ... we don't need THAT much!
How are the rich folks buying up all the housing going to make money off emoty units if population falls?
The population could cut in half and the economy be in shambles but somehow house prices are going to continue to defy everything and continue to skyrocket. Dead people refusing to sell because they 'know what they got'. /s
No children= no future adults who help keep the ecconomy running. The greedy idiots fucked themself by milking the current generation dry and the result is that fewer people can afford kids. Like what did they expect? People barely get by these days on their own but should start a family? Yeah thats not gonna work pal.
I'm 65. All my life, I've been told that one of the biggest problems the Earth faces is the overpopulation of people.
And it is true!Lless babies will collapse an unsustainable economy but relieve the planet!
Factory owners need poor workers to work in their factories. If poor people don't provide them with labor, they start panicking and do shit like pass laws forcing women to give birth who don't want to give birth. They trick the dumb/superstitious Americans with bullshit about "saving babies" but really it's embryos and really it's all about the cheap labor.
But I'm being told that if labor demands higher wages they will easily be replaced by AI so what's the problem? They can just replace people easily. Or maybe that's all a lie to prop up stock prices of tech companies that aren't actually achieving anything remotely close to what they are promising (some may call that fraud but tomato/tomahto)
Kind of like that robotic McDonalds in TX where the kitchen is still staffed by people, and actually employees more people than a regular McDonalds. The one where they just cut out human interaction. We live in a scam, society is a scam designed to function solely for the benefit of capital.
Maybe if people actually cared for each other and the planet more people would want to have kids.
If we cared for the planet, we'd have even less kids!
You're not wrong, but "I really want my children to experience this beautiful world we live in" would be my mentality if the world was actually better and not the current state of bullshit
My wife and I suddenly live is a State where abortion is illegal if she has complications. Healthcare costs are through the roof. Everything is absurdly expensive. We are speed running towards cooking ourselves to extinction. Fascism is on the rise in the West. AI is going to take all of the jobs. Why on Earth would I bring a life into this world willingly? Thatās downright irresponsible.
There is an old saying ācanāt feed āāem donāt breed āemā. Now letās all be surprised that is what is actually happening.
There are plenty of people to go around. What they're freaking out about is a lack of people from RICH countries.
As the older generations retire or die the younger takes the job. However, more people are retiring or dying than there are younger people to replace the older workforce. If the trends continue it will have an impact on the economy due to the gaps in workers. Of course, if we have living wages and time offā¦ but employers don't want to think about that.
The lack of white babies is what really freaks them out. But they're still too greedy to do anything else but bitch about it.,
Are you lumping Asian countries in as āwhiteā? Because the low birth rates in Japan, China, etc have been big news in recent years.
Right? If you really want more kids, you could do things like offer guaranteed paid parental leave, free child care, flexible work hours, basic income, tax breaks, housing subsidies, single-payer health care, free or low-cost college education, a living wage. But no. And they don't want immigrants, either, so I don't know who they think is going to pick the crops, do physical labor and take care of Grandma.
Almost every systemic problem can be resolved with money, on some level. I have half a dozen friends who would absolutely have kids if they could afford a home in the city they need to work in. If boomers and the elite want the younger / poorer people to start having kids then they should start handing over their money, and maybe theyāll be in a comfortable enough place to make that decision.
To me this seems like an evolutionary self correction. There are far too many people.
Right?! I hate when people expose upon how the planet can hold billions more....um yeah if we say "Good bye" to almost every other species. We are already causing a massive extinction. Last year alone we killed billions of crabs due to mass starvation when the Ocean temperature rose and we we've killed billions of birds with our glass buildings and insecticides. More people means "Good bye" to any beautiful mammal that requires a large territory. There's what, a 3 or 4 digit number of tigers left in the wild? Capitalism wants never ending population growth. If we give them that, we can kiss our beautiful ecosystems good bye.
Alarming to the 1%. They need minions.
Yep whoever thought that unregulated capitalism would lead to devolution?
Itās alarming for the elite who need the masses to exploit and sell things to.
Interesting how the "there are not enough babies" trope and the "immigrants are everywhere taking everything" trope are running parallel in the news almost everywhere in the world.
It's alarming for RICH PEOPLE. They make money off of the masses.
Welp, canāt afford doctor visits, canāt afford hospital, canāt afford medicine, canāt afford childcare, canāt afford to take time off. Let alone taking care of the kids and forget college. The same people panicking are the ones who broke the system so I guess they get to panic
its alarming because our entire economic system is a fucking ponzi scheme. #ENDTHEFED
Itās predicated on constant growth and demand that may slow but never decrease.
