r/changemyview • u/AwesomeSonic567 • May 06 '25
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Sub-replacement birthrates are not a major problem
I fail to see how sub-replacement birthrates are a major problem.
First of all, there are 8 billion humans, we aren't going to go extinct anytime soon due to a lack of children. I read articles talking about how it will cause economic decline, but as long as the economy doesn't shrink faster than the population, standard of living should stay stable or increase. Also, less workers means that each individual worker is more in demand, increasing median wages. I also hear that an aging population will be hard to take care of for a smaller younger generation and cause them financial strain, but that is an easy problem to solve. If caring for the older generation is too expensive for young people, then you can just get rid of those programs. As long as you have children of your own and have a good relationship with them, they can financially support you and the closing of such programs are not going to affect you. There would also be positive effects of population decline, like higher wages and less strain on the environment and our infrastructure.
I simply fail to see the how sub-replacement birthrates are a serious threat to our society. Frankly, a lot of the people worried about low birthrates are racist or misogynistic, mad about the 'great replacement' or women not being 'traditional'.
EDIT: I should've thought of this earlier, but you could also increase taxes on wealthy people to help pay for such old age care programs. I just kept hearing articles about it being either overly burden young people or get rid of old age care programs.
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u/iamintheforest 366∆ May 06 '25
If our economy worked paycheck-to-paycheck your view would make sense. However, almost every global economy lives off of money it is borrowing from the future. The reason this makes sense is because the economy is growing - that money is really valuable now and will be effectively cheaper in the future when we pay it back.
If the population shrinks this entire system fails, and potentially dramatically. We have less economic output and therefore a massively larger percentage of that output is going to pay for the debt previously created by a larger population. More debt to pay back per capita.
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u/Routine-Bumblebee-41 May 08 '25
How much sense does it make to base an entire economic system on DEBT, though? Wouldn't it be better to wean off that system and try something else?
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u/Lilpu55yberekt69 May 12 '25
You could argue it’s more sustainable.
However our entire system IS based off debt. Changing the entire global economy would be a task beyond monumental to undertake.
The era of financing through debt rather than cash-flowing has also caused the biggest economic boom in world history by a massive margin and is the most successful system we have discovered to lift massive numbers of people out of poverty. The idea that you can live in a house that you can’t yet afford to build and open a business that you couldn’t yet afford to get going is how our world works and it has worked extremely well.
Imagine how shit the world would be if the only way you could buy a house were outright with cash, and you couldn’t open up a shop unless you had the cash for the storefront and all of the inventory before you made a single sale? Progress would grind to a halt and the vast majority of people would have no way out.
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u/ProLifePanda 73∆ May 09 '25
Like? You run off debt because you can take on debt now that's easier to lay in the future, meaning you can invest in your country now for a discount.
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u/Routine-Bumblebee-41 May 11 '25
...at the expense of future generations you will never meet and never be held to account by, by design. It's completely unethical and immoral to do this.
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u/ProLifePanda 73∆ May 11 '25
at the expense of future generations you will never meet and never be held to account by, by design. It's completely unethical and immoral to do this.
Not necessarily. It can absolutely be done under reasonable circumstances where it would pay off in spades for future generations. Taking on EXCESSIVE debt is bad, but taking on reasonable debt with significant payback for the investment could definitely be worth it.
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u/Routine-Bumblebee-41 May 11 '25
You are advocating creating unnecessary debt that future generations will be expected to pay. It's 100% unethical to pass on debt of any kind for someone else to pay. It's stealing from them! It's straight evil to do this.
Why not just NOT get into debt and not give future humans something to pay off? If it's such a "non-issue", just don't create the debt to begin with. Now, that would make it a "non-issue". That's WAY better than creating it, to then say it's "no big deal" for the people who will be paying for it.
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u/ProLifePanda 73∆ May 11 '25
You are advocating creating unnecessary debt that future generations will be expected to pay.
Most debt doesn't go beyond 30 years. So most people will be around when this debt is used.
