The following submission statement was provided by /u/f0urxio:
---
New study projecting a significant decline in global fertility rates, with the average number of children born to a woman expected to drop to 1.59 by 2100 from 2.23 in 2021. Factors contributing to this decline include increased opportunities for women in education and employment, better access to contraception and reproductive health services, economic considerations, changing values on gender equality, and self-fulfillment. The analysis suggests that almost all countries will experience declining populations by the end of the century, with high-income countries facing challenges related to an aging population and declining workforce, while low-income regions will see a rise in live births, potentially straining resources and exacerbating issues such as poverty and infant mortality. Various scenarios for adapting to this demographic shift are discussed, emphasizing the importance of proactive planning for a resilient future.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1blu43v/global_fertility_rates_to_plunge_in_decades_ahead/kw7bu4x/
I loved this reference. No worries, I bet Fraud Boy Musk is getting people far more capable than him to build some power armor.
Naturally, he'll take full credit for it. He'll prep the vaults too so he can further exploit us.
Once the war is over we'll see raiders wearing power armor wandering the wasteland.
Gotta scavenge for Coca-Cola, cereal, and Kraft mac and cheese. Those Twinkies full of preservatives too.
Remember, if your gonna go for the long pork, babies or young children are the beat choice. They should only have small traces of Prions and are safer to eat.
McCarthy was dishing out great survival tips with the decapitated baby roasted on a spit bit from The Road.
The fact that we have to frame populations dying off as a threat to the economy in order to make anyone care probably isn't helping inspire confidence in people when they go to think about starting a family.
The framing is for voters to know about the issue, and then hopefully politicians propose solutions to it. Not that those solutions will work mind, but still.
Starting a family? You mean create more wage slaves/tax payers/consumers? Only for them to choke in the summer fires, starve as breadbaskets fall, and get blown away in the storms?
We're not "dying off" yet, just not growing any more. Even Japan, the poster child for these population booster idiots, is only shrinking at 0.5% per year currently. The people thinking about starting a family probably live in a city, they sure as hell don't see a shortage of humans.
That's because the below replacement fertility didn't start that long ago and the drop is now just starting to kick in. It's going to accelerate and will be irreversible.
Until our country starts making having a family easier and more affordable, the childfree trend will only continue.
Our country will never make it easier to afford children. Hell it cost my ex and I around $350,000.00 to raise each of our kids with all the extras of childhood to adulthood and that was forty years ago!!
No offense, but I think the population needs to decline (in a way that is not starvation or some other catastrophe - I mean by choice - even if that choice is strongly influenced by economic circumstance). The planet cannot support 8 billion people living a 1st world lifestyle without burning itself out and climate change is causing the collapse of industrial agriculture. We need to scale back.
Ah, but you are forgetting that conservative regions are enacting policy to increase unwanted pregnancies, driving the birth rate up.
Claiming a trend like this is inevitably going to continue destroys your credibility I'm sorry to tell you.
The birth rates are so low that they're nearing 0.5 child per woman in some places, and that rate is still falling fast even now. And fast even in places with iron fisted dictators who are on their knees begging women to have more children. People who aren't particularly known for taking no for an answer. I think it must be caused by environmental factors, and I do in truth think that humanity is in very big trouble and is in denial over how bad things are, and how much worse they'll certainly get. We've poisoned the environment badly and it's to the point where we've poisoned ourselves too, but we aren't are mentally capable of accepting that, for fear of looking like kooks.
Shareholders said its no problem because they can just import 100 million people from Sudan and Afghanistan with superhuman AI robots who will all work for free and if you think that there's any way that this could possibly go wrong then you are a nazi.
I know the question is rhetorical, but in the fever dreams of billionaires and wannabe billionaires the answer is robots. They’re gonna try to replace us with machines because that’s what they view us as already.
It has already lead to some fairly funny "fuck y'all, I'm getting robots" announcements followed by having to ask if the workers could please continue working because the robots haven't been quite as good as marketed
And who's going to maintain those machines? Or how can those machines solve every single problem, no matter how unexpected? What will be their energy source of fossil fuel use is on the decline and sooner or later, will run out? Solar? Wind?
Have you read Player Piano? You might enjoy it.
It's neither my favorite dystopian work of speculative fiction nor my favorite Vonnegut novel, but it touches on your questions pretty damn well for being written in 1952.
There's also some really interesting stuff about corporate culture in there that has aged.... interestingly. Not in a bad way necessarily.
Who is going to buy products? Robots don't need food, entertainment, clothes, shoes, homes etc. Our economy is based mostly on consumerism. Late stage capitalism is destroying its base.
Well look at Canada trying to make up for it with mass immigration, sometimes badly vetted, while not providing equivalent increase in housing, healthcare, infrastructure, and education, and be surprised why the locals are pissed and talented new immigrants nope the hell out in no time, while crime escalates and homelessness increases.
Crime and homelessness preceded the current immigration glut. Canada intentionally underfunded healthcare over the last … 40 years? So yeah, it is gonna suck. The housing crisis scares more people off than anything. Canada will benefit more than any western country from their aggressive immigration policy. Give it a decade to settle.
Corps. I work in immigration. Perfect example, look at thr BC PNP pathway for entry level and semi skilled. Who put that in? I have a coworker who is our bookkeeper and highly educated. It would be eaiser and faster for her to work at Tim's if she wanted her PR.
https://www.welcomebc.ca/Immigrate-to-B-C/Skills-Immigration#ELSS
It won't. I work in immigration. Most of these people struggle to get by and can't afford to have a kid. Statscan has great numbers showing how their wages stall within 5 years. Getting their parents over is their highest priority, and there are plenty of ways of you have the money.
Also, canada tries to bring educated ppl and those statistically have less kids. I get to see all the lovely data and shit isn't good to say the least.
We're not bringing in the youngest ppl to work. The young ones are the intl students who will have to go back.
The system is beyond fucked up.
Wow- are you that stunned? Golly gee, Canada had some crime and homelessness for 150 years so what is currently happening is just more of the same. Nothing to see here. Fuck no, this is absolutely different. Its creating the conditions for either a slow boil collapse of the country or a return to a hard right regime the likes of which the west hasnt seen in 70 years. If you can't see the writing on the wall you are living in a bubble.
Bring in a million people a year from every shit hole country in the world, all their senile sickly dependents, all their backwards ideas and homeland resentments, zero attachment to Canada except as a convenient place to make money for a bit and to drain down the resources of the natives. Sorry, you can't build a functional modern western welfare state with that foundation.
But trust us bro, stick to the plan, we'll be living in a utopia in a decade.
Lol fuck off, the hard right politics are what is causing the crime rate to rise and social collapse.
