I don't see the humor you're seeing, there's no hypocrisy because the two messages are coming from two very different groups with very different values and moti

I don't see the humor you're seeing, there's no hypocrisy because the two messages are coming from two very different groups with very different values and motivations. The "we need more people" stuff is coming from the capital class and their sycophants. They want more people so they can have more laborers to drive down the cost of labor, and more consumers to buy more product, and more renters to drive up the price of rent. They want population number to go up because they are invested and committed to the numbers go up game. As long as more people means more numbers go up, that's what they'll keep demanding. The UK has more people than ever before, it's steadily climbing but they always want even more. Unbounded growth. The "I don't want kids because this place is crowded" and "kids are too expensive" messages are coming from members of the general public who are dealing with the ramifications of the policies of the first group. Their rent is high, their towns and cities growing, traffic is getting worse, city buses are packed, there's lots of things they want to buy but the value of their labor isn't keeping pace. Birth rate falls in response to these pressures, so the capital class tries to import new labor from poor parts of the world, knowing those new laborers will feel relatively happy to live 10 people to an apartment working for piss poor pay, because those conditions are still an improvement over where they are coming from.