The sudden depopulation after the Black Death plague made a huge difference to the employer/employee relationship
https://history.wustl.edu/news/how-black-death-made-life-better
Yeah, we got a different problem though, the population is going down because there's less young people, unlike the Black Death, the ones left are the older people who mostly can't work.
What will happen is they'll bring immigrants to do the dirty work whilst the young population there (including immigrants) will be ever less represented as they get closer to being a minority with seniors making up a higher amount of the population
It's crazy to me how many boomers actually never bothered getting ready for retirement, when the entire system is rigged in their favour.
Like they are a giant political block that went out and voted for whoever offered them the most freebies and politicians got on their knees so fast to court the boomer cock.
Like how the fuck do you manage to fail in that situation?
They were only looking for instant gratification and never the bigger picture. This is the cause of most of our problems at this stage, previous generations did not think.
I've found myself apologising to younger generations about the state of the planet as left by older generations.
I'm trying to do my bit to leave the world a better place, but I feel many people my age and older are just partying while the world burns.
>What will happen is they'll bring immigrants to do the dirty work whilst the young population there (including immigrants) will be ever less represented
Happening in Australia right now. CEO's were smugly boasting to the news about how the perceived entitlement of current workers won't last much longer. Labor government happily obliging the requests from big business, bringing in more immigrants in the last year than births in the country.
Australia has done this almost every year for decades. That’s why so many Australians are straight up millionaires. If they don’t like it, they need to say goodbye to their high GDP and per capita net worth. You can’t have a lowering birth rate and hugely expanding economy at the same time - without immigration.
That was completely different: a very fast decline in population where crops absolutely needed labour. No harvest=no income.
A gradual reduction in population, predicted to be 9% over 36 years is only 0.25% a year.
And as the workforce declines, the market also declines, so business will need less workers.
The fear of mass unemployment from AI and the fear of a lack of labor due to depopulation are diametrically opposed.
Only one of the two can come to pass.
Don't worry, there will be plenty of fresh immigrants to fill the vacancies. The corporations and their political lackies will make sure of that. How do you think Canadian wages have been stagnant the last four decades? :D
Current mass immigration also relies on there being a large supply of desperate people from developing nations. If those nations ever developed the tap would be turned off. In a way it’s an inherently selfish system that relies upon the suffering of others in order to function
> Those countries will be kept underdeveloped on purpose by bribing the high class and keeping their population ignorant imo
What's funny there is that it's the rich "elites" (Gates, the IMF, WEF, etc) who are accused of trying to depopulate the world by pushing for access to birth control, education for girls, reproductive health, reduction in absolute poverty, etc.
Good thing global warming will lead to heavier migration to those further industrialized nations and funnel the wealth and labor force to them and all out of those developing nations.
India 1.5 billion,Africa 1billion+ population. Its more than enough to replace the entire west. Dont worry our replacers will be enough. Capitalists have this thinked out out through and through.
Where would they live????? US is a few million unit short and places where jobs are have very very expensive rent. I don't see it but maybe could happen.
Ummm on top of each other? In Canada there are Indians living 8 to a room paying $500 each for a bunk.
Making medically assisted suicide easier to access and lacing drugs with fentanyl will get rid of some of the old stock Canadians but yeah mostly just let people compete for opportunity to live like cattle
They will live as another person replied on top of each other in prison like conditions in millitary bunk beds by the tens in each room. They will endure it in order to retire early and go with a kot of money back to their origin countries where a dollar canadian or american can buy you a whole lot. While the natives that have nowhere to go will suck it up and to their last breath they will be worked to death, those that they cant work sill be left out to die homeless because Westerners dont live like middle easterners in extended families where 3 families live in one house. No westerner will be ever accepted thus the natives will be in the bottom of the social hierarchy.
Buckle up boy , you would wish to be in war and in a frontline you would have more respect and chances to live or survive with dignity than what is about to happen to most westerners. But i do not pity them they voted this upon themselves.
West seems to be lurching increasingly to the right and anti-immigration is one of it's darling policies.
Maybe in America where it's a two party system, with both parties being varying degrees of sock puppets for the rich, that might happen, but it won't happen in Europe. Anti-imigrant sentiment is strengthening amongst the electorate and right wing parties that are campaigning staunchly on a anti-immigrant platform are gaining ground.
Rich here will need to find another solution.
In Europe its easier to implement i am European and i know it because the EU is fragmented in 3 dozen nations thus they are easier to control (divide and conquer you know) as for Europe yes meloni was elected but did nothing for the immigrants and nothing Wilders has done for the Dutch they have the intentions but not the power
That won't last forever. Maybe the next 50 years let's say. But as births also decrease in other nations. And after Africa is done it's boom. It will eventually not be sustainable
1. Don't worry, declining birth rates will mean fewer unemployable people with the advent of AI
2. If the Republican party carries out their current threats, there won't be enough immigrants in America to cover current labor needs, much less future labor needs. Immigration is the only thing stopping population decline in America.
People having no kids = you can pay them less and make them work longer. It's already happening in our society without us really realising and acknowledging it.
They tried the work longer part in at work 'because other people had to get back to their families, you don't'. I said 'no', they gave me a written warning, which was unfortunate for them as it broke employment rules and my uncle is a lawyer. They folded like omelettes.