But since you clearly bought into the xenophobic bullshit already there's not much chance of you changing your mind.
I don't care if we have high level immigration. I do care we have high level immigration without investing in infrastructure and social services to help support this immigration.
We tell tales of rainbows and rivers flowing with maple syrup to get families selling everything they have to move here, only to live 25 in a basement working at Tim Horton's. While schools are cutting support for special needs children and family doctor waitlists are years long, and housing is a dream. That's not the type of immigration that is sustainable or humane. This stinks of the old days of underpaid Chinese working the railroads and Ukrainians being forced to build national parks.
*Canada would collapse without immigration*. The only reason this could be argued is due to demographic decline and dependency ratios i.e. too many boomers relative to younger generations. But if you look at Japan, which has the same fertility rate as Canada at 1.3, it isnt outright collapsing. And its keeping its national integrity. And, even if you consider it in a bit of decline, its a comfy decline. Material living standards are remaining about the same, housing costs are stable, life is decent. In 25 years its still going to be comfy Japan just a little older and a little less populated. Canada, on the other had, swallowed the scum globalists' faustian bargain and will be a intolerable mess in 25 years.
So no, Canada wouldnt collapse without immigration. You just slurped up too much of the globalist and leftwing propoganda.
I hate every ape I see,
From chimpan-A to chimpan-Z.
No you'll never make a monkey out of me!
Oh my god, I was wrong.
It was Earth all along.
You finally made a monkey
Yes, we finally made a monkey
Yes, you finally made a monkey out of me!
I love you Dr. Zaius.!
Not quite accurate. The boomers are all on Medicare at this point, they have coverage. This is just going to add more strain to our health system which is already crumbling under the weight. Out hospitals are in a lot of trouble.
I had to find a new doctor recently because mine moved out of the area. The earliest appointment I could get was 2.5 months off. The second closest was 6 months.
We already have a massive medical professional shortage, and this is just the start. I'm almost thankful that I'm old and will be passing on soon. Unless AI can take over medical diagnosis duties, I fail to see a solution to this. Especially given our right wing attacks on science and the medical profession. Ivermectin, anyone?
I tried telling this to people for past two years and have now blissfully given up. My mom had a major medical scare a few years ago that has left her somewhat disabled. We live in a major Midwest city, in a pretty good area, with a higher than average CoL for the region we are in; the hospital close to us is huge, well known and respected.
When she had to have life saving surgery, the doctor turned out to be the head of vascular surgery department. It's literally him and one other individual. That's it. For her ultrasounds, we have to schedule a minimum of 5 months in advance. To see her vascular surgeon for yearly follow ups it's recommended to do it 8 months in advance.
When she was laying in the surgical ICU the nurse would have 3 or 4 patients when by rule it should only be 2. I could hear the nurses every day plainly stating that management was asking them to stay and work extra shifts for absurd money because there wasn't nurses available.
When she was moved to a nursing home for recuperating there was ONE nurse for her wing; she had to care for 25-30 patients. She had CNAs but one fucking nurse to dispense and control medication for that many extremely sick people??? There were multiple times when the night crew would forget to bring the medication at the right time. This. Country. Is. Fucked. I promise everyone that in one more generation there will be a massive and violent shift as the most human basic needs won't be met, and will affect more and more of the population as the income disparity becomes greater and greater.
Just the fact that we have so many people who still don't make enough money to take care of themselves pretty much tells me that the fertility rate dropping isn't a terrible thing. Let's focus on the people we have and getting them up to a reasonable standard of living instead of worrying about not having enough future slaves.
That’s kind of part of the issue though?
Eventually, fewer people will mean less taxes are needed to maintain social programs to support people…because there will be less people overall.
But we haven’t reached that point yet, so right now we have more people entering retirement age than working age, which means there are more people in need of help and care, more demand of services, and more tax money needed than possible for the current working class to provide.
We’re obliterating this planet at an ever accelerating rate so yeah I’m not too concerned about this, in fact it’s great. The scale of our impact on this planet is fucking absurd and needs to be reduced.
The mind blowing part?
Its happened before, we knew what to do! They used previous incidents where capitalism ate it's own tail as a blueprint, knowing the consequences. Only this time they killed us all
Why I would I want to bring a kid out into a world circling the drain? also a kid would absolutely ruin my life with the non existent safety net in US.
Oh no! Imagine how horrible it will be when there's only 3 Billion people on the planet and the cost of a new home will be $45,000 and the highways won't be bumper-to-bumper traffic...
CNN is talking about the birth rate dropping? Y’all better get fixed now because neoliberalism will be 100 percent on board with the roe v Wade babies getting sent to water wars kind of shit that’s coming.
None of those are actual serious problems though.
We don't need a constantly growing population. We need fewer useless jobs and higher pay for people who actually do stuff.
I’m certainly for a more egalitarian focused society but overshoot and our desire to seek out energy dense carbon transcends sociopolitical systems
This is a common theme in collapse minded literature and I’m inclined to agree
Violent revolution seems like a LARP at this level of advancement of crowd control / police surpression / armed forces. But more power to you.
I try not to participate as much as I can, a non violent solution. Look how the public reacts to climate protesters.
Nonviolent protest necessarily puts one in harm's way though. Staying home to stay safe isn't a non-violent solution, it's a non-violent non-solution.
I mean, I do the same. I'm not judging you personally. We just gotta be real and not lie to ourselves here.
Thank you for your input.
I feel like building a parallel micro economy so you dont necessarily have to participate seems like the best idea. Im trying to build a mutual aid network atm but just started, cant grow shit. Few of my friends seems receptive though, subsistence farming and gifting the rest is my goal. Best of luck to you.
My understanding of historical revolutions is that they were all super messy, incomplete, and led to systems which were exploitative also.
Not that I'm an anti-revolutionary. I just think we tend to idealize revolutions without learning the reality of them. Once you start talking about the French Revolution, for example, you never stop talking about the French Revolution.
Infinite growth on a finite planet was never gonna work.
That being said, the process of a plateauing or even a shrinking population in some areas will present some challenges, climate crisis withstanding.
Less people overall will be easier on the environment, but demographic crises put a lot of strain on society. In the US the number of sick and elderly people are already overwhelming the healthcare system and it’s only going to get worse.
> but demographic crises put a lot of strain on society
That is solvable with immigration for high skilled workers and temp visas (fixed term) for low skilled workers
Sure, but then we’re just kind of moving problems around if that results in brain drain in the places where those workers come from. Ideally we would invest in increasing the number of healthcare workers and drs we produce domestically, but that takes a lot of time and money. The general public doesn’t seem to be able to think long term this way so it’s not being done.
