I strongly agree that in the long term it's better for everyone to have lower or even zero population growth, possibly with negative growth for a while. I love

I strongly agree that in the long term it's better for everyone to have lower or even zero population growth, possibly with negative growth for a while. I love that more people are shedding the presumption that growth is a necessity for well-being in posterity The problem is in the short term, as the current population starts to skew older, there will be fewer working-age people supporting the increasing numbers of elderly people who retire and eventually can't support themselves even if they want to. This is both a macroeconomic problem (not enough income/production to pay for everything) and a microeconomic problem (literally not enough qualified caregivers, limiting supply of care even as demand increases, and therefore making it much more expensive). Thus we need to figure out a way to make it through the transition out of our current high-positive-growth without creating a crisis of poverty and suffering among the soon-to-be elderly. The answer probably involves nation-state governments creating a shit ton of money to make it all happen. But in the USA at least, we are already very deep in unknown zone of debt-to-GDP ratio above unity, the cost of debt service itself beginning to grow (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYOIGDA188S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYOIGDA188S), and an uncertain future around our ability to control inflation with monetary policy. Not to mention the pesky habit of large corporations and wealthy individuals to funnel money out of public expenditure in the form of economic rent. If we could actually stop being greedy for two seconds and try to plan ahead, I'm sure we could figure it out. But when has that ever happened before?