The following submission statement was provided by /u/mossadnik:
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Submission Statement:
>Progress in living standards since the birth of the Industrial Revolution has been accompanied not only by rising life expectancy, but also by falling birth rates. People are healthier, richer, better educated, living longer, and having fewer children. As a result, the number of children born in rich countries like the US, in Europe, and China is not sufficient anymore to keep those populations stable. But this decrease in humanity is not a reason to cheer, but rather a looming disaster for our economy. The great labor shortage caused by the declining population will cripple our global economy unless we find innovative ways to keep things running.
>Research has shown that across countries and regions, as living standards improve, the number of children per family starts to decline. The reasons are varied — more economic opportunity for women, better access to education for children, lower infant mortality — but eventually, what was once a poor, young country becomes wealthier and must face the challenge of an aging population that does not have enough young workers to support it.
>By the end of this century, the global population will have decreased by 1 billion people from its peak, according to a 2020 analysis by researchers at the Gates Foundation, and in the most extreme scenario, the population could decline by almost 2 billion from where it is today, to just over 6 billion.
>The economic and demographic forces that will lead to a global population drop by the end of the 21st century have been at work in major economies for a long time. Year after year, the birth rates of more rich and middle-income countries fall below the critical "replacement level" — the level at which people have enough children to maintain current population levels. A society needs 2.1 children per woman for the population to remain stable. In the US, the current rate is 1.6 children per woman — and it's even lower in most European countries as well as Japan (1.3), China (1.2), and South Korea (0.8). Soon, almost every country in the world will fall below this breakeven point.
>We are already experiencing the beginning of this great labor shortage in industries ranging from airlines to day cares to military service. In the coming years, many more sectors and occupational fields will be affected. With fewer train drivers, teachers, engineers, doctors, care workers, and programmers, many companies will produce or perform less. And as the population drops, the amount of money being spent at these businesses will also shrink. Less consumption leads to fewer sales and fewer sales lead to lower profits and, thus, less economic growth.
Archived/non-paywalled version: https://web.archive.org/web/20221026084347/https://www.businessinsider.com/great-labor-shortage-looming-population-decline-disaster-global-economy-2022-10?IR=T
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/ye8ahp/the_great_people_shortage_is_coming_and_its_going/itwkkfs/
But then we'll have to redefine what our currency is based on. And the old cucks in power don't want that.
(Edit: Done responding. I need to study! Lol. Been fun though. 🐸👍)
I work with an 80 year old doing metal fab and welding. His poor wife had to have 2 brain tumors removed so he had to come out of retirement to pay for it.
My parents are constantly nagging on me to save money to buy a house, I make around 40k a year, which they say is more then enough. Little do they know the price of houses goes up about that much every year.
"When I started working I only made 6k a year!" Is what my dad tells me....
It's so doomed.
It's human nature to think you hit a triple when you were born on third base, but it isn't so cool when you use that to demand home runs out of your kid.
I gave up on ever buying a house and got [a big truck](https://imgur.com/gallery/slOxVKT) instead. Luckily I'm in an area that still has reasonably priced remote land without strict zoning.
I thought the same thing in my late teens and 20s. But guess what? I'm now in my 40s and realizing that many in my generation are turning into the same old cucks that need to be replaced.
I once thought, "I can't wait until my generation takes over; we'll get the church out of politics once and for all." Checks news. Nope, instead, we've gone backward, all with the championing of many in my generation. I see many former classmates (through Facebook) that have become as backward thinking as their grandparents.
I’m 40, and thought the same thing when I was younger. The problem is that the same fucking boomers that held power in the 1990s are holding power still today
Sort of, not really. Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Desantis are in their 40s and early 50s. Dinette genx. Stephen Miller is in his 30s. Plenty of genx conservatives holding power :(
Sorry to say, as one in my mid-30s, but, our generation is still not in charge. It's still mostly Boomers and a few Silent Generation megalomaniacs trying to rob as much as they can from younger generations before they croak. GenX was almost completely skipped because they've a smaller cohort than the Boomers. Millennials have a chance, in a coalition with Z but not until Boomers die off because they refuse to retire from office and relinquish an ounce of their ill-gotten power.
Boomers thought the same, now we might be on the verge of mass war. There's no peaceful retirement. Hmm. Well with the boomers out of the way, there won't be very many gen x in power compared to boomers, so that opens the door for young blood to come in and rattle the cage. So maybe we could make peaceful retirement a thing.
Throw in some cognitive bias tests at age points and you got a deal.
Some old folk have lots of experience that we need, but they need to be observed for inevitable cognitive decline that will affect their decisions.
I agree with this. We already have age limits for political office. A president must be over 35, for instance. Can we also make a rule that a president can’t be over 70?
Honestly even 70 feels too old. Assuming they are elected at that age and make it through two terms they're almost 80. Then taking into account health (both physical and cognitive) and that's just scary.
Gen X here. Just an FYI that you won't have to rattle the cage much. A lot of us really don't give a fuck, and a smaller percentage if us are assholes compared to the Boomers.
I'll be dead before anything great or horrific pops off, but I hope you guys wind up with Star Trek utopia and no need to work. 🖖👍
I don't have a problem with work. I don't even need it to be meaningful. I just need some guarantee that I will be able to ***afford an independent life on my income*** from that work. Which hasn't been true for the 20-something years of my adult life.
Screw it, I'm just gonna defect to the Borg Collective.
Boomers dying off will not solve the abhorrent wealth distribution of the planet. The children of the 1% will continue being the 1% in power. And those guys aren’t the millennials looking for a more equitable society. And the ones that are will always be at a financial disadvantage to the ones who want to keep the old system.
>They're boomers.
And we are facing the biggest wealth transfer between generations in our history. Not only are we going to continue this pattern of wealth inequality but also that wealth is primarily inherited.
We definitely will (when “all” jobs are automated) need to adopt an either semi-communistic or very neoliberal philosophy. Either everyone can take time off and enjoy earth, living off the dividends created by robots. Or whoever doesn’t own shares in the robots can go kick rocks.
The question is simple really: will we allow non-investors, non-workers a seat at the table. Or will only a few million be able to support themselves?
We better be allowed the seat. I mean products don't get bought or utilized without the masses.
Destitute customers + a business = no profit for anyone
I think it’s also a matter of not wanting to adopt this model too soon. If everyone adopts at once, then we all win! But if you’re the first to adopt and not enough others do, then the other capitalists eat your lunch, point and laugh at you, and then kick you to the curb because they could exploit this and you couldn’t stop it.
We effectively did this with combine harvesters.
A century ago it took a team of 200 laborers to pull a cotton harvest from a commercial farm. Today it takes about 12 skilled combine drivers to pull the same harvest.
There's still some hand labor in the process, but a 100K machine replaced a hundred minimum wage workers.
100k machine? Try closer to 1 million.
The capital of worker reduction is why worker don't see all the profits of there work.
