Yes. This is where the article should end. Yep, our economy is a Ponzi scheme that needs new buyers (babies) to keep producing in its current form. More babies just kicks the can down the road,...
So it seems a bit counterintuitive to worry that, actually, we’re not reproducing enough.
Yes. This is where the article should end.
There are financial as well as social consequences to this fertility crisis.
Yep, our economy is a Ponzi scheme that needs new buyers (babies) to keep producing in its current form. More babies just kicks the can down the road, while exacerbating the issues of having too many people.
Exactly. The economy needs to be restructured to work with a stable or reduced population. If than means a wealth tax on billionaires or something like that, sounds fine to me. Honestly, the fact...
Exactly. The economy needs to be restructured to work with a stable or reduced population. If than means a wealth tax on billionaires or something like that, sounds fine to me.
Honestly, the fact that our population is getting close to peaking is great news. It means we might just squeak by after all. Maybe.
I mean the answer is incredibly unpopular and people won't like it, but in a society without enough labor to sustain an old population which doesn't work the solution is to have them work in...
Exemplary
I mean the answer is incredibly unpopular and people won't like it, but in a society without enough labor to sustain an old population which doesn't work the solution is to have them work in whatever way they can. You can tax billionaires and companies all you want, if there isn't enough labor to produce for the retired cohort, the market will correct by raising wages until people working on other things start serving the needs of retired people, the result of this is inflation. We have mostly managed to avoid inflation by passing legislation that pushes these wages down by encouraging companies to become conglomerates, which boosts the value of stocks, where a lot of retirement money is, or they zone properties to restrict the amount of real estate that can be built so people can retire, etc. It's gotten to a point where every time I see some sort of new economic policy my first question is whether or not this is just another scheme to prop up the idea of retirement, and it always is.
I'm not clear on what would be inflationary about taking money from billionaires and using it to pay people who work in assisted living facilities an adequate wage. It's just moving money around,...
I'm not clear on what would be inflationary about taking money from billionaires and using it to pay people who work in assisted living facilities an adequate wage. It's just moving money around, not printing new money.
The inflation doesn't come from taking money from billionaires, it comes from not having enough people to work on what needs to be done. Raising wages in the assisted living industry means that...
The inflation doesn't come from taking money from billionaires, it comes from not having enough people to work on what needs to be done. Raising wages in the assisted living industry means that people will leave from other industries (let's say, teachers) which requires them to raise salaries to cover their vacancies and so on. This inflation isn't bad for most people who work for a living, but it's bad for people who hold assets, usually when this happens governments tend to curb it asap because it could leave retired people who planned their retirement until a certain age with a certain amount of money short, who tend to be the people who vote. We experienced some of this kind of inflation in the last few years, but the fed raised interest rates to stop this from happening, and so the stock market and housing market went up again.
On another note, the money taken from billionaires is being used for "innovation" by investing it into the stock market or other ventures, hoping to build new things that bring value to people. Even if you're skeptical about that and think we should expropriate money from billionaires, that money could be going elsewhere, like infrastructure or education, it goes back to my last point, where I'm wondering why we keep trying to prop up retirement at such young ages, it's unsustainable and greatly taxes the youth.
I'm having a really hard time seeing a problem with working people, especially the teachers in your example, being paid more. If we have to take extra money from billionaires to cover...
I'm having a really hard time seeing a problem with working people, especially the teachers in your example, being paid more. If we have to take extra money from billionaires to cover infrastructure and education I'm fine with that as well.
It's the Syndrome effect: if everyone's being paid more, then nobody is. If there's not enough people and pay increases across the board to compensate for the shortage, then prices of goods will...
It's the Syndrome effect: if everyone's being paid more, then nobody is. If there's not enough people and pay increases across the board to compensate for the shortage, then prices of goods will also increase as those goods become more expensive to create due to labour costs. And therefore you get inflation, because even as people are earning more money, that money won't stretch as far as before.
There's a bunch of caveats here of course, and I don't entirely agree with the previous poster's point. For example, as labour costs increase, you'll also see companies looking more at automation - if a new machine that gets rid of your workers costs the same as five years' salary for all your workers, then maybe the risk/reward ratio isn't quite right. But if it costs the same as one year's salary, then that sounds like a much better deal. Measures like taxing billionaires might also have an impact, but I think are mostly short-term solutions. Taxing billionaires is a wealth transfer measure - by doing it, you ideally reduce the numbers of billionaires, resulting in less tax next year. You can't build a sustainable tax base with these sorts of redistributive taxes.
This is kind of silly to me. The types of jobs we're talking about are both extremely hard to automate (otherwise the shortages wouldn't be nearly so concerning) and very underpaid relative to...