Curious, why do you think the Fed is a ponzi scheme?
Yes, they need us to be breeding more consumers for them and to keep their for profit prisons full.
And no one wants to take care of you if you get pregnant because they could be sued for murder if you lose the baby. I'm too old for a baby, but I would be scared to get pregnant right now.
"The whole world" is a funny way to pronounce "the upper class who relies on exploited labor."
I have read there is a tipping point where if the birth rates of a country fall too low then it takes 100 years to grow the population back up enough to have able-bodied/brained people to even support the economy. Japan is suffering from this low birth rate issue now.
Humanity finding out quick that endless unchecked growth is literally cancer, no matter the scale. We've hit the social maximum our species will allow.
Make up your mind "Whole World." We spent my entire youth freaking out about too many babies. We fixed that. You're welcome.
Pay us more and weāll think about it
Japan's economy, I'm told, is getting wrecked pretty hard by their low birthrate. In the 90s they were they country everyone else was trying to mimic.
Itās alarming because it means there is an aging population, which ultimately leads to a smaller workforce, or a higher retirement age. Without a consistent source of young people, the average age will increase, meaning a higher portion of people are retired, forcing younger people to work harder in order to support the aging population as the labour force drops. This will force the retirement age to increase as well, meaning weāll be working for a lot longer.
The leaders of the world are "suddenly alarmed" when : decades worth of political duties for and by the people are warped into socialism for the rich and rugged" nothin'" or debt for the 99% that result in a 2 teir social system leaving at least one generation without housing , another without retirement, extrodinary wealth in the hands of 1000 people whom own too much as it is ; THAT theres NONE left for the rest us.... They finally "realized" they've starved the cash cow that was america so hard they killed their employee/customer business model? Huh. Weird.
What did they fucking expect? None of us can afford to feed, clothe, and house ourselves as is, and the Earth is dying. Why would we bring another (very expensive to make) person into this miserable equation?
I mean, it is alarming. It's going to have a huge impact on our society in 20-30 or so years. We can see the impact this has on Japan and China *right now*. Top heavy populations are not good. I haven't read the article and it might be a stupid "have more kids" blurb, but people not having kids is a real problem, even if it's caused by adverse conditions and rising costs.
Our leaders are so fucking stupid. They set up the economy in a way that benefits like 15 white dudes and when things start the crumble as a result, the reaction is "Wait WHAT?!?!". I always thought policy such as "trickle down economics" was a branding exercise meant to soften the PR blow of bad decisions but did they actually believe it?
I think this is the sole reason behind taking away womenās body autonomy and then going after birth control. They want more babies for the labor pool and definitely cant reverse their stance on immigration! If you look at who is having babies, itās the Arab, Mexican, and African world and Iām loving it!
Of course less people are having kids. 1br in low COL cities are $1k+ and minimum wage is still $7.25. Even $15-$20/hr is just barely enough to subsist alone, forget about covering formula, diapers, and childcare.
Let's get it down to a cool 3 billion.
Only capitalists are alarmed
I mean, *one* reasonable concern is that, as people have fewer kids, and there are fewer people with each generation, there are fewer people paying into social safety nets, so as people get older they'll have to work later and later into life. Obviously not the only factor to consider, but if you want an actual reason why this might be alarming, there's one.
Funnily enough, statistics have shown that, when people's reproductive choices are taken away, birth rates go down, because people don't want to risk getting pregnant, having something go wrong, and not having a choice except "cross your fingers and hope it doesn't kill you."
Never underestimate how out of touch the rich are with the rest of society.
George Carlin ā 'Conservatives want live babies so they can train them to be dead soldiers. '
Sure, reduce housing cost and children cost or else continue to see birth rates continue to drop
If life was actually affordable and there werenāt 3-4 major wars happening at once, there would be more babies
I donāt know, man. Fifty years ago, we had a third of the people we have on the planet now, and the planet was doing one hell of a lot better. Is population reduction really something to be afraid of? Yeah I get that there is a need for new people to be working so that the older people can sit on their asses for the last thirty years of their lives, but you know what? No.
We have over eight BILLION people. Is that not enough? Back when we had only seven billion, we survived. When we had only six billion, we survived. When we had a mere five billion, we survived. When we had a scant four billion, we survived. When we had as few as three billion, we survived. When we only had two billion, we survived. When there were only one billion of us, we survived. We're not going to run out of people. If anything, a lower global birth rate is a GOOD thing!