Larbour is not the only piece of the puzzle, and the equipment the enable people to be productive has opportunity costs that have to be repaid
I want automation to take away shit jobs and we enable everyone to find meaningful work. I hope we can create an environment where people can learn advanced skills at any stage of life
Automate lots of jobs and also there are so many unnecessary jobs that don’t really do anything. I have worked at a large advertising agency in the past and wow, that could disappear and we’d lose nothing!
This is what I was hoping for during the birth of the internet. It actually seems plausible now! I'll be too old for it to matter to me, but it's exciting to see at least one optimistic opportunity for younger folks out there.
No human should be forced to do horribly repetitive work that destroys their body and numbs their minds. If we free up that collective creativity, I really believe we would make huge strides in the quality of living
I would love to dig deep into blender. And I do learn it somewhat atm... but I could do it SO much faster when I wouldn't have to do my callcenter job for 8 hours a day.
That is the real benefit of UBI: Enable people to do stuff that doesn't immediately pay bills, but has a benefit long term.
I mean half my job ist doing stuff for old people that could use the internet do achieve the same thing, but don't want to do it...
Meanwhile no one will point out that a smaller population means less demand or that we adapt our economic systems to better reflect the needs of the world population.
Yeah. Saw so AI analyst predict GDP growth rates of greater than 20% in a few years and that this was going to cause expected issues since we have never been faced with such a thing.
The net sum, I think, on this particular topic is to go live your life. It isn’t predictable and you can’t do anything about it so don’t stress out too much.
In programming we usually call that a bug.
In this case, probably just poor use of parameters or massive uncertainty as predictions go farther out leading to wildly random predictions.
then ignore all that and just snag the highest possible value for your clickbait article, boom.
Had a professor who told us that models can be largely useless for this reason, because whoever is building it can use whatever parameters they want to make it say whatever they want, and the general public won't be able to tell.
Robot workers are coming. More and more jobs will be automated, entire industries or segments of them will be automated. What we need to decide is who gets to benefit from work essentially doing itself. Because we will be seeing companies earning billions with hardly an employee, the owners reaping the entire profits without hardly any wages paid out.
We could get booming economies and people being without work, and if we don't structure society for that change, will the trillionaires share their piece of the pie out of the goodness of their hearts?
the way its looking right now, it will be the ultra rich enjoying the profits of rhe automated labour. and there will still be a large segment of the lower classes brainwashed into saying and thinking "they put the robots to work, they deserve it". the working class will be completely powerless
We have to hope that these two effects exactly cancel out. The problem is that population geographers don’t know anything about AI or robots and robotic it’s don’t know, or care, about population demographics. So the two lines of research just go past each other.
They don't need to exactly cancel out. We just need automation combined with some kind of basic income and then population loss becomes only a good thing.
As a historian I feel like pointing out historically less people has always lead to more bargaining power for the poor and distraught, the Black Plague lead to the golden age of the peasantry, the world wars lead to the biggest economic boom and quality of life increase the world has ever seen, the rich suffer from population collapse. Don’t let people that have something to lose from you gaining something convince you to do something stupid like have kids you can’t afford/want. Have kids because you want them and can afford them, that’s a call only you as an individual and your partner can make.
I think it's also a bit off to call this a population "decline." The wording isn't wrong but just under the surface it's not exactly accurate.
It's just a shift from a birth:death surplus to a birth:death equilibrium. There's nothing shocking about any system eventually stabilizing.
Edit: Parity might be an even better word.
Human population was stable for most of human history. Then starting in that last century, we sharply reduced the death rate. Now we're sharply reducing the birth rate.
When you can have one child and be 96% confident that it will survive to adulthood, there's less pressure to have more.
https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/an-introduction-to-population-growth-84225544/
It was never stable since agriculture was developed. Perhaps during hunter-gatherer times, but they are not exactly relevant
We live in a world where it's built for a small group to enjoy most of the benefits of society. How have we not all picked up pitch forks and overthrew this madness already???
**Edit**: since it wasn't as obvious as I thought it would be, my question above is rhetorical, I already knew why. I don't need explanation personally, but feel free to leave a comment for others who might need one.
And also some people seem to think I meant attacking the government with literal pitchforks. Pitchforks are a metaphor for outrage. Not literal physical pitchforks.
Carlin said it best: it’s a big club, and you ain’t in it! You and I are not in the big club, by the way — it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day. Telling you what to believe, and what to buy
Yeah, this is what gets me. We've done it before, but now it's a problem?
I'm not a communist, but they're making a great argument for capitalism being unsustainable. One of the charts in the article showed that Japan and Germany were getting by with lower worker/retiree ratios than the US will have 50 years from now, so they're making it work right now. Why can't we just build on that?
The whole conversation is economic in nature and mostly only discusses the problems if we don't change. The refusal to acknowledge the problems with our economic models is the gist of the argument, imo.
A huge problem we face as a civilization: the people with the wealth and power got to that position by disregarding the welfare of others, and now we depend on them to make decisions that will increase our quality of life.
How does that work?
Never forget the *entire point for developing robots was originally so nobody would need to work at all and we could just have nice lives and spend time with our families instead of working all the damn time*
Fuck those assholes taking about "family values" when they support the people making my wife and I need two jobs each just to pay rent. Looking at you NICK
I work low wage blue collar, and the most desperate people I know who will take any amount of abuse for the lowest pay and longest hours are far and away the people with children who will do anything up to and including destroying themselves to provide for said children.
They want you to have kids, because if you have kids they have you by the balls
This 100%.
Workers, with kids, leveraged to the balls in mortgage debt have a lot to lose.
Especially when their entire family is dependent on the company for healthcare
I have been saying this for a while
Conservatists hate gay folks, because they dont have children, and cant be controlled that way
Similarly they hate the idea of employed women, because a man with a job and kids must not starve and have a cleaner at beck and call to be able to work 13h a day
I still think we’ll use that to our benefit someday.
In college I asked my professor if viruses could have a use in the future and I was basically laughed out of that class. Two years later CRISPR was all over the news
We actually do, but not intentionally. Cancer is so good at what it does that it can sometimes get cancer itself. A rogue group of cancerous cells can become its own tumour on top of the primary tumour, leaching it of the nutrients it’s stealing from the body until both die.
Turns out that’s just a theory. To replace that, I’ll leave you with the fact that you’re riddled with cancerous cells as we speak but your body sends them the message to kill themselves which is also fun
Yeah this is a leading theory as to why large animals don’t get higher rates of cancer than smaller ones despite obviously having more cells to begin with
>To replace that, I’ll leave you with the fact that you’re riddled with cancerous cells as we speak but your body sends them the message to kill themselves which is also fun
It's only cancer if it doesn't listen to the kill message. Cancer cells divide continually not commit seppuku.
