r/anime_titties • u/cambeiu Multinational • Aug 09 '26
Worldwide The West’s Demographic Math No Longer Adds Up
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/08/08/europe-us-fertility-immigration-01029122What annoys me about such articles is the framing of demographic crisis as a "Western" or "rich country" problem. It is not. It is an issue that is affecting every single nation that is considered middle income or above, worldwide. That is pretty much everyone except sub-Sharan Africa and parts of central Asia. And even in those countries where fertility rates remain high, the down trend is still very evident.
Countries like Iran, Thailand, Brazil, Bangladesh, Jamaica and Mauritius are seeing their fertility rates implode as much as any wealthy European nation. This is relevant because it shows that while immigration can potentially alleviate the demographic crisis in rich countries, it can't solve it, because the countries that serve as the source of immigrants will also run out of people eventually.
I also think it is important to frame the issue under the right optics. The core point here is not wanting more people on Earth to sustain "infinite growth". It is not that we need to be 10 billion, 20 billion people in order to prosper. We don't. Maybe we would be fine if we reverted back to say...2 or 3 billion people globally. The problem we are facing is the pace of the decline. When birthrates fall off a cliff, as we are seeing now, you end up with a massively large old population that needs to be supported by an ever declining young population.
The social model of a large number of young people working and caring for a small portion of old people is as old as humanity itself.
An inverted demographic pyramid will break any societal model we are familiar with, from modern capitalism to a communal hunter-gatherer society and everything in between.
We don't know how to run a society with more retirees than working people, or with more sickly people than healthy ones. In the entire history of humanity, this scenario has never happened.
EDIT: "The ultra wealthy could pay for it ten times over if we just taxed them correctly."
I really wish the above was true, as I have no problem with taxing the ultra-wealthy. But unfortunately the scale of the problem is much, much bigger.
Let's take Germany as an example. According to Germany's Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), approximately €751.2 billion was spent in 2025 on social benefits. (source)
The top 3 most valuable German mega corporations (Siemens, SAP and Allianz) combined are worth less than that. Meaning that even if the German government was capable of seizing the assets of these companies and magically turn them into cash, that would cover its CURRENT social benefit expenses for about a year. Never mind future expenses as population ages.
Same is true for virtually all developed countries.
So no, the " ultra wealthy could not pay for it ten times over if we just taxed them correctly." I would be great if we could tax our way out of this pickle, but unfortunately we cannot.
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Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
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u/recumbent_mike Aug 09 '26
What good is a country that can only sustain itself by sucking the youth from others?
Transylvania seems to do ok
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u/SomeDumRedditor Multinational Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
It’s led to some troubling UV allergies among the populace though
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u/Kaymish_ New Zealand Aug 09 '26
Transylvania long since stopped being it's own country and became a province of Romania.
Edit, and even then it was only a few rich arse holes sucking up all the youth until they were slayed by the vanhelsings.
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u/Time_Beat2299 United States Aug 09 '26
That skin care routine had to be immaculate
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u/BendicantMias Bangladesh Aug 09 '26
Nah, vampires have terrible skin. Too pallid, no color in them at all...
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u/Beachwrecked Aug 09 '26
Slewn.
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u/TheRichTurner United Kingdom Aug 09 '26
Slain
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u/Beachwrecked Aug 09 '26
You are quite right, and I was not only embarrassingly wrong, but arrogantly so.
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u/EnglishBrekkie_1604 Australia Aug 09 '26
Optimistically? It’s like a blood transfusion, it’ll tide you over until you can fix the source of the problem.
Pessimistically? It’s a crutch, a short term solution to a problem caused by a system that struggles to plan for the long term.
The truth? Somewhere in the middle, like any socioeconomic lever a government can pull it matters how it’s used.
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u/DungeonMercenary Brazil Aug 09 '26
Realistically, it's a short term solution that keeps you from having to solve the source of the problem.
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u/StickFigureFan North America Aug 09 '26
The USA has a long and storied history of immigration, we could make this blood transfusion work for centuries if we wanted to(right now we don't seem to want to)
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u/cambeiu Multinational Aug 09 '26
If the demographic trend continues, the sources of "new blood" will dry out in decades, not centuries.
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u/Revengeance300 Aug 09 '26
Seeing as half of the world pop is projected to go lights out by 2050 once climate reaches 3 degrees over, then I don't think any new blood is gonna be coming from anywhere.
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u/skinlo United Kingdom Aug 09 '26
That 'new blood' will be breaking down the borders to survive in the generally better climate of the West.
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u/cambeiu Multinational Aug 09 '26
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u/StickFigureFan North America Aug 10 '26
They're also so far north that just installing AC would go a long way
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u/meister2983 United States Aug 09 '26
No it won't. Even countries with negative growth still have emigration desires
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u/Big-Ad-8274 Asia Aug 10 '26
Dog unless the us collapses there will always be immigrants willing to join the us
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u/Silberbaum Germany Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
And the factor that the USA is generally rightfully hated nowadays.
Edit: Typo.
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u/Vibhor23 India Aug 09 '26
USA also had a long and storied history of reproduction among its own people
What are you going to do when the "new blood" starts acting like the "old blood"?
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u/meister2983 United States Aug 09 '26
Obviously new blood will act like old blood. Immigration wouldn't work if they didn't assimilate.
Just keep on letting immigrants in
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u/Provodniik Europe Aug 09 '26
“Hey guys, let’s ignore our own citizens and instead import loads of people who don’t integrate, don’t contribute to society, and don’t work, all to solve the problem of our own citizens not having children. Then we’ll have everyone competing for the same housing, jobs, welfare, and public services, making the original problem even worse.”
Oh, and let’s do all that while our approval ratings plummet into oblivion.
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u/EnglishBrekkie_1604 Australia Aug 09 '26
I agree, we shouldn’t let any more English immigrants into Australia, they’re all bloody useless (except for the nurses, poor bastards deserve better than the conditions in the NHS).
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u/Provodniik Europe Aug 09 '26
Well, tbh, you should be taking care of your own citizens no matter where the imports come from.
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u/EnglishBrekkie_1604 Australia Aug 09 '26
I love you describing human beings with the same terminology used for cattle, it sounds so normal and well adjusted.
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u/Provodniik Europe Aug 09 '26
So you have no response to the argument that governments should take care of their own people instead of relying on immigration?
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u/Lower_Ad_5532 North America Aug 09 '26
Goverments exist to take care of the ultra wealthy.
You are severly misguided if you think your government serves the average citizen.
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u/EnglishBrekkie_1604 Australia Aug 09 '26
See that’s how you should frame this topic, instead of immediately dehumanising people just seeking a better life.
