It just seems like we could adjust our economy to compensate for a shrinking population. The answer of paying your working population more seems so much easier trying to get people to have kids they don’t want. It would also slow the population shrink by making children more affordable, but a smaller population seems far more sustainable than an ever growing one and a shrinking one seems like it should decrease suffering with the resources being less in demand.
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You have two villages. One has a “growing” demographic: 60 workers, 30 kids, 10 retired people. Life in this village is awesome, a worker (farmer, mechanic, lawyer, whatever) needs to work enough for themselves and 60% extra to cover non working people. The trend is even more awesome for them in the future, so they can be even richer in retirement while the future workers can both themselves be richer while giving less. Say 50 kids 100 workers, 15 retired people.
Village two has 40 workers, 10 kids, and 50 retired people. Thing here suck. You have to work 250% more to cover non workers. But that is nothing, the really, really awful times have yet to come. When you retire their will be even less workers, with less to go around to cover more retirees.You will be dramatically poorer in the future.
Sure, technology has some offsets, but which of the two above villages can invest in technology?
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