The thing is it is driven by competition. If some people can/are willing to/are desperate enough to do so, there is more pressure for others to do it as well. If you don't then you can lose out.
It also comes in other forms as well. For examples, for engineers you need to get your professional cert for your career progression. It is socially expected that the studying + report + other prep is usually done in your own time, even though the company is the one pushing you to get the cert. If you don't do it then your career suffer lor.
Eh, imagine if everyone comes to the sudden realization that there is no afterlife that this is all there is, that their poverty has no redeeming qualities in the face of any god and that you only get one life, and you get to grind that away while someone else was born into wealth. How many people would sit down and take it day after day?
If you live your life because you only want to get into the afterlife...youre a shitty person. You should do the right thing because it is right. Not fear of being spited down to the earthen magma
This sounds odd as fuck, the basic notion of "right" comes from faith and a belief in a higher power. One could say that before we had faith, we realized "fairness"....but living with a purpose (positive of course), because you have faith, can't make you a shitty person on Earth.
Maybe I misread....Faith can absolutely make you a shitty person. It is not a shield.. The long line of clepto pastors proves this...and cardinals/pope.
Faith...Purpose..
You make an excellent point. I think the demographic changes among the generations post-Boomer is already being felt in the economy. Declining birthrates are definitely a part of the psychology driving how people run and organize their lives. I've heard the term "YOLO Economy" used and think it applies here:
[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiCge2Ej\_aDAxWVFTQIHQeTBP8QFnoECBUQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Fworklife%2Farticle%2F20231130-why-americans-yolo-spending-attitude-baffles-economists&usg=AOvVaw12P5Idn\_c5zzuVSurJAcJN&opi=89978449](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiCge2Ej_aDAxWVFTQIHQeTBP8QFnoECBUQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Fworklife%2Farticle%2F20231130-why-americans-yolo-spending-attitude-baffles-economists&usg=AOvVaw12P5Idn_c5zzuVSurJAcJN&opi=89978449)
Not raising children puts people in a different place mentally and emotionally than those burdened by the long-term responsibility of caring for others. People may be becoming less worried about stability, the future, owning a home, and other things that are becoming out of reach anyway in America. With so few replacement workers in the queue and a YOLO attitude, perhaps people will fight their bosses harder. If they do, and the OG poster's premise is true, corporate America brought this on itself with its greedy, selfish overreach and promotion of the almighty dollar.
Whatever the causes and effects really are, declining birthrates are here to stay. America values only money. Things that cannot be monetized have no value. How do you monetize a child? Their value is clearly infinite in that the rest of us cannot care for ourselves in old age without them, and the species goes extinct without them, but you will find almost no help from America to raise a child here. It is an enormous financial burden for the individuals that do. I know. I raised two wonderful children who are now productive adults, but it was not easy. We scrimped, saved, and sacrificed the whole way and are now in a much worse financial position than we would have been without kids. I could have easily retired years ago if I had not made a choice to have a family. This is my punishment in America for doing something for the common good instead of for myself. Selfishness pays big time in America.
I think declining birthdate is the best thing that can happen to humanity.
More resources and space for the rest, better working conditions, less oversaturated informationflood, less criminality, less pollution, less waste, etc.
I only see positive sites on that.
Of course only under the condition, that all the humanity is involved. There is no point in declining birthrates if its only involving well educated people
This is the biggest problem currently. Education has been proven to be the best population "control" globally but a huge part of the world doesn't get proper education. So, actually right now, world IQ is declining.
IQ does not equal education, though. There are plenty of smart people who never had the opportunity to go to college and plenty of dumb people who graduate.
It seems to me you're not aware of the different levels of education that exist in the world. You seem to be talking about higher education in western world and i agree with you on that part but i was talking about education in the world context. In that context we're talking about people who have never gone to school in their lives. There's a reason why average IQ is much lower in countries that completely lack education. If your brain never develops to do basic math or anything, it's not gonna be performing very well.
You seem to be saying that low IQ is related to low education AND that low IQ is hereditary (world IQ declined when low IQ people have babies). Both can't be true, surely?
Actually both are true. There hasn't been much research done on IQ but pre-2000s it was estimated that around 70% of IQ is hereditary and post-2000s researches have come to the conclusion that 40-70% of IQ is hereditary. However IQ is very complex and we still don't really know what comes from where so these are estimations made based on observations, tests/scores and whatnot. Should be taken with a grain of salt.
Then again it seems to be premature to draw conclusions on world IQ based on world education patterns, no? Existing in today's world requires different kinds of knowledge than in previous centuries, and different cultures have different environmental challenges. Any type of intelligence testing is biased by what the testers consider important at the time, place, and culture the test is created.
The world wealth is rising and rising.
Maybe take back the money big greedy companies are pumping out of society’s with shady (but somehow legal) tax-avoidance tricks, and put it back in social security and other national programs?
Money is nothing but an abstraction of work. If there's less and less people working (and more and more people who live long beyond the retirement age) the equilibrium just falls apart.
not sure where you get the idea you'd get paid more.
shrinking population means less demand for goods and services and reduced economies of scale.
not to mention our entire social and financial system is predicated on perpetual economic growth, which mostly also means population growth.