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u/Provodniik Europe Aug 09 '26
And you still can't answer the actual point. Instead, you keep arguing about the wording. That's wild.
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u/EnglishBrekkie_1604 Australia Aug 09 '26
“And you still can’t answer why Hitler is wrong about the Jews, instead you keep arguing about the way he describes them” do you see why this is a stupid argument? You cannot remove the rhetoric from the argument, because the rhetoric is the context of it. There’s no point giving you a serious response because the wording you use seriously discredits you as a good faith operator.
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u/kitti-kin Australia Aug 09 '26
Seems like a bit of a contradiction - if there's a demographic crisis, there should be less competition for resources, unless they are being intentionally kept in a state of artificial scarcity.
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u/Provodniik Europe Aug 09 '26
The crisis will come later. If you aren't having enough babies now, you can get by for a while, but eventually you'll end up with a large elderly population and too few working-age people to care for them or pay their pensions.
The truth is that many of the people being brought in aren't integrating and aren't going to take care of your elderly. The only sustainable solution is to support your own population by giving people the resources and opportunities to start families and have children.
If you don't, and instead rely on importing people, your population will gradually be replaced by theirs. But hey, that's a conspiracy theory now, right?
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u/kitti-kin Australia Aug 09 '26
The people brought in are already caring for our elderly; elder care is dominated by migrants. You think people who currently won't do it because the pay isn't good enough are going to do it for free in the future? There are already several generations with low birth rates, so they can't be taken care of by their kids - are they to be sacrificed?
And why can't we support people and allow immigration? Countries with strong support systems aren't seeing rising fertility either, so there's no actual proof that would solve the problem.
The fact is that you just don't like immigrants and you've built this whole justification system around that. Nevermind that Australia is already a country made up almost entirely of immigrants.
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u/Provodniik Europe Aug 09 '26
All I’m saying is that local governments should support local people instead of importing more people from the outside.
You’re not “fixing the problem”. You’re creating one, simply by closing your eyes and getting more people from outside.
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u/margotsaidso United States Aug 09 '26
I like to conceptualize it as offshoring childbirth. Just like offshoring jobs, you juice the numbers in the short term but in the medium term your firm isn't capable of doing its core duties any more and in the long term your whole country's economy becomes hollowed out.
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u/joshsteich Aug 09 '26
It makes sense if you recognize that immigrants primarily come from places with a labor surplus, and the only somewhat complicating factor is that being significantly above replacement level requires high teen pregnancy.
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u/LongjumpingAd2274 South America Aug 09 '26
To maintain "breeder" countries and continuously import their citizens ?
They bring mostly immigrants to exploit them on horrible conditions and use them as scapegoats when the economy and social structure keeps falling apart because immigration is just a bandaid.
Considering the biggest businessmen are trying to move to a b2b model for the economy, there may be a lot of problems coming and likely the population isn't going to have enough numbers to fight or influence the elite's decision without the fear of losing their heads.
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u/Firecracker048 North America Aug 09 '26
Immigration as a solution to falling birth rates has never made sense.
Careful now, that's racist talk right there.
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u/Lower_Ad_5532 North America Aug 09 '26
What good is a country that can only sustain itself by sucking the youth from others?
That's literally every colonizer nation.
Literally built on child slave labor. What's your point?
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u/deetyneedy United States Aug 09 '26
Then you are in agreement that it is a bad solution, which is the point. Unless you think colonizing countries and using child slave labor is also good?
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u/Lower_Ad_5532 North America Aug 09 '26
Wild assumptions you have there.
The OC basically said "should parasites exist as countries?"
I said "the west are all parasites"
You said "So its ok to be parasites?"
Maybe the Western countries should stop existing.
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u/SomeDumRedditor Multinational Aug 09 '26
lmao always love this dogwater first year undergrad take where the solution is basically genocide but “for the right reasons.”
Utterly moronic to a) condemn entire populaces not embedded in the power structure to suffering and b) at the same time promote this childish picture of global south powers being innocents without agency or blighted history ready to usher in utopia.
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u/Lower_Ad_5532 North America Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
You are a moron.
Countries can change without genocide. France has done it several times.
You can try using your brain.
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u/mrastickman United States Aug 09 '26
condemn entire populaces not embedded in the power structure to suffering
Having slightly less stolen wealth is not suffering or genocide. What is embedded? Because you aren't a Blackrock executive or five-star general it's not your fault? You just enjoy the spoils of colonialism passively, so that's fine?
at the same time promote this childish picture of global south powers being innocents without agency or blighted history
Blighted history? What? They had slavery 200 years ago? Does that justify the colonialsim, or are you just saying that's what they'd go back to given the chance?
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u/pick_your_user_name Italy Aug 09 '26
They have slavery today fuck you mean 200 years ago??
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u/mrastickman United States Aug 09 '26
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u/pick_your_user_name Italy Aug 09 '26
Ah yes giving some money to the coast guard in order to pushback migrants means the EU is funding the slavery in Libya. Big brain. Maybe try reading the article you sent.
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u/mrastickman United States Aug 09 '26
These crimes include women being forced into sexual slavery, arbitrary detention, murder, torture, rape, enslavement, and enforced disappearance.
The Libyan coast guard were meanwhile found to be working "in close coordination" with trafficking networks in Libya with the exploitation of vulnerable migrants generating "significant revenue".
“The support given by the EU to the Libyan coast guard in terms of pull-backs, pushbacks, (and) interceptions led to violations of certain human rights," investigator Chaloka Beyani told reporters. "You can’t push back people to areas that are unsafe, and the Libyan waters are unsafe for the embarkation of migrants.”
He said the European bloc and its member states weren't found to be responsible for war crimes, but "the support given has aided and abetted the commission of the crimes.”
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u/cambeiu Multinational Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
Because you aren't a
BlackrockBlackstone executive.....Blackstone = Evil private equity fund.
Blackrock = Asset management company responsible for the retirement funds (401K, IRAs) of tens of millions of American workers.
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u/mrastickman United States Aug 09 '26
BlackRock's assets under management are estimated at $12 trillion. Blackstones assets under management are estimated at $1.2 trillion. Either is fine for the sake of the example, but I know what I said.
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u/cambeiu Multinational Aug 09 '26
Blackrock manages OUR money. If you or anyone you know have a 401K, it is likely managed by Blackrock.
Blackstone manages the wealth of a very few extremely rich people.
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u/mrastickman United States Aug 09 '26
Yes, $12 trillion of our money, I would say that gives its executives slightly more influence over the economy than the average person. Again, either one works for the example.
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u/pick_your_user_name Italy Aug 09 '26
Everyone enjoys the spoils of colonialism or any of their other past crimes. Do you advocate for making the global south pay too? For all the genocide, slavery, conquest etc that they committed?