This is kind of silly to me. The types of jobs we're talking about are both extremely hard to automate (otherwise the shortages wouldn't be nearly so concerning) and very underpaid relative to other similarly demanding careers. There isn't a "Syndrome effect" if you raise wages for a role that has a shortage of necessary workers, because some people who otherwise wouldn't have worked in that industry due to the low pay will now consider switching to it. Most low-end retail jobs started being offered for higher wages directly post pandemic due to labor shortages. I absolutely promise you the people making $13 an hour rather than $9 an hour were impacted by the better wages. And that's in jobs that are more easily replaced with automation than something like elder care or teaching.
Except there's only a limited supply of workers. You can pay workers more and make care work a more attractive industry, but those workers need to come from somewhere. If the labour pool is...
Except there's only a limited supply of workers. You can pay workers more and make care work a more attractive industry, but those workers need to come from somewhere. If the labour pool is shrinking as you put more money into care, then other companies are going to be competing and also paying more, leading to inflation as everyone pays more for the same amount of work.
One solution to this is to make the labour market more elastic - it's okay if one sector of the market is booming if more people are being made available. To take part in the sector without disturbing the other areas so much. But for that you need immigration or high birth rates, one of which involves taking people out of other economies, and the other of which is what we're discussing here.
I'm just not convinced we're at a point where there's objectively not enough workers in the entire economy for these jobs to get done. I think the issue is that these jobs are unattractive to...
I'm just not convinced we're at a point where there's objectively not enough workers in the entire economy for these jobs to get done. I think the issue is that these jobs are unattractive to workers that exist and would not bring the economy down if they switched careers. Heck, I'd look into teaching myself if it paid better, and I promise that we are not suffering from a shortage of my current job.
One need only look at the US healthcare industry to find hordes of workers who provide nothing of actual value to society. Fix that problem, and there are plenty of people to care for the elderly,...
One need only look at the US healthcare industry to find hordes of workers who provide nothing of actual value to society. Fix that problem, and there are plenty of people to care for the elderly, I suspect
Unless there are asset taxes on billionaires, they'll still be able to sit on their billions. Even a 100% tax on income after 1 billion wouldn't stop someone from accumulating that much, only slow...
Unless there are asset taxes on billionaires, they'll still be able to sit on their billions. Even a 100% tax on income after 1 billion wouldn't stop someone from accumulating that much, only slow down going any higher. But at the same time, you can have those fierce upper tiers and still have proportionate taxes at lower income tiers. And once billionaires aren't sitting on their hoards of assets, the velocity (and thus frequency of taxation) of the money would sustain public programs much better than currently.
It's not an issue to you, it's an issue to people who want to retire at 60, 65, etc. Their retirement funds/assets/etc won't keep up with the costs of what they need to live. The short of it is...
It's not an issue to you, it's an issue to people who want to retire at 60, 65, etc. Their retirement funds/assets/etc won't keep up with the costs of what they need to live. The short of it is that unless we get to a post scarcity society where old people can function without anyone taking care of them, then end of life care will be unaffordable unless they work for a longer period of their life.
It's not that simple. The issue isn't that there are not enough people overall, it's too many old people. Too many old people means less people who can (or are willing to) work and more people who...
It's not that simple. The issue isn't that there are not enough people overall, it's too many old people. Too many old people means less people who can (or are willing to) work and more people who need some sort of care. Who's going to take care of them? Younger people who would otherwise provide goods and services for other young people.
If this keeps getting worse, people will eventually keep working until they slowly die where fell and can't get up by themselves. This is probably an exaggeration, I don't know, but that's the gist of the issue.
It's only a fertility crisis in places that don't welcome new people from around the world. If you need to have your replacements look and think just like you, then yes, you've gotta pump out and...
It's only a fertility crisis in places that don't welcome new people from around the world. If you need to have your replacements look and think just like you, then yes, you've gotta pump out and indoctrinate those babies. If you're welcoming to a broader swath of humanity, there's plenty of people who would do amazing things with the opportunities available to people in countries with more robust governmental systems and infrastructure.
Immigration as a solution, ignoring the social hurdles of integrating large numbers of people from other cultures for a moment, is just kicking the can down the road in rich countries at the cost...
Immigration as a solution, ignoring the social hurdles of integrating large numbers of people from other cultures for a moment, is just kicking the can down the road in rich countries at the cost of robbing developing countries of their best and brightest. As those countries develop, we're seeing their fertility rates plummet, and at a much faster rate than it did in the west and east Asia. India, for example, is already at around 2 and is on track to hit Japan levels by 2050.
I don't think you can say in order to save our species we need to not have babies. That is counter intuitive. If we want to "survive as a species" we need to make raising children easier. Of...
I don't think you can say in order to save our species we need to not have babies. That is counter intuitive. If we want to "survive as a species" we need to make raising children easier. Of course over population is bad too, so it's a balance.
I agree wholeheartedly. There's no singular solution to the issue. You can't just throw money at people and hope they have kids. Communities and towns need to be structured around raising families...