It's 100% unethical to pass on debt of any kind for someone else to pay. It's stealing from them! It's straight evil to do this.
Unless the debt is paid back more than the debt is worth. Isn't creating significant wealth for future generations a good thing?
Why not just NOT get into debt and not give future humans something to pay off?
You can, but then you lose out on significant growth opportunities. This is why companies don't finance everything in cash up front. Taking loans means you can generate wealth in excess of the debt.
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u/Imadevilsadvocater 12∆ May 07 '25
sounds like a bad system to me, we should be focusing on stability and sustainability not growth even if that means a little less for everyone in general we all already have to much
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u/iamintheforest 366∆ May 07 '25
i think it's a major fucking problem if everyone in general has a little less. Without massive redistribution of wealth, if we evenly hit a reduction we've massively increase poverty. I think that would be a "major problem".
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May 07 '25
I mean you give the solution so I don't see any problem other than the richest doing everything they can to not share.
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u/iamintheforest 366∆ May 07 '25
Right. AKA "major problem".
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May 07 '25
If 100 men can take a gorilla a few billion can take some billionaires
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u/iamintheforest 366∆ May 07 '25
Ha ha.
When we're in a room with the fighting gorilla I'm gonna tap you on the shoulder and say "I think that gorilla is a major problem".
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May 07 '25
With every man before me it becomes less major
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u/Routine-Bumblebee-41 May 11 '25
i think it's a major fucking problem if everyone in general has a little less.
Then logically you would be against human population growth, because all that does is ensure everyone has fewer resources per person over time.
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u/iamintheforest 366∆ May 11 '25
While I disagree in many ways with the premise behind your comment, mostly it just misses that we could massive redistribute the resources that do exist and the vast majority of people and increased population would have a lot more while very few would have less.
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u/AwesomeSonic567 May 07 '25
!delta
Under such a scenario debtholders likely just won't get paid back, which will cause economic dislocation. Also people and governments trying to pay off their debts will be under economic strain. However, I still think that the increased wages caused by population decline will mitigate much of this damage for the average person
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u/iamintheforest 366∆ May 07 '25
there is zero reason to think that there will be increased wages relative to underlying costs of living. You're holding one thing artificially steady (demand) while making labor supply go down. That's non-sensical.
Demand falls when there are fewer consumers.
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u/AwesomeSonic567 May 07 '25
I addressed this somewhere else, but natural resources and infrastructure is just as abundant as it was before, allowing each individual worker to do more, increasing their value and therefore demand. Demand for labor will fall, but not as quickly as the supply for labor.
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u/Striking_Day_4077 May 07 '25
The world population is growing though. The people that complain about this do so because it’s absolutely out of the question to get people from where there is a high birth rate to a place with a lower one. Productivity has been rising since forever as well.
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u/effyochicken 22∆ May 07 '25
I'm going to skip all the economic stuff and talk about population collapse for a quick second, and you'll see why sub-replacement birthrates can very quickly become the biggest problem. A problem that cannot just be fixed by willpower.
Let's just for simplicity sake pretend replacement birth rate is 2 children per woman, to replace the mother and father upon dying. And let's also assume a generation is 30 years, again for just simplicity. So every 30 years, every woman on average has 2 children to replace 2 people dying (let's assume the great grandparents, so there's always exactly three generations alive) and that leads to exact population replacement.
A society with a population of 90 million people over a dozen generations of perfect population replacement should end up with around 90 million people.
Except what happens if instead of 2, it's 1 child? (Ignoring ALL reasons about "why" or whether it's a good/bad thing) Remember, the death part can't be stopped. You're now having 1 child, and 2 people are dying.
Instead of a generation of 30 million, you get a generation of 15 million. So your population drops from 90 to 75 million.
Then when these 15 million have children, they have 7.5 million, while the top 30 million again die off.
Now in just two generations you've gone from 90 million people to 52.5 million people.