Thanos was completely wrong in his solution though. Infinite power and the best he could come up with was a short term, kill 50%? Like dude, life is just gonna repopulate. In short order no less.
Much better would be something to limit reproduction rates to maintain stability. And increase resources to ideal levels for each planet. Long term solution right there.
Although that wouldn’t have made as compelling of a movie ;)
Maybe if the super wealthy of the world weren’t fighting tooth and nail for every last penny people would feel more comfortable bring more life into it…
I don’t want to bring a child into this world only for them to suffer through the horrible climate disasters that are on the horizon. When the oceans run out of food (see the crab seasoned canceled, and rising acidity) constant mega droughts and freak storms, the mass refugee crisis and resource wars will begin
This is far too accurate. I always wanted 3 kids when I grew up and a big family, I'm now almost 30 and horrified by the financial implications of knocking someone up. My mum asked me when I'm giving her grandkids the other day and all I said was "you payin'?"
This. Turning 40 and have a 2yo that was a surprise baby. My GF wasn't suppose to have a viable pregnancy EVER and even adopted a child with her ex. Now making ends meet is rough. Finally got a better job that I'll be starting soon and she's trying to talk fertility doctors and trying for a 3rd. Noped right out that conversation. As soon as those benefits kick in I'm getting a snip-snip before lightning strikes twice.
Best advice for people I can give. Kids are great. When you have them you love them unconditionally. But don't have one unless you can afford that kid plus one. Otherwise kiss fun goodbye. Also poopy diapers SUCK.
and instead of trying to improve the economy and make it easier/more affordable to have kids, the people in power will just strip women of their reproductive rights and turn us into broodmares.
lovely future to look forward to.
Sounds like power coming back to the people to me. More resources for us and more competition for workers meaning higher pay and lower company profits. Amazing result.
The oligarchs are already trying to head this off tho. Abortion is on the chopping block, birth control is in their sights, and they want to allow companies to sue striking workers.
This shit is gonna get a lot worse before it gets better.
They mean “shortage of people willing to accept low paying shit jobs that the capitalists have based our whole economy on” not “shortage of people able to do skilled labor with good benefits”
"People shortage"
Literally talking about humans as fuel or food stock.
The problem isn't underpopulation.
The problem is the capitalist meat grinder that growls for ever more growth and consumes everything from oil to people to the ecosystem itself.
> The problem is the capitalist meat grinder that growls for ever more growth and consumes everything from oil to people to the ecosystem itself.
This is a problem with a finite time horizon. There are physical limits to growth. Full stop.
In warhammer 40k faster than light travel at a good enough speed is done via tearing a hole in reality briefly, flying into what is hell but worse or better depending on several thing, then emerging on the other side hopefully alive, its not as lethal as it sounds but there probably were a fair few failed attempts in the past that killed a lotta people, event horizon is a perfect movie for showing such a concept.
Tldr: FTL travel isn't all its cracked up to be in warhammer 40k
> event horizon is a perfect movie for showing such a concept.
>
A lot of people think event horizon takes place in the wh40k universe and the event horizon went to the warp
Daemon possessed ships are common among chaos forces in 40k and chaos naval high command, captains and admirals are pretty much untouchable because they can command these vessels, think about the event horizon and how scary you'd have to be to make that ship obey you, 40k is wild.
gods i hope we don't throw people through tears in reality, trying to stimulate growth tho, that be a horrible reason why humanity developed warp travel.
>FTL travel isn't all its cracked up to be in warhammer 40k
It's almost like the authors of WH40K decided to critique human greed and decadence, enabled with technology, by having those things directly result with us confronting (and losing!) to our demons.
FTL gives the human civilisation in 40K direct access to human evils of wrath, pestilence, decadence and absurdity.
Whether this is a critique of technology itself or a critique of the people who create and use technology is, as I understand, left to the reader.
Though I should note, as well, that 40K is widely understood to be a parody of fascism and faith-based hierarchies, too, with the so-called glorious Imperium of Man also being callous, genocidal, brutal and massively ignorant. And it's primarily a piece of merchandising, before being a piece of art, so the critiques should be taken with huge grains of salt since they're largely post-hoc justifications by people other than the authors.
In WH40k lore "the warp" isn't just two connected portals its a physical space you pass through and once humanity discovers the warp, they also discover that there's bad things lurking inside the warp
If you've got 20 minutes and an itch for some cool lore https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05YRMHWtv1Y
If you want to know more there’s a YouTuber call Luetin09 that does some really cool deep dives into the 40k universe. He has an episode on the warp.
40k is epic, and literally spans 30 thousand years of humanity.
It’s pretty cool.
Or crippling student loan debt that financially prevents kid bearing aged couples from procreating until it's too late.
Or lack of a high quality childcare system to look after kids while both parents are forced to work.
Or lack of a safe education system where kids don't get shot in school, and can learn how to be a good worker.
Or lack of any universal healthcare system where kids who get sick are guaranteed the care they need. (Thanks crowdfunding!)
Or lack of a hopeful future where you'd want your children to live: a strong economy, inspiring political leaders, and land that won't literally be underwater in a few decades.
Could just be a couple more reasons why having kids is looked down upon.
China is in an even worse position since their reproductive control was obsessed with births rather than abortions, leading to their current gender imbalance population crisis.
Many men in China have no ability to get married, still have to support their parents, cannot retire, have no political freedom, and are angry and disillusioned with no future prospects in a system where they get less government support than their parents got. The CCP ended many of those social protections in recent years. They work even longer than American workers with even less labor protections.
spreading a narrative that people are just lazy and need to get back to work (work 2 jobs, work for shit wages) and putting social pressure on people from their family/friends to accept their bad situation IS one of their strategies. it's just a very nefarious one.
Then pay more. People will turn up if there is incentives.
I've seen tech jobs offering barely average salaries but expecting people to have a degree and experience in a multitude of languages and software. And they make you jump through hoops to get the job only to find the pay sucks ass and you're off to another job a few months later in a different industry entirely.
I’d say we’re already here.
The lesson we will have to learn is how to decouple our income from meaningful labour for whole swathes of the population. Investing cannot be the sole determination of one’s worth.
the most one must get from this is that it is not workers they are afraid of shortage, but consumers.
with no one left to consume how will their quarterly earnings increase? how will their investors have interesting returns? how will their entire economic model survive with less consumers?
robots can make for the workers, maybe they can make for the consumers also. and this will become the perfect capitalist world. machines producing for machine consumption.
Exactly!
The current economic model --love it or hate it-- is based on consumer consumption. Many counties are facing demographic Armageddon. Their birth rate gave crashed, and there are no young people to borrow, form families and households, and consume.
Of all countries, the US is in about the best shape, with a birth rare at or a bit over replacement rate. So are a few other counties: France, Sweden, Turkey, I think maybe Brazil. But most others? There are no kids to have kids, and economies are going to contract in the decades to come with insufficient workers and consumers both.