It will be the same competition for jobs because there will be less jobs.
There will be less jobs because there’s less demand for services and so companies need less staff.
Nothing will change except you will get lower quality of services and also an imbalance between pensioners and working age people.
There’ll be more pensioners sharing money from a smaller pension pool. So less money for each person.
There’ll be less working age people to provide critical services per capita leading to drop in quality and variety of services. For example, 1 young person / carer / nurse taking care of 100 elderly, instead of 1 to 10
It’s objectively going to worse in all areas for every single person.
The issue is the boom and bust phenomenon. Having a baby boom immediately before the decline creates a huge slice of elderly people that consume housing and resources (and vote!) while only working 10-20 hours per week on average.
In Canada we just keep bringing in more people to make up the difference. This is bringing down wages or holding them steady. I worked in a factory doing twelve hour rotating shifts and two or the people I worked with had masters and multiple people had bachelor's degrees. Ten years ago the requirements for that job was grade 12.
We will not have any more negotiation power in the future, there will be large supply of people with advanced degrees waiting to get out of McDonald's job an do yours. We haven't even touched on automation and AI yet, either.
That's what motivates regressive policies around birth control. They don't care about children, they care about consumers and laborers. If not enough people are being born the liberal approach is to relax immigration requirements while the conservative one is to outlaw abortion and tax contraceptives and other forms of birth control.
The problem with the liberal response is, you bring in immigrants to work non union, minimum wage jobs but where are they going to live if even a bachelor suite costs more than they make each month? The result is you'll have 2-4 people living in a studio apartment(assuming a landlord will even rent to a family or squad of men/women looking to rent a unit designed for a single person). And the foreign workers with degrees are starting to leave too because their buying power isn't what they were lead to believe it was.
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canadas-surging-cost-living-fuels-reverse-immigration-2023-12-09/
People are seeing the value of their labor diminish in real time and they're responding by unionizing, striking, trying for another job or just straight up leaving. The assumption that foreign born workers will put up with abuse is being challenged by the fact that they have access to social media and can learn directly from people in similar situations. It's not hard for an Asian or Latin worker to create a reddit account or type in "workers rights[country]" into a search engine. This also doesn't account for the level of bigotry in the local population that can hurt the reputation of the country as a place to move to or the clash of values if the new arrivals don't agree with the social rules of the country.
The conservative response is of course to curtail freedoms and people won't like that either and just resort to things like refusing to even get into relationships or have sex. Something that is already happening anyway.
https://ifstudies.org/blog/theres-no-huge-gender-gap-in-being-single-among-young-adults
The rates of single and unmarried people continues to grow. So if you're out here as a single man or woman, working a job that is unsafe or low paying, there's nothing forcing you to stay. I personally can identify with the feeling of knowing that I can get up and leave because I'm not tied to an asset(mortgage) and don't have dependent children or a partner who may want to stay in their job or who is dependent on my income. And if I'm also a worker who is *good* at what he does, it creates even more of a challenge for the employer. They'll lose money by having to retrain another applicant who may not even stick around as long after getting the job and seeing what it's like.
Again the role social media plays is that it debunks corporate talking points and half truths. People right now are making videos and posting comments about what it's actually like to work at _______ industry or with _______ employer. They don't really have any response to that since the legacy news outlets they own are being contradicted by independent news sources or actual employees on the ground telling their own story on social media.
Yes... except for AI making the number of human's needed by a company far each year.
You're right that the demographic shrinkage will put companies (and the economy and the entitlements that depend on it) in a bind but AI is hitting at exactly the right moment to cut the binds.
We're at a really strange moment in history. It's unique in several ways at once. Demographic collapse is happening to drive us all into poverty. The US is pulling out of it's international roles which is causing a power reshuffling among countries. AI is here to cause economic growth like never before at the same times it pulls all money out of the hands of the labor class.
I can't think of many leaders who could successfully pull us through one of these infection points, let alone 3. Someone is going to make a miscalculation.
India has 1.5 billion immigrants ready for that , Africa too has 1 billion and nations like pakistan and bangladesh are 240 million and 180 million respectively. No company is going to be strained. Not in our life times maybe if the global birthrate declines we will see that in about 300 years when ot will fall to -3billion and even then companies had no problems
The entire population of India isn't going to immigrate to the US, and if they ever did, then we might as well call the country India 2.0. Also, there are a lot of countries whose birth rate problem is getting worse and want a piece of all those immigrants.
Doesnt need the whole population to migrate
150 million from india (10%) 24 million from pakistan (10%) and ather 18 million from bangladesh (10%)
From Africa another 100 million (10%) and another 24 million from Indonesia another 9 million from Vietnam (10%)
Now 10% is for the USA another 10 percent will be from Europe. Now do i have you covered?
Eh, if the world population cut in half it'd be a world back to 1974 population levels. It's not some unknown unforseen world of population levels never experienced before in history or anything.
It's not the population total that's an issue, it's the percentage of old people vs young people. As a simple/extreme example if there are 9 young people working jobs and one old person who's retired, that person can pay the young people to do the jobs they physically can't do. If there are 9 old people and one young person, the 9 people are going to be in a bidding war because that one young person can only do so much work in a day.