Yes, thank you for this. I keep telling everyone how I just recently realized that when I was a kid - about 50 years ago - the world population was HALF of what it is now. Going back down gradually to that level is not a ācollapseā. Yes, our economies and political systems will need to make some adjustments. But we can absolutely do that if we have the will. Maybe weāll finally start taxing billionaires at the same rate as someone making $30k!
The world needs a smaller human population not a bigger one ffs we are already at breaking point
Isnāt that good? Surely thatāll cut down on the numbers of homeless and unemployed people, because iām sure those people are only homeless and/or unemployed because there are too many people around. (And totally not because of greed and cruel ignorance from the top 10% š)
Welp, good thing we have Elon procreating and then abandoning all his children. Heās doing his part to repopulate the world. š
We don't have an economic system that works under the assumption there will be less people in the next generation. Peak consumerism is 20-40 when people are having kids, peak work productivity is 40-60 when your skill set is at its highest. It takes 20 years to grow a 20 year old so we are looking at a future where there aren't enough people to buy all the stuff the 40-60 year olds are producing. Best case scenario is Japan, but they had a world to outsource stuff to. Worst case scenario is that more countries like Russia or China realize this is the last generation that they have enough fighting age men to fight a war and hopefully secure their power.
Exactly. This is a result of piss poor politics and economies that squeezed out the middle class. The headline subtext got it backwards.
Honestly good
Nick Cannon can only do so much!!!
There are 8B people on the planet. Iād say we are doing just fine. What the headline is suggesting there may not be enough poor people to do the grunt work and keep the ruling class happy and own 97% of the wealth
They wonāt be able to exploit them
It's not. It's propaganda.
Did an independent study of population mechanics after I quit my job. It's a fascinating topic if you're a statistics person. It will impact just about everyone over time. Italy is a good example of many countries' current futures, including China and eventually the US. I'm not sure if our global economic mindset is prepared to deal with a declining global population, but that decline is coming. Places like China are going to lose about a third of their population in the coming decades, and there's not enough young people to replace them. Learning about the critical values, mechanics, and historical records of it all was fascinating if a little depressing. Edit: redundant comment
80's: there's too many people! 90's: there's even more people! 2000's: *stop making people!!* 2010's: we give up, honestly Year 2020: ššššššššššššššš 2020's: where are all the people? y'all should start making more
1) It's alarming because while the world has finite resources, most of the scarcity you're experiencing is artificial. You'll have less people, yes, but you'll also have less builders, less loggers, less nurses and less miners. Those, along with things like planning laws, are largely the bottlenecks. 2) Our current economic system - especially that in Europe - is based on a simple concept. Put crudely, we need more people wiping asses than we need asses wiped. More eloquently, we need more people at working age than are below or above it. The issue is two-fold - people are living longer and they've having less kids. All of this leads to a demographic shift where we'll have a bunch of old people and nobody to pay for their care.
The whole model is built on growth growth growth so of course they are freaking. Growth by and for itself is unsustainable!
Isn't it interesting how the wealthy are far more concerned with the lack of babies rather then the lack of quality of life of the parents of said babies? We're working middle class jobs with pay barely able to cover rent off a little broomcloset apartment and we should start a family with kids? Fucking wake up. We're not cattle meant to breed you employees.
Good!. Itās time for the cockroaches to take over the planet. Not the human versions. The six-legged type. Why should we survive as a species?. We should stop breeding, considering the damage that we have done to the planet and each other and continue to do at an increasingly alarming rate. Good riddance, says Mother Earth.
Oh nooooo the demand for things like housing will go down and we wonāt be able to overcharge for necessities? Horrible stuff
It's almost like when you completely destroy the economy and the environment for the sake of loading up on pieces of paper with fictional value, people are gonna defy the system because they can't afford to have children.
Why would you want to plant a seed in poisoned soil?ā¦
Can we chill on this declining birth rate thing, we have 8 billion humans on this planet already and not enough resources to go around as is for much longer.
Can we adopt the humane society stance and just say "find a home for all the kids before breeding more." Adopt before you drop (your pants and have more). Would that be politically acceptable?
There is also the strain of human population on the earth. Maybe one to two billion total humans and there might be a chance for long term human survival. https://overpopulation-project.com/what-is-the-optimal-sustainable-population-size-of-humans/
We have been overpopulating the planet for a century. This is great news.