I agree wholeheartedly. There's no singular solution to the issue. You can't just throw money at people and hope they have kids. Communities and towns need to be structured around raising families if that's the goal you're trying to achieve. Families need ample living space, places to take their kids, ways to connect with other families, ample social support, and so much more. You can't squeeze people into dense cities or fling them hundreds of miles from extended family and expect that they'll want to or be able to raise more than a single child on average if at all
I think dense cities would be fine if more of the space was shared and there was more community within it. Okay, so you've got a small apartment. Your kids don't have a ton of space in it to play....
I think dense cities would be fine if more of the space was shared and there was more community within it. Okay, so you've got a small apartment. Your kids don't have a ton of space in it to play. But your neighbor's is a little bigger*, they can play there if the weather is bad. Or the park outside is a great place for all the kids in the building to play when it's nice out. The park isn't that big either, and as they get older they get a bit bored of that, but that's okay because some of the older kids are willing to take them to a bigger park that biking distance away, or to some other communal shared space where kids can have fun.
That wouldn't really work in a situation where you don't know your neighbors or trust the older kids, though.
I'm so, so sick of hearing about this fake "crisis". It's literally only a crisis because our economy is constructed so as to require perpetual growth. Now we've got otherwise well-educated,...
I'm so, so sick of hearing about this fake "crisis". It's literally only a crisis because our economy is constructed so as to require perpetual growth. Now we've got otherwise well-educated, progressive people losing their minds because we're not acting like it's the 1950s. Like, a falling population is basically a "get out of jail free" card for all kinds of social and political problems, including climate change. The only thing we have to give up is massive wealth concentration, seems like a good deal to me.
Aside from the economy, there is also the issue of the number of elderly needing care and support greatly outstripping the number of young people able to provide it. The most frequently proposed...
Aside from the economy, there is also the issue of the number of elderly needing care and support greatly outstripping the number of young people able to provide it. The most frequently proposed solution is something along the lines of caretaker androids, but it's not clear that the technology developments required for those to become real will happen in time, plus there's potentially ethical concerns (can people thrive when taken care of by machines instead of other people, etc).
Plenty of young people exist to take care of the elderly, it's just not valued as a part of society. The job that I do would not exist if America had a functioning healthcare system, and...
Plenty of young people exist to take care of the elderly, it's just not valued as a part of society. The job that I do would not exist if America had a functioning healthcare system, and contributes almost nothing to society. I would much rather take care of elderly people all day (and I do have non-paid experience with it, so that's not assuming it will be more pleasant than it is) but I wouldn't be able to afford to live on the wages that it pays.
Aside from increased pay, it would also need to be an adequately staffed facility where the workers are respected, and the safety and comfort of both the workers and the residents is respected and prioritized. That's not technologically impossible at all, but it's also far from the current situation.
I understand the concern, but I think it's a very solvable problem, particularly given that the aging people currently hold an enormous amount of wealth relative to the younger people. Plus, it...
I understand the concern, but I think it's a very solvable problem, particularly given that the aging people currently hold an enormous amount of wealth relative to the younger people. Plus, it would probably be healthier for the economy if that wealth transferred sooner as taxes and payment for care services rather than later as inheritance.
You couldn't pay me enough to work in a retirement home, and I suspect I'm not alone in that perspective. I'm also not sure that it's the kind of field where you want to drive more people to it...
You couldn't pay me enough to work in a retirement home, and I suspect I'm not alone in that perspective. I'm also not sure that it's the kind of field where you want to drive more people to it based on pay alone.
I'm amenable to the idea of much lower global populations, but I don't think there's any getting around the fact that the transition to that is going to be rough. (And even then, it seems hard to get an affluent society to operate at replacement levels — we seem to either be very far above or quite a bit below that number.)
Like it or not, we in the developed world do live in a capitalist, hyper individualistic society that doesn't value people much beyond their economic output. An overwhelming majority of people do not save enough for retirement as it is. And I would imagine that a massively aging population will only increase the costs of retirement as more and more people compete for access to dwindling resources.
It affects more than the elderly. An aging population will have the elderly consuming quite a lot of access to medical care. There are already labor shortages and issues with burnout in medicine — this would only exacerbate it.
I don't know what the answer is, but I do think it's a problem if fertility rates go off of a cliff. A gradual decline in population (and therefore population aging) would certainly be easier to manage. But that doesn't seem to be what societies do when they become prosperous.
The point about societies being either way above or way below the replacement rate is interesting, and that would certainly complicate things. A good answer to a lot of this is, perhaps, and I can...
I don't know what the answer is, but I do think it's a problem if fertility rates go off of a cliff. A gradual decline in population (and therefore population aging) would certainly be easier to manage. But that doesn't seem to be what societies do when they become prosperous.
The point about societies being either way above or way below the replacement rate is interesting, and that would certainly complicate things. A good answer to a lot of this is, perhaps, and I can only speak for what I can see in the US, that our societies need to become more "communal". If services can be provisioned to many people at once, then less labor is required. Obviously this doesn't apply to everything (it wouldn't make sense to have a group doctor appointment).
