Impact of decreasing birth rates

[Pendleton]

I hadn't read about Korean fertility recently. It appears they now make the Japanese look as fertile as Africans in comparison. Down to a fertility rate of 0.84. They used to be even more homogenous than the Japanese but are now down to 96% ethnic Koreans.

Korea reports 1st population decline in 2020; total fertility rate hits new record of 0.84

South Korea reported the first natural decline in population last year as the number of deaths outpaced that of newborns amid the country's rapid aging and chronic low birth rate, data showed Wednesday. The number of newborns came to a record low of 272,400 last year, down 10 percent, or 30,300...

www.koreatimes.co.kr

 

[Castelnau]

Its amazing people think of babies just in terms of the economy. Like "oh man if there's no kids whose going to grow up, work and fund my social security?". We live in such a spiritually dead society.

I'm sure all those childless urban career woman (think female HuffPo writers) will realize what a terrible choice they made and panic adopt nonwhite kids at age 60 then write endless navel gazing articles and books on the process.

 

[Timbuktube]

USA gets to cheat the system by sucking in immigrants. So we don’t really have a declining birthrate. We do. But. We compensate with millions of illegals and skilled immigrants.

This has minor socioethnic and demographic implications. Not much else to worry about.

 

[Lime]

Its amazing people think of babies just in terms of the economy. Like "oh man if there's no kids whose going to grow up, work and fund my social security?". We live in such a spiritually dead society.

I'm sure all those childless urban career woman (think female HuffPo writers) will realize what a terrible choice they made and panic adopt nonwhite kids at age 60 then write endless navel gazing articles and books on the process.

Economic effects are the result of the strange absence of desire to have children, so it's not either/or, it's both.

Although maybe not so strange:

And there’s a good reason why: Having kids is, literally, no fun. Researchers have been studying the effects of children on their parents for decades and the results are nearly always the same. Having children makes parents less happy. You can slice, dice, and rationalize the data any way you like, controlling for age, church attendance, education, you name it. Doesn’t matter.

Although:

After accounting for the financial strain that parenthood brings, it turns out having children doesn’t reduce parental happiness, but increases it, authors David Blanchflower and Andrew Clark wrote in a working paper published last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

 

[Oberrheiner]

What will be of the newly built housing after 2060 when the population starts to plummet? And the general economy when one needs 2 workers for every retiree?

I don't think it will become so.

Migrants have started targeting retirees a long time ago - easy targets with above average riches.

 

[Max Roscoe]

The requirement of capitalism for permanent exponential grown is a feature, not a bug.
It is *designed* to require mass immigration, as stable, K-selected civilizations reach a saturation point (as does everything in nature).

White civilizations reached this point a long time ago. Much of Asia, did, which is why China took the wise step of limiting its population around a billion people. There are numerous quality of life issues that become significantly worse with high density urbanization (ie you will eat bugs, you will have fracked water, you will pay $10 a gallon for gas, you will own nothing, and you will "like" it), but setting aside the good/bad aspect of it, population levels are mostly natural phenomenon, and we have yet to see a K-selected civilization engage in exponential growth, or an R-selected civilization stabilize (even facing mass starvation, Africans reproduce at record levels). And under capitalism, the Economy must be fed at all costs and it requires more and more every year, no matter what.

Even during the covid 19 lockdowns where by every measure, economic activity is a fraction of what it was before, corporations have found a way to grow their profits. It's bizarre, and we don't yet know how exactly they did it, though probably the economic bailouts, 97% of which went to corporations, are the reason.

The future of the world’s population in 4 charts

Last week, the UN released updated population figures and projections. I just had a chance to go through them and the great key findings document (PDF, 1MB) that accompanies them. But before I dive in, how accurate are these projections? What kind of track record do UN demographers have? The ...

blogs.worldbank.org

The countries which will experience the greatest growth in coming years are:
India
Nigeria
Pakistan
Congo
Ethiopia
USA
Indonesia
Uganda

Is anyone betting that these countries will be better off in 2050 than they are today?

