China's Population Drops For the First Time In Decades (cnbc.com) 152
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: China's population declined in 2022, the National Bureau of Statistics said Tuesday. The drop was the first since the early 1960s, according to Yi Fuxian, a critic of China's one-child policy and author of the book "Big Country With an Empty Nest." Mainland China's population, excluding foreigners, fell by 850,000 people in 2022 to 1.41 billion, the statistics bureau said. The country reported 9.56 million births and 10.41 million deaths for 2022.
In 2021, China's population grew by the slowest increase on record. The mainland China population, excluding foreigners, rose by 480,000 to 1.41 billion people at the end of 2021, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. New births on the mainland fell by 13% in 2021 to 10.62 million babies, the data showed. In 2020, new births fell by 22%, according to the data. "The population will likely trend down from here in coming years," said Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management. "This is very important, with implications for potential growth and domestic demand."
The National Bureau of Statistics also reported that China's economy expanded by 3% in 2022, far below the government's target. "It also marks one of the worst performances in nearly half a century," reports CNN.
This is a developing story...
In 2021, China's population grew by the slowest increase on record. The mainland China population, excluding foreigners, rose by 480,000 to 1.41 billion people at the end of 2021, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. New births on the mainland fell by 13% in 2021 to 10.62 million babies, the data showed. In 2020, new births fell by 22%, according to the data. "The population will likely trend down from here in coming years," said Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management. "This is very important, with implications for potential growth and domestic demand."
The National Bureau of Statistics also reported that China's economy expanded by 3% in 2022, far below the government's target. "It also marks one of the worst performances in nearly half a century," reports CNN.
This is a developing story...
Official Chinese numbers, that is... (Score:5, Informative)
Some analysts in the West say that China started dropping a while ago, and that their numbers were incorrect before. The overcount is also supposedly in their younger population, with millions fewer 20 to 30 year olds than the official count.
It's quite possible that China is only about 1.1 or 1.2 billion right now, and that official drop is the start of a much faster collapse in total population.
Re:Official Chinese numbers, that is... (Score:5, Insightful)
It will be interesting to see what they, as the only country who has made a conscious effort at population control, will do about it.
Maybe the decline is slow enough they feel it's not disruptive and don't need to do anything.
Or will worker/soldier shortages scare them enough, eventually, that they encourage people to have more babies?
Doesn't seem hard to encourage baby-making, with the right financial incentives. My own state of Texas is already seeming to do it haphazardly and without direction (like everything else.) Medicare being strictly available to child-bearers, other benefits like food stamps increasing manifold beyond what another small mouth requires, as soon as you pop out a kid. Tax incentives for child-bearers. In the breadth of my life experience (way beyond the average Slashdotter, just so you know I'm not pulling out "what I heard" on Fox News or whatever) I have noticed black families particularly rely on these benefits, and I think it encourages them to out-reproduce the whites. It's a wonder the Republicans here aren't more adamant about cutting these benefits, in light of that. Or maybe they care more about maintaining a large underclass to keep wages down. Maybe they just don't think or care at all... hmm, that's probably most likely.
Already happening (Score:3, Interesting)
Or will worker/soldier shortages scare them enough, eventually, that they encourage people to have more babies?
No eventually about it, China has already been encouraging people to have more babies [wsj.com].
Turns out Hans Rosling [ted.com] was right all along. There is no such thing as a "population bomb". As societies get richer fewer people want to have kids, and so the population growth will inevitably stop accelerating until we reach a steady state of around 9 billion or so... but that somewhat higher ceiling will not be
Re:Already happening (Score:5, Insightful)
the population growth will inevitably stop accelerating until we reach a steady state of around 9 billion or so...
That is not supported by evidence. After birthrates drop, they ... drop more. There is no sign of any "leveling off".
Two decades ago, Korea's birthrate dropped below the replacement rate of 2.1. Today, Korea's birthrate is less than one. So the population will halve with each generation. Many other countries are on a similar downward trendline.
Many countries are trying to encourage more births, but none successfully.
Re:Already happening (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it is quite hard to encourage offspring when society has worked very hard toward the idea that both parents should hold full time carreers while simultaneously making sure that it takes both salaries to not go into poverty.
