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World’s failure to have enough children will end ‘centuries of social progress’

2 points by rustoo 4y ago

mytailorisrich 4y ago
The environmental problems we're facing are down to the explosion of the global population. While all the talk is about emissions and net zero, we must reign in our overall impact on the planet and that includes stabilising the population, and perhaps even better letting it decrease. The cultural paradigm shift is to accept this and to think about how to adapt our economies and societies.
jleyank 4y ago
If the goal is to have children, then efforts must be made to ensure people can afford to do so and to make sure the health care system nurtures them. Some countries and provinces are doing this but “spending money on others” is really out of favour right now. Children are both a direct and indirect cost: primarily women are removed from the work force and raising them costs money. This means companies and governments have to create things like child care and career retention plans to allow parents to raise newborns and then return to work. They have to retain jobs in the country or province/state so people can make money, and such jobs have to provide health care or the governments must do so. Domestic production will raise prices a little, and this is something societies must do to keep job opportunities present. Will this happen? Today, no. Having children will remain the domain of the (very) poor and possibly (very) rich. Everybody else has to work to preserve their current situation. Perhaps immigration will provide the needed younger workers, but that’s politically unacceptable. Better to let food rot in the fields than let “them” in.
quantified 4y ago
How many of those who feel like this is a problem wants to do everything to live to 100? You can't encourage and support masses living for 3,4,5 decades past their economically productive years and not have a plan for supporting them. The first 20 or so years are spent growing up, then you work, with pay maybe maxing towards the end, until 60's, then get 30 more years. Cops, firefighters, military don't all get to work into later life. If the only answer here is to run a population pyramid scheme, then so be it, but we all know the consequence of that. Cheek by jowl with very expensive water, food, and housing at some point. All the retirees would have more to work with if they'd been able to save more of their own money along the way, instead of needing to plow it into other peoples' high profits and wasted government activities along the way. But spending 35 years repaying your childhood's costs and saving for 25-35 years more doesn't seem possible on an individual wage-earner level. There's a lot of money available in the economy, just not for people to actually live, eh?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rdtwo 4y ago
People can only effectively make children from age 14-45. If modern society doesn’t allow folks to get into a life situation where they can do that before mid/late 30s that doesn’t leave a lot of time

2 points by rustoo 4y ago

The environmental problems we're facing are down to the explosion of the global population. While all the talk is about emissions and net zero, we must reign in our overall impact on the planet and that includes stabilising the population, and perhaps even better letting it decrease. The cultural paradigm shift is to accept this and to think about how to adapt our economies and societies.

jleyank 4y ago

If the goal is to have children, then efforts must be made to ensure people can afford to do so and to make sure the health care system nurtures them. Some countries and provinces are doing this but “spending money on others” is really out of favour right now. Children are both a direct and indirect cost: primarily women are removed from the work force and raising them costs money. This means companies and governments have to create things like child care and career retention plans to allow parents to raise newborns and then return to work. They have to retain jobs in the country or province/state so people can make money, and such jobs have to provide health care or the governments must do so. Domestic production will raise prices a little, and this is something societies must do to keep job opportunities present. Will this happen? Today, no. Having children will remain the domain of the (very) poor and possibly (very) rich. Everybody else has to work to preserve their current situation. Perhaps immigration will provide the needed younger workers, but that’s politically unacceptable. Better to let food rot in the fields than let “them” in.

quantified 4y ago

How many of those who feel like this is a problem wants to do everything to live to 100? You can't encourage and support masses living for 3,4,5 decades past their economically productive years and not have a plan for supporting them. The first 20 or so years are spent growing up, then you work, with pay maybe maxing towards the end, until 60's, then get 30 more years. Cops, firefighters, military don't all get to work into later life. If the only answer here is to run a population pyramid scheme, then so be it, but we all know the consequence of that. Cheek by jowl with very expensive water, food, and housing at some point. All the retirees would have more to work with if they'd been able to save more of their own money along the way, instead of needing to plow it into other peoples' high profits and wasted government activities along the way. But spending 35 years repaying your childhood's costs and saving for 25-35 years more doesn't seem possible on an individual wage-earner level. There's a lot of money available in the economy, just not for people to actually live, eh?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

rdtwo 4y ago

People can only effectively make children from age 14-45. If modern society doesn’t allow folks to get into a life situation where they can do that before mid/late 30s that doesn’t leave a lot of time