 

[infowarrior1]

The requirement of capitalism for permanent exponential grown is a feature, not a bug.
It is *designed* to require mass immigration, as stable, K-selected civilizations reach a saturation point (as does everything in nature).

White civilizations reached this point a long time ago. Much of Asia, did, which is why China took the wise step of limiting its population around a billion people. There are numerous quality of life issues that become significantly worse with high density urbanization (ie you will eat bugs, you will have fracked water, you will pay $10 a gallon for gas, you will own nothing, and you will "like" it), but setting aside the good/bad aspect of it, population levels are mostly natural phenomenon, and we have yet to see a K-selected civilization engage in exponential growth, or an R-selected civilization stabilize (even facing mass starvation, Africans reproduce at record levels). And under capitalism, the Economy must be fed at all costs and it requires more and more every year, no matter what.

Even during the covid 19 lockdowns where by every measure, economic activity is a fraction of what it was before, corporations have found a way to grow their profits. It's bizarre, and we don't yet know how exactly they did it, though probably the economic bailouts, 97% of which went to corporations, are the reason.

The future of the world’s population in 4 charts

Last week, the UN released updated population figures and projections. I just had a chance to go through them and the great key findings document (PDF, 1MB) that accompanies them. But before I dive in, how accurate are these projections? What kind of track record do UN demographers have? The ...

blogs.worldbank.org

The countries which will experience the greatest growth in coming years are:
India
Nigeria
Pakistan
Congo
Ethiopia
USA
Indonesia
Uganda

Is anyone betting that these countries will be better off in 2050 than they are today?

This requirement of exponential growth is only possible in our debt based fiat money system. Not when the gold standard was still in place and the money supply isn't controlled by hostile powers.

 

[tothepoint]

The requirement of capitalism for permanent exponential grown is a feature, not a bug.
It is *designed* to require mass immigration, as stable, K-selected civilizations reach a saturation point (as does everything in nature).

Even during the covid 19 lockdowns where by every measure, economic activity is a fraction of what it was before, corporations have found a way to grow their profits. It's bizarre, and we don't yet know how exactly they did it, though probably the economic bailouts, 97% of which went to corporations, are the reason.

It's quite simple actually. The government starts printing money which it then lends to the banks at basically 0% interest rate. The banks lend the money to the corporations at record low interest rates, the corporations then use that to expand or in some cases buy back their shares thus driving the prices up. Some have even invested that money in Bitcoin, that's why you've seen an explosion in price recently. They then pay back the loans 10-20 years later when the currency has lost 20-30% of its value. This is a flawed system supported by government intervention. When this shit starts to happen you don't have capitalism anymore, you have a twisted, cancerous form of it.

The other major issue is the very definition of a corporation. There would be limits to corporate expansion if the board of directors would be personally liable. It's baffling to me that corporations can exist as separate entities. When you can poison the oceans and then retire all the way to the bank with your billion dollar bonus something is wrong. Again, this is not capitalism, it's madness supported by government courts.
CEOs, CFOs and all the other Os on the board of directors should be the first in line to pay for any damages caused by the actions of the corporation. Excuses like "I didn't know that our sub-contractors used forced child labor" and other bullshit like that would not hold in court and these people would go to jail.

 

[ATaleFromSpain]

Here in Spain, 2019 reproductive rate was only 1.2 (to maintain a constant native population this must be close to 2.1). In 2020 the rate was under 1 for sure. I’m 37 and only about 30% of my friends have kids. This will be a monster problem and nobody seems to look into it!!!

 

[ralfy]

Continuous growth in capitalism is neither a feature nor a bug but part of its very meaning. It refers to capital gained from various sources, including profits, and reinvested to increase production, with what is produced purchased by growing consumer markets.

The market for all sorts of goods and services is huge on a global scale because 71 pct of people worldwide live in less than $10 daily. They want to and intend to earn more, and the other 29 pct are counting on them to do that because their own income and returns on investment are based on the same. This also puts to question claims that demand for oil should drop and that "green" energy will dominate because much of the world has not reached industrialization, and thus needs lots of oil and minerals to achieve that, let alone use alternative sources of energy.