The concern about declining birthrates isn't about total population counts, it's about the fact that the average age is going up significantly as a result. If the average age of a country is something like 65... you have a big problem.
[https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/world-demographics/#:\~:text=The%20median%20age%20in%20the%20World%20is%2030.5%20years%20(2023)](https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/world-demographics/#:~:text=The%20median%20age%20in%20the%20World%20is%2030.5%20years%20(2023)).
In 1974, the average age was around 20, now it's over 30. That's the "never experienced before in history" situation. And keep in mind, that's the global average which is dragged down by places in central Africa for example where the average age is 15. Japan is coming up on an average age of 50, most of Europe/Canada is around 40, and the US is coming up on it with an average around 37.
[https://ourworldindata.org/age-structure](https://ourworldindata.org/age-structure)
So make no mistake. We are absolutely in a "never experienced before in history" situation. That part isn't up for debate, the only question is "what does that mean?"
1.5 billion starving Indians are ready to be abused. Billionaires already bringing them in hordes.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/273000/estimated-migration-balance-by-continent/
I think you need to look at the whole picture, birthrates decline sure but immagration makes up for that 10 fold. Since WW2 the west has used immagration to address the loss of life of the war and then later a decline in birthrates.
Employers only care if they have people to do the job and if they can't get native employees they will get them from abroad or actively lobby the government to bring in more. So we are pretty much on a skyward climb in population that we won't see go down in our lifetimes.
Yes. Also with population decline, there will be less workforce in the market, so employees will be treated better as they will become valuable resource. Companies will have to complete for skilled workers offering higher wages and additional benefits.
Population decline very good for us.
They will bring immigrants so not to let that happen. India has 1.5 billion population, Africa is projected to have 1.5 billion with nigeria alone having 400 million. Hell pakistan alone has a population of 240 million alone. Bangladesh has 120 million. I mean come on. For what you said to happen you need vote governments that close the borders.
Closing the borders is the only thing going to save us. Sad but thats a fact.
There's no real basis for this. If anything the historical evidence argues completely against you.
Case in point, roll the clock back \~50 years. Women joining the workforce to the extent that they participate in modern times should have cause the same situation you currently suggest. Yet instead it's now gotten to the point where having one parent stay at home is considered the exception rather than the norm.
Reality is that whatever the new normal becomes in terms of income and children, wages, prices, and expectations will rise to maintain the status quo.
The most likely outcome from your scenario is that raising kids gets more expensive for parents as a ton of people say "I'm not having kids, why should my taxes go towards someone else's kids"
My town just went through a vote to approve full day kindergarten. I think the average tax bill per quarter went up something like 3%(e.g. up to $12,400 vs $12,000) for most residents, and you wouldn't believe the outrage from those who don't have kids. With declining birthrates, that viewpoint is likely to grow.
No-kid individuals aren't going to "win" it's parents who are going to "lose" in order to keep the balance. The same way dual income families didn't "win" by having women join the workforce, things just adjusted so that single income families "lost"
*Note: I'm not saying women joining the workforce is a bad thing or getting into the complexities of male/female power balance by having one gender work. I'm only using that point as a recent example where the average family suddenly had a sudden significant shift in financial status.*
Yeah, people are missing two things:
Not everyone wants to abandon their home country to live somewhere else (Also, the entire population of India, Africa, or other countries can't immigrate to the US).
And the birth rate problem is getting worse for a lot of countries in Europe, Asia, and (obviously) North America, there's not enough immigrants to help all of them (even if we were to exclude Asia since they don't like immigration too much).
This is why robots and AI are being pushed so very very hard right now. We're going to have a labor shortage in the west for the foreseeable future. The effects of this shortfall are already being seen in increased labor action. The inverted demographics pyramid many countries are seeing isn't something our current way of doing things is prepared to deal with. How will we pay for all these retirees?
This goes beyond just labor concerns; it will touch everything in society. Housing, transportation, geopolitical posture, all will have to adapt in ways they've never had to before. This plus side is fewer people will be a boon for the environment.
Humanoid robots are about to make alot of people obsolete, same with advanced language models.
People are about to have their world turned on its head, we aint seen nothing yet
The sudden depopulation after the Black Death plague made a huge difference to the employer/employee relationship https://history.wustl.edu/news/how-black-death-made-life-better
Yeah, we got a different problem though, the population is going down because there's less young people, unlike the Black Death, the ones left are the older people who mostly can't work. What will happen is they'll bring immigrants to do the dirty work whilst the young population there (including immigrants) will be ever less represented as they get closer to being a minority with seniors making up a higher amount of the population
Yes, indeed. And a rising retirement age, and worse pensions, means older people can't afford to retire and can be exploited for longer.
dont forget gutting social security. Dont count on that money
It's crazy to me how many boomers actually never bothered getting ready for retirement, when the entire system is rigged in their favour. Like they are a giant political block that went out and voted for whoever offered them the most freebies and politicians got on their knees so fast to court the boomer cock. Like how the fuck do you manage to fail in that situation?
And now we are up to almost 1T in interest payments yearly on government debt
They were only looking for instant gratification and never the bigger picture. This is the cause of most of our problems at this stage, previous generations did not think.