I honestly have begun to think that the solution to the elderly care problem is draconian patronizing health mandates. Many of the maladies we associate with old age are not inevitable, and in...
I honestly have begun to think that the solution to the elderly care problem is draconian patronizing health mandates. Many of the maladies we associate with old age are not inevitable, and in fact can be affected by lifestyle and dietary choices. Such a setup would benefit the population as a whole, not just the elderly.
That being said, I cannot think of a less popular idea! I don’t think there are many places in the world where such laws would be able to pass without the benefit of an autocracy or oligopoly. The closest we have today are in Southeast Asia where they have programs like subsidies for healthy meals and employer-run weight management programs.
And even if we did manage to get such a comprehensive and effective program enacted, people’s bodies will eventually give out no matter what. While behavior and environment are extremely important in epigenetics, you still can’t ignore genes.
A lot of the nutrition side of things can be resolved by changing food taxes and subsidies. The sugary drinks taxes some municipalities have tried have significantly decreased the amount of soda...
A lot of the nutrition side of things can be resolved by changing food taxes and subsidies. The sugary drinks taxes some municipalities have tried have significantly decreased the amount of soda purchased, so if national policy was focused on incentivizing the production and sale of healthier food people would trend towards eating healthier just because healthier things were the cheap, available option. If we subsidized beans more and corn less, there'd be less high fructose corn syrup available. Things like that.
Yes! Thank you for saying this. At least in the US, everything is backwards, in the subsidy game. And, it's not just food! We subsidize things we know are undesirable or don't work. Sigh
Yes! Thank you for saying this. At least in the US, everything is backwards, in the subsidy game. And, it's not just food! We subsidize things we know are undesirable or don't work. Sigh
Maybe you realize that and you're only talking about the US, but this is an extremely western-centric (and mostly specifically USA-centric) point of view. The problem of "who will pay for pensions...
I understand the concern, but I think it's a very solvable problem, particularly given that the aging people currently hold an enormous amount of wealth relative to the younger people.
Maybe you realize that and you're only talking about the US, but this is an extremely western-centric (and mostly specifically USA-centric) point of view. The problem of "who will pay for pensions and healthcare for the elderly" exists in many countries where what you say is not the case and the elderly are already relatively poor.
Also aging population brings other issues, like the healthcare needs suddenly become much higher for the same number of people. Brits often blame Tories for irreparably screwing up the NHS, and there's a point to it, but the core problem is not attempts at solving problems through partial privatization, the core problem is nobody prepared the system for significantly increased needs of an aging population. And it won't get better any time soon because it cannot be solved just by throwing money at the problem.
I realize you're expressing frustration with the current economic system, but I believe it's unreasonable to call a situation that already brings real problems in some societies (Japan, UK),...
I'm so, so sick of hearing about this fake "crisis". It's literally only a crisis because our economy is constructed so as to require perpetual growth.
I realize you're expressing frustration with the current economic system, but I believe it's unreasonable to call a situation that already brings real problems in some societies (Japan, UK), cannot be solved quickly and exists within our very real political and economic systems that most people do not wish to change and most people who tried did not succeed as "fake".
I find it very strange that for most of 2000 - 2017 or so the Internet was constantly hand-wringing about a looming overpopulation crisis ("30 billion world population by 2050! We're all going to...
I find it very strange that for most of 2000 - 2017 or so the Internet was constantly hand-wringing about a looming overpopulation crisis ("30 billion world population by 2050! We're all going to starve!"), only to abruptly swap polarity and start stressing about an underpopulation crisis.
There are many factors that influence the zeitgeist of a given time, and I don't think it's all the worthwhile to try to attribute motivations to large groups of people (especially one so large as...
There are many factors that influence the zeitgeist of a given time, and I don't think it's all the worthwhile to try to attribute motivations to large groups of people (especially one so large as the entirety of the internet), but one parsimonious explanation I can think of is that people who were concerned about overpopulation probably aren't going to be too vocal about replacement rates falling so you're only going to hear people concerned about the other end of things.
How about both? "Underpopulation" / Population growth below replacement levels in the developed world. Overpopulation globally. As in, we consume more resources than earth can sustainably provide....
How about both? "Underpopulation" / Population growth below replacement levels in the developed world. Overpopulation globally. As in, we consume more resources than earth can sustainably provide. Irrespective of where those resources are and where the people consuming them are. And yes, the synthesis of those two means that developed countries continue to decline in population while developing countries explode in population. Perfect feed stock for "great replacement" type conspiracy theories, but I think it's too simplistic to simply write off overpopulation concerns as an ethnonationalist narrative.