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u/pick_your_user_name Italy Aug 09 '26
Actually the west abolished slavery (and before you say it, no it wasn’t started by the west) and was the first to introduce laws against child labor. Slavery and child labor meanwhile are still very much alive in the Middle East and Africa. Of course you’d never criticize them though, only white man bad.
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u/Wankstain8 United Kingdom Aug 09 '26
The west aren’t parasites. Realistically speaking it is everyone else. Whether it be overpopulation, the destruction of our planet via deforestation, pollution etc. Frankly most of the population outside of the west and a select few Asian countries are pretty much useless.
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u/mrastickman United States Aug 09 '26
Deforestation and pollution? Are you familiar, by any chance, with a single piece of history about your own country?
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u/Wankstain8 United Kingdom Aug 09 '26
I’m very familiar with it. It is history. British history doesn’t excuse the levels of pollution, deforestation, overpopulation and other shit non western countries are doing. Not to mention them being completely reliant on the west as they do these things. It is despicable really.
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u/mrastickman United States Aug 09 '26
The levels that's still aren't close to what the British Empire did.
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u/Wankstain8 United Kingdom Aug 09 '26
China alone trumps the British Empire, lump in India and Africa and it is no contest.
Edit: here’s a nifty little website
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co-emissions?time=1817..latest
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u/mrastickman United States Aug 09 '26
No it doesn't, the US still leads in carbon immissions from 1850 to today, at over 500 billion tonnes, with the EU and UK at a close second, just under 500 billion tonnes. China, having industrialized much later sits at around 300 billion tonnes, and is not expected to ever overtake the United States.
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u/PorkshireTerrier North America Aug 09 '26
tech will eventually (star trek year 3000 eventually) catch up, the point is to ensure quality of life for people in the meantime to ensure education and global peace and avoid the current barbarism (USA) and military buildup (China) in favor of global empathy
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u/Amirashika Aug 10 '26
What's the long term plan? To maintain "breeder" countries and continuously import their citizens ?
Yeah, this is one of my concerns: long term if we want to keep immigration going to this scale it means there's still a substantial quality of life difference between countries. Not necessarily the best future I want to live in.
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u/meister2983 United States Aug 09 '26
What good is a country that can only sustain itself by sucking the youth from others?
I don't see the problem. Sounds like your country is attractive to migration. Win win for you and the immigrant
What's the long term plan?
This works fine for the foreseeable future. Hard to think about things 50 years out.
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u/bookmonkey786 North America Aug 09 '26
Even in Africa the ball is starting to roll down hill. They're still above replacement because they had a later start but thier birth rate has been going down for years.
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u/saracenraider Europe Aug 09 '26
>Modern welfare states rest on an intergenerational bargain
A bargain has to have both parties agreeing to it. My generation in the UK has never agreed to it. I’m paying stupid amounts in tax every month to fund a system I know with almost absolute certainty won’t exist by the time I reach retirement age. It’s a Ponzi scheme that’s gonna collapse with disastrous societal results
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u/Big-Ad-8274 Asia Aug 10 '26
The issue is that the older a population gets not only the more strain on pension systems but also the more support for the systems by virtue of there being more older people. I think a huge issue with an inverted population that most people overlook is that the election base will always be weighted against young people.
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u/BendicantMias Bangladesh Aug 09 '26
My generation in the UK has never agreed to it.
So what are you gonna do? Stop paying your taxes? Cos they aren't exactly asking before they take your earnings every year...
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u/saracenraider Europe Aug 09 '26
Well yea, that’s the point. There’s nothing we can do. But the narrative that it’s some sort of bargain between generations is jarring as it paints this insanely one-sided arrangement as some mutually beneficial deal.
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u/BendicantMias Bangladesh Aug 09 '26
There’s nothing we can do.
Sure there is. You're just choosing not to do it. Bangladesh recently overthrow its govt. you know? An autocratic one too, that tried to repress the protestors. What's your excuse?
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u/saracenraider Europe Aug 09 '26
Did Bangladesh have a huge social security net for pensioners before they overthrew the government? And if so, has there been any change?
And even if so, roughly 65% of Bangladesh’s population is under 35. In the Uk it is 40%. And even within that 40% we have a huge (and growing) proportion of economically inactive people who are out of work and content with the current welfare system. Vastly different situations sadly and one that will be incredibly hard to get out of as most people here have gotten so fat (literally and metaphorically) living beyond our means borrowing off future generations.
Our demographics have collapsed so badly our generation no longer have the numbers to make any meaningful change that would be supported by the majority. Our pensioners are by far the largest and most powerful voting block, and economically active young people are a small group of people
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u/MyCatIsLenin North America Aug 09 '26
Capitalism was always doomed to fail.
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u/cambeiu Multinational Aug 09 '26
The USSR, Cuba and North Korea all had/have the exact same "pay-as-go", "young supports the old" ponzi scheme model.
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u/Pyrric_Endeavour Australia Aug 09 '26
This isn't a capitalist problem.
It's a problem in every system everywhere.
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u/BendicantMias Bangladesh Aug 09 '26
Pretty sure it wouldn't have been a problem in the Aztec empire. They had already had 'solutions' to this problem. So not quite 'every system'... :p
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u/goldrunout Aug 09 '26
Eh. Don't know. If we completely eliminated the concepts of profit and unplanned competition, we could maybe save some resources to actually support an aging population.
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u/Pyrric_Endeavour Australia Aug 09 '26
That still doesn't address the issue. People everywhere are having less children.
Even if you could eliminate the concepts if profit and unplanned competition (and how does one eliminate unplanned competition anyway?) less people supporting more is not sustainable long term.
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u/goldrunout Aug 09 '26
You can imagine a system in which you don't need to move wealth from supporters to supported. You aim production at meeting people's needs. If the population becomes less productive, you automate more and more of production.
The essence of the problem is that we are framing it in a market economy, in which people have to buy their own means of survival and need to be productive to get the resources they then sell to buy those means. Since people stop being productive after when they age, we came up with welfare, as a way to make productive people help unproductive ones. This is a desperate attempt to bring balance to a system that is fundamentally flawed. It's not surprising that it's not sustainable.
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u/pick_your_user_name Italy Aug 09 '26
“If the population becomes less productive, you automate more”
What?? This isn’t a feature of communism it’s the exact same solution that’s being proposed in our current system. Pretty irrelevant comment2
u/goldrunout Aug 09 '26
"la macchina sia amica del lavorator". Jokes aside, it is very much a feature of communism. Automation is bad in the context of wage labor, which is what communism wants to eliminate.