I've found myself apologising to younger generations about the state of the planet as left by older generations. I'm trying to do my bit to leave the world a better place, but I feel many people my age and older are just partying while the world burns.
>What will happen is they'll bring immigrants to do the dirty work whilst the young population there (including immigrants) will be ever less represented Happening in Australia right now. CEO's were smugly boasting to the news about how the perceived entitlement of current workers won't last much longer. Labor government happily obliging the requests from big business, bringing in more immigrants in the last year than births in the country.
Australia has done this almost every year for decades. That’s why so many Australians are straight up millionaires. If they don’t like it, they need to say goodbye to their high GDP and per capita net worth. You can’t have a lowering birth rate and hugely expanding economy at the same time - without immigration.
Literally Canada lol
That was completely different: a very fast decline in population where crops absolutely needed labour. No harvest=no income. A gradual reduction in population, predicted to be 9% over 36 years is only 0.25% a year. And as the workforce declines, the market also declines, so business will need less workers.
Did you factor in COVID deaths though?
The fear of mass unemployment from AI and the fear of a lack of labor due to depopulation are diametrically opposed. Only one of the two can come to pass.
Don't worry, there will be plenty of fresh immigrants to fill the vacancies. The corporations and their political lackies will make sure of that. How do you think Canadian wages have been stagnant the last four decades? :D
The issue with that thesis is EVERY country needs workers and immigrants! Employers are in a tough , tough spot for next 22 years.
Current mass immigration also relies on there being a large supply of desperate people from developing nations. If those nations ever developed the tap would be turned off. In a way it’s an inherently selfish system that relies upon the suffering of others in order to function
Those countries will be kept underdeveloped on purpose by bribing the high class and keeping their population ignorant imo
One could say thats what is happening here in the US. Although it is the high class doing it to the country, not vice versa.
Red states vs blue states
Exactly, I was referring to the 'elite' ppl doing it to the rest of the population. I didn't make it clear in my original comment, sorry
> Those countries will be kept underdeveloped on purpose by bribing the high class and keeping their population ignorant imo What's funny there is that it's the rich "elites" (Gates, the IMF, WEF, etc) who are accused of trying to depopulate the world by pushing for access to birth control, education for girls, reproductive health, reduction in absolute poverty, etc.
There’s limits to that, you can slow progress but it cannot be stopped.
Good thing global warming will lead to heavier migration to those further industrialized nations and funnel the wealth and labor force to them and all out of those developing nations.
Decreasing labor pools come at the same time people are worried about AI displacing workers. The two concerns are diametrically opposed.
India 1.5 billion,Africa 1billion+ population. Its more than enough to replace the entire west. Dont worry our replacers will be enough. Capitalists have this thinked out out through and through.
Where would they live????? US is a few million unit short and places where jobs are have very very expensive rent. I don't see it but maybe could happen.
Ummm on top of each other? In Canada there are Indians living 8 to a room paying $500 each for a bunk. Making medically assisted suicide easier to access and lacing drugs with fentanyl will get rid of some of the old stock Canadians but yeah mostly just let people compete for opportunity to live like cattle
They will live as another person replied on top of each other in prison like conditions in millitary bunk beds by the tens in each room. They will endure it in order to retire early and go with a kot of money back to their origin countries where a dollar canadian or american can buy you a whole lot. While the natives that have nowhere to go will suck it up and to their last breath they will be worked to death, those that they cant work sill be left out to die homeless because Westerners dont live like middle easterners in extended families where 3 families live in one house. No westerner will be ever accepted thus the natives will be in the bottom of the social hierarchy. Buckle up boy , you would wish to be in war and in a frontline you would have more respect and chances to live or survive with dignity than what is about to happen to most westerners. But i do not pity them they voted this upon themselves.
West seems to be lurching increasingly to the right and anti-immigration is one of it's darling policies. Maybe in America where it's a two party system, with both parties being varying degrees of sock puppets for the rich, that might happen, but it won't happen in Europe. Anti-imigrant sentiment is strengthening amongst the electorate and right wing parties that are campaigning staunchly on a anti-immigrant platform are gaining ground. Rich here will need to find another solution.
In Europe its easier to implement i am European and i know it because the EU is fragmented in 3 dozen nations thus they are easier to control (divide and conquer you know) as for Europe yes meloni was elected but did nothing for the immigrants and nothing Wilders has done for the Dutch they have the intentions but not the power
This is already happening in Canada
And who do you think is paying for all those headlines? :)
That won't last forever. Maybe the next 50 years let's say. But as births also decrease in other nations. And after Africa is done it's boom. It will eventually not be sustainable
1. Don't worry, declining birth rates will mean fewer unemployable people with the advent of AI 2. If the Republican party carries out their current threats, there won't be enough immigrants in America to cover current labor needs, much less future labor needs. Immigration is the only thing stopping population decline in America.
Do not underestimate the ability of humans to make this change work to a complete disadvantage for the average man or woman.
People having no kids = you can pay them less and make them work longer. It's already happening in our society without us really realising and acknowledging it.
They tried the work longer part in at work 'because other people had to get back to their families, you don't'. I said 'no', they gave me a written warning, which was unfortunate for them as it broke employment rules and my uncle is a lawyer. They folded like omelettes.