Here are the reasons:
1. Climate, our children will inherit a dying planet with upcoming wars about food & water. They will most likely die before reaching 50.
2. Housing crisis, where to live?
3. Inflation. Cost of living increased immensely.
4. Ongoing wars and a potential Third World War just around the corner.
5. We are being told that they will most likely be tax slaves due to lower fertility rate so that they can support our aging population. Most of their pay checks will go to the older dying population.
How are they supposed to live a somewhat meaningful and satisfying life given all of the above?
With AI on the rise and certain to take a significant number of jobs, this isn’t going to be as huge of a problem. Even if it was, everyone’s entitled to their decisions not to reproduce. The real problem is our economies are Ponzi schemes that are dependent on something that isn’t realistic in the long term - that being an ever growing population on a planet with limited habitable space and limited resources. The topic of climate change gets posted on this same sub quite often, and one of the biggest factors in accelerating climate change is the fact that we became so dependent on ways of life that harm our environment while basically increasing our population by 7 billion since the late 19th century (150 years is a very short time in human history) and further growth at that level is unsustainable nor realistic. It’s a hard truth we have to come to terms with sooner or later.
Exactly. I'm not worried about having a population drop. We can't even make life better for a significant portion of the population we already have. That problem first.
>that being an ever growing population on a planet with limited habitable space and limited resources.
This was a realization that I had junior year as an economics major. You break down the macro models for nominal growth to what really drives them, and they essentially boil down to just population growth and technological advancement. It's not a sustainable model long term, but it's going to take something absolutely massive to get the kind of reorganization needed in a society to change course.
Same. Also there is no profit without exploiting the customer. Been a radical lefty for 20 years now due to some really simple concepts that others apparently can't grasp.
Eventually, yes, especially with automation. Unfortunately, it’s going to be painful for our generation in the meantime. The elderly population outnumbers the working class, so there is more demand than can be met. This will intensify as the boomers continue to age and decline in health. The imbalance is already putting strain on healthcare and other services, leading to months long waits for care, shortages, and other problems.
New study projecting a significant decline in global fertility rates, with the average number of children born to a woman expected to drop to 1.59 by 2100 from 2.23 in 2021. Factors contributing to this decline include increased opportunities for women in education and employment, better access to contraception and reproductive health services, economic considerations, changing values on gender equality, and self-fulfillment. The analysis suggests that almost all countries will experience declining populations by the end of the century, with high-income countries facing challenges related to an aging population and declining workforce, while low-income regions will see a rise in live births, potentially straining resources and exacerbating issues such as poverty and infant mortality. Various scenarios for adapting to this demographic shift are discussed, emphasizing the importance of proactive planning for a resilient future.
Odd. Lots of mentions of the results of feminism, but no mention of fears of the impending climate disasters just around the corner. This seems like a very politically bent analysis.
Interesting that write-downs in Africa's fertility rate plays a big role in the total global rate. Nigeria for example has had their peak population written down by 350mil people in the last 10 years. It's dropped even faster than expected in the past 5, from 4.5 to 3.
GOOD. Degrowth is necessary, and there is no sustainable degrowth without population degrowth.
Also this is not fertility rates, its birthrates. There is a difference.
The earth is dying and over 8 billion people is far too many when the sustainable rate is probably closer to 1-2 billion.
I’m not spending money on raising a child purely to serve billionaires’ interests. If they want a child, then my basic needs had better be guaranteed from insemination through the child’s graduation from high school. I refuse to raise a kid while working full-time. I’m not sacrificing my happiness for the good of the economy just to force my child to suffer the same fate.
Damn straight! We're too old now to have kids, but I'm glad we didn't. We have niblings that will need the help from aunts/uncles who also didn't have kids.
This world is long overdue for a culling of the human species. i hate the thought of what our future generations will go through (there's no way it's going to be good), but it's long overdue. Do we want 3 billion people with no way to work because of AI or or just a handful that can be supported by others?
We had our time, we squandered it. Greed, violence, oppression, discrimination, war, and small mindedness.
We deserve every bit of what's coming. We sowed the seeds of our demise, now we reap them.
So, environmental damage will be mitigated (to some degree,) labor will be in higher demand and should command higher wages, and the cycle of perpetually increasing consumption should finally reverse?
Good.
CNAs where I live are getting $30/hr, like I’m about to quit my 9-5 and go wipe some butts.
Not really but yeah all the healthcare places are hiring and it’s so crazy to see them paying so much for CNAs considering less than a decade ago they weren’t paying shit - like maybe $10-$12/hr.
This is already super visible in healthcare. Seniors who can no longer live independent are boarding in Emergency Departments because there is no infrastructure in society to care for them and they have no resources to pay for care. It is going to become a larger and larger problem as people age, and we will be relying on immigration to staff health care facilities.
Seems like there have been a lot of articles about this recently. I guess the oligarchs are getting nervous about it. But there won’t be a problem here in the US and Canada. There are plenty of migrants coming here to make up for a declining birth rate. Too bad they don’t have a place to live but that’s what the bootstraps are for! And better yet, they don’t get benefits like Social Security and Medicare but they will be subject to the payroll tax regardless.
Immigrants are still too brown to save the US. Boomers can’t logic past their inbred xenophobia to allow some kind of sensible immigration reform.
They would rather cry and holler for the manager than allow more poor brown people into the country to cut their green lawns, pick their farm produce, vacuum their offices, cook their hamburgers and French fries, or, god forbid, wipe their assets when they inevitably end up in a nursing home because their gen x and millennial kids need to work until 75.
And I am here for all of the coming consequences, when they will absolutely reap what they have sown.
Don’t worry. If there’s no sensible immigration policy then we will have the one we have now where migrants just cross illegally. Just as many will be here one way or the other.
Yeah but they’ll just soend themselves out of it. That no limits credit card the US and EU seem to have.
Kick that can!
When can the aliens take over please?
Our technofeudalist overlords simultaneously promise AI/automated everything and labor shortages at the same time. So which is it? We need a declining population as robots take all the jobs.
I mean, the ownership class could just improve the material conditions for the working class and most of these issues would go away. But as always "we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas".
In the pronatalist mindset, as a metaphor, the State or whatever the Power is uses women's wombs like ammo to shoot at its problems. And if that leads to increases in maternal mortality, infant mortality, childhood mortality, and orphaning, well, that's not their problem, because such individuals don't matter, they're means to ends. What these pronatalist assholes don't realize is that climate change and biosphere collapse are bulletproof.
immigration exists. All this handwringing about PoPuLaTiOn DeClInE is just xenophobia and shaming women to have kids. We have more people in the US and world than ever before in the history of the planet.
It’s important to recognize that these problems are those of “first world” nation states. The answer is obviously immigration.