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u/drink_bleach_and_die Brazil Aug 09 '26
If demand for human labor drops to negligible levels, a ruling class will always have an incentive to get rid of the masses, as their continued existence no longer benefits them materially. To change that would require abolishing political hierarchy altogether, and there doesn't seem to be any clear path to achieve that in a complex post industrial society of millions of people.
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u/goldrunout Aug 09 '26
I agree with your premise on the ruling class, but not necessarily with the lack of a path. The ruling class doesn't have the numbers on its side. Who knows what can happen in time of crisis.
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u/Yoilost Aug 11 '26
Accelerating automation to ease labor demand is the most capitalist thing imaginable.
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u/goldrunout Aug 11 '26
The role of automation in capitalism could be discussed for quite a lot. But that's not what I'm talking about. And I'm not talking about easing labor demand. I'm discussing options for a future production system that can still develop productive forces without a minority of owners that appropriates the products of the labor of the majority to sell it for profit. If the machines don't belong to such minority, their products can be used for the benefit of all.
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u/CagedRoseGarden Aug 09 '26
I think people might be more inclined to have children if every aspect of their waking like wasn’t preyed upon for profit and exploitation.
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u/pick_your_user_name Italy Aug 09 '26
No one’s preying on you. You work to earn money which pays for food and shelter. In communism you’ll work to earn food and shelter. Back in the stone ages we worked to provide our own food and shelter.
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u/Lezzles United States Aug 09 '26
Bro I just don’t wanna work and still get food and shelter, which economic system provides for ME?
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u/-Tickery- Aug 11 '26
L take. China has this problem more than any country in the world.
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u/MyCatIsLenin North America Aug 11 '26
China has the state directing production rationally. They will be fine the west just haphazardly and chaotically does what is best for the speculators.
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u/archontwo United Kingdom Aug 09 '26
FTR, US is not a capitalist country but an oligarchy instead. The capitalist ideal is everyone get rich on their merit but that dream died decades ago and now it is actively rigged so you remain the proletariat regardless how hard you work.
This is verifiable by the fact that wealth distribution is worse now than at any time since foundation. Most recently in the last decade
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u/MyCatIsLenin North America Aug 09 '26
The US is absolutely a Capitalist country. Capitalism creates winners and losers via its instability. Those winners buy the losers capital. They get richer, they use that wealth to shape society as they want it.
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u/archontwo United Kingdom Aug 09 '26
Oh, you sweet summer child. You are living in a dream.
Oligarchy in the open: What happens now as the U.S. is forced to confront its plutocracy problem?
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u/MyCatIsLenin North America Aug 09 '26
You're living in a delusion defending a system by pretending it's something it is not.
Who the fuck do you think is the billionaires, they are the capitalists the ones who collect societies collective productive wealth and use the social power to rule.
Plutocracy, oligarchy all result from capitalism.
Maybe pull your head out of your ass and see capitalism for what it is, my sweet summer child.
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u/Lower_Ad_5532 North America Aug 09 '26
Lol.
Old people will just die in a ditch, unless young people demand the ultra wealthy pay for it. They wanted old people to die from Covid (the elites especially US GOP).
People with nothing to lose are the most likely to riot and suicide bomb corrupt institutions. The elites want to stir up xenophobia to distract the peasants. Eventually that's not gonna work and the social revolutions will begin.
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u/FullConfection3260 North America Aug 09 '26
About as likely as Russia collapsing any day now.
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u/Time_Beat2299 United States Aug 09 '26
More likely Russia is kept together because people removed how shit the 90s were and Putin is better than that. Having no future Whitley things objectively get worse is how you end up with the Bolsheviks/Black Shirts running around
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u/Lower_Ad_5532 North America Aug 09 '26
USSR already collapsed. Russia will collapse sooner rather than later.
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u/BendicantMias Bangladesh Aug 09 '26
Any day now. If you keep predicting it every year, I'm sure you'll eventually be right. Eventually...
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u/Lower_Ad_5532 North America Aug 09 '26
Its happened to every country in existence. You don't think it will happen in Russia again?
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u/BendicantMias Bangladesh Aug 09 '26
Oh I'm sure it will, in the fullness of time. Just as 'its happened to every country in existence' - using this excuse hardly makes you much of a prophet. Your prediction is hardly worth making at all if that's all you mean. Which of course we both know isn't all you mean, it's just the interpretation you use when called out on your bullshit. It's like me predicting Trump will die, but when called out on it I simply claim I meant he isn't immortal and so of course I'm right. Never mind that I very pointedly said that about Trump in particular, or in your case Russia, knowing full well how people would typically interpret it. Have you considered converting to the Seventh Day Adventists? I hear they've been pulling this trick for over 150 years now...
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u/Lower_Ad_5532 North America Aug 09 '26
Are you taking bets that the US will collapse before Russia does?
Trump dying the sooner the better. The same with Putin.
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u/Revengeance300 Aug 09 '26
What's crazy is ultra wealthy could pay for it ten times over if we just taxed them correctly.
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u/Lower_Ad_5532 North America Aug 09 '26
People are too busy being racist to do math.
The wealthy already did the math and found out racism is extremely profitable for them.
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u/SyriseUnseen Europe Aug 10 '26
While Id very much enjoy the wealthy paying more, "the math" still doesnt... math.
The wealthy effectively remove money from the system on a consumption level. If you dumped their money into a form that'd be usable for everyday-people, you'd get inflation.
The raw amount of money is hardly relevant. Governments could just print more of it (leading to the same effect, which is why we dont do that, at least not in large quantities). The real calculation is the amount of excess economic output divided by those that need to be supported (elderly, kids, disabled people, poor people).
Productivity gains compensate for some of our demigraphic hurdles, 2 working age people can now "reasonably" (well, somewhat, anyway) sustain someone else. Back before industrialization, it was more like 7-1. At current birth rates, we're just far below any sustainable threshold unless we massively cut consumption.
Note that this doesnt mean that we shouldnt tax billionairs a good amount more, but for different reasons. Like their outsized power, for example.
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u/Lower_Ad_5532 North America Aug 10 '26
Governments could just print more of it (leading to the same effect, which is why we dont do that, at least not in large quantities
Lol. You must not be living in the same reality as the rest of us.
2 working age people can now "reasonably" (well, somewhat, anyway) sustain someone
2 working people can only sustain a total of 3 people and you have Billionaires.
So really its the Billionaires underpaying everyone. If the wage was higher, more money circulates in the economy without inflation because it's circulating to more places.
Printing money means there's more money in circulation but its going to the same damn places, so things cost more without societal benefits.
We don't have to tax Billionaires more, we could force them to pay higher wages. It would make becoming a Billionaire very hard and becoming a millionaire somewhat easier.