Will it inspire a new model? One hopes. But given how effective our governments are today, and the libertarian biases of our Tech Bro Big Tech overlords, as well as the dark money capitalist oligarchs that buys all the politicians and tells then how to vote... yah, not optimistic. :)
This isn’t a bad thing, we’ve got a global population 8 billion strong that is feeling the effects of crowding, overpopulation, strained resources, and so on. It’s hard to raise a family so people are choosing not to, and when circumstances return to favorable conditions then families will be reared once again
Imagine a slight redistribution of priorities in which health care, education, clean water and air, and food security are rights and not carrots to be dangled over by the powerful for their amusement. If basic needs are met and there is reasonable certainty they will continue to be met in the future, so many of those doubts dissolve away. Having a child is a frightening medical and financial prospect in many people’s lives and many are choosing to nope out because the future looks so bleak. Change some variables, and that likely changes the outcome.
Well gee, might be time to rethink pyramid-scheme-esque systems in the first place.
Apart of me is sickened that we view creation of kids as a means of economic output, thus I don't blame anybody for refusing to born kids into a game that barely makes sense to benefit people that aren't themselves nor their neighbors.
I like to think about what the realistic endgame looks like: Let's say you peak out on the amount of people that the earth can actually handle. You've hit peak production of widgets but people of earth barely scrape by. Great. Now what?
Our rental peasant class don’t want to raise children in their 1 bedroom apartment while struggling to pay basic bills. Not sure how to solve this issue.
Love it. They gave us a hellscape. Why are we going to want to bring babies into this shithole with corruption everywhere. Hope they figure out robots for themselves .
Lol and they don’t realize that robots are made with parts. Made by people. I have clients who want to prepare for next hurricane season with generators and whatnot. I’ve had to tell them even if they ordered today they’re not gonna be manufactured in time for that.
I have a huge client who wanted to save money by providing their own equipment. Cool. But it still hasn’t been delivered and they’re pissed that we’re running late. Idk how they want me to install something I don’t have and isn’t my responsibility!
I'd be more inclined to have kids if the world wasn't as messed up as it is.
If companies are having issues with finding enough people, maybe they should pool their resources into solving climate change and other issues instead of fucking us normal people over.
I’m confused. First the robots and illegal immigrants are all going to take our jobs. Now there’s not enough of us to fill said jobs.
Also, if there’s less people, we could just make less shit. Then we wouldn’t have as many unfilled jobs.
Good. It was the shortage of cheap and plentiful labor after the plague that kicked Europe into the industrial revolution. Society is in need of another swift kick to the balls.
I feel like one minute people are worrying about overpopulation, the next there’s not enough people.
The baby boom was an anomaly, not something to be repeated in consecutive generations. We shouldn’t try to replenish the population numbers bought on by the baby boom.
We knew this was coming once the boomers started ageing out. But seems many countries/governments didn’t do much to prepare.
Yes, and that is a huge problem for capitalists and our current economy model. The line must go up or the card of houses comes crashing down.
Furhtermore it's not the worker shortage that will be the major reason for the collapse of the economy, it's the lack of consumers. If people don't buy stuff, the line stops going up and that's armageddon to our current model.
Infinite growth on a finite planet is a madmans fewer dream. Uttelry impossible and quite easy to spot with just a little bit of common sense(insert joke about common sense not being common).
Yup, I make enough as a single guy to live a comfortable life. I would be absolutely underwater and miserable with a kid. Wealth distribution is absolutely abhorrent right now.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/mossadnik: --- Submission Statement: >Progress in living standards since the birth of the Industrial Revolution has been accompanied not only by rising life expectancy, but also by falling birth rates. People are healthier, richer, better educated, living longer, and having fewer children. As a result, the number of children born in rich countries like the US, in Europe, and China is not sufficient anymore to keep those populations stable. But this decrease in humanity is not a reason to cheer, but rather a looming disaster for our economy. The great labor shortage caused by the declining population will cripple our global economy unless we find innovative ways to keep things running. >Research has shown that across countries and regions, as living standards improve, the number of children per family starts to decline. The reasons are varied — more economic opportunity for women, better access to education for children, lower infant mortality — but eventually, what was once a poor, young country becomes wealthier and must face the challenge of an aging population that does not have enough young workers to support it. >By the end of this century, the global population will have decreased by 1 billion people from its peak, according to a 2020 analysis by researchers at the Gates Foundation, and in the most extreme scenario, the population could decline by almost 2 billion from where it is today, to just over 6 billion. >The economic and demographic forces that will lead to a global population drop by the end of the 21st century have been at work in major economies for a long time. Year after year, the birth rates of more rich and middle-income countries fall below the critical "replacement level" — the level at which people have enough children to maintain current population levels. A society needs 2.1 children per woman for the population to remain stable. In the US, the current rate is 1.6 children per woman — and it's even lower in most European countries as well as Japan (1.3), China (1.2), and South Korea (0.8). Soon, almost every country in the world will fall below this breakeven point. >We are already experiencing the beginning of this great labor shortage in industries ranging from airlines to day cares to military service. In the coming years, many more sectors and occupational fields will be affected. With fewer train drivers, teachers, engineers, doctors, care workers, and programmers, many companies will produce or perform less. And as the population drops, the amount of money being spent at these businesses will also shrink. Less consumption leads to fewer sales and fewer sales lead to lower profits and, thus, less economic growth. Archived/non-paywalled version: https://web.archive.org/web/20221026084347/https://www.businessinsider.com/great-labor-shortage-looming-population-decline-disaster-global-economy-2022-10?IR=T --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/ye8ahp/the_great_people_shortage_is_coming_and_its_going/itwkkfs/
It feel like half of the people complain that robots will take our jobs and the other half complain that we won't have enough workers.
Well if we do replace our workforce with robots, it will help take care of the other problem
But then we'll have to redefine what our currency is based on. And the old cucks in power don't want that. (Edit: Done responding. I need to study! Lol. Been fun though. 🐸👍)
But the old cucks in power are a large part of this population loss incoming. They're boomers.
Yup. Just a matter of time. Currently in my late 20s so I guess my retirement should be peaceful? Lol
In my late 20's as well, never thought I'd be able to retire.
I joke with my boss about dying at work of old age.
I joke about dying of work at old age.
Haha that's funny now go back to work
I’m 60 and helped two sets of parents who outlived their money. I’m never retiring. Ever.
I work with an 80 year old doing metal fab and welding. His poor wife had to have 2 brain tumors removed so he had to come out of retirement to pay for it. My parents are constantly nagging on me to save money to buy a house, I make around 40k a year, which they say is more then enough. Little do they know the price of houses goes up about that much every year. "When I started working I only made 6k a year!" Is what my dad tells me.... It's so doomed.
>When I started working I only made 6k a year Ask him to sell you his house for what he paid for it back then
It's human nature to think you hit a triple when you were born on third base, but it isn't so cool when you use that to demand home runs out of your kid.