Both are a concern. You can't sustain 30 billion on this planet. Even 10 billion will make some of our problems worse, and that seems to be where we're headed. To a first degree approximation, 4 billion now would be better than the 8 billion we're at. (*)
Meanwhile, population decline will invariably lead to issues, irrespective of the economic system in place. Too many old people that can't meaningfully contribute to society. There's ways of addressing this and softening the hit - raising the retirement age, shifting medical KPIs from "years lived" to "healthy years lived", involving the elderly better in child rearing. But you're still going to have to somehow deal with that 65 year old electrician whos knees are so fucked he can't even stand up straight anymore and who smoked enough in his days to pave a road with his lungs. Perhaps for 40 more years. And you're either going to have to tell his family you're letting him die, or you somehow pay his medical bills.
And migration is also not really a sustainable solution. Either wealthy countries pick out the best workers to prop up their economies, thus depriving those countries of the valuable human capital that could drive their development forward. Or wealthy countries are less selective about who they allow in, which does little to address the demographic challenges and can easily lead to xenophobic sentiments boiling over.
Personally, I think some unpleasant choices will have to be made on all fronts here. We're probably best on track wrt. the overpopulation thing: No one talks about 30 billion, and the projected peak of 10 billion will be a bit tighter than now but probably doable.
(*) massive asterisk on that one, because the second degree approximation curves in the other direction. More people means more people doing innovation, and bigger markets to fund those innovations. Hell, some products (e.g. electronics) we're relying on today are so capital intensive, I doubt if they could exist in smaller markets. To illustrate that this isn't just electronic toys like iPhones: Look at the "learning curve" of solar power, how it got cheaper with increased adoption. Achieving the necessary scale for that is more difficult with a smaller population.
Your aside on learning curves reminds me of the concept of activation energy in chemistry. We may need massive markets to support the R&D, but the supply chains could be profitable at much smaller...
Your aside on learning curves reminds me of the concept of activation energy in chemistry. We may need massive markets to support the R&D, but the supply chains could be profitable at much smaller scales than what was needed during the learning curve.
It's all the same people and they're still simultaneously complaining about overpopulation as well -- rich (mostly white) countries are having an underpopulation crisis and poor (mostly non-white)...
It's all the same people and they're still simultaneously complaining about overpopulation as well -- rich (mostly white) countries are having an underpopulation crisis and poor (mostly non-white) foreigners are contributing to a dangerous global overpopulation problem. They don't usually say so quite so explicitly but... it's not hard to spot the pattern.
Another pattern that may be relevant is that many of the people audibly concerned about overpopulation on the internet 10-20 years ago were in a stage of life where having children wasn't in any...
Another pattern that may be relevant is that many of the people audibly concerned about overpopulation on the internet 10-20 years ago were in a stage of life where having children wasn't in any way smart, practical, or desirable which makes it a lot easier to make sweeping statements on the subject. Many of those same people are now at the age where they're settling in and feeling both biological clocks ticking and pressure from family and peers, which intuitively would be a powerful force in shifting views/opinions.
It’s also worth mentioning that the people are different, and they have different influences. The underpopulation people are influenced by the “line goes up” crowd, while the overpopulation crowd...
It’s also worth mentioning that the people are different, and they have different influences. The underpopulation people are influenced by the “line goes up” crowd, while the overpopulation crowd are influenced by neomalthusian economics.
Yes. This is where the article should end.
Yep, our economy is a Ponzi scheme that needs new buyers (babies) to keep producing in its current form. More babies just kicks the can down the road, while exacerbating the issues of having too many people.
Exactly. The economy needs to be restructured to work with a stable or reduced population. If than means a wealth tax on billionaires or something like that, sounds fine to me.
Honestly, the fact that our population is getting close to peaking is great news. It means we might just squeak by after all. Maybe.
I mean the answer is incredibly unpopular and people won't like it, but in a society without enough labor to sustain an old population which doesn't work the solution is to have them work in whatever way they can. You can tax billionaires and companies all you want, if there isn't enough labor to produce for the retired cohort, the market will correct by raising wages until people working on other things start serving the needs of retired people, the result of this is inflation. We have mostly managed to avoid inflation by passing legislation that pushes these wages down by encouraging companies to become conglomerates, which boosts the value of stocks, where a lot of retirement money is, or they zone properties to restrict the amount of real estate that can be built so people can retire, etc. It's gotten to a point where every time I see some sort of new economic policy my first question is whether or not this is just another scheme to prop up the idea of retirement, and it always is.
I'm not clear on what would be inflationary about taking money from billionaires and using it to pay people who work in assisted living facilities an adequate wage. It's just moving money around, not printing new money.
The inflation doesn't come from taking money from billionaires, it comes from not having enough people to work on what needs to be done. Raising wages in the assisted living industry means that people will leave from other industries (let's say, teachers) which requires them to raise salaries to cover their vacancies and so on. This inflation isn't bad for most people who work for a living, but it's bad for people who hold assets, usually when this happens governments tend to curb it asap because it could leave retired people who planned their retirement until a certain age with a certain amount of money short, who tend to be the people who vote. We experienced some of this kind of inflation in the last few years, but the fed raised interest rates to stop this from happening, and so the stock market and housing market went up again.