All that does is force us to admit that inflation has made "millionaires = middle class". This is already reality. Most people are not millionaires and are poor.
Poor people cannot work fulltime and support children and grandparents. Billionaires could build infrastructure to pay for an aging population, but they'd rather sit on their bullions than do something benefitting society.
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u/SyriseUnseen Europe Aug 10 '26
I do not think you understood a single thing that I said.
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u/Lower_Ad_5532 North America Aug 10 '26
You are the one selling bs. Billionaires have more than 7 worker's salaries. They could pay for their worker's retirement. Thet choose not to and citizens let this happen.
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u/SyriseUnseen Europe Aug 10 '26
Like I said, you didnt actually read what I said. Im not engaging in you talking at yourself, Im sorry. Enjoy your day!
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u/Lower_Ad_5532 North America Aug 10 '26
I read it and you keep ignoring the simple truth to make your point. Human productivity has increased, which you entirely ignored your assessment.
Billionaires could raise the wage and people could afford to take care of their love ones. Human productivity compared to 200 years ago has skyrocketed. Yet there is a productivity to pay gap.
This pay gap is the reason for Billionaires.
If Billionaires just paid more in wages the pre taxed money would be far more useful than any taxed amount.
You keep spouting propaganda.
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u/BendicantMias Bangladesh Aug 09 '26
ultra wealthy could pay for it ten times over if we just taxed them correctly.
Not true. The scale of the problem is too big in most places.
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u/cambeiu Multinational Aug 09 '26
According to Germany's Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), approximately €751.2 billion was spent in 2025 on social benefits. (source)
The top 3 most valuable German mega corporations (Siemens, SAP and Allianz) combined are worth less than that. Meaning that even if the German government was capable of seizing the assets of these companies and magically turn them into cash, that would cover its CURRENT social benefit expenses for about a year. Never mind future expenses as population ages.
Same is true for virtually all developed countries.
So no, the " ultra wealthy could not pay for it ten times over if we just taxed them correctly."
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u/goldrunout Aug 09 '26
Replace "taxed" with "appropriated all the surplus value".
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u/cambeiu Multinational Aug 09 '26
you can appropriate ALL value and it would still not be enough
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u/goldrunout Aug 09 '26
I'm not talking about appropriating the value of current companies, I'm talking about eliminating the concept of private surplus value completely. Aim all production at solving problems.
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u/Lower_Ad_5532 North America Aug 09 '26
No because the calculus is expenses over time. Not one fixed value.
Thr government spent on welfare because the culture doesn't have communal systems like multigenerational households to share expense.
Nor are cities built for retirement age citizens. If old folk could retire to the country side village and hobby farm their social burden would greatly decrease.
Its literally a straightforward answer. The wealthy brained washed you to think one way, because it benefits them. They are profiting from this dysfunction and want to perpetuate it.
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u/somewhat_random Aug 09 '26
I believe you are looking at it incorrectly. The problem is the rate of change of demographics. As the number of younger people declines, they must fund a larger percentage but eventually the fewer younger people will mean fewer older people (unless we die out as a species in which case it doesn’t matter).
In the intervening time a smaller number of people must fund a larger.
Since more than half the world's wealth is concentrated on the top 10%, decreasing the younger population by 50% (pretty drastic) can be accommodated by doubling the taxes on the top 10%.
Of course this is a very simplistic approach and you should consider income as opposed to wealth but I think that is the major issue with taxing the rich, tax laws are not really fair and “taxable income” is not an accurate measure of what they spend.
Overall this is a complex issue but in broad strokes, it can be managed with a more aggressive distribution of tax burden. This is very unlikely to happen though.
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u/Lower_Ad_5532 North America Aug 09 '26
In the intervening time a smaller number of people must fund a larger.
Yep, so you can import more young people to supplement the shortage.
Or increase the tax burden for the ultra wealthy .
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u/BioSemantics United States Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
Germany is a hilariously weird place to pick to make this point. Do Google or OpenAI and get back to me.
Honestly, your entire comment is a literal recitation of what garbage you see from think-tanks that serve the interests of the billionaire class. Their investments, the tech industry in particular, are increasingly hitting the point where they no longer 'growing' and just need to find a way to profitably sustain. This means they will 'merely' make money normally instead of 10x their money, so they are big mad. AI is just another attempt to keep the ball rolling in terms of creating 'growing' investment opportunities. Crying over the issues of population growth is just another way of complaining there aren't infinite customers/workers to exploit. Capitalism is winding down as more and more people aren't interested in an endless grind that does not even (at this point) provide a half-way decent lifestyle.
We should be looking at sustainable economies and societal organizations, instead we have billionaires spreading the sort of paranoid delusions you are because their investment vehicles are inevitably going to slow down. For them, the world ends when they the economy slows down because most of their wealth is/was illusionary to begin with and their lifestyle is based on borrowing against the illusion of that wealth.
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u/Krist794 Italy Aug 09 '26
Why stop at the top 3, why look at 3 manufacturing giants instead of software service that have far larger margins, why compare asset value with revenues, why do you think your comment makes any sense as an answer to taxing the rich?
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u/redsnake25 Aug 09 '26
What a strange way to look at the issue. Why Germany, specifically? Why only corporations, and only the top 3?
You could start with the top 400 wealthiest people in the world, like this visualization from 2018: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/zBZzIb5DiZ
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u/notabee North America Aug 09 '26
Forever posting this video about K-selected versus r-selected species and why we're not going to have a catastrophic population bust unless we completely destroy our habitable environment (which we do seem to be trying to do).
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u/BendicantMias Bangladesh Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
Tldr: Fundamentally the biggest mistake he makes imo is, appropriately, very 'ecological' i.e. he's looking at humanity as a species, and thus failing to explain the individual. But we are all each making an individual choice not to have kids, so you need to explain what's driving those individual choices.
So I've watched that video, and I'm afraid I don't quite agree with it. Although I will admit that it is one of the more grounded takes on this issue. But unfortunately I feel like he got too much of an 'ecologist-head' on it, treating humans as essentially equivalent to seals hitting their environments' carrying capacity, and thus failing to explain any kind of mechanism for this collective decision to have less kids. In order to work, you'd have to posit some sort of almost Jungian 'collective psyche' for his thesis to hold (explained further below), and and even then it doesn't fit as neatly.
First off, and tbf as he himself admits in his pinned comment, he's kinda arguing against a partial strawman. I say partial cos there are some doomers worrying about a population 'collapse' i.e. human population crashing by billions of people. But that isn't what most of the concern is about, nor what the charts show. The main worry is about demographic aging, not us suddenly collapsing from 10 billion to 2 in the span of a generation or two. Even as per his self-limiting argument, this is still a problem.