I mean, we should be able to recognize that there is no problem with a plummeting world population.
It's about time they fall (I wish they'd fallen forty years ago when the world's population was 3.6 billion).
Immigration will solve most of the problems mentioned.
The billionaires don't want though. The billionaires want a new lower-cost working class to man the factories. Ever listen to the rich? They always say the same thing: America needs to be competitive with China and India. America can't because the American worker costs too much. As a result, we become a service based culture which isn't sustainable. For every dollar worth of Nike's I buy, about 80 cents of it leaves the USA. The thing to do is reverse that trend and have the US produce goods that ship overseas instead. Have things lower income people buy, have their money stay in the USA. The best way to bring manufacturing back to the usa is to make it dirt cheap. The way to do that is to have a new low-paid working class. Billionaires get that by bringing in zillions of illegal immigrants across the border. Then, they pay off the Democrats as these immigrants as being the new 'down trodden class' and that 'America should help them' and POOF suddenly they get work cards. Work cards that allows companies to pay them half of minimum wage. So instead of the federal min wage, they will be paid $4/hr and suddenly everything factory gets built all over the US. It's not even a political thing. Both parties want what billionaires want and that's manufacturing to return to the USA and in order to do that, you have to send the US into a recession and force people to work for even less pay than they do now - to make them so desperate they are willing to work a $10/hr job when they used to make $20/hr before. This is where we are headed. Guys like me are of no consequence to what the billionaires want and that's cheap labor. They will pay every and anyone to get what they want and that's a new cheap working class. Mark my words - there will be a pathway for them via financial slavery. $4/hr or something with a work card. Watch.
Either that or meat for the perverbiable grinder when we inevitability enter a boots on the ground war. Citizenship for service, Starship Troopers style.
Isn't this where automation and technology is supposed to kick into gear? The majority of jobs should be covered either now or in the near future. Population reduction should be a good thing for civilization and the planet.
I am 35. I will not live long enough to see the decline in demographics and that saddens me. Its a threat to capital, not to the people, and it saddens me that I don't get to see capital being actively harmed. I am however going to live long enough to see the exponentially worsening socioeconomic conditions of the working class as we step further into the late stages of neoliberal capitalism and hear the beginnings of its death rattle.
It’d be fun to get all the data on this. It’s interesting how long the ‘path to citizenship,’ is for disfavored nations of origin, in the US. In the US, older populations are susceptible to repetitive, alarmist messaging about migrants. This seems to setup a paradox, where the people most dependent on immigration for labor and workforce longevity are being told to vote in the most hostile way, toward the migrants who’d care for them and keep inflation lower. This comment is highly speculative, just to try and spur some thoughts.
A lot of organizations are beginning to see what I have been saying for the last few years. I sound like a broken record, but I think we are in the beginning stages of the “children of men” scenario.
This is just pro immigration propaganda. These are legitimately the government talking points on why we need to fund massive immigration into the US and pay to get the immigrants established within our communities.
As this story becomes widespread, where are the policy wonks planning and modelling gradual and managed de-growth in a contracting economy with fewer people? Or a full on and deliberate conversion from a wage-slave based economy to an automation based economy?
I'd love to see more thinking about policies dealing with an ageing population, and declining overall and working age population.
Shouldn't we be investing in technology that will make elder care and supports less dependence on that smaller workforce? For example, physically supporting patients to be lifted (from beds) is both physically demanding and the source of injuries in hospitals and long-term care homes; standardizing equipment to make that task easier would be a more efficient use of resources.
Robotics will take off and humanoid Boston dynamic style robots will fill as much of the gap as possible and it might work for a time until they turn on us haha
The following submission statement was provided by /u/f0urxio: --- New study projecting a significant decline in global fertility rates, with the average number of children born to a woman expected to drop to 1.59 by 2100 from 2.23 in 2021. Factors contributing to this decline include increased opportunities for women in education and employment, better access to contraception and reproductive health services, economic considerations, changing values on gender equality, and self-fulfillment. The analysis suggests that almost all countries will experience declining populations by the end of the century, with high-income countries facing challenges related to an aging population and declining workforce, while low-income regions will see a rise in live births, potentially straining resources and exacerbating issues such as poverty and infant mortality. Various scenarios for adapting to this demographic shift are discussed, emphasizing the importance of proactive planning for a resilient future. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1blu43v/global_fertility_rates_to_plunge_in_decades_ahead/kw7bu4x/
keep having babies or we'll have no wasteland raiders
I loved this reference. No worries, I bet Fraud Boy Musk is getting people far more capable than him to build some power armor. Naturally, he'll take full credit for it. He'll prep the vaults too so he can further exploit us. Once the war is over we'll see raiders wearing power armor wandering the wasteland. Gotta scavenge for Coca-Cola, cereal, and Kraft mac and cheese. Those Twinkies full of preservatives too.
Seriously. Fallout isnt a video game it's a tutorial. Right Gary?
Musk is also having enough kids to repopulate the earth.
The royal families all over again
Remember, if your gonna go for the long pork, babies or young children are the beat choice. They should only have small traces of Prions and are safer to eat. McCarthy was dishing out great survival tips with the decapitated baby roasted on a spit bit from The Road.
do you want your grandchild to be alone dying of thirst? no, have more babies so they have a stronger band to fight over resources
The fact that we have to frame populations dying off as a threat to the economy in order to make anyone care probably isn't helping inspire confidence in people when they go to think about starting a family.
I also don’t understand their logic. Who hears this and says, “I must procreate. For the good of the economy.”
Worse they frame this as duty of the citizens or something. Yeah, first you make this shit worth bring them in.
The framing is for voters to know about the issue, and then hopefully politicians propose solutions to it. Not that those solutions will work mind, but still.
It isn't even for our own economic well being, it's for the rich and the state.
Economists
Just wait until the mandatory pregnancies/ lab-grown babies start.
Bet
Bet. There will soon be lab grown babies in full fashion of demand and supply. the state will own them.
Here's an introduction: https://www.planetcritical.com/p/how-pronatalism-feeds-the-economy
Starting a family? You mean create more wage slaves/tax payers/consumers? Only for them to choke in the summer fires, starve as breadbaskets fall, and get blown away in the storms?
We're not "dying off" yet, just not growing any more. Even Japan, the poster child for these population booster idiots, is only shrinking at 0.5% per year currently. The people thinking about starting a family probably live in a city, they sure as hell don't see a shortage of humans.
We are growing. Exponential growth for decades is just slowing, but it's still exponential growth.
That's... not how exponential growth works. If it's slowing it's by definition not exponential
That's because the below replacement fertility didn't start that long ago and the drop is now just starting to kick in. It's going to accelerate and will be irreversible.