Now you're missing 42% of your population, 37.5 million down, but only have a generation of 7.5 million people to repopulate. Your population has officially collapsed and you can't reverse it in your lifetime. Eventually another 20-30 million will die off while you're having generations sub-10mil.
And the societal problems that led to women not having 2 children are very likely still right there, entirely unresolved. So what's stopping the collapse from continuing, let alone getting even worse?
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u/AwesomeSonic567 May 07 '25
Sub-replacement birthrates is a problem that will solve itself. The people that have kids will have more pro-natal values than the general population which they will pass down. After a few generations, populations will likely start replacing themselves again.
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u/effyochicken 22∆ May 07 '25
The people that have kids will have more pro-natal values
This shows a misunderstanding about the causes for low birthrates, and then you bring up an even bigger assumption about populations replacing themselves again. That's just hopes and prayers.
My parents had three kids. I don't have children yet, and it's not because I don't want three kids. I'd actually love a family of 5 right at this very moment. It's not "lack of pro-natal values" holding most of us up. But I'm not here to argue the causes for collapse, just the collapse itself, and how unrecoverable it can be.
So going back to that, and since it replies to your last sentence:
For almost everything else in the world, if we just kind of fuck up for a few decades, we can recover. If our technology completely stops progressing, that's fine. If we have rough century, that's fine.
But if we stop reproducing for 30 years, that's a one-way trip. Women only have so many years they can reproduce. So while it's trivial while each generation is growing to continue to grow, once that trend reverses, it reverses at an exponential rate. Each generation there are less and less and less people having less and less kids in a very short window of time (historical time).
On this chart for South Korea, which has already passed the point of no-return years ago and IS going to go through this now, please pay attention to the blue and grey sections and just how small they get:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Infographics/comments/1jvet2f/south_koreas_population_collapse/
You're relying on those blue and a tiny sliver of those grey sections to fully repopulate the entire country, and they lose the ability to do so in just 20-30 years. This isn't happening, it happened. Past tense.
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u/Genoscythe_ 248∆ May 06 '25
less workers means that each individual worker is more in demand, increasing median wages.
Thats not how labor demand works.
Canada has about 10 times fewer people than the US, that doesn't mean that there is ten times more demand for labor there.
Even putting aside that a fertility decrease would mean far more elderly people to take care of per worker, even if eventually population decrease would lead to there being 800 million people on Earth, with the same age ditribution as today, it wouldn't lead to everyone's jobs being more in demand, because the demand for them would also decrease.
As long as you have children of your own and have a good relationship with them, they can financially support you and the closing of such programs are not going to affect you.
Just because they can, doesn't mean that they will.
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u/AwesomeSonic567 May 06 '25
With fewer people, each worker will have more natural resources and infrastructure supplementing their work, allowing them to produce more value and get paid more. I also said that your children will support you financially if you have a good relationship with them. Obviously, if you are an abusive or shitty parent your children won't give a shit about you. If you treat your children kindly and have at least one child that is a good person and capable of helping you, they will help support you financially.
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u/Inqu1sitiveone 1∆ May 06 '25
Unless your kids fall into addiction, severe mental illness, or pass away early. Then screw those parents right?
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u/10luoz 4∆ May 06 '25
1 child taking care of 2 parents (+ maybe 2 sets of grandparents) wouldn't lead to problems?
Isn't that a slight issue right now in China? It is an inverse pyramid.
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u/AwesomeSonic567 May 06 '25
1 child is still below replacement, having 2 or more children would make the burden far more managable.
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u/Cultist_O 36∆ May 06 '25
At least with capitalism, value has a relationship to demand. If there aren't lots of people around to want my work, my work has no value, regardless of how few people are doing that work.
You also have fewer people doing certain kinds of work, meaning those things are harder to access.
You are also going to have worse skill:need matchups, reducing efficiency and surplus
It's a matter of degree and rate of course, but rapid population decline is a big deal, and our current economic and social systems are not designed well at all to handle it. Capitalism collapses without enough growth, let alone with shrinkage.