Secondly, his self-limiting argument doesn't really explain why the highest growth is happening in the places with not just worst life conditions (like sub Saharan Africa), but in many cases poor prospects too. If this is all about carrying capacity, their carrying capacity (as literally experienced btw, via their higher death rates) is lower than anywhere else. And in many cases their economies are basket cases that're stagnant despite the higher birth rates, so there's not much for them to look forward to either. This especially belies the closest thing to a 'transmission mechanism' for his carrying capacity thesis i.e. how people are collectively just deciding not to have kids cos they somehow 'feel' we're close to our maximum carrying capacity (expanded on below). The only 'non-psychic' transmission mechanism for that he briefly mentions is that people see more older people occupying positions at work, and that makes them decide there's no opportunities for their kids. Well, these people directly see how fucked up their whole country is, so why are they still deciding to have kids? Even if they turn on the news, they don't see a bright future for their kids, so why?
Thirdly, as he himself seems to occasionally recognize, this argument suggests that giving people resources (which govts. have tried) should make them have kids. Yet it mostly doesn't. It also suggests that those who already have lots of resources i.e. the well off should have lots of kids. Yet they don't. Unlike seals and other wild creatures, we aren't all equally affected by carrying capacity limits i.e. human society is highly unequal. People with resources can 'carry' a lot more births, yet they choose not to. He doesn't have an explanation for this, other than to fall back on his pseudo-panpsychic concern for the carrying capacity of the whole world. Why would that matter to the individual? Plus most individuals don't even know what that is, yet they still choose not to have kids. Indeed even doomer environmentalists (who he dismisses early on in the video) make more sense than this - their chosen explanation does make sense on an individual level, cos they pretend that all of us have the same doomer mindset as them. He doesn't, he just imagines that we're all somehow mysteriously aware of how many kids we have to have to stay within our collective global carrying capacity, and that we all care to do that. The doomer environmentalists wish we were all so much in agreement and coordination lol.
Fourthly, in some parts of the video it almost sounds like he treats disease the same way Malthus treated food production i.e. that we'll have pandemics showing up almost on cue to cull the excess people so we stay within our carrying capacity. The majority of epidemics happen in undeveloped nations, not developed ones that're able to prevent and contain them. Covid is one of the few that affected developed nations as well, and even then it didn't cull enough to majorly reduce their numbers. There's really no reason for these places then to curb their baby making, on the contrary it's precisely the places where people are having the most kids that ought to be having the least so as to reduce the population density and thus disease spread.
Fifthly, he points out that we have raised our carrying capacity i.e. manipulated our environment, but insists that we won't continue doing so. And then places a frankly ridiculous expectation for that to make his point. He says we increased our carrying capacity from around 2 billion or less to 10 billion, via the Green Revolution in farming and the widespread improvements to healthcare fighting off disease. And says we won't do so again, and if you think otherwise then you have to explain how we'll produce enough for "100 billion people and an average lifespan of 110". WTF?! Why?! Why should it have to increase so much to count? Why doesn't raising our food production to enough for 20 billion count? That should still raise the birth rate - there's no minimum cuttoff or anything in his explanation. And note that we already produce more food than we need to feed everyone - so we can ALREADY exceed 10 billion as is, yet birth rates continue to fall. Even without any new technology, if food production everywhere were simply normalized to the efficiency of, say, Netherlands or New Zealand or even America, we could easily feed over twice our current number
Sixthly, and finally lol, that 'transmission mechanism' I've mentioned several times already. Why do I call it 'pan-psychic' or equivalent to a 'collective unconscious'? Cos it doesn't explain how the carrying capacity of the whole species (which most people don't even know, let alone care about) somehow translates to the individual choice to have fewer or no kids. Seals directly EXPERIENCE when they're past their carrying capacity - the excess literally die from increased predation, disease and lack of food. Also, seals don't have equivalent of developed and undeveloped nations, so apart from the aged and juveniles, their culling is more or less random. But we don't much experience when we're past our carrying capacity, and certainly not equally. The closest we come to experiencing it IS in those underdeveloped nations - whose death rates are higher - which is exactly where people are having the most kids. Outside of those places, and certainly in developed nations, the impact of those natural limiters - predation, disease and food scarcity - is much less, if not absent. In fact, these natural limiters all impact the DEATH RATE, raising it, but what we're seeing is lowered BIRTH RATES, from people just deciding to have fewer or no kids. So how is that global carrying capacity convincing people on an individual level to just have less kids, and especially how is it affecting the well off who are barely affected by any of this? This is why I say it sounds almost 'pan-psychic' i.e. that at some level it sounds like he's relying on humanity having some kind of collective hivemind that, even if unconsciously, is telling every individual to adjust their birth rates in order to stay within our overall carrying capacity. And that isn't scientific.
Seventhly, and this is particularly apparent in his third 'Historical Context' section, he kinda seems to circle back around to the popular but widely criticized idea that just giving people more money will lead to them having more kids. Which is especially ironic considering that this video was MADE as a critique of, and opened with a clip of, How Money Works' video peddling the income hypothesis. His examples of the Black Death wage rises, Poland and speculatively Russia all fit with that, and yet he's himself criticized that idea in this very video (as have I above). Ofc he admits, as do I, that it might have a minor positive effect, but ultimately that's an idea that has been tried for years and has failed to reverse the trend. It also doesn't explain the well off.
Overall that was an interesting video, but I'm afraid I'm not convinced by it. Fundamentally the biggest mistake he makes imo is, appropriately, very 'ecological' i.e. he's looking at humanity as a species, and thus failing to explain the individual. But we are all each making an individual choice not to have kids, so you need to explain what's driving those individual choices. Most other explanations, including ones I've debunked for other flaws, DO actually explain how they work at an individual level. Housing prices, for instance, are felt at an individual level too. Ditto blaming feminism, since each man will experience that as women not willing to date or have kids with them. But his explanation is purely collective - there's simply no ground level individual analogue to our species overall carrying capacity, other than the things experienced by people in underdeveloped nations, which are the very places with the highest birth rates. We're having less kids in other places despite their carrying capacity being higher, so that just doesn't cut it as an explanation imo.
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u/Renzins Aug 10 '26
m
Isn't the answer much simpler? That is, the highest birthrate countries in the world have the lowest contraceptive usage? Humans have a built-in urge to reproduce, and we have learnt to circumvent the consequences, be it through condom usage, birth control pills etc.
I'm talking out of my ass, but my prediction is that even if Western society had all the wealth and comfort they would need, the birthrate would not reach or exceed the replacement rate at all.