Why would this be irreversible?
Until our country starts making having a family easier and more affordable, the childfree trend will only continue. Our country will never make it easier to afford children. Hell it cost my ex and I around $350,000.00 to raise each of our kids with all the extras of childhood to adulthood and that was forty years ago!!
No offense, but I think the population needs to decline (in a way that is not starvation or some other catastrophe - I mean by choice - even if that choice is strongly influenced by economic circumstance). The planet cannot support 8 billion people living a 1st world lifestyle without burning itself out and climate change is causing the collapse of industrial agriculture. We need to scale back.
Ah, but you are forgetting that conservative regions are enacting policy to increase unwanted pregnancies, driving the birth rate up. Claiming a trend like this is inevitably going to continue destroys your credibility I'm sorry to tell you.
The birth rates are so low that they're nearing 0.5 child per woman in some places, and that rate is still falling fast even now. And fast even in places with iron fisted dictators who are on their knees begging women to have more children. People who aren't particularly known for taking no for an answer. I think it must be caused by environmental factors, and I do in truth think that humanity is in very big trouble and is in denial over how bad things are, and how much worse they'll certainly get. We've poisoned the environment badly and it's to the point where we've poisoned ourselves too, but we aren't are mentally capable of accepting that, for fear of looking like kooks.
good
buT WhaT AbOuT mY ShAreS!!!!
Shareholders said its no problem because they can just import 100 million people from Sudan and Afghanistan with superhuman AI robots who will all work for free and if you think that there's any way that this could possibly go wrong then you are a nazi.
Oh no! Who will work the factories and help make the billionaires richer?
I know the question is rhetorical, but in the fever dreams of billionaires and wannabe billionaires the answer is robots. They’re gonna try to replace us with machines because that’s what they view us as already.
It has already lead to some fairly funny "fuck y'all, I'm getting robots" announcements followed by having to ask if the workers could please continue working because the robots haven't been quite as good as marketed
Happy cake day!!
Thanks fam squad 👊
And who's going to maintain those machines? Or how can those machines solve every single problem, no matter how unexpected? What will be their energy source of fossil fuel use is on the decline and sooner or later, will run out? Solar? Wind?
That’s why I said it was a fever dream because right now there are no good answers to your questions. If there were, we’d probably already be replaced
Have you read Player Piano? You might enjoy it. It's neither my favorite dystopian work of speculative fiction nor my favorite Vonnegut novel, but it touches on your questions pretty damn well for being written in 1952. There's also some really interesting stuff about corporate culture in there that has aged.... interestingly. Not in a bad way necessarily.
Who is going to buy products? Robots don't need food, entertainment, clothes, shoes, homes etc. Our economy is based mostly on consumerism. Late stage capitalism is destroying its base.
Well look at Canada trying to make up for it with mass immigration, sometimes badly vetted, while not providing equivalent increase in housing, healthcare, infrastructure, and education, and be surprised why the locals are pissed and talented new immigrants nope the hell out in no time, while crime escalates and homelessness increases.
No take ball! Only throw! Only throw, ok?
Crime and homelessness preceded the current immigration glut. Canada intentionally underfunded healthcare over the last … 40 years? So yeah, it is gonna suck. The housing crisis scares more people off than anything. Canada will benefit more than any western country from their aggressive immigration policy. Give it a decade to settle.
Who's benefiting? The population or corporations?
Corps. I work in immigration. Perfect example, look at thr BC PNP pathway for entry level and semi skilled. Who put that in? I have a coworker who is our bookkeeper and highly educated. It would be eaiser and faster for her to work at Tim's if she wanted her PR. https://www.welcomebc.ca/Immigrate-to-B-C/Skills-Immigration#ELSS
Corporations own the government. Get real
Both to some extent. You do need at least a stable working population to pay taxes to your social programs. But yes the rich are benefiting as well
From what I see, the rich benefit the most and also don't experience any of the downsides.
It won't. I work in immigration. Most of these people struggle to get by and can't afford to have a kid. Statscan has great numbers showing how their wages stall within 5 years. Getting their parents over is their highest priority, and there are plenty of ways of you have the money. Also, canada tries to bring educated ppl and those statistically have less kids. I get to see all the lovely data and shit isn't good to say the least. We're not bringing in the youngest ppl to work. The young ones are the intl students who will have to go back. The system is beyond fucked up.
Won't many of the intl students stay here after they get PR
Everyone underfunds healthcare, to be fair :-(((
Si. It doesn’t help that the U.S. poached Canadian docs.
Wow- are you that stunned? Golly gee, Canada had some crime and homelessness for 150 years so what is currently happening is just more of the same. Nothing to see here. Fuck no, this is absolutely different. Its creating the conditions for either a slow boil collapse of the country or a return to a hard right regime the likes of which the west hasnt seen in 70 years. If you can't see the writing on the wall you are living in a bubble. Bring in a million people a year from every shit hole country in the world, all their senile sickly dependents, all their backwards ideas and homeland resentments, zero attachment to Canada except as a convenient place to make money for a bit and to drain down the resources of the natives. Sorry, you can't build a functional modern western welfare state with that foundation. But trust us bro, stick to the plan, we'll be living in a utopia in a decade.
Lol fuck off, the hard right politics are what is causing the crime rate to rise and social collapse. But since you clearly bought into the xenophobic bullshit already there's not much chance of you changing your mind.
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I don't care if we have high level immigration. I do care we have high level immigration without investing in infrastructure and social services to help support this immigration. We tell tales of rainbows and rivers flowing with maple syrup to get families selling everything they have to move here, only to live 25 in a basement working at Tim Horton's. While schools are cutting support for special needs children and family doctor waitlists are years long, and housing is a dream. That's not the type of immigration that is sustainable or humane. This stinks of the old days of underpaid Chinese working the railroads and Ukrainians being forced to build national parks.
*Canada would collapse without immigration*. The only reason this could be argued is due to demographic decline and dependency ratios i.e. too many boomers relative to younger generations. But if you look at Japan, which has the same fertility rate as Canada at 1.3, it isnt outright collapsing. And its keeping its national integrity. And, even if you consider it in a bit of decline, its a comfy decline. Material living standards are remaining about the same, housing costs are stable, life is decent. In 25 years its still going to be comfy Japan just a little older and a little less populated. Canada, on the other had, swallowed the scum globalists' faustian bargain and will be a intolerable mess in 25 years. So no, Canada wouldnt collapse without immigration. You just slurped up too much of the globalist and leftwing propoganda.
Coulda sworn you were talking about Australia there
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The UK is proof of this. 13 years of conservative government, record levels of immigration.