On another note, the money taken from billionaires is being used for "innovation" by investing it into the stock market or other ventures, hoping to build new things that bring value to people. Even if you're skeptical about that and think we should expropriate money from billionaires, that money could be going elsewhere, like infrastructure or education, it goes back to my last point, where I'm wondering why we keep trying to prop up retirement at such young ages, it's unsustainable and greatly taxes the youth.
I'm having a really hard time seeing a problem with working people, especially the teachers in your example, being paid more. If we have to take extra money from billionaires to cover infrastructure and education I'm fine with that as well.
It's the Syndrome effect: if everyone's being paid more, then nobody is. If there's not enough people and pay increases across the board to compensate for the shortage, then prices of goods will also increase as those goods become more expensive to create due to labour costs. And therefore you get inflation, because even as people are earning more money, that money won't stretch as far as before.
There's a bunch of caveats here of course, and I don't entirely agree with the previous poster's point. For example, as labour costs increase, you'll also see companies looking more at automation - if a new machine that gets rid of your workers costs the same as five years' salary for all your workers, then maybe the risk/reward ratio isn't quite right. But if it costs the same as one year's salary, then that sounds like a much better deal. Measures like taxing billionaires might also have an impact, but I think are mostly short-term solutions. Taxing billionaires is a wealth transfer measure - by doing it, you ideally reduce the numbers of billionaires, resulting in less tax next year. You can't build a sustainable tax base with these sorts of redistributive taxes.
This is kind of silly to me. The types of jobs we're talking about are both extremely hard to automate (otherwise the shortages wouldn't be nearly so concerning) and very underpaid relative to other similarly demanding careers. There isn't a "Syndrome effect" if you raise wages for a role that has a shortage of necessary workers, because some people who otherwise wouldn't have worked in that industry due to the low pay will now consider switching to it. Most low-end retail jobs started being offered for higher wages directly post pandemic due to labor shortages. I absolutely promise you the people making $13 an hour rather than $9 an hour were impacted by the better wages. And that's in jobs that are more easily replaced with automation than something like elder care or teaching.
Except there's only a limited supply of workers. You can pay workers more and make care work a more attractive industry, but those workers need to come from somewhere. If the labour pool is shrinking as you put more money into care, then other companies are going to be competing and also paying more, leading to inflation as everyone pays more for the same amount of work.
One solution to this is to make the labour market more elastic - it's okay if one sector of the market is booming if more people are being made available. To take part in the sector without disturbing the other areas so much. But for that you need immigration or high birth rates, one of which involves taking people out of other economies, and the other of which is what we're discussing here.
I'm just not convinced we're at a point where there's objectively not enough workers in the entire economy for these jobs to get done. I think the issue is that these jobs are unattractive to workers that exist and would not bring the economy down if they switched careers. Heck, I'd look into teaching myself if it paid better, and I promise that we are not suffering from a shortage of my current job.
One need only look at the US healthcare industry to find hordes of workers who provide nothing of actual value to society. Fix that problem, and there are plenty of people to care for the elderly, I suspect
Unless there are asset taxes on billionaires, they'll still be able to sit on their billions. Even a 100% tax on income after 1 billion wouldn't stop someone from accumulating that much, only slow down going any higher. But at the same time, you can have those fierce upper tiers and still have proportionate taxes at lower income tiers. And once billionaires aren't sitting on their hoards of assets, the velocity (and thus frequency of taxation) of the money would sustain public programs much better than currently.
It's not an issue to you, it's an issue to people who want to retire at 60, 65, etc. Their retirement funds/assets/etc won't keep up with the costs of what they need to live. The short of it is that unless we get to a post scarcity society where old people can function without anyone taking care of them, then end of life care will be unaffordable unless they work for a longer period of their life.
It's not that simple. The issue isn't that there are not enough people overall, it's too many old people. Too many old people means less people who can (or are willing to) work and more people who need some sort of care. Who's going to take care of them? Younger people who would otherwise provide goods and services for other young people.
If this keeps getting worse, people will eventually keep working until they slowly die where fell and can't get up by themselves. This is probably an exaggeration, I don't know, but that's the gist of the issue.
It's only a fertility crisis in places that don't welcome new people from around the world. If you need to have your replacements look and think just like you, then yes, you've gotta pump out and indoctrinate those babies. If you're welcoming to a broader swath of humanity, there's plenty of people who would do amazing things with the opportunities available to people in countries with more robust governmental systems and infrastructure.
Immigration as a solution, ignoring the social hurdles of integrating large numbers of people from other cultures for a moment, is just kicking the can down the road in rich countries at the cost of robbing developing countries of their best and brightest. As those countries develop, we're seeing their fertility rates plummet, and at a much faster rate than it did in the west and east Asia. India, for example, is already at around 2 and is on track to hit Japan levels by 2050.
I don't think you can say in order to save our species we need to not have babies. That is counter intuitive. If we want to "survive as a species" we need to make raising children easier. Of course over population is bad too, so it's a balance.