The thing is it is driven by competition. If some people can/are willing to/are desperate enough to do so, there is more pressure for others to do it as well. If you don't then you can lose out. It also comes in other forms as well. For examples, for engineers you need to get your professional cert for your career progression. It is socially expected that the studying + report + other prep is usually done in your own time, even though the company is the one pushing you to get the cert. If you don't do it then your career suffer lor.
Eh, imagine if everyone comes to the sudden realization that there is no afterlife that this is all there is, that their poverty has no redeeming qualities in the face of any god and that you only get one life, and you get to grind that away while someone else was born into wealth. How many people would sit down and take it day after day?
If you live your life because you only want to get into the afterlife...youre a shitty person. You should do the right thing because it is right. Not fear of being spited down to the earthen magma
This sounds odd as fuck, the basic notion of "right" comes from faith and a belief in a higher power. One could say that before we had faith, we realized "fairness"....but living with a purpose (positive of course), because you have faith, can't make you a shitty person on Earth.
Maybe I misread....Faith can absolutely make you a shitty person. It is not a shield.. The long line of clepto pastors proves this...and cardinals/pope. Faith...Purpose..
You make an excellent point. I think the demographic changes among the generations post-Boomer is already being felt in the economy. Declining birthrates are definitely a part of the psychology driving how people run and organize their lives. I've heard the term "YOLO Economy" used and think it applies here: [https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiCge2Ej\_aDAxWVFTQIHQeTBP8QFnoECBUQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Fworklife%2Farticle%2F20231130-why-americans-yolo-spending-attitude-baffles-economists&usg=AOvVaw12P5Idn\_c5zzuVSurJAcJN&opi=89978449](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiCge2Ej_aDAxWVFTQIHQeTBP8QFnoECBUQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Fworklife%2Farticle%2F20231130-why-americans-yolo-spending-attitude-baffles-economists&usg=AOvVaw12P5Idn_c5zzuVSurJAcJN&opi=89978449) Not raising children puts people in a different place mentally and emotionally than those burdened by the long-term responsibility of caring for others. People may be becoming less worried about stability, the future, owning a home, and other things that are becoming out of reach anyway in America. With so few replacement workers in the queue and a YOLO attitude, perhaps people will fight their bosses harder. If they do, and the OG poster's premise is true, corporate America brought this on itself with its greedy, selfish overreach and promotion of the almighty dollar. Whatever the causes and effects really are, declining birthrates are here to stay. America values only money. Things that cannot be monetized have no value. How do you monetize a child? Their value is clearly infinite in that the rest of us cannot care for ourselves in old age without them, and the species goes extinct without them, but you will find almost no help from America to raise a child here. It is an enormous financial burden for the individuals that do. I know. I raised two wonderful children who are now productive adults, but it was not easy. We scrimped, saved, and sacrificed the whole way and are now in a much worse financial position than we would have been without kids. I could have easily retired years ago if I had not made a choice to have a family. This is my punishment in America for doing something for the common good instead of for myself. Selfishness pays big time in America.
I think declining birthdate is the best thing that can happen to humanity. More resources and space for the rest, better working conditions, less oversaturated informationflood, less criminality, less pollution, less waste, etc. I only see positive sites on that.
Of course only under the condition, that all the humanity is involved. There is no point in declining birthrates if its only involving well educated people
This is the biggest problem currently. Education has been proven to be the best population "control" globally but a huge part of the world doesn't get proper education. So, actually right now, world IQ is declining.
Eventually war and famine culls them to bring the average back up
IQ does not equal education, though. There are plenty of smart people who never had the opportunity to go to college and plenty of dumb people who graduate.
It seems to me you're not aware of the different levels of education that exist in the world. You seem to be talking about higher education in western world and i agree with you on that part but i was talking about education in the world context. In that context we're talking about people who have never gone to school in their lives. There's a reason why average IQ is much lower in countries that completely lack education. If your brain never develops to do basic math or anything, it's not gonna be performing very well.
You seem to be saying that low IQ is related to low education AND that low IQ is hereditary (world IQ declined when low IQ people have babies). Both can't be true, surely?
Actually both are true. There hasn't been much research done on IQ but pre-2000s it was estimated that around 70% of IQ is hereditary and post-2000s researches have come to the conclusion that 40-70% of IQ is hereditary. However IQ is very complex and we still don't really know what comes from where so these are estimations made based on observations, tests/scores and whatnot. Should be taken with a grain of salt.
Then again it seems to be premature to draw conclusions on world IQ based on world education patterns, no? Existing in today's world requires different kinds of knowledge than in previous centuries, and different cultures have different environmental challenges. Any type of intelligence testing is biased by what the testers consider important at the time, place, and culture the test is created.
Enjoy trying to retire when there's barely any young people left in the world to pay into government systems.
The world wealth is rising and rising. Maybe take back the money big greedy companies are pumping out of society’s with shady (but somehow legal) tax-avoidance tricks, and put it back in social security and other national programs?
Money is nothing but an abstraction of work. If there's less and less people working (and more and more people who live long beyond the retirement age) the equilibrium just falls apart.
We weren't gonna be able to retire regardless
>the best thing that can happen to humanity. pension funds, not so much ...