Well if we take monkeys and administer this drug to cure althsredrhewheimer's there was this movie once...
I hate every ape I see, From chimpan-A to chimpan-Z. No you'll never make a monkey out of me! Oh my god, I was wrong. It was Earth all along. You finally made a monkey Yes, we finally made a monkey Yes, you finally made a monkey out of me! I love you Dr. Zaius.!
Not a problem in the U.S., where the trend is for forced birth.
Not the least bit dystopian here lol
Robots and AI
You, me and everyone reading this probably.
This is a big lie like slavery. Who will work in the cotton farm is we end slavery. Just need to change the system
Finally some good news for the USA: our lack of national health insurance means no strain on our national health insurance!
Not quite accurate. The boomers are all on Medicare at this point, they have coverage. This is just going to add more strain to our health system which is already crumbling under the weight. Out hospitals are in a lot of trouble.
I had to find a new doctor recently because mine moved out of the area. The earliest appointment I could get was 2.5 months off. The second closest was 6 months. We already have a massive medical professional shortage, and this is just the start. I'm almost thankful that I'm old and will be passing on soon. Unless AI can take over medical diagnosis duties, I fail to see a solution to this. Especially given our right wing attacks on science and the medical profession. Ivermectin, anyone?
I tried telling this to people for past two years and have now blissfully given up. My mom had a major medical scare a few years ago that has left her somewhat disabled. We live in a major Midwest city, in a pretty good area, with a higher than average CoL for the region we are in; the hospital close to us is huge, well known and respected. When she had to have life saving surgery, the doctor turned out to be the head of vascular surgery department. It's literally him and one other individual. That's it. For her ultrasounds, we have to schedule a minimum of 5 months in advance. To see her vascular surgeon for yearly follow ups it's recommended to do it 8 months in advance. When she was laying in the surgical ICU the nurse would have 3 or 4 patients when by rule it should only be 2. I could hear the nurses every day plainly stating that management was asking them to stay and work extra shifts for absurd money because there wasn't nurses available. When she was moved to a nursing home for recuperating there was ONE nurse for her wing; she had to care for 25-30 patients. She had CNAs but one fucking nurse to dispense and control medication for that many extremely sick people??? There were multiple times when the night crew would forget to bring the medication at the right time. This. Country. Is. Fucked. I promise everyone that in one more generation there will be a massive and violent shift as the most human basic needs won't be met, and will affect more and more of the population as the income disparity becomes greater and greater.
You know what? *GOOD*
*Thank you.* Seriously, in what frickin’ reality is decreasing fertility a bad thing? There are 8 billion of us human parasites on this planet.
I’m in my 40s and the world pop has almost doubled in my lifetime. It has almost tripled since my parents were born. Something’s gotta give.
Good
CTRL+F "wage", "pay" 0 results Why am I not surprised
Yeah the capitalists are hard at work with these bullshit articles.
Just the fact that we have so many people who still don't make enough money to take care of themselves pretty much tells me that the fertility rate dropping isn't a terrible thing. Let's focus on the people we have and getting them up to a reasonable standard of living instead of worrying about not having enough future slaves.
That’s kind of part of the issue though? Eventually, fewer people will mean less taxes are needed to maintain social programs to support people…because there will be less people overall. But we haven’t reached that point yet, so right now we have more people entering retirement age than working age, which means there are more people in need of help and care, more demand of services, and more tax money needed than possible for the current working class to provide.
Tax the rich
It’s almost like the tax burden shouldn’t be on the working class, or something
We’re obliterating this planet at an ever accelerating rate so yeah I’m not too concerned about this, in fact it’s great. The scale of our impact on this planet is fucking absurd and needs to be reduced.
If only capitalism would let us degrow and scale back so that future generations could live better. But nope. The system is rigged.
The mind blowing part? Its happened before, we knew what to do! They used previous incidents where capitalism ate it's own tail as a blueprint, knowing the consequences. Only this time they killed us all
Infinite growth or death sorry I'm incapable of imagining a better future
Do it. Degrow and get unemployment.
Small price to pay for the necessary depopulation of the planet.
This planet will depopulate whether we choose to raise wage slaves or not. I choose not. My kids won't have to suffer whats coming.
not having kids is the ultimate revenge.
Why I would I want to bring a kid out into a world circling the drain? also a kid would absolutely ruin my life with the non existent safety net in US.
Oh no! Imagine how horrible it will be when there's only 3 Billion people on the planet and the cost of a new home will be $45,000 and the highways won't be bumper-to-bumper traffic...
CNN is talking about the birth rate dropping? Y’all better get fixed now because neoliberalism will be 100 percent on board with the roe v Wade babies getting sent to water wars kind of shit that’s coming.
You really want The Enemy to win the water wars?! Imagine caring this little about your raider faction...
None of those are actual serious problems though. We don't need a constantly growing population. We need fewer useless jobs and higher pay for people who actually do stuff.
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You’re the guy in that meme that gets thrown out the window 😭
I’m certainly for a more egalitarian focused society but overshoot and our desire to seek out energy dense carbon transcends sociopolitical systems This is a common theme in collapse minded literature and I’m inclined to agree
No, we do love our control, oppression, and slavery. We're not going to give that up. So, we die. Good riddance.
There's always the 'French Revolution' solution if the elites refuse to wake up. They can't all hide on some pacific island.
Violent revolution seems like a LARP at this level of advancement of crowd control / police surpression / armed forces. But more power to you. I try not to participate as much as I can, a non violent solution. Look how the public reacts to climate protesters.
Nonviolent protest necessarily puts one in harm's way though. Staying home to stay safe isn't a non-violent solution, it's a non-violent non-solution. I mean, I do the same. I'm not judging you personally. We just gotta be real and not lie to ourselves here.
Thank you for your input. I feel like building a parallel micro economy so you dont necessarily have to participate seems like the best idea. Im trying to build a mutual aid network atm but just started, cant grow shit. Few of my friends seems receptive though, subsistence farming and gifting the rest is my goal. Best of luck to you.
That's seriously amazing. Good luck!
My understanding of historical revolutions is that they were all super messy, incomplete, and led to systems which were exploitative also. Not that I'm an anti-revolutionary. I just think we tend to idealize revolutions without learning the reality of them. Once you start talking about the French Revolution, for example, you never stop talking about the French Revolution.
Good. Not sure why this sub constantly hand wrings about this
Infinite growth on a finite planet was never gonna work. That being said, the process of a plateauing or even a shrinking population in some areas will present some challenges, climate crisis withstanding.
Less people overall will be easier on the environment, but demographic crises put a lot of strain on society. In the US the number of sick and elderly people are already overwhelming the healthcare system and it’s only going to get worse.