Given that, what capitalists want is not decreasing population but a slowly increasing one because the first will lead to lower demand, among others, and the second to poverty due birth rates that are too high. This also puts to question claims that various rich people, organizations like the UN, etc., want population decrease, as that would lead to lower demand.

The catch is that capitalism also has cycles, starting with the beginning of industrialization to a peak, and on to late capitalism and decadence. At that latter stage, birth rates start to decrease as more become more interested in careers, etc., which are part of prosperity. With that, richer countries start relying on poorer ones not only for labor but even for consumer markets. Eventually, as poorer countries become richer, they also experience the same problems.

The other catch is that increasing amounts of energy and material resources are needed to maintain that growth. That means more oil and minerals are needed to support goods and services produced and sold, and the money used to capitalize on that and buy them. The world is not an unlimited sphere, and factors like gravity increase energy needed to extract minerals take place. And as goods and services become more sophisticated, then even more energy is needed per person.

There is no "we're lucky we'll do fine even as most suffer" argument to consider here because capitalism is not the same as feudalism. Much of the wealth of capitalists consists of credit, or essentially numbers in hard drives, and the value of those numbers can only be maintained if more oil and minerals are extracted to provide more goods and service to growing numbers of people who need and want them, from which profits and returns on investment are achieved. In short, everyone is part of it, and "magic technology" ideas like automation does not help because robots aren't consumers and more energy and minerals are still needed even with that.

What capitalists hope is that technologies which can increase energy return plus decrease pollution can be developed in order to meet continuous growth needed for more prosperity, such that the world population will reach a peak because of that prosperity (which leads to lower birth rates) and slowly level off with a minimum of conflict. But the resources needed to accomplish that is huge: the equivalent of one more earth in order to meet just basic needs, and much more to meet wants, which is the goal of most human beings.

On a much lower scale, countries experiencing population aging due to prosperity will have to rely on poorer countries with much younger populations for not only workers but even consumers.

 

[ralfy]

One more thing: in general governments don't print money arbitrarily. They are usually borrowed into existence through commercial banks or borrowed directly from investors to meet particular goals.

Also, the largest source of credit creation isn't government but the commercial bank, and the largest component of credit worldwide is derivatives, esp. unregulated ones, and with a notional value of over US$1.2 quadrillion.

Last, the main controllers of the global economy are not governments but multinational corporations, especially financial ones:

Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world

As anti-capitalist protesters take to the streets, mathematics has teased apart the global economic network to show who's really pulling the strings

www.newscientist.com

 

[infowarrior1]

One more thing: in general governments don't print money arbitrarily. They are usually borrowed into existence through commercial banks or borrowed directly from investors to meet particular goals.

Also, the largest source of credit creation isn't government but the commercial bank, and the largest component of credit worldwide is derivatives, esp. unregulated ones, and with a notional value of over US$1.2 quadrillion.

Last, the main controllers of the global economy are not governments but multinational corporations, especially financial ones:

Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world

As anti-capitalist protesters take to the streets, mathematics has teased apart the global economic network to show who's really pulling the strings

www.newscientist.com

The ones who founded the Federal Reserve:

The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve: G. Edward Griffin: 9780912986456: Amazon.com: Books

The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve [G. Edward Griffin] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve

www.amazon.com

Are already run by the same people. And funnily enough Wall Street Funded Lenin:

Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution: The remarkable true story of the American Capitalists who financed the Russian Communists - Sutton, Anthony C | 9781905570355 | Amazon.com.au | Books

Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution: The remarkable true story of the American Capitalists who financed the Russian Communists [Sutton, Anthony C] on Amazon.com.au. *FREE* shipping on eligible orders. Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution: The remarkable true story of the American...

www.amazon.com.au

The Bolsheviks in Russia was funded by the same "Capitalists"