I’ve never understood why a declining population is in itself a bad thing (for individuals).
Everywhere there seems to be labor shortages it’s almost always the low-end jobs that can’t fill vacancies (that’s a good thing for living standards). Plus benefits like less inheritance splitting, greater capital per person (roads, houses, etc.). And at the far extreme, developing countries often have high growth rates and widespread poverty as a result. On the flip side, if I’m an only child and inherit my parent’s house, that is a huge increase to my living standards to never have to carry a mortgage.
The argument usually seems to be that old people consume resources without working, but isn’t that true of both children and the elderly? The elderly need a lot of hospitals, doctors, nurses, etc., but kids need teachers, doctors, school bus drivers, universities, daycares, etc. Both groups might pull family members out of the workforce for years to care for them. But the elderly often have their own assets to draw from to pay for some/all of this, whereas kids come into the world with nothing.
What am I missing?
In: Economics
>The argument usually seems to be that old people consume resources without working, but isn’t that true of both children and the elderly?
Children are like an investment for the economy, they (most likely) will contribute most of their lives to it. The elderly are in something like the “reward” period of their life, where they don’t need to contribute to it anymore, and should just focus on enjoying their life.
Less children means less adults in the next 10-20 years. This is actually fine overall, IF we are shrinking slowly enough.
Otherwise we simply do not have the ability to feed and support that many people if they are not also somehow contributing.
To add, we definitely can handle degrowth if we radically change our economical system and standards, and we can even do that without neglecting health and huge amounts of quality of life stuff. But we also have the people who aren’t necessarily wrongly doing their best to ensure each generation will live in more and more luxury. It’s a great thought and a great thing to work towards, if you can also come up with a way to support it
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