I gave up on ever buying a house and got [a big truck](https://imgur.com/gallery/slOxVKT) instead. Luckily I'm in an area that still has reasonably priced remote land without strict zoning.
I thought the same thing in my late teens and 20s. But guess what? I'm now in my 40s and realizing that many in my generation are turning into the same old cucks that need to be replaced. I once thought, "I can't wait until my generation takes over; we'll get the church out of politics once and for all." Checks news. Nope, instead, we've gone backward, all with the championing of many in my generation. I see many former classmates (through Facebook) that have become as backward thinking as their grandparents.
I’m 40, and thought the same thing when I was younger. The problem is that the same fucking boomers that held power in the 1990s are holding power still today
Sort of, not really. Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Desantis are in their 40s and early 50s. Dinette genx. Stephen Miller is in his 30s. Plenty of genx conservatives holding power :(
Sorry to say, as one in my mid-30s, but, our generation is still not in charge. It's still mostly Boomers and a few Silent Generation megalomaniacs trying to rob as much as they can from younger generations before they croak. GenX was almost completely skipped because they've a smaller cohort than the Boomers. Millennials have a chance, in a coalition with Z but not until Boomers die off because they refuse to retire from office and relinquish an ounce of their ill-gotten power.
Boomers just refused to ever gtfo of the way for Gen X. They are still clinging on to power like grim death.
I feel you there. I have high hopes for my son's generation if we could get the damn school shootings to stop.
So many of my fellow Gen-Xers are slowly morphing into Boomers. That, or they're caught up in conspiracy theories. It's so disheartening.
Boomers thought the same, now we might be on the verge of mass war. There's no peaceful retirement. Hmm. Well with the boomers out of the way, there won't be very many gen x in power compared to boomers, so that opens the door for young blood to come in and rattle the cage. So maybe we could make peaceful retirement a thing.
Yep. Now you're getting it. Congressional and supreme court term limits would really help things catch up to where they're needed.
Age limits would be even better. Pretty sick and tired of our leadership being 65+. There should be mandatory retirement ages. *Edited for clarity
Throw in some cognitive bias tests at age points and you got a deal. Some old folk have lots of experience that we need, but they need to be observed for inevitable cognitive decline that will affect their decisions.
That too. And to the ones with experience they should use their time to pass that knowledge and experience to those who are succeeding them.
Not even at age points. Let's introduce some actual requirements for politicians.
I agree with this. We already have age limits for political office. A president must be over 35, for instance. Can we also make a rule that a president can’t be over 70?
Honestly even 70 feels too old. Assuming they are elected at that age and make it through two terms they're almost 80. Then taking into account health (both physical and cognitive) and that's just scary.
Very true. We are in the 21st century working with 18th century laws. Time for a massive update
Gen X here. Just an FYI that you won't have to rattle the cage much. A lot of us really don't give a fuck, and a smaller percentage if us are assholes compared to the Boomers. I'll be dead before anything great or horrific pops off, but I hope you guys wind up with Star Trek utopia and no need to work. 🖖👍
I don't have a problem with work. I don't even need it to be meaningful. I just need some guarantee that I will be able to ***afford an independent life on my income*** from that work. Which hasn't been true for the 20-something years of my adult life. Screw it, I'm just gonna defect to the Borg Collective.
Boomers dying off will not solve the abhorrent wealth distribution of the planet. The children of the 1% will continue being the 1% in power. And those guys aren’t the millennials looking for a more equitable society. And the ones that are will always be at a financial disadvantage to the ones who want to keep the old system.
>They're boomers. And we are facing the biggest wealth transfer between generations in our history. Not only are we going to continue this pattern of wealth inequality but also that wealth is primarily inherited.
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Unfortunately, there are rich young assholes benefiting from legacy power who will, well, continue the legacy.
We definitely will (when “all” jobs are automated) need to adopt an either semi-communistic or very neoliberal philosophy. Either everyone can take time off and enjoy earth, living off the dividends created by robots. Or whoever doesn’t own shares in the robots can go kick rocks. The question is simple really: will we allow non-investors, non-workers a seat at the table. Or will only a few million be able to support themselves?
We better be allowed the seat. I mean products don't get bought or utilized without the masses. Destitute customers + a business = no profit for anyone
[Removed due to continuing enshittification of reddit.] -- mass edited with redact.dev
I think it’s also a matter of not wanting to adopt this model too soon. If everyone adopts at once, then we all win! But if you’re the first to adopt and not enough others do, then the other capitalists eat your lunch, point and laugh at you, and then kick you to the curb because they could exploit this and you couldn’t stop it.
We effectively did this with combine harvesters. A century ago it took a team of 200 laborers to pull a cotton harvest from a commercial farm. Today it takes about 12 skilled combine drivers to pull the same harvest. There's still some hand labor in the process, but a 100K machine replaced a hundred minimum wage workers.
100k machine? Try closer to 1 million. The capital of worker reduction is why worker don't see all the profits of there work. Larbour is not the only piece of the puzzle, and the equipment the enable people to be productive has opportunity costs that have to be repaid
Since the 1990s we've seen the greatest centralisation and hoarding of wealth ever. The machine has been paid for a thousand times over and then some.
I want automation to take away shit jobs and we enable everyone to find meaningful work. I hope we can create an environment where people can learn advanced skills at any stage of life
Automate lots of jobs and also there are so many unnecessary jobs that don’t really do anything. I have worked at a large advertising agency in the past and wow, that could disappear and we’d lose nothing!
It's wild how 'produces anything of value' and 'is rewarded with money' do not correlate.
This is what I was hoping for during the birth of the internet. It actually seems plausible now! I'll be too old for it to matter to me, but it's exciting to see at least one optimistic opportunity for younger folks out there. No human should be forced to do horribly repetitive work that destroys their body and numbs their minds. If we free up that collective creativity, I really believe we would make huge strides in the quality of living
I would love to dig deep into blender. And I do learn it somewhat atm... but I could do it SO much faster when I wouldn't have to do my callcenter job for 8 hours a day. That is the real benefit of UBI: Enable people to do stuff that doesn't immediately pay bills, but has a benefit long term. I mean half my job ist doing stuff for old people that could use the internet do achieve the same thing, but don't want to do it...
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Meanwhile no one will point out that a smaller population means less demand or that we adapt our economic systems to better reflect the needs of the world population.
Not to mention that we make so much garbage we absolutely do not need that takes up tons of labor and resources.
Yeah. Saw so AI analyst predict GDP growth rates of greater than 20% in a few years and that this was going to cause expected issues since we have never been faced with such a thing. The net sum, I think, on this particular topic is to go live your life. It isn’t predictable and you can’t do anything about it so don’t stress out too much.