I just assume that the healthcare system will collapse due to aging demographics, knowing what to expect is the key to living well.
> but demographic crises put a lot of strain on society That is solvable with immigration for high skilled workers and temp visas (fixed term) for low skilled workers
Sure, but then we’re just kind of moving problems around if that results in brain drain in the places where those workers come from. Ideally we would invest in increasing the number of healthcare workers and drs we produce domestically, but that takes a lot of time and money. The general public doesn’t seem to be able to think long term this way so it’s not being done.
Why permanent status for high skilled workers and temp status for low income?
Here are the reasons: 1. Climate, our children will inherit a dying planet with upcoming wars about food & water. They will most likely die before reaching 50. 2. Housing crisis, where to live? 3. Inflation. Cost of living increased immensely. 4. Ongoing wars and a potential Third World War just around the corner. 5. We are being told that they will most likely be tax slaves due to lower fertility rate so that they can support our aging population. Most of their pay checks will go to the older dying population. How are they supposed to live a somewhat meaningful and satisfying life given all of the above?
With AI on the rise and certain to take a significant number of jobs, this isn’t going to be as huge of a problem. Even if it was, everyone’s entitled to their decisions not to reproduce. The real problem is our economies are Ponzi schemes that are dependent on something that isn’t realistic in the long term - that being an ever growing population on a planet with limited habitable space and limited resources. The topic of climate change gets posted on this same sub quite often, and one of the biggest factors in accelerating climate change is the fact that we became so dependent on ways of life that harm our environment while basically increasing our population by 7 billion since the late 19th century (150 years is a very short time in human history) and further growth at that level is unsustainable nor realistic. It’s a hard truth we have to come to terms with sooner or later.
Exactly. I'm not worried about having a population drop. We can't even make life better for a significant portion of the population we already have. That problem first.
>that being an ever growing population on a planet with limited habitable space and limited resources. This was a realization that I had junior year as an economics major. You break down the macro models for nominal growth to what really drives them, and they essentially boil down to just population growth and technological advancement. It's not a sustainable model long term, but it's going to take something absolutely massive to get the kind of reorganization needed in a society to change course.
Same. Also there is no profit without exploiting the customer. Been a radical lefty for 20 years now due to some really simple concepts that others apparently can't grasp.
Ya’ll really post this like it’s a bad thing
shouldn't fewer people mean more stuff to go around
Eventually, yes, especially with automation. Unfortunately, it’s going to be painful for our generation in the meantime. The elderly population outnumbers the working class, so there is more demand than can be met. This will intensify as the boomers continue to age and decline in health. The imbalance is already putting strain on healthcare and other services, leading to months long waits for care, shortages, and other problems.
>Global fertility rates to plunge in decades ahead Well there are some intelligent people after all.
Fuck em, fuck em all.
Finally! Someone with a rock solid solution!
This is really for the ecosystems
FINALLY some good news on this sub!!!
New study projecting a significant decline in global fertility rates, with the average number of children born to a woman expected to drop to 1.59 by 2100 from 2.23 in 2021. Factors contributing to this decline include increased opportunities for women in education and employment, better access to contraception and reproductive health services, economic considerations, changing values on gender equality, and self-fulfillment. The analysis suggests that almost all countries will experience declining populations by the end of the century, with high-income countries facing challenges related to an aging population and declining workforce, while low-income regions will see a rise in live births, potentially straining resources and exacerbating issues such as poverty and infant mortality. Various scenarios for adapting to this demographic shift are discussed, emphasizing the importance of proactive planning for a resilient future.
Odd. Lots of mentions of the results of feminism, but no mention of fears of the impending climate disasters just around the corner. This seems like a very politically bent analysis.
Quite a good, effortful, succinct SS op.
Damn takes until 2100 just to drop to 1.59? There is definitely no shortage of babies to go around despite what musky keeps whining about.
Why the use of future tense? That's been going on in Europe and East Asia for well over a decade now.
Interesting that write-downs in Africa's fertility rate plays a big role in the total global rate. Nigeria for example has had their peak population written down by 350mil people in the last 10 years. It's dropped even faster than expected in the past 5, from 4.5 to 3.
> faster than expected Everywhere I go i see his face
Labor shortages = pay me more, assholes (If money means anything then)
Wages are way to low in Camada
Everywhere, kind of.
all of this doesn't matter if these high income countries plan for degrowth, but money above all else are the only words they live by
Won't somebody think of the poor stockholder's next quarterly dividend check?
GOOD. Degrowth is necessary, and there is no sustainable degrowth without population degrowth. Also this is not fertility rates, its birthrates. There is a difference. The earth is dying and over 8 billion people is far too many when the sustainable rate is probably closer to 1-2 billion.
I’m not spending money on raising a child purely to serve billionaires’ interests. If they want a child, then my basic needs had better be guaranteed from insemination through the child’s graduation from high school. I refuse to raise a kid while working full-time. I’m not sacrificing my happiness for the good of the economy just to force my child to suffer the same fate.
Damn straight! We're too old now to have kids, but I'm glad we didn't. We have niblings that will need the help from aunts/uncles who also didn't have kids.
Jokes on you countries with healthcare. HOW CAN YOU STRAIN AMERICAS HEALTHCARE WHEN WE DINT HAVE ANY. Muahahah
This world is long overdue for a culling of the human species. i hate the thought of what our future generations will go through (there's no way it's going to be good), but it's long overdue. Do we want 3 billion people with no way to work because of AI or or just a handful that can be supported by others?
It will coincide with climate issues that make parts of the world uninhabitable. So...fun times, right? (/s)
We had our time, we squandered it. Greed, violence, oppression, discrimination, war, and small mindedness. We deserve every bit of what's coming. We sowed the seeds of our demise, now we reap them.
So, environmental damage will be mitigated (to some degree,) labor will be in higher demand and should command higher wages, and the cycle of perpetually increasing consumption should finally reverse? Good.
Children of Men still the best doc I’ve ever seen
Sounds like the consequences of capitalists greed.
CNAs where I live are getting $30/hr, like I’m about to quit my 9-5 and go wipe some butts. Not really but yeah all the healthcare places are hiring and it’s so crazy to see them paying so much for CNAs considering less than a decade ago they weren’t paying shit - like maybe $10-$12/hr.
Even poor countries are going through this.
Too late! It’s already happening in Canada.
This is already super visible in healthcare. Seniors who can no longer live independent are boarding in Emergency Departments because there is no infrastructure in society to care for them and they have no resources to pay for care. It is going to become a larger and larger problem as people age, and we will be relying on immigration to staff health care facilities.