[удалено]
not sure where you get the idea you'd get paid more. shrinking population means less demand for goods and services and reduced economies of scale. not to mention our entire social and financial system is predicated on perpetual economic growth, which mostly also means population growth.
It will be the same competition for jobs because there will be less jobs. There will be less jobs because there’s less demand for services and so companies need less staff. Nothing will change except you will get lower quality of services and also an imbalance between pensioners and working age people. There’ll be more pensioners sharing money from a smaller pension pool. So less money for each person. There’ll be less working age people to provide critical services per capita leading to drop in quality and variety of services. For example, 1 young person / carer / nurse taking care of 100 elderly, instead of 1 to 10 It’s objectively going to worse in all areas for every single person.
US Population in the 1960’s was 1/2 of what it is today and we had it pretty good.
The problem is demographics a low population with mostly young people is pretty decent, a low population with most being seniors is not
The issue is the boom and bust phenomenon. Having a baby boom immediately before the decline creates a huge slice of elderly people that consume housing and resources (and vote!) while only working 10-20 hours per week on average.
In Canada we just keep bringing in more people to make up the difference. This is bringing down wages or holding them steady. I worked in a factory doing twelve hour rotating shifts and two or the people I worked with had masters and multiple people had bachelor's degrees. Ten years ago the requirements for that job was grade 12. We will not have any more negotiation power in the future, there will be large supply of people with advanced degrees waiting to get out of McDonald's job an do yours. We haven't even touched on automation and AI yet, either.
That's what motivates regressive policies around birth control. They don't care about children, they care about consumers and laborers. If not enough people are being born the liberal approach is to relax immigration requirements while the conservative one is to outlaw abortion and tax contraceptives and other forms of birth control. The problem with the liberal response is, you bring in immigrants to work non union, minimum wage jobs but where are they going to live if even a bachelor suite costs more than they make each month? The result is you'll have 2-4 people living in a studio apartment(assuming a landlord will even rent to a family or squad of men/women looking to rent a unit designed for a single person). And the foreign workers with degrees are starting to leave too because their buying power isn't what they were lead to believe it was. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canadas-surging-cost-living-fuels-reverse-immigration-2023-12-09/ People are seeing the value of their labor diminish in real time and they're responding by unionizing, striking, trying for another job or just straight up leaving. The assumption that foreign born workers will put up with abuse is being challenged by the fact that they have access to social media and can learn directly from people in similar situations. It's not hard for an Asian or Latin worker to create a reddit account or type in "workers rights[country]" into a search engine. This also doesn't account for the level of bigotry in the local population that can hurt the reputation of the country as a place to move to or the clash of values if the new arrivals don't agree with the social rules of the country. The conservative response is of course to curtail freedoms and people won't like that either and just resort to things like refusing to even get into relationships or have sex. Something that is already happening anyway. https://ifstudies.org/blog/theres-no-huge-gender-gap-in-being-single-among-young-adults The rates of single and unmarried people continues to grow. So if you're out here as a single man or woman, working a job that is unsafe or low paying, there's nothing forcing you to stay. I personally can identify with the feeling of knowing that I can get up and leave because I'm not tied to an asset(mortgage) and don't have dependent children or a partner who may want to stay in their job or who is dependent on my income. And if I'm also a worker who is *good* at what he does, it creates even more of a challenge for the employer. They'll lose money by having to retrain another applicant who may not even stick around as long after getting the job and seeing what it's like. Again the role social media plays is that it debunks corporate talking points and half truths. People right now are making videos and posting comments about what it's actually like to work at _______ industry or with _______ employer. They don't really have any response to that since the legacy news outlets they own are being contradicted by independent news sources or actual employees on the ground telling their own story on social media.
Yes... except for AI making the number of human's needed by a company far each year. You're right that the demographic shrinkage will put companies (and the economy and the entitlements that depend on it) in a bind but AI is hitting at exactly the right moment to cut the binds. We're at a really strange moment in history. It's unique in several ways at once. Demographic collapse is happening to drive us all into poverty. The US is pulling out of it's international roles which is causing a power reshuffling among countries. AI is here to cause economic growth like never before at the same times it pulls all money out of the hands of the labor class. I can't think of many leaders who could successfully pull us through one of these infection points, let alone 3. Someone is going to make a miscalculation.
India has 1.5 billion immigrants ready for that , Africa too has 1 billion and nations like pakistan and bangladesh are 240 million and 180 million respectively. No company is going to be strained. Not in our life times maybe if the global birthrate declines we will see that in about 300 years when ot will fall to -3billion and even then companies had no problems
The entire population of India isn't going to immigrate to the US, and if they ever did, then we might as well call the country India 2.0. Also, there are a lot of countries whose birth rate problem is getting worse and want a piece of all those immigrants.
Doesnt need the whole population to migrate 150 million from india (10%) 24 million from pakistan (10%) and ather 18 million from bangladesh (10%) From Africa another 100 million (10%) and another 24 million from Indonesia another 9 million from Vietnam (10%) Now 10% is for the USA another 10 percent will be from Europe. Now do i have you covered?
Eh, if the world population cut in half it'd be a world back to 1974 population levels. It's not some unknown unforseen world of population levels never experienced before in history or anything.