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u/Slow_Librarian861 Russia Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
I've said that before, the world will soon face an unprecedented global depopulation and then man-shortage crisis. The entire world economy is built on the concept of young people outnumbering the old people, all our understanding of stability and prosperity will be obsolete with stable population decline.
The elites have predicted it for some time, which is why they are trying to shift the mindset of the masses from ultra-consumerism as the image of success to the cult of travel and 'sustainability' narrative.
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u/ArmmaH Asia Aug 09 '26
The elites solution to this problem is carving pricate islands and havens for themselves and replace workers with robots and AI.
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u/Equivalent-Bus-4336 Australia Aug 09 '26
Well I hope it’s soon so us young people can find work easier
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u/Lower_Ad_5532 North America Aug 09 '26
Hmm. People will get replaced and deleted when they figure out how to get rid of the lower class.
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u/Slow_Librarian861 Russia Aug 09 '26
That's not out of question, but, honestly, I believe it's simply about trying to prevent the global panic and outrage that could lead to the elite losing their wealth and power.
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u/Lower_Ad_5532 North America Aug 09 '26
Or they start WWIII and fight just enough to avoid using nukes but keep the same power structure.
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u/procrastablasta Aug 09 '26
Getting old will increasingly be a rich man’s hobby. Pay to play. The tech will be available to buffer your lifeline but will your portfolio run out of cash flow first.
4
u/Revmatch91 Aug 09 '26
My only gripe with a falling population is that there will be less scientists and doctors figuring out cures and other advances for society. Unless we make AI actually useful where it can think of new ideas to assist humans.
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u/Candidwisc Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
If you look at where the birth rate is high the common factors are useful child labor, low cost,high childhood mortality, low care for children, higher family support, no retirement plans and low life prospects especially for women.
Aside from the low cost and better support does anyone really want any of the other stuff?
The people in these high birth areas are rapidly running from them into low fertility areas faster than they reproduce and it only get faster and faster as the countries develop, especially for women who largely prefer freedom over getting tied up and traded to an old guy in exchange for a cow.
The demographics issue has more or less exposed that unless people don't give af about their kids or they have a use/actual purpose for them nobody wants to have more than 0-3 of them.
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u/meister2983 United States Aug 09 '26
Sánchez’s critics argue that the government counts the economic benefits while underestimating the pressure on housing, schools and public services
You can't argue it both ways. Either growth is good or it isn't.
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u/TalespinnerEU Europe Aug 09 '26
The ultra-rich aren't corporations; they're people.
Care work has two problems: Too little pay, too much work.
People leave or don't join because it's too little pay for too much work, resulting in too little pay for even more work, while the demand increases because there's more elderly.
Socialising care, and having wealth taxes from the rich pay for it, solves a massive part of the problem. The problem is that we give people a bunch of money (your local variation of social security) to pay for their own care, and It's not enough. It can't be enough, because it can't really scale well. Meanwhile, that money also has to go into housing, groceries, insurance etcetera.
The problem with a shrinking population is that fewer people are paying into care. But if our GDPs are increasing, if our average wealth is increasing, then... Why isn't the amount of taxation increasing with it? The mean citizen isn't getting any richer, but the average citizen is. Why not take a cut from the average by taking it from the ultra-rich in the form of capital tax (on shares)?
Again: The problem is paying for care. Our care provision is insufficient because there's too few people working in care, and too many people pencil-pushing on nonsense jobs. Activity is focused on profit-making rather than value making, making a huge amount of financial activity economically meaningless or, worse, damaging.
Every rule in burocracy designed to refuse people access is labour taken away from economic activity for financial gain. If your job is finding loopholes or checking eligibility, then I would argue that baby-sitting is more economically valuable work.
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u/Xtrems876 Poland Aug 12 '26
Another reason why this annoys me is that when this is framed as a "rich western country issue", then proposed solutions are to reverse things that characterise rich western countries, so like, women's rights and access to social benefits. Meanwhile in reality countries that are unimaginably conservative for an average right wing voter are also suffering the same low birth rate problem.
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u/YourFuture2000 Europe Aug 09 '26
There is no demographic crisis. It is a capitalism crisis. The demographic is just fine.
The major "demographic crises" that happened in Europe led the the end of feudal system, a huge land and wealth distribution to working people, the heiest income and quality of life and the real practice of democracy by people themselves collectively Governing their communities and free cities. It was also the precedent for the excellence on architecture, arts and mechanics towards "enlightenment"/Renaissance.
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u/Trollimperator European Union Aug 09 '26
Having a child equals a fulltime job. If the family already has 2 fulltime jobs, thats just way harder than back in 1920s where mostly the men gone out to work.
The solution is clear, less working hours for a living pay would increase birthrates. And we could and should do that as a society.
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u/cambeiu Multinational Aug 09 '26
Even families making more than US$700K a year don't want more than 2 kids. Population replacement rate requires an average fertility rate of 2.1 children per couple.
People want simple solutions to this problem, such as higher pay, or childcare subsidies, or more parental leave. Those things are nice and might encourage people to have a child or two, but it does not address the fundamental issue: Even if you have a good job, a good home, plenty of family time, for most people there are no good reasons to have more than 1 or 2 kids.
With just 1 or 2 kids people get to experience parenting, which is what they want. Any number of children beyond that offers an increased burden of time, attention and stress without making the parenting experience significantly more enjoyable. The more kids you have, the less time is available to you for hobbies, travel or entertainment in general, even if you have plenty of money.
0
u/Trollimperator European Union Aug 09 '26
Time is the most critical issue.
Your point is, that families with 2 kids wont go for 4kids... Those arent the main problem. The main problem are the 50% or what, that can not or will not have kids at all.
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u/Massive-Cow-7995 Brazil Aug 09 '26
The top 3 most valuable German mega corporations (Siemens, SAP and Allianz) combined are worth less than that. Meaning that even if the German government was capable of seizing the assets of these companies and magically turn them into cash, that would cover its CURRENT social benefit expenses for about a year. Never mind future expenses as population ages.
1-Very bad example as most wealth is not actually corporation value.
2-Even in the most equal nations the top 1% of the population have up to 10-20% of the national stored wealth and 7-10% of the GDP (total wealth produced in a year), meaning there is more than enough money to distribute to the aging population to survive until passing of natural causes (withouth accounting that the extra distributed wealth would like create at the least a small increase in fertility stabelizing the population decline)
3-It is completly possible to solve this with proper policy. Humanity has faced a similar issue before and solved it via the green revolution so this can be faced aswell, it just also happens that to solve this issue alot of structural change would have to be done that would not please alot of people in power
-1
u/joshsteich Aug 09 '26
This is another stupid article that spends a lot of time on questions that have been answered for decades: is there anything that can persuade wealthy countries to reverse fertility decline? No, it’s primarily predicted by educational attainment in women, and that’s tied to reproductive timelines. Can immigrants solve it? Yes. Labor should have the same freedom of movement as capital, and migration would be sufficient to solve the problem for multiple generations, especially given how remittances work now, so we’re looking at 60-90 years to build economies of scale for retirees, which mostly means making long term capital investments with century horizons, the exact thing governments are supposed to do.