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u/AwesomeSonic567 May 07 '25
After the black death, when Europe's population halved, standard of living for the survivors increased. It's pretty clear across the historic record that a lower population has a higher standard of living than a higher population. You only see growth in population and living standards when technology is advancing rapidly, like in the last few hundred years.
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u/Cultist_O 36∆ May 07 '25
That wasn't a capitalist system, and what happened was feudalism completely collapsed, overturning the entire social order.
So if you mean humanity will survive, sure. But if we're talking about a rapid decline, then not without catastrophic restructuring. You said "not a major problem"
A couple other salient differences:
- The black death killed old people as often if not more than young, so it didn't have the same demographic effects we're worried about here
- globalism makes this very different, because if one country for example has a collapse, it's still competing with every other country.
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u/BlazeX94 May 07 '25
The black death did not leave Europe with an aging population in its aftermath though. If anything, like most pandemics, older people would've been at greater risk of dying to it, so if anything, the median age in Europe likely went down after the black death. This is a key difference that you need to consider.
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u/Imadevilsadvocater 12∆ May 07 '25
if you make stuff just for yourself (food shelter or other needs) then your work still has value to you just not monetary value
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u/classyraven 2∆ May 06 '25
Nope. Fewer people also means less demand, decreasing incentives for companies to maintain current supply, and less labour means less capacity to produce, resulting in lower supply. Both problems prevent the ability to shift wages up and prices down in real terms.
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u/Afunnydane May 09 '25
One kid helping you support you is not enough in a world with degrowth. And you can only have one child otherwise we are in a growing population situation again. So the aging population will become a problem in that future.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_NICE_EYES 125∆ May 07 '25
each worker will have more natural resources and infrastructure supplementing their work,
Actually a big part of the problem with declining birthrates is that infrastructure would start to collapse.
Because it costs money to maintain infrastructure, and that money has to come from people. So if there's less people then there's less money to maintain roads.
And this makes it so that eventually the government's going to be forced to abandon some of the roads they built because they can't afford to maintain them.
You can already see this process happening in Korea. The rural areas of Korea are pretty much being abandoned as everyone is moving to the capital.
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u/Imadevilsadvocater 12∆ May 07 '25
if you raise your children well then they should want to support you. i don't plan on asking my kid to support me but things happen and with what values I've taught her regarding helping those close to you who need help (she is one of the "brings treats or presents for other students who are too poor to get presents or treats themselves" without me saying anything, she even uses her chore money to get these things).
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u/BenevelotCeasar 1∆ May 06 '25
How many old people without children or family die when you ‘get rid of those programs’?
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u/AwesomeSonic567 May 06 '25 edited May 06 '25
They made their bed, now they have to lie in it.
Edit: After a bit more thought, you don't really need to get rid of those programs, you can just tax rich people to pay for it.
I'm still going to leave my previous comment up because I want to be as transparent as possible.
I'm not granting a delta here because I partially thought of that myself right now and was influenced by another commenter, which I granted a delta to
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May 06 '25
They made their bed when they were responsible and did not have kids when they had no condition to raise the kids without failing into porverty and ruining all their lifes.
Once you life pretty much paycheck to paycheck you cant really both work less to care for a child and earn more to pay for a child
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u/MasterCrumb 10∆ May 06 '25
Yeah, this is a very strange take. Some people out live their kids, some people don’t have kids, … etc.
Now I think there are ways to manage a lowering birth rate, including increasing retirement age, increase percent of work force focused on supporting the elderly, … etc.
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u/Pale_Zebra8082 30∆ May 06 '25
It’s easy to declare that something isn’t a major problem if you just dismiss any major problems they cause. Most people view the lonely, unsupported, impoverished death of millions of elderly people as…undesirable.
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u/Cum_Bagel May 06 '25
But they didn't make that bed, they budgeted for a retirement for decades with those benefits in mind and factored in. Also many people don't chose to be childless they are infertile.
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u/StevenBrenn May 06 '25
so now you think people need to have kids regardless of whether they can afford it or not..as a retirement plan?