Raising kids is not a one or even two person job. It seldom goes smoothly enough for that. You need help if you want to come out of it somewhat sane.
Creating an environment that works both in a global economy and provides the necessary reassurances is not easily done. Especially because the population will resist many of the moves necessary due to ideology (feminism, anti-socialism and "I could do it and it didn't kill me either").
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Creating an environment that works both in a global economy and provides the necessary reassurances is not easily done. Especially because the population will resist many of the moves necessary due to ideology (feminism, anti-socialism and "I could do it and it didn't kill me either").
The third world has few to zero "reassurances" for people looking to have kids yet that's where all the population growth is happening. What you're discussing might help 1st world birth rates a smidge but it's clearly not going after the core issue or it wouldnt be the world's poorest nations seeing all the massive population growth.
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The third world has population growth out of necessity. When you have such high childhood death rates, the only way to have enough "help" to survive is to have a lot of children
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Or perhaps, just maybe, people made their own decisions for their own reasons.
All the people together doing that, we call it society.
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That is not supported by evidence.
It is. Belgium and France are examples. Main difference though: Both countries have intensive child care support in the laws. South Korea has not. If you treat children solely as a problem for the parents, you are getting lots of people trying to minimize the problem.
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Belgium and France are examples.
Belgium's birthrate is 1.55.
France's birthrate is 1.83.
Both are below replacement level and declining.
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Israel succeeded, at least until very recently. Turns out what you need is a society that makes it possible to have children and views it as a normative good, a society that doesn't pump its kids full of chemicals and teach them that the slightest awkwardness during puberty is a sign they should sterilize themselves, and most importantly the ability to actually buy a home and support a family.
Israel has succeeded at maintaining (a high) population growth primarily because it has a large religiously orthodox segment in society that has an extremely high fertility rate. Haredi jews have a growth rate of 5% (doubling approximately every 14 years) while non-Haredi jews have a growth rate of 1.2% (doubling every 60 years or so). From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. It is however also clear that this will change Israel fundamentally over the coming decades.
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You just proved my point for me. Israel is one of the only developed countries in the world where even the completely non-religious still have a positive population growth.
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I have heard it described as "relaxing the one-child policy". They now allow 3 children before they cut your benefits off.
My understanding is they are removing the negative incentives to extra births. This is not the same thing as offering positive incentives, like the cash payments many get in the US.
The article is paywalled, but I'd be interested in knowing the full details.
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They're already freaking out because 1) their entire economy will implode and 2) they have an extraordinary gender imbalance that's only going to get worse. Having a huge number of young men with no future, no hope, and nothing to lose is not a good thing for a country's stability.
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Or neighboring countries' stability...
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Historically speaking it's a very good indicator of a neighboring country about to stop being neighboring.
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The gender imbalance thing likely isnt going to get worse. While Chinese data is hard to trust their reported gender imbalance rates have been shrinking for a bit now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] .
More importantly though female infanticide is done by poor people for reasons of economic security. As China's population becomes more wealthy the need for such practices diminishes.
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Or will worker/soldier shortages scare them enough, eventually, that they encourage people to have more babies?
There are two problems with this. First is it takes 20+ years for those babies to enter the workforce, so it takes decades to turn the ship. Second is it is very hard to convince middle class families to have more kids than they would have otherwise without convincing. Even countries with very good support for families, like Nordic countries, have very low birth rates.
[Provide] tax incentives for child-bearers. In the breadth of my life experience [...] I have noticed black families particularly rely on these benefits, and I think it encourages them to out-reproduce the whites.
This is a product of more Hispanic and black families being in poverty and in the working class. Middle and upper middle class black families
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Looks like going from 2 people to 3 people in a household nets an extra $7.36/day in food stamps (technically SNAP these days).
Going from 3 to 4 is only an extra $6.74 a day more.
It seems to decrease until 8 people, but after that, it's an extra $6.93/day.
(Assuming 365.25 days per year for my calculation.)