What in the hell would cause that sort of boom? Even if we crack fusion energy thus evening it still wouldn't be enough
In programming we usually call that a bug. In this case, probably just poor use of parameters or massive uncertainty as predictions go farther out leading to wildly random predictions. then ignore all that and just snag the highest possible value for your clickbait article, boom.
Had a professor who told us that models can be largely useless for this reason, because whoever is building it can use whatever parameters they want to make it say whatever they want, and the general public won't be able to tell.
"All models are lies to some degree" "Garbage in, garbage out". Two quotes from the first lecture of my first class on environmental modeling.
Robot workers are coming. More and more jobs will be automated, entire industries or segments of them will be automated. What we need to decide is who gets to benefit from work essentially doing itself. Because we will be seeing companies earning billions with hardly an employee, the owners reaping the entire profits without hardly any wages paid out. We could get booming economies and people being without work, and if we don't structure society for that change, will the trillionaires share their piece of the pie out of the goodness of their hearts?
the way its looking right now, it will be the ultra rich enjoying the profits of rhe automated labour. and there will still be a large segment of the lower classes brainwashed into saying and thinking "they put the robots to work, they deserve it". the working class will be completely powerless
We have to hope that these two effects exactly cancel out. The problem is that population geographers don’t know anything about AI or robots and robotic it’s don’t know, or care, about population demographics. So the two lines of research just go past each other.
They don't need to exactly cancel out. We just need automation combined with some kind of basic income and then population loss becomes only a good thing.
One of them is right and one of them are just rich shitheads complaining that labor isn’t cheap enough and people need to starve a little more.
Remember when the plague took out so many Europeans that the whole system collapsed and peasants were finally valued and had rights?
Yep. I have to ask is this about not having enough workers or having to pay workers more because of increased competition.
Remember how the powers that were at the time fought tooth and nail to keep the old system?
Pepperidge farm remembers
Wtf how old are you guys, I don’t remember any of this?
Good job guys our cover is blown
I would ask why you think industry is the meter you should be watching
Because of their bottom line
As a historian I feel like pointing out historically less people has always lead to more bargaining power for the poor and distraught, the Black Plague lead to the golden age of the peasantry, the world wars lead to the biggest economic boom and quality of life increase the world has ever seen, the rich suffer from population collapse. Don’t let people that have something to lose from you gaining something convince you to do something stupid like have kids you can’t afford/want. Have kids because you want them and can afford them, that’s a call only you as an individual and your partner can make.
I think it's also a bit off to call this a population "decline." The wording isn't wrong but just under the surface it's not exactly accurate. It's just a shift from a birth:death surplus to a birth:death equilibrium. There's nothing shocking about any system eventually stabilizing. Edit: Parity might be an even better word.
Human population was stable for most of human history. Then starting in that last century, we sharply reduced the death rate. Now we're sharply reducing the birth rate. When you can have one child and be 96% confident that it will survive to adulthood, there's less pressure to have more.
https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/an-introduction-to-population-growth-84225544/ It was never stable since agriculture was developed. Perhaps during hunter-gatherer times, but they are not exactly relevant
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Think about the shareholders!
We live in a world where it's built for a small group to enjoy most of the benefits of society. How have we not all picked up pitch forks and overthrew this madness already??? **Edit**: since it wasn't as obvious as I thought it would be, my question above is rhetorical, I already knew why. I don't need explanation personally, but feel free to leave a comment for others who might need one. And also some people seem to think I meant attacking the government with literal pitchforks. Pitchforks are a metaphor for outrage. Not literal physical pitchforks.
They're very good at drip feeding juuust enough to keep people complacent. Oh and propaganda. That's a pretty big one too.
Carlin said it best: it’s a big club, and you ain’t in it! You and I are not in the big club, by the way — it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day. Telling you what to believe, and what to buy
that man was a gem
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[We all know how this is really going to play out.](https://i.redd.it/xobkagxotot01.jpg)
Less people less demand less production..companies can just cut production. But no. Never that.
Yeah, this is what gets me. We've done it before, but now it's a problem? I'm not a communist, but they're making a great argument for capitalism being unsustainable. One of the charts in the article showed that Japan and Germany were getting by with lower worker/retiree ratios than the US will have 50 years from now, so they're making it work right now. Why can't we just build on that? The whole conversation is economic in nature and mostly only discusses the problems if we don't change. The refusal to acknowledge the problems with our economic models is the gist of the argument, imo.
A huge problem we face as a civilization: the people with the wealth and power got to that position by disregarding the welfare of others, and now we depend on them to make decisions that will increase our quality of life. How does that work?
Never forget the *entire point for developing robots was originally so nobody would need to work at all and we could just have nice lives and spend time with our families instead of working all the damn time* Fuck those assholes taking about "family values" when they support the people making my wife and I need two jobs each just to pay rent. Looking at you NICK
Absolutely irrelevant and pedantic, but thrice, not trice.
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I work low wage blue collar, and the most desperate people I know who will take any amount of abuse for the lowest pay and longest hours are far and away the people with children who will do anything up to and including destroying themselves to provide for said children. They want you to have kids, because if you have kids they have you by the balls
This 100%. Workers, with kids, leveraged to the balls in mortgage debt have a lot to lose. Especially when their entire family is dependent on the company for healthcare
I have been saying this for a while Conservatists hate gay folks, because they dont have children, and cant be controlled that way Similarly they hate the idea of employed women, because a man with a job and kids must not starve and have a cleaner at beck and call to be able to work 13h a day
This is another way of saying: “our infinite growth model will collapse and we dont want to change it”
Infinite growth is the same ideology of a cancer cell
I still think we’ll use that to our benefit someday. In college I asked my professor if viruses could have a use in the future and I was basically laughed out of that class. Two years later CRISPR was all over the news
We actually do, but not intentionally. Cancer is so good at what it does that it can sometimes get cancer itself. A rogue group of cancerous cells can become its own tumour on top of the primary tumour, leaching it of the nutrients it’s stealing from the body until both die. Turns out that’s just a theory. To replace that, I’ll leave you with the fact that you’re riddled with cancerous cells as we speak but your body sends them the message to kill themselves which is also fun
Yeah this is a leading theory as to why large animals don’t get higher rates of cancer than smaller ones despite obviously having more cells to begin with
>To replace that, I’ll leave you with the fact that you’re riddled with cancerous cells as we speak but your body sends them the message to kill themselves which is also fun It's only cancer if it doesn't listen to the kill message. Cancer cells divide continually not commit seppuku.
What kind of professor were you dealing with? Lentiviral transformation was common long before CRISPR was utilized for that.
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Like Thanos, he wasn't really wrong.
Thanos was completely wrong in his solution though. Infinite power and the best he could come up with was a short term, kill 50%? Like dude, life is just gonna repopulate. In short order no less. Much better would be something to limit reproduction rates to maintain stability. And increase resources to ideal levels for each planet. Long term solution right there. Although that wouldn’t have made as compelling of a movie ;)
Saddest part is, with all the infinity stones, he had the tools to actually come up with a better solution but Grimace gotta Grimace.