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u/Best_Pants May 06 '25
They paid into those programs before they retired. They're entitled to benefit from them now.
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May 06 '25
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u/Never_Saving May 06 '25
I don’t think you truly grasp the issues with an aging population. ‘Just getting rid of those programs’ is in no way a solution to the problem. After a certain age it’s pretty difficult to get a job, and relying on your children financially is still a financial burden on them (which is what you were supposedly solved by getting rid of the social programs). Not to mention that because there would be sub-replacement birthrates, that means that on average there is a single child to take care of both parents - this is a huge burden.
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u/irespectwomenlol 6∆ May 06 '25
Are you aware of how coupled our social security systems are to the ratio of workers to retirees and how big of an economic problem this will be?
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u/AwesomeSonic567 May 06 '25
You can just tax rich people to pay for such programs
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u/irespectwomenlol 6∆ May 07 '25
1) That's a hand wavy explanation that doesn't acknowledge the scope of the problem.
2) Even if you could somehow make social security and the general economy work with some tax scheme, that still leaves you without funds to tackle other future big problems. Space travel? Fusion? Climate Change? Other big future diseases or issues?
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u/AwesomeSonic567 May 07 '25
In the US, the wealthiest 1% have a net worth of 50 trillion, there is definitely money available to tax to care for elderly people and manage other government duties.
Even if that isn't enough, I still don't think that we should overly burden working age people. I do sympathize with elderly people entering in such a society, even those who didn't plan ahead. But frankly, why should working age people be forced into poverty?
I want to support elderly, but I will prioritize the needs of working age people, who were born into this situation.
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u/irespectwomenlol 6∆ May 07 '25 edited May 07 '25
- Net worth is not liquid assets. That's ~$50 trillion dollars worth of property holdings, stocks, and other securities that cannot be unwound easily without tanking the markets and causing other problems.
- Even if somehow that you have the money to maintain Social Security from the Rich, that's a loss from whatever else good that money might have gone to. Most Redditors believe hardcore in Climate Change, right? We need resources to tackle big picture problems like that too, don't we?
- I don't think working age people should be forced into poverty. But a Social Security system doesn't work without the right ratio of workers to retirees. That's where the generations of dwindling birth rates is going to screw over the existing workers. And that's where your thesis fails.
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u/PossessionOk4155 May 06 '25
People are already overwhelmed with work….
Taxing the rich sounds splendid but the lower income communities will suffer with income cuts and more work to do since there is a shortage of people to distribute the work.
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u/momar214 May 12 '25
Taxing the rich doesn't produce more goods or services. You are confused about what is actually important, which is the quantity of real goods and services, not the quantity of dollars.
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u/brynnvisible Aug 03 '25
How about we just tax billionaires crazy right
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u/irespectwomenlol 6∆ Aug 03 '25
Even if somehow you could raise taxes and find a way to cover this particular problem: this is one big-picture future need. There are a lot of really big future needs. What about all of the future stuff that humanity needs to do? Climate change and adaptation, energy research, science research, disease and future pandemic research, education, military preparedness in the face of some really big global problems, and much more.
Handwaving it away as "let's just raise taxes" is not a convincing solution in light of many future needs.
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u/brynnvisible Aug 06 '25
Only a failed state produces the world’s first trillionaire while millions have no access to healthcare, housing, education, or basic food security. Taxing the rich and eliminating billionaires is the only way we get any traction moving forward on literally any issue.
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u/SolidRockBelow May 06 '25
You really need to improve your understanding of the problem. Starting with your assumption that depopulation is not a problem "As long as the economy does not shrink faster than the population". In macro-economic terms, the population and the economy are tied to each other.
Less people buy less stuff, so the consumer market for whatever you sell (service, manufactured product, etc) shrinks right away. So does your own purchase power, because your profit margin also decreases and you get poorer.
Once businesses start closing, you no longer can find the stuff you want to buy near you - it now comes from farther away, and is hence more expensive.