I agree wholeheartedly. There's no singular solution to the issue. You can't just throw money at people and hope they have kids. Communities and towns need to be structured around raising families if that's the goal you're trying to achieve. Families need ample living space, places to take their kids, ways to connect with other families, ample social support, and so much more. You can't squeeze people into dense cities or fling them hundreds of miles from extended family and expect that they'll want to or be able to raise more than a single child on average if at all
I think dense cities would be fine if more of the space was shared and there was more community within it. Okay, so you've got a small apartment. Your kids don't have a ton of space in it to play. But your neighbor's is a little bigger*, they can play there if the weather is bad. Or the park outside is a great place for all the kids in the building to play when it's nice out. The park isn't that big either, and as they get older they get a bit bored of that, but that's okay because some of the older kids are willing to take them to a bigger park that biking distance away, or to some other communal shared space where kids can have fun.
That wouldn't really work in a situation where you don't know your neighbors or trust the older kids, though.
I'm so, so sick of hearing about this fake "crisis". It's literally only a crisis because our economy is constructed so as to require perpetual growth. Now we've got otherwise well-educated, progressive people losing their minds because we're not acting like it's the 1950s. Like, a falling population is basically a "get out of jail free" card for all kinds of social and political problems, including climate change. The only thing we have to give up is massive wealth concentration, seems like a good deal to me.
Aside from the economy, there is also the issue of the number of elderly needing care and support greatly outstripping the number of young people able to provide it. The most frequently proposed solution is something along the lines of caretaker androids, but it's not clear that the technology developments required for those to become real will happen in time, plus there's potentially ethical concerns (can people thrive when taken care of by machines instead of other people, etc).
Plenty of young people exist to take care of the elderly, it's just not valued as a part of society. The job that I do would not exist if America had a functioning healthcare system, and contributes almost nothing to society. I would much rather take care of elderly people all day (and I do have non-paid experience with it, so that's not assuming it will be more pleasant than it is) but I wouldn't be able to afford to live on the wages that it pays.
Aside from increased pay, it would also need to be an adequately staffed facility where the workers are respected, and the safety and comfort of both the workers and the residents is respected and prioritized. That's not technologically impossible at all, but it's also far from the current situation.
I understand the concern, but I think it's a very solvable problem, particularly given that the aging people currently hold an enormous amount of wealth relative to the younger people. Plus, it would probably be healthier for the economy if that wealth transferred sooner as taxes and payment for care services rather than later as inheritance.
You couldn't pay me enough to work in a retirement home, and I suspect I'm not alone in that perspective. I'm also not sure that it's the kind of field where you want to drive more people to it based on pay alone.
I'm amenable to the idea of much lower global populations, but I don't think there's any getting around the fact that the transition to that is going to be rough. (And even then, it seems hard to get an affluent society to operate at replacement levels — we seem to either be very far above or quite a bit below that number.)
Like it or not, we in the developed world do live in a capitalist, hyper individualistic society that doesn't value people much beyond their economic output. An overwhelming majority of people do not save enough for retirement as it is. And I would imagine that a massively aging population will only increase the costs of retirement as more and more people compete for access to dwindling resources.
It affects more than the elderly. An aging population will have the elderly consuming quite a lot of access to medical care. There are already labor shortages and issues with burnout in medicine — this would only exacerbate it.
I don't know what the answer is, but I do think it's a problem if fertility rates go off of a cliff. A gradual decline in population (and therefore population aging) would certainly be easier to manage. But that doesn't seem to be what societies do when they become prosperous.
The point about societies being either way above or way below the replacement rate is interesting, and that would certainly complicate things. A good answer to a lot of this is, perhaps, and I can only speak for what I can see in the US, that our societies need to become more "communal". If services can be provisioned to many people at once, then less labor is required. Obviously this doesn't apply to everything (it wouldn't make sense to have a group doctor appointment).
I honestly have begun to think that the solution to the elderly care problem is draconian patronizing health mandates. Many of the maladies we associate with old age are not inevitable, and in fact can be affected by lifestyle and dietary choices. Such a setup would benefit the population as a whole, not just the elderly.
That being said, I cannot think of a less popular idea! I don’t think there are many places in the world where such laws would be able to pass without the benefit of an autocracy or oligopoly. The closest we have today are in Southeast Asia where they have programs like subsidies for healthy meals and employer-run weight management programs.
And even if we did manage to get such a comprehensive and effective program enacted, people’s bodies will eventually give out no matter what. While behavior and environment are extremely important in epigenetics, you still can’t ignore genes.
A lot of the nutrition side of things can be resolved by changing food taxes and subsidies. The sugary drinks taxes some municipalities have tried have significantly decreased the amount of soda purchased, so if national policy was focused on incentivizing the production and sale of healthier food people would trend towards eating healthier just because healthier things were the cheap, available option. If we subsidized beans more and corn less, there'd be less high fructose corn syrup available. Things like that.