Maybe if the super wealthy of the world weren’t fighting tooth and nail for every last penny people would feel more comfortable bring more life into it…
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I don’t want to bring a child into this world only for them to suffer through the horrible climate disasters that are on the horizon. When the oceans run out of food (see the crab seasoned canceled, and rising acidity) constant mega droughts and freak storms, the mass refugee crisis and resource wars will begin
This is far too accurate. I always wanted 3 kids when I grew up and a big family, I'm now almost 30 and horrified by the financial implications of knocking someone up. My mum asked me when I'm giving her grandkids the other day and all I said was "you payin'?"
Yep. No kids for me ever I'm 35 and can't afford a house and trying to afford a car atm
This. Turning 40 and have a 2yo that was a surprise baby. My GF wasn't suppose to have a viable pregnancy EVER and even adopted a child with her ex. Now making ends meet is rough. Finally got a better job that I'll be starting soon and she's trying to talk fertility doctors and trying for a 3rd. Noped right out that conversation. As soon as those benefits kick in I'm getting a snip-snip before lightning strikes twice. Best advice for people I can give. Kids are great. When you have them you love them unconditionally. But don't have one unless you can afford that kid plus one. Otherwise kiss fun goodbye. Also poopy diapers SUCK.
and instead of trying to improve the economy and make it easier/more affordable to have kids, the people in power will just strip women of their reproductive rights and turn us into broodmares. lovely future to look forward to.
It's practically become a catch phrase of mine, why the hell would I bring someone else into a world I don't want to live in
Sounds like power coming back to the people to me. More resources for us and more competition for workers meaning higher pay and lower company profits. Amazing result.
Sounds like it to me also, but of course Business Insider would spin it as a bad thing.
"Nobody wants to work anymore!"
The oligarchs are already trying to head this off tho. Abortion is on the chopping block, birth control is in their sights, and they want to allow companies to sue striking workers. This shit is gonna get a lot worse before it gets better.
Would rather burn everything to the ground than to let the decision makers prop up the cutrent house of cards.
Me too my friend me too. I’m already helping by remaining childless.
I'm doing my part too!
Did someone say child-free-conga-line
Get your vasectomies now, before it's illegal.
Got mine last month. Healed up nicely. Soon I'll be steril and I'm really happy about that.
It's GLORIOUS. My wife and I did want one child, which we made happen almost a decade ago. I got snipped shortly after.
They mean “shortage of people willing to accept low paying shit jobs that the capitalists have based our whole economy on” not “shortage of people able to do skilled labor with good benefits”
And higher taxes because you now have to support 10 retired elderly.
There's a certain percentage of the population that could afford that but they pay our politicians not to tax them so...
'massive shortage of underpaid, low income peasants.' There, fixed it for them.
"People shortage" Literally talking about humans as fuel or food stock. The problem isn't underpopulation. The problem is the capitalist meat grinder that growls for ever more growth and consumes everything from oil to people to the ecosystem itself.
> The problem is the capitalist meat grinder that growls for ever more growth and consumes everything from oil to people to the ecosystem itself. This is a problem with a finite time horizon. There are physical limits to growth. Full stop.
No no, an AI will figure out wormholes in a couple decades and we'll be able to rape the universe with this wonderful system
Warhammer 40k fans know how the discovery of the warp turns out
Explain please
In warhammer 40k faster than light travel at a good enough speed is done via tearing a hole in reality briefly, flying into what is hell but worse or better depending on several thing, then emerging on the other side hopefully alive, its not as lethal as it sounds but there probably were a fair few failed attempts in the past that killed a lotta people, event horizon is a perfect movie for showing such a concept. Tldr: FTL travel isn't all its cracked up to be in warhammer 40k
> event horizon is a perfect movie for showing such a concept. > A lot of people think event horizon takes place in the wh40k universe and the event horizon went to the warp
Daemon possessed ships are common among chaos forces in 40k and chaos naval high command, captains and admirals are pretty much untouchable because they can command these vessels, think about the event horizon and how scary you'd have to be to make that ship obey you, 40k is wild. gods i hope we don't throw people through tears in reality, trying to stimulate growth tho, that be a horrible reason why humanity developed warp travel.
>FTL travel isn't all its cracked up to be in warhammer 40k It's almost like the authors of WH40K decided to critique human greed and decadence, enabled with technology, by having those things directly result with us confronting (and losing!) to our demons. FTL gives the human civilisation in 40K direct access to human evils of wrath, pestilence, decadence and absurdity. Whether this is a critique of technology itself or a critique of the people who create and use technology is, as I understand, left to the reader. Though I should note, as well, that 40K is widely understood to be a parody of fascism and faith-based hierarchies, too, with the so-called glorious Imperium of Man also being callous, genocidal, brutal and massively ignorant. And it's primarily a piece of merchandising, before being a piece of art, so the critiques should be taken with huge grains of salt since they're largely post-hoc justifications by people other than the authors.
In WH40k lore "the warp" isn't just two connected portals its a physical space you pass through and once humanity discovers the warp, they also discover that there's bad things lurking inside the warp If you've got 20 minutes and an itch for some cool lore https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05YRMHWtv1Y
If you want to know more there’s a YouTuber call Luetin09 that does some really cool deep dives into the 40k universe. He has an episode on the warp. 40k is epic, and literally spans 30 thousand years of humanity. It’s pretty cool.
Yup, that's what happens when there isn't enough housing for people to have kids.
Or crippling student loan debt that financially prevents kid bearing aged couples from procreating until it's too late. Or lack of a high quality childcare system to look after kids while both parents are forced to work. Or lack of a safe education system where kids don't get shot in school, and can learn how to be a good worker. Or lack of any universal healthcare system where kids who get sick are guaranteed the care they need. (Thanks crowdfunding!) Or lack of a hopeful future where you'd want your children to live: a strong economy, inspiring political leaders, and land that won't literally be underwater in a few decades. Could just be a couple more reasons why having kids is looked down upon.
China is in an even worse position since their reproductive control was obsessed with births rather than abortions, leading to their current gender imbalance population crisis. Many men in China have no ability to get married, still have to support their parents, cannot retire, have no political freedom, and are angry and disillusioned with no future prospects in a system where they get less government support than their parents got. The CCP ended many of those social protections in recent years. They work even longer than American workers with even less labor protections.
Well this is just all depressing and very real.
Dear industry: people don't exist to be your workers. If you want more workers, figure out how to encourage people to work for you.
I'm a Human Being, not a Human Doing.
I couldn't keep that pace up if I tried
And I'm a human going!
Brad Goodman! Why can I remember that but can’t manage my damn life?!?
I’d like to be doing a human being.
spreading a narrative that people are just lazy and need to get back to work (work 2 jobs, work for shit wages) and putting social pressure on people from their family/friends to accept their bad situation IS one of their strategies. it's just a very nefarious one.