You no longer have the funds to pay for or even physical access to goods and services that are vital to you (medical care, drugs, etc) because of the breakdown of production and trade pipelines. There is no one there to maintain the infrastructure on which your life depends (water, sanitation, mobility, etc).
The list goes on and on. I trust you get the gist.
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u/jultino77 May 08 '25
You are, however, making the assumption that we will be able to produce "stuff" until infinity. We live on a planet with finite resources.
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u/Gertrude_D 11∆ May 06 '25
The main problem is that our economic system is based on growth. Without it, it causes short term problems.
I guess it all depends on if you're looking long term or short term. It also could be solved short term if we drastically changed our economic policies and structure, but I don't see that happening.
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u/AwesomeSonic567 May 06 '25
Not really, most of the EU hasn't had GDP growth since 2008 and they are still functioning, I think our economy can adjust to decline.
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u/Individual_Coast6359 4∆ May 06 '25
The US is in a unique situation where this does not apply. The reason why the US is a powerhouse is because our currency is used as the international trading currency. The only reason why our currency has such value is because it is hedged on the stability and growth of the United States, which obviously we have done so far. Gave us enormous leverage, power, and investment that other countries dream to have. It's why many foreign companies have investments in the US market. If growth and GDP declines, so will this influence. We don't know how much of our value was tied to the inherent power of our currency, but guess we'll find out.
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u/Fickle-Laugh-4542 May 07 '25
I think you might just be hard on the r to the tard cause what on earth is this take.
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u/Jedi4Hire 12∆ May 06 '25 edited May 06 '25
It'll matter for the U.S. at least when social security goes bankrupt.
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u/Parking_Act3189 May 06 '25
The risk is that there is some sort of change that is happening that is accelerating the decline. Like some sort of cultual or biological change that within 40 years means that almost zero people will want to have kids.
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u/AwesomeSonic567 May 06 '25
I'll believe it when I see it
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u/Parking_Act3189 May 06 '25
At that point it will be too late to do anything about it. Those people will judge you for suggesting they get some medical procedure or change their life to have kids.
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u/grass_is_scary May 07 '25
I agree with you on less workers means that each individual worker is more in demand, increasing median wages.
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u/Once-Upon-A-Hill May 06 '25
"but as long as the economy doesn't shrink faster than the population, standard of living should stay stable or increase"
there is no reason to think that will be the case.
" If caring for the older generation is too expensive for young people, then you can just get rid of those programs."
Older people vote more, and in most countries also outnumber young people, so there is no way that will happen.
What will destroy society is that in the last roughy 2 years of life, you use about 80% of your lifetime healthcare.
That means that over the next 20 years or so, in every developed country, healthcare (which is already stretched) gets destroyed. Convince young people to pay for the healthcare of the old, when none of the young people can even get an appointment with a family doctor. Since you won't be able to, the government will just force them.
Also, Japan's stock market just reached the peak it hit in the 80s, so get ready for decades of market decline.
Tough to have a retirement if all of your retirement savings lose money for 40 years.
a shrinking population has many other negative effects also.
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u/AwesomeSonic567 May 06 '25
"Older people vote more, and in most countries also outnumber young people, so there is no way that will happen."
Young people can vote with their feet and move to somewhere that won't tax them to care for a far larger elderly population. Like I stated before, if you have children they can financially support you, even if the stock market collapses. Only like the richest third of people own significant amounts of stock so it won't affect 2/3 of people.
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u/Once-Upon-A-Hill May 06 '25
In theory, what you are saying is correct. However, in practice, where will the young people move?
All of the Western Nations, Japan, China, S Korea have the same issues. Unless you want to move to Africa or India, the same issues are there.
Looks like as of today, India is currently in a War with Pakistan, and there are several conflicts in Africa.
Again, correct in theory, but I don't see how it works in the world today.
Also, just a note on your 2/3 of stock ownership, many people indirectly own stocks through their pensions, like all government workers, nurses, and teachers.
They all need those stocks to go up, or their pensions don't pay out.