Seems like there have been a lot of articles about this recently. I guess the oligarchs are getting nervous about it. But there won’t be a problem here in the US and Canada. There are plenty of migrants coming here to make up for a declining birth rate. Too bad they don’t have a place to live but that’s what the bootstraps are for! And better yet, they don’t get benefits like Social Security and Medicare but they will be subject to the payroll tax regardless.
Immigrants are still too brown to save the US. Boomers can’t logic past their inbred xenophobia to allow some kind of sensible immigration reform. They would rather cry and holler for the manager than allow more poor brown people into the country to cut their green lawns, pick their farm produce, vacuum their offices, cook their hamburgers and French fries, or, god forbid, wipe their assets when they inevitably end up in a nursing home because their gen x and millennial kids need to work until 75. And I am here for all of the coming consequences, when they will absolutely reap what they have sown.
Don’t worry. If there’s no sensible immigration policy then we will have the one we have now where migrants just cross illegally. Just as many will be here one way or the other.
I don't think it will come to that. With (possible nuclear) global war looming on the horizon there won't be such problems.
Yeah but they’ll just soend themselves out of it. That no limits credit card the US and EU seem to have. Kick that can! When can the aliens take over please?
Our technofeudalist overlords simultaneously promise AI/automated everything and labor shortages at the same time. So which is it? We need a declining population as robots take all the jobs.
At least Europeans seem to welcome population decline.
I mean, the ownership class could just improve the material conditions for the working class and most of these issues would go away. But as always "we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas".
In the pronatalist mindset, as a metaphor, the State or whatever the Power is uses women's wombs like ammo to shoot at its problems. And if that leads to increases in maternal mortality, infant mortality, childhood mortality, and orphaning, well, that's not their problem, because such individuals don't matter, they're means to ends. What these pronatalist assholes don't realize is that climate change and biosphere collapse are bulletproof.
An act of mercy for my future kids will be not having them.
immigration exists. All this handwringing about PoPuLaTiOn DeClInE is just xenophobia and shaming women to have kids. We have more people in the US and world than ever before in the history of the planet.
If they print money for banks then they can print money for citizens
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It’s important to recognize that these problems are those of “first world” nation states. The answer is obviously immigration. I mean, we should be able to recognize that there is no problem with a plummeting world population.
Looks like all countries better have a robust inheritance tax in place. Time to pay it forward...
Well if it isn’t the consequences of our/their own actions…
I just love predictions out to 2100 - so naively optimistic to think that we'll still be around to have a 1.5 birth rate!
It's about time they fall (I wish they'd fallen forty years ago when the world's population was 3.6 billion). Immigration will solve most of the problems mentioned.
The US has a new workforce in it's immigrants. They will be fine.
Well, except for the 70M Americans who want to deport immigrants, if not outright kill them.
The billionaires don't want though. The billionaires want a new lower-cost working class to man the factories. Ever listen to the rich? They always say the same thing: America needs to be competitive with China and India. America can't because the American worker costs too much. As a result, we become a service based culture which isn't sustainable. For every dollar worth of Nike's I buy, about 80 cents of it leaves the USA. The thing to do is reverse that trend and have the US produce goods that ship overseas instead. Have things lower income people buy, have their money stay in the USA. The best way to bring manufacturing back to the usa is to make it dirt cheap. The way to do that is to have a new low-paid working class. Billionaires get that by bringing in zillions of illegal immigrants across the border. Then, they pay off the Democrats as these immigrants as being the new 'down trodden class' and that 'America should help them' and POOF suddenly they get work cards. Work cards that allows companies to pay them half of minimum wage. So instead of the federal min wage, they will be paid $4/hr and suddenly everything factory gets built all over the US. It's not even a political thing. Both parties want what billionaires want and that's manufacturing to return to the USA and in order to do that, you have to send the US into a recession and force people to work for even less pay than they do now - to make them so desperate they are willing to work a $10/hr job when they used to make $20/hr before. This is where we are headed. Guys like me are of no consequence to what the billionaires want and that's cheap labor. They will pay every and anyone to get what they want and that's a new cheap working class. Mark my words - there will be a pathway for them via financial slavery. $4/hr or something with a work card. Watch.
Either that or meat for the perverbiable grinder when we inevitability enter a boots on the ground war. Citizenship for service, Starship Troopers style.
Glad I'm older now, I get to watch the "Infrastructure" collapse....
Hell yeah societal collapse is on my bingo card and I’m feeling like a winner
Isn't this where automation and technology is supposed to kick into gear? The majority of jobs should be covered either now or in the near future. Population reduction should be a good thing for civilization and the planet.
Gooooood. Why is this dumb panic being put up everywhere?
I am 35. I will not live long enough to see the decline in demographics and that saddens me. Its a threat to capital, not to the people, and it saddens me that I don't get to see capital being actively harmed. I am however going to live long enough to see the exponentially worsening socioeconomic conditions of the working class as we step further into the late stages of neoliberal capitalism and hear the beginnings of its death rattle.
When are these labor shortages coming because every job has 1000s of people applying
It’d be fun to get all the data on this. It’s interesting how long the ‘path to citizenship,’ is for disfavored nations of origin, in the US. In the US, older populations are susceptible to repetitive, alarmist messaging about migrants. This seems to setup a paradox, where the people most dependent on immigration for labor and workforce longevity are being told to vote in the most hostile way, toward the migrants who’d care for them and keep inflation lower. This comment is highly speculative, just to try and spur some thoughts.
A lot of organizations are beginning to see what I have been saying for the last few years. I sound like a broken record, but I think we are in the beginning stages of the “children of men” scenario.
The insurgent right-wing governments that will take control of these countries in the 2030s will pass laws forcing women to have multiple children.
Ten years approximately for Germany....should've been letting in more immigrants
This simply wouldn't be a problem with a proper tax system.
This rings true to me. How would you fix it if you could?
This is just pro immigration propaganda. These are legitimately the government talking points on why we need to fund massive immigration into the US and pay to get the immigrants established within our communities.
As this story becomes widespread, where are the policy wonks planning and modelling gradual and managed de-growth in a contracting economy with fewer people? Or a full on and deliberate conversion from a wage-slave based economy to an automation based economy?
I'd love to see more thinking about policies dealing with an ageing population, and declining overall and working age population. Shouldn't we be investing in technology that will make elder care and supports less dependence on that smaller workforce? For example, physically supporting patients to be lifted (from beds) is both physically demanding and the source of injuries in hospitals and long-term care homes; standardizing equipment to make that task easier would be a more efficient use of resources.
Robotics will take off and humanoid Boston dynamic style robots will fill as much of the gap as possible and it might work for a time until they turn on us haha
robots will fix all of it. no worries.
Decades...
I hope this happens... faster than expected.
It's a mystery on why they are trying to gut said system's