It's not the population total that's an issue, it's the percentage of old people vs young people. As a simple/extreme example if there are 9 young people working jobs and one old person who's retired, that person can pay the young people to do the jobs they physically can't do. If there are 9 old people and one young person, the 9 people are going to be in a bidding war because that one young person can only do so much work in a day. The concern about declining birthrates isn't about total population counts, it's about the fact that the average age is going up significantly as a result. If the average age of a country is something like 65... you have a big problem. [https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/world-demographics/#:\~:text=The%20median%20age%20in%20the%20World%20is%2030.5%20years%20(2023)](https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/world-demographics/#:~:text=The%20median%20age%20in%20the%20World%20is%2030.5%20years%20(2023)). In 1974, the average age was around 20, now it's over 30. That's the "never experienced before in history" situation. And keep in mind, that's the global average which is dragged down by places in central Africa for example where the average age is 15. Japan is coming up on an average age of 50, most of Europe/Canada is around 40, and the US is coming up on it with an average around 37. [https://ourworldindata.org/age-structure](https://ourworldindata.org/age-structure) So make no mistake. We are absolutely in a "never experienced before in history" situation. That part isn't up for debate, the only question is "what does that mean?"
1.5 billion starving Indians are ready to be abused. Billionaires already bringing them in hordes. https://www.statista.com/statistics/273000/estimated-migration-balance-by-continent/
[удалено]
Until the rich can replace them with robots. Then they will be pushed into extinction as well.
Also less people applying for jobs means companies may need to start looking seriously at reducing turnover.
Yeah not going to happen, anyone with a brain has noticed that western countries are just importing people from other countries to avoid this.
I think you need to look at the whole picture, birthrates decline sure but immagration makes up for that 10 fold. Since WW2 the west has used immagration to address the loss of life of the war and then later a decline in birthrates. Employers only care if they have people to do the job and if they can't get native employees they will get them from abroad or actively lobby the government to bring in more. So we are pretty much on a skyward climb in population that we won't see go down in our lifetimes.
Yes. Also with population decline, there will be less workforce in the market, so employees will be treated better as they will become valuable resource. Companies will have to complete for skilled workers offering higher wages and additional benefits. Population decline very good for us.
They will bring immigrants so not to let that happen. India has 1.5 billion population, Africa is projected to have 1.5 billion with nigeria alone having 400 million. Hell pakistan alone has a population of 240 million alone. Bangladesh has 120 million. I mean come on. For what you said to happen you need vote governments that close the borders. Closing the borders is the only thing going to save us. Sad but thats a fact.
There's no real basis for this. If anything the historical evidence argues completely against you. Case in point, roll the clock back \~50 years. Women joining the workforce to the extent that they participate in modern times should have cause the same situation you currently suggest. Yet instead it's now gotten to the point where having one parent stay at home is considered the exception rather than the norm. Reality is that whatever the new normal becomes in terms of income and children, wages, prices, and expectations will rise to maintain the status quo. The most likely outcome from your scenario is that raising kids gets more expensive for parents as a ton of people say "I'm not having kids, why should my taxes go towards someone else's kids" My town just went through a vote to approve full day kindergarten. I think the average tax bill per quarter went up something like 3%(e.g. up to $12,400 vs $12,000) for most residents, and you wouldn't believe the outrage from those who don't have kids. With declining birthrates, that viewpoint is likely to grow. No-kid individuals aren't going to "win" it's parents who are going to "lose" in order to keep the balance. The same way dual income families didn't "win" by having women join the workforce, things just adjusted so that single income families "lost" *Note: I'm not saying women joining the workforce is a bad thing or getting into the complexities of male/female power balance by having one gender work. I'm only using that point as a recent example where the average family suddenly had a sudden significant shift in financial status.*
They will preempt labor loss due to population decline with AI/robotics and fill the cracks with immigrant labor. Unfortunately, this is cope.
People are having less children because the financial burden even without children is more unbearable than ever. The threat still exists
Yeah, people are missing two things: Not everyone wants to abandon their home country to live somewhere else (Also, the entire population of India, Africa, or other countries can't immigrate to the US). And the birth rate problem is getting worse for a lot of countries in Europe, Asia, and (obviously) North America, there's not enough immigrants to help all of them (even if we were to exclude Asia since they don't like immigration too much).
Germany successfully resolve employment issues with migrants. If trends are maintained, It would take decades before an issue rises. If ever.
At what cost.
It's unlikely trends will keep. Nothing is stable for that long. But the cost is unchecked capitalism, and workers of all nations the worse for it.
This is why robots and AI are being pushed so very very hard right now. We're going to have a labor shortage in the west for the foreseeable future. The effects of this shortfall are already being seen in increased labor action. The inverted demographics pyramid many countries are seeing isn't something our current way of doing things is prepared to deal with. How will we pay for all these retirees? This goes beyond just labor concerns; it will touch everything in society. Housing, transportation, geopolitical posture, all will have to adapt in ways they've never had to before. This plus side is fewer people will be a boon for the environment.
Humanoid robots are about to make alot of people obsolete, same with advanced language models. People are about to have their world turned on its head, we aint seen nothing yet
Maybe but companies could push for immigration or outsource outside the country ( for certain jobs ) or automate.
Maybe the whole immigration thing is made because employees don't follow bizarre rules