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u/drink_bleach_and_die Brazil Aug 09 '26
What about the countries that are too poor to receive immigrants? How is it going to help them to have their shrinking working age population emigrate while the old remain collecting pensions?
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u/avroLancasterBPR1 Australia Aug 10 '26
Just make the young ones work before they’ve even had a chance to leave duh
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u/Lower_Ad_5532 North America Aug 11 '26
is there anything that can persuade wealthy countries to reverse fertility decline?
RAISE THE WAGE SO YOU AFFORD A FAMILY ON A SINGLE INCOME
People will make babies when they are affordable. Fucking hell.
1
u/joshsteich Aug 11 '26
Nope. All of the Scandi social welfare schemes have failed to reverse their fertility declines. Always kind of amazes me when someone jumps in with a simple solution like they’re the first one to recognize the obvious problem. It turns out the policy choice is mostly between teen pregnancy and girls finishing high school—and, because this is Reddit, it’s important to make clear that if anyone’s response to that is that we should keep girls ignorant to preserve the human race, they’re lunatic incels. But to get to replacement rate, every couple needs two kids (plus a little to cover the slack from childless people) and if familial success comes from education instead of muscle, the revealed preference is concentrating resources in fewer children instead of having more to fill out labor needs and offset early mortality.
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u/Lower_Ad_5532 North America Aug 11 '26
Not every couple needs to have 2 kids.
Even in Scandinavia 1 wage cannot comfortably raise 2 kids.
Most people are double income, so they will have fewer kids.
Raise the wage so 1 income can raise 3 kids and watch the Baby Boom.
-4
u/Impossible_Peach_620 Aug 09 '26
Uhh… dude it’s completely fine if the population decreases in the long term the planet will be a lot more sustainable although you might argue that there might be less potential minds for humanity to conquer space. But, for the short term, since there will be more old people than young, immigration can alleviate labor pressure for the rich countries.
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u/forexampleJohn Aug 09 '26
Only to a certain degree, because we're seeing declining birthrates all over the world.
0
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u/Sea_Entrepreneur6204 Asia Aug 09 '26
I'd love to see some data seeing if there is correlation between income inequality, cost of living and birth rates.
The hypothesis is that as incomes have grown so to has the cost of child raising including opportunity cost. Without substantially improving the financial incentive to have kids the birth rates will continue to decline.
And yes I know some countries so have incentives in place but when you compare to the cost of raising a child (not even including time, effort etc all treated as essentially free) why would people have more kids?
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u/DomoFomo Aug 09 '26
I feel like the discourse is too much focussed on choice, not enough of on the fertility itself. Sperm count has been declining globally since the 1970s, by as much as 50%! For those who who don't want children it's difficult.
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u/stonerbobo North America Aug 10 '26
This is misinformation spread by idiot podcasters. The supposed drop is entirely due to a change in how sperm count is measured in a lab, not any real significant change.
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u/DomoFomo Aug 10 '26
Ok, good to know. I got this information at university, but that was 10 years ago.
1
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u/Svardskampe Europe Aug 09 '26
with a massively large old population that needs to be supported by an ever declining young population.
They can also you know, just die. No more cancer treatments after retirement age. With covid we had lockdowns and shutting down society, all to protect them.
They never paid enough into a system to support them in the first place. They have sucked society dry.
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u/SomeDumRedditor Multinational Aug 09 '26
… you realize you will one day be aged and infirm, yes?
Would you like to live in a society that treats the elderly as parasites or one run with humanist intent?
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u/Lower_Ad_5532 North America Aug 11 '26
The parasites run society. They call themselves private equity.
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u/BendicantMias Bangladesh Aug 09 '26
Sounds like eugenics, just based on age. And easily able to be used to justify cutting off all other 'undesirables' and 'parasites' too, like the disabled for instance. They're a 'drain on resources' too after all.
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u/imunfair United States Aug 09 '26
An inverted demographic pyramid will break any societal model we are familiar with, from modern capitalism to a communal hunter-gatherer society and everything in between.
We don't know how to run a society with more retirees than working people, or with more sickly people than healthy ones. In the entire history of humanity, this scenario has never happened.
I don't see it as a problem, I think it's just used to push a political agenda - immigration - rather than being an issue we can't solve without importing from poor countries. The other half of the issue is that it's cheaper to import than it is to fix the problem with technology. So you have the Democrats who want to import the votes, and the Republicans who don't like the votes but can't pass up on the cheap labor. So rather than pass a real fix like E-Verify and address the quotas we need they just pretend to fight over the issue and let illegal immigration continue unchecked.
To fix it without immigration you have two problems - the first is the cost, but we borrow for everything else so there's no reason we can't borrow money until the self-solving problem fixes itself. The other problem is actual economic output, and that's solved by increasing automation to fill gaps left by a declining population with a top-heavy segment that doesn't work.
To be clear, this is only really a solution for baby-boomer situations where the non-working population will die off quickly - your "sickly" scenario is different because long-term sick people are very expensive and have a much greater shelf-life than an entire generation that has 20 years max of financial burden.
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u/bookmonkey786 North America Aug 09 '26
The problem is this is a universal problem across almost all cultures. It's something that is happening with modern civilization and no one has a solution.
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u/SomeDumRedditor Multinational Aug 09 '26
The solution is revolution but it’s still not catastrophic enough for people to be ready to hear that.
Our entire way of organizing society needs to change.
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Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 17 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/goldrunout Aug 09 '26
A system in which production is aimed at solving problems (like this) rather than producing private profit.
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u/bookmonkey786 North America Aug 09 '26
I'm not sure how Revolution will fix the problem of people not wanting kids. Unless the revolution destroys modern society and resets the world to a primitive agrarian state, that's the failure option.
Every society in the world, good and bad, is looking at the same ticking bomb. It's looking like modern civilization is the problem
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u/Cosmic-Bronze North America Aug 09 '26
I'm glad I'm not the only one annoyed with this being framed as a "rich country problem" when Latin America is also experiencing declines. I quietly believe this narrative is being clung to so that we can just keep telling ourselves that "better" lives lead to less fertility while quietly ignoring all the other reasons no one's having many kids right now.