Does a smaller population not benefit everyone?
In: Planetary Science
Normally, population decline results in an “inverted pyramid”. An aging population unfit for the majority of labor roles, while simultaneously consuming more resources due to accumulated wealth and health issues, leads to an economy where fewer people have to work harder to sustain the consumption of their elders whose understanding of resource availability was developed around a time before the inversion took place.
Because much of the modern economy / society operates on the same principles as a Ponzi scheme or MLM.
First off population decline isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If it was almost all old people who were unable to work/support themselves who died all at once as a one time event, it wouldn’t necessarily cause problems.
I think what you’re trying to ask is about declining birth rates. The issue is the old people I mentioned above who are unable to be productive or support themselves. Lower birth rates means fewer young/productive people to support the aged unproductive people, while also supporting themselves.
Also, since the world economy is based on continued growth, it greatly complicates how business and money would look going forward, since everything would be in decline big picture.
Population decline means less people to spend more money, which would put a stick in their wheel of eternal growth.
Modern industry is only possible due to the nearly infinite supply of dirt cheap human labor and an equally infinite demand. For example, the only reason the iPhone exists is because there are millions of people to buy them and cheap labor with which to build them. Without the people, the system just collapses
Our entire economic system is not designed to handle population contractions. If it happens, things break and break badly.
In Japan almost 30% of the population are over 65. China is getting there and UK is about 25%. The proportion keeps going up and up. 10% of Japanese are over 80 – one in ten – and birth rates have plummeted
Lots of these older people lead great lives, but many suffer from chronic ill health or dementia and have to be looked after or receive ongoing health management. This is expensive, and it is hard politically in many countries to extract the funds from the old people themselves eg their money may be tied up in their house or their pension funds or politicians don’t want to lose the votes of their supporters.
And of course many older folk don’t have the funds or the family to provide the care themselves
So younger people have to pay the money and do the work, all the time struggling with their bills and a lack of available/affordable housing. So younger people do not have the time or the inclination or the finances to have children or larger families and the whole pyramid will become unstable one day.
In my opinion, it isn’t a bad thing (in fact, it’s critical for our survival). Many countries worry about declining populations and the inverted demographic pyramid. What they never talk about, is the fact that they could bump up their populations if they allowed more immigration. There are plenty of countries with LOTS of people that could emigrate to a declining country. IMHO, immigration is the key to economic harmony in a time of declining birth rates.
This planet isn’t covered with humans who live and make babies. It’s covered in animate being that create a finite number of labor hours. Unless they make babies, which creates more labor hours.
Wage slaves exist only for the bottom line of a tiny exclusive few. And They are the ones who need your labor hours. Hurry up and make more so the billionaires can get to space faster!!
It’s damaging to a country’s social services system which are funded by labor taxes. If there are not enough people to work to make money for elderly pensions, who will pay and them and how will the elderly make ends meet? Should they just suck it up and go back to work to make ends meet? Obviously, no, there is a moral obligation that society has for the elderly, the sick, the disabled etc. so it’a important to keep the social system functioning to serve people’s needs.
Which is why so many countries are looking at immigration now, to mixed results.
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