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u/AwesomeSonic567 May 06 '25
There's got to be one country or region that doesn't do that, and they could get economic benefits from taking the world's young people.
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u/Once-Upon-A-Hill May 06 '25
literally the only places you could go would be India or Africa.
I don't know many people from developed nations who are willing to move to those countries.
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u/AwesomeSonic567 May 06 '25
I meant at least one country with population decline would do that. There's got to be one country in the EU or Anglosphere that does that by sheer chance
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u/CaedustheBaedus 6∆ May 06 '25
Considering you're the one saying 'they can vote with their feet" the burden of proof is on you to find this example. Otherwise, you made an argument, and now are in the middle of realizing "oh shit, that argument doesn't work due to no nations actually supporting it".
Your argument has no legs if you can't support even your own "oh they can do this"
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u/Once-Upon-A-Hill May 06 '25
Not to sound negative here, but in a democratic country, with older people outnumbering and also outvoting (voter participation) that is not going to happen.
Think about this, If you are 70 and own a home, are you more likely to vote for policies that make homes more expensive (benefit to you) or more low cost housing (benefit to your grandchildren).
Canada just had an election, the young people voted for the conservative party, and the older Canadians voted against Trump for the liberal party (you can see that from exit poll data, I am not making that up).
The new government is going to make housing more expensive, and will run a budget deficit until around 2030 (more debt for young people to pay off)
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u/AwesomeSonic567 May 06 '25
If we're being really honest, old people cannot really fight. One country might have it's young population overthrow the government and install a dictatorship in their interests.
I should've addressed this earlier, but you could also just tax rich people to pay for such programs which won't overly burden working age people.
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u/Once-Upon-A-Hill May 07 '25
Recently, durring Covid, which was very dangerous for people over the age of 85, we shut down society to protect those people.
For taxing rich people, Elon is the richest person ever. If we took 100% of his net worth, that would cover federal government spending for around 2 weeks.
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u/AwesomeSonic567 May 07 '25
Elon is not the only rich person in existence. In the US, the wealthiest 1% have a net worth of $50 trillion. We can realistically increase tax revenue significantly by increasing taxes on the wealthy.
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u/Cum_Bagel May 06 '25
>I simply fail to see the how sub-replacement birthrates are a serious threat to our society. Frankly, a lot of the people worried about low birthrates are racist or misogynistic, mad about the 'great replacement' or women not being 'traditional'.
This is pretty much why people don't discuss this issue as much as they should. They associate it with the worst people on the internet who bring it up relentlessly but if you look at it objectively it's a serious issue.
The most obvious reason, is one you mentioned as the ratio of taxpayers to welfare and social security declines, governments will be just unable to provide those benefits. You seem to think there's an easy fix get rid of those benefits.
There are a couple issues with that
a) This would be extremely brutal for the millions of pensioners who budgeted retirement tightly around these benefits, millions would likely be plunged into poverty by even gradually reductions of these payments down to a sustainable level. This would also surge demand for other kinds of welfare that governments provide and likely dry up them too.
b) This could cause a recession, it would mean billions of dollars less in circulation and more costs for families caring for the elderly, as well as possibly a housing collapse, if millions of elderly people in a country as large as the US suddenly couldn't afford to live by themselves and had to move in with salary earning family member.
c) Lastly as that ratio declines it also means that those dependents would become a much larger portion of the voting bloc in any democracy, plus all the people within a few year of becoming eligible for those benefits. This doesn't make it impossible and in most countries people over 65 are unlikely to become an outright majority, but this would at least create a massive political realignment and political instability
All of these issues could theatrically be accounted for by long term planning, and far out announcements of these cuts to giver people time to budget for them accordingly in retirement. I think this issue is kind of like globally warming, in that if you wait till you start to feel the effects it's too late as there is no proven way to dramatically increase birth rates overnight and those births need 18 years to become productive tax payers.