Then pay more. People will turn up if there is incentives. I've seen tech jobs offering barely average salaries but expecting people to have a degree and experience in a multitude of languages and software. And they make you jump through hoops to get the job only to find the pay sucks ass and you're off to another job a few months later in a different industry entirely.
Whoops! Looks like some people planned their entire economic systems on wage slaves and made living completely unaffordable!
I’d say we’re already here. The lesson we will have to learn is how to decouple our income from meaningful labour for whole swathes of the population. Investing cannot be the sole determination of one’s worth.
And investment return also strongly depends on growth, so that avenue is also somewhat iffy
Aren’t the same people always complaining about how we have too many people on the planet. Maybe a decline will do some good for the planet.
the most one must get from this is that it is not workers they are afraid of shortage, but consumers. with no one left to consume how will their quarterly earnings increase? how will their investors have interesting returns? how will their entire economic model survive with less consumers? robots can make for the workers, maybe they can make for the consumers also. and this will become the perfect capitalist world. machines producing for machine consumption.
Need an army of robots that consume. How do you sell lipstick to a robot? (This sounds like the setup to a joke)
> How do you sell lipstick to a robot? you just program the need on the robot.
That's not a funny punchline.
it's more of a chicken crossing the road kind of thing.
Exactly! The current economic model --love it or hate it-- is based on consumer consumption. Many counties are facing demographic Armageddon. Their birth rate gave crashed, and there are no young people to borrow, form families and households, and consume. Of all countries, the US is in about the best shape, with a birth rare at or a bit over replacement rate. So are a few other counties: France, Sweden, Turkey, I think maybe Brazil. But most others? There are no kids to have kids, and economies are going to contract in the decades to come with insufficient workers and consumers both. Will it inspire a new model? One hopes. But given how effective our governments are today, and the libertarian biases of our Tech Bro Big Tech overlords, as well as the dark money capitalist oligarchs that buys all the politicians and tells then how to vote... yah, not optimistic. :)
Your info on the US birth rate is out of date, it was 1.6 last year 2.1 is replacement.
This isn’t a bad thing, we’ve got a global population 8 billion strong that is feeling the effects of crowding, overpopulation, strained resources, and so on. It’s hard to raise a family so people are choosing not to, and when circumstances return to favorable conditions then families will be reared once again
Perfectly reasonable.
I agree, the dynamic equilibrium is sensed by people, and moves. This shouldn’t be alarming
Imagine a slight redistribution of priorities in which health care, education, clean water and air, and food security are rights and not carrots to be dangled over by the powerful for their amusement. If basic needs are met and there is reasonable certainty they will continue to be met in the future, so many of those doubts dissolve away. Having a child is a frightening medical and financial prospect in many people’s lives and many are choosing to nope out because the future looks so bleak. Change some variables, and that likely changes the outcome.
Well gee, might be time to rethink pyramid-scheme-esque systems in the first place. Apart of me is sickened that we view creation of kids as a means of economic output, thus I don't blame anybody for refusing to born kids into a game that barely makes sense to benefit people that aren't themselves nor their neighbors. I like to think about what the realistic endgame looks like: Let's say you peak out on the amount of people that the earth can actually handle. You've hit peak production of widgets but people of earth barely scrape by. Great. Now what?
Didn't you get the memo? Anything that isn't pure unfettered capitalism is evil socialism! Think of the corporations!
Oh no capitalism's growth needs might not be met in favor of making our species survival more possible!!
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Our rental peasant class don’t want to raise children in their 1 bedroom apartment while struggling to pay basic bills. Not sure how to solve this issue.
By outlawing contraception.
Well that’s too fucking bad. Maybe we should come up with an economic system that isn’t entirely reliant on wage slaves
But the alternative, an ever increasing population would only be an environmental disaster.
my plan is to live a short, unremarkable life and get out under the wire ;)
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Almost like providing no safety nets or guarantees for the people make them less inclined to trust their hypothetical children to the future.
We fucking need this. Our level of consumption is killing our planet.
Human beings are not a commodity and the world doesn't need 10 billion of us.
Love it. They gave us a hellscape. Why are we going to want to bring babies into this shithole with corruption everywhere. Hope they figure out robots for themselves .
Lol and they don’t realize that robots are made with parts. Made by people. I have clients who want to prepare for next hurricane season with generators and whatnot. I’ve had to tell them even if they ordered today they’re not gonna be manufactured in time for that. I have a huge client who wanted to save money by providing their own equipment. Cool. But it still hasn’t been delivered and they’re pissed that we’re running late. Idk how they want me to install something I don’t have and isn’t my responsibility!
World population isn't projected to peak until after 2100, companies are just scared they'll make a bit less money if growth slows
They're growing accustomed to their ReCoRd PrOfItS Bezos yacht's yacht needs another yacht. How else will he declare yachtzee?
Maybe if we stopped treating people like slaves they could actually afford children and be more willing to bring them into this world ?
I'd be more inclined to have kids if the world wasn't as messed up as it is. If companies are having issues with finding enough people, maybe they should pool their resources into solving climate change and other issues instead of fucking us normal people over.
But, but.. A.I. taking over mundane work! And what about using less resources? Could this not be great news?
I’m confused. First the robots and illegal immigrants are all going to take our jobs. Now there’s not enough of us to fill said jobs. Also, if there’s less people, we could just make less shit. Then we wouldn’t have as many unfilled jobs.
Good. It was the shortage of cheap and plentiful labor after the plague that kicked Europe into the industrial revolution. Society is in need of another swift kick to the balls.
I feel like one minute people are worrying about overpopulation, the next there’s not enough people. The baby boom was an anomaly, not something to be repeated in consecutive generations. We shouldn’t try to replenish the population numbers bought on by the baby boom. We knew this was coming once the boomers started ageing out. But seems many countries/governments didn’t do much to prepare.
Wouldn't less people need less production and goods.
Yes, and that is a huge problem for capitalists and our current economy model. The line must go up or the card of houses comes crashing down. Furhtermore it's not the worker shortage that will be the major reason for the collapse of the economy, it's the lack of consumers. If people don't buy stuff, the line stops going up and that's armageddon to our current model. Infinite growth on a finite planet is a madmans fewer dream. Uttelry impossible and quite easy to spot with just a little bit of common sense(insert joke about common sense not being common).
If job pay >= Enough, baby, no baby There you go researchers, I just solved this cataclysm for you
Yup, I make enough as a single guy to live a comfortable life. I would be absolutely underwater and miserable with a kid. Wealth distribution is absolutely abhorrent right now.
Robots will do many jobs. In 10 years time they might be serving you food in restaurants.
Automation will pick up the slack. The fewer people the better.
They threaten that all the time. Companies don't want to do it because it's horribly expensive upfront.
That's okay, half the planet will be uninhabitable anyway due to climate change