It’s happening all over the world. Birthrates are declining and almost all leaders are lamenting the fact.
The argument is that with declining birthrates there won’t be enough tax money from fewer younger people to pay for the care of older people. Also, in the United States, consumers spending money keeps the economy going. With fewer consumers, companies – and the economy – won’t be able to grow. Corporations will have to shrink in size rather than grow.
By 2050, if the birthrate continues to decline as is expected, more than 75 percent of the world’s countries will be below replacement-level in population. Populations in some major economies will decrease by 20 to 50 percent by 2100.
To me, declining populations are good thing not a bad thing. The earth is straining to sustain the population that we have now. The economic systems we have encourage people to spend, spend, spend. It’s depleting the world’s resources and is leading to climate change.
Climate change is an example how we’re stressing environments to produce stuff for people to buy to keep corporations making profits and to have economic growth.
New economic models need to be developed. New programs, which may require tax increases, need to be developed to take care of senior citizens rather than paying women to have babies so these children can grow up and pay taxes to care for the elderly.
On paying women to have babies, $5,000, for example, one recent suggestion is to pay much more to parents for “replacement costs,” the amount it would cost to hire someone to do child care. It would cost as much or more than Medicare, according to an article in The New York Times.
To me, it’s time to look at accepting declining birthrates as a good thing.
Population Connection, formerly Zero Population Growth, gives these reasons why people need to stop panicking over low birthrates:
- Low birthrates are a result of women’s empowerment.
- Small families are good for people and society.
- The planet needs zero population growth for a more sustainable future.
- Babies are nonworking dependents, too.
- Growth-dependent economies have no place in the future.
Declining birthrates as a positive thing is something to think about as we approach World Population Day July 11, a United Nations observance day that seeks to raise awareness of population issues.
You didn’t mention that AI will soon–in the next few years (despite some of the crummy results produced by AI–citations that don’t exist, etc.) replace many white collar jobs in the US. https://aimagazine.com/articles/white-collar-bloodbath-anthropic-warns-of-ai-job-losses Not that these tech CEOs have any ideas about what will happen if the power goes off, since AI is a huge power consumer & I guess won’t work at all w/out power, unlike humans workers, if nothing else they can still use pens & pencils & paper or manual typewriters (if any still exist). As well as speak to each other w/out using electricity (if they’re in the same building/room.
Trump claimed he’d bring back jobs to the US (has it happened yet?
And how many? How well do they pay? Some manufacturing jobs HAVE already returned to the US–because it didn’t take long for some manufacturers & their customers to notice the fragility of “globalized” supply chains (some returned before the great recession). But when the manufacturer returned, fewer workers were needed, because robots, computerization of some functions were performing jobs (or parts of jobs) formerly performed by humans. Humans were still needed to repair/maintain/reprogram the robots.
Does seem though that low paying difficult jobs, like picking fruit, etc, will still exist. Some fruit picking has been mechanized, as have some other aspects of farming (dairly farming, etc) but it seems that humans are still needed for plenty of jobs on the farm. But they don’t pay well and they’re physically demanding.
What should happen is that any tech company replacing humans w/AI should have to pay hefty taxes, but this being the US. that won’t happen. Otherwise there won’t be enough taxes to pay for the services the remaning humans need.
I’m also unsure who who the tech people think will ultimately buy products in the US, ie, keep creating profits for Amazon, Zuckerberg, the auto industry et al.
With a lower population, there will be fewer people needing jobs. As Population Connection says, growth-dependent economies have no place in the future.