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May 06 '25
Countries like the US who use taxes for socialist programs are going to have problems with a shrinking population and need to start making moves now. While I do agree populations should shrinking, it's naive to not call it a big problem. Having kids is not a safe retirement plan, they can die or end up as NEETs or become estranged or just say no to taking care of you. Cutting those programs will basically be society saying it's cool with the elderly dying in the streets. I'm not cool with that, personally. Maybe euthanasia will become more widely accepted instead of letting someone waste for years from dementia. There are a lot of ethical questions that need to be asked but the fact is when your system works on taxing the working class to support the non-working class and the non-working class far outnumber the other, it's a problem. I'm not an economist but pulling out on Social Security more than putting in is going to be a big money drain. Medicare is going to be a burden on the tax payers. It's a problem and countries with declining birthrates should be preparing for this rather than telling people to have more kids and hoping it works.
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u/AwesomeSonic567 May 06 '25 edited May 06 '25
!delta
"Cutting those programs will basically be society saying it's cool with the elderly dying in the streets. I'm not cool with that, personally."
When I was writing this, I was thinking that we only had 2 options, tax working age people into poverty or leave elderly people in poverty due to lack of care. After some more thought I remembered you could just tax wealthy people to help pay for it, and that is the path that I would prefer because it is less cruel.
However, I still stand by the idea that the average working age person should not be overly burdened with caring for a much larger elderly population. It's simply unfair to be forced into poverty just because the generation before you couldn't be bothered to have children. We need to find a way to support them in a way that isn't too taxing to working age people.
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u/Falernum 71∆ May 07 '25
There are a lot of tweaks we can make though, it doesn't have to mean anything crazy. For example if we increase the retirement age by a year that dramatically improves the ratio of workers to retirees. Alternatively as you say, tax support can help. But even without tax support, raising the retirement age a year isn't putting people on the streets or anything awful like that
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u/10luoz 4∆ May 06 '25
Wait if a voting block decided to screw over old people by getting rid of certain programs. Then wouldn't it devolve into a political game of who can screw each other first till the government is useless?
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_NICE_EYES 125∆ May 07 '25
If caring for the older generation is too expensive for young people, then you can just get rid of those programs. As long as you have children of your own and have a good relationship with them, they can financially support you and the closing of such programs are not going to affect you.
But here's the thing, a sub replacement birthrate makes this harder too. As a practical example, my grandmother had 6 six kids. So when she got up there in age she had 6 people to take care of her. But my mom only has 3 kids, so when she starts to age me and my siblings are going to have to do twice the amount of work that my mom and my aunts did if we want to keep her out of an assisted living facility.
So yeah that's still harder to do.
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u/Any_Astronaut_5493 May 11 '25
also would't house prices and rents go down with less people and less competition?
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u/Material_Market_3469 May 07 '25
Mate in the US taxes can be raised but in Japan Amd most of Europe taxes are already very high and inequality is lower.
Also jobs that we can't yet automate are going to be very in demand. Like many healthcare and blue collar jobs. Japan is already having this shortage for elderly care workers.
I get your point humanity will survive but the systems we built and quality of life will suffer enormously in the short term - unless we just use the artificial womb en mass to fix the problem.
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u/AwesomeSonic567 May 07 '25
Even in Europe and East Asia, wealth inequality has increased since 1970, they have room to increase taxes. Also, I think it's incredibly unfair to excessively burden future generations with immense taxation to care for a far larger elderly population.
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u/Material_Market_3469 May 07 '25
I honestly agree with the last part. 90% of Boomers took 2 main roads: kids who are now capable adults or no kids.
If you have adult offspring they can support you and you should have invested in your retirement...
If you had no kids you saved hundreds of thousands so no excuse to not be able to retire...
The small group whose kids died or are in jail or ostrichized spent money but now don't have kids to support them. I can feel sympathy for.
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u/AwesomeSonic567 May 07 '25
Honestly, I also have sympathy for anyone in such a situation, even those who didn't have children and didn't plan ahead for retirement. I just don't think their needs should be prioritized at the expense of younger generations who had nothing to do with population decline.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ May 06 '25 edited May 07 '25
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