Yes! Thank you for saying this. At least in the US, everything is backwards, in the subsidy game. And, it's not just food! We subsidize things we know are undesirable or don't work. Sigh
Maybe you realize that and you're only talking about the US, but this is an extremely western-centric (and mostly specifically USA-centric) point of view. The problem of "who will pay for pensions and healthcare for the elderly" exists in many countries where what you say is not the case and the elderly are already relatively poor.
Also aging population brings other issues, like the healthcare needs suddenly become much higher for the same number of people. Brits often blame Tories for irreparably screwing up the NHS, and there's a point to it, but the core problem is not attempts at solving problems through partial privatization, the core problem is nobody prepared the system for significantly increased needs of an aging population. And it won't get better any time soon because it cannot be solved just by throwing money at the problem.
That's fair, I should have specified that my frustration is with the US, other countries have their own specific circumstances.
Wouldn’t that mostly be wealth transfer from one moderately rich person to the outright wealthy owner of the old folks’ home?
I realize you're expressing frustration with the current economic system, but I believe it's unreasonable to call a situation that already brings real problems in some societies (Japan, UK), cannot be solved quickly and exists within our very real political and economic systems that most people do not wish to change and most people who tried did not succeed as "fake".
I find it very strange that for most of 2000 - 2017 or so the Internet was constantly hand-wringing about a looming overpopulation crisis ("30 billion world population by 2050! We're all going to starve!"), only to abruptly swap polarity and start stressing about an underpopulation crisis.
There are many factors that influence the zeitgeist of a given time, and I don't think it's all the worthwhile to try to attribute motivations to large groups of people (especially one so large as the entirety of the internet), but one parsimonious explanation I can think of is that people who were concerned about overpopulation probably aren't going to be too vocal about replacement rates falling so you're only going to hear people concerned about the other end of things.
How about both? "Underpopulation" / Population growth below replacement levels in the developed world. Overpopulation globally. As in, we consume more resources than earth can sustainably provide. Irrespective of where those resources are and where the people consuming them are. And yes, the synthesis of those two means that developed countries continue to decline in population while developing countries explode in population. Perfect feed stock for "great replacement" type conspiracy theories, but I think it's too simplistic to simply write off overpopulation concerns as an ethnonationalist narrative.
Both are a concern. You can't sustain 30 billion on this planet. Even 10 billion will make some of our problems worse, and that seems to be where we're headed. To a first degree approximation, 4 billion now would be better than the 8 billion we're at. (*)
Meanwhile, population decline will invariably lead to issues, irrespective of the economic system in place. Too many old people that can't meaningfully contribute to society. There's ways of addressing this and softening the hit - raising the retirement age, shifting medical KPIs from "years lived" to "healthy years lived", involving the elderly better in child rearing. But you're still going to have to somehow deal with that 65 year old electrician whos knees are so fucked he can't even stand up straight anymore and who smoked enough in his days to pave a road with his lungs. Perhaps for 40 more years. And you're either going to have to tell his family you're letting him die, or you somehow pay his medical bills.
And migration is also not really a sustainable solution. Either wealthy countries pick out the best workers to prop up their economies, thus depriving those countries of the valuable human capital that could drive their development forward. Or wealthy countries are less selective about who they allow in, which does little to address the demographic challenges and can easily lead to xenophobic sentiments boiling over.
Personally, I think some unpleasant choices will have to be made on all fronts here. We're probably best on track wrt. the overpopulation thing: No one talks about 30 billion, and the projected peak of 10 billion will be a bit tighter than now but probably doable.
(*) massive asterisk on that one, because the second degree approximation curves in the other direction. More people means more people doing innovation, and bigger markets to fund those innovations. Hell, some products (e.g. electronics) we're relying on today are so capital intensive, I doubt if they could exist in smaller markets. To illustrate that this isn't just electronic toys like iPhones: Look at the "learning curve" of solar power, how it got cheaper with increased adoption. Achieving the necessary scale for that is more difficult with a smaller population.
Your aside on learning curves reminds me of the concept of activation energy in chemistry. We may need massive markets to support the R&D, but the supply chains could be profitable at much smaller scales than what was needed during the learning curve.
It's all the same people and they're still simultaneously complaining about overpopulation as well -- rich (mostly white) countries are having an underpopulation crisis and poor (mostly non-white) foreigners are contributing to a dangerous global overpopulation problem. They don't usually say so quite so explicitly but... it's not hard to spot the pattern.
Another pattern that may be relevant is that many of the people audibly concerned about overpopulation on the internet 10-20 years ago were in a stage of life where having children wasn't in any way smart, practical, or desirable which makes it a lot easier to make sweeping statements on the subject. Many of those same people are now at the age where they're settling in and feeling both biological clocks ticking and pressure from family and peers, which intuitively would be a powerful force in shifting views/opinions.
It’s also worth mentioning that the people are different, and they have different influences. The underpopulation people are influenced by the “line goes up” crowd, while the overpopulation crowd are influenced by neomalthusian economics.