While welfare (TANF)
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What's the difference when going from zero kids to a nonzero number? That's where my own observations were being made, but it was so many years ago now I don't remember the exact figures.
I know there are other variables that affect SNAP benefits as well, like employment status, probably also income level and assets. Certainly you have to report these things on your application.
I know that, for Texas Medicare at least, the difference between zero kids and nonzero kids is zero benefits or full benefits. In th
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$235 more in SNAP benefits, extra $147 for TANF, and earned income can be $85/mo more (goes from $78/mo to $163/mo as the cutoff).
So $382/mo total for a kid, plus one can earn an extra $85 if they work.
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As a former marxist turned conservative passing straight through Republican to American Solidarity Party:
I have noticed black families particularly rely on these benefits, and I think it encourages them to out-reproduce the whites.
I bloody well hope so. Nothing would please me more. I think any pro-life Republican, unlike the anti-life, pro-abortion Democrats, would applaud minorities joining the rest of the conservative side of the United States in raising large families.
Large families are the entire po
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I'm the last person to believe anything coming from the cccp but it never occurred to me they would lie about something as simple as total population but it makes sense.
Dropping 850k seemed like an oddly small number compared to total population after thinking about it a bit. Probably a small number to soften up their people for when the really big drops start coming in.
If your country uses fake population numbers that ripples through all government decisions leading to bad policies no matter what your und
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The reason for more more more is our economic systems are based on the idea of growth. Revenue, web site hits, carrots sold last season, cars made, anything, everything. If the numbers don't go up, "it's bad". For most things the easiest and often only way this is possible is if there are more people every year.
I'm not saying I think this is a good thing or how it should be. But it's how it is.
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Dropping 850k seemed like an oddly small number compared to total population after thinking about it a bit. Probably a small number to soften up their people for when the really big drops start coming in.
It is. What China isn't saying is the true number of dead from covid. For them to say they only had one or two people die in a week is about the biggest lie one can give out. Only recently have they started saying higher numbers. According to "official" Chinese numbers, 60,000 people have died from covid [cnn.com]
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Re: Official Chinese numbers, that is... (Score:2)
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China's official population is 1.4 billion. Are you seriously suggesting that there might be 300 million fewer citizens than the official count?
Nearly an entire US worth of people who don't actually exist?
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Some analysts in the West say that China started dropping a while ago
Like at the start of COVID?
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Couple years back I saw a report that concluded China's reported birth rate was being significantly exaggerated, and was in fact only about 15% of the official figures.
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I was rather surprised too, tho what I saw had some pretty solid reasoning.
But I expect the reality is somewhere in the middle.
No worries (Score:2)
They can import people from Africa. Prosperity creates population collapse. US population would have negative population growth too if we ended immigration and stopped allowing people to be poor.
Re: No worries (Score:2)
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They'd have already started doing that if that was palatable to them, they've known this was coming for years.
I suspect they'll take the Japanese rout of ethnocentrism and just take the hit.
India's going down too (Score:1, Interesting)
It makes me wonder what the various right wingers are going to fearmonger about in the near future. We're not going to have migrants or even immigrants to speak of much anymore, because no country is going to let what few young folk they have leave. They're getting a lot of mileage out of trans people right now, but I don't think that'll last.
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Re: India's going down too (Score:2)
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American religious conservatives have been upset about abortion since well before population decline was a worry.
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You're acting like the *right wingers" are wrong about these things in principle.
Sure, they use and abuse the tepics more for their own gain rather than making sure we keep the balance they cry for.
But the issues are as real as climate change the left is no less morally corrupt in fighting.
It's politics my man. Politics isn't about solving problems, unfortunately.
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The trick for the left is looking like the good guys while saying horrible things.
In that regard, the right is just more "honest".
The amount of racism and sexism coming out of the left is hard to properly comment.
They are made of the same cloth. They just use different propaganda.
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We're not going to have migrants or even immigrants to speak of much anymore, because no country is going to let what few young folk they have leave.
Yes, the fertility rates in Africa are trending downwards. But the rates are still very high and it will take a long time for them to come down. In the meantime the population in Africa will grow from 1.3 billion (16% of global population) to 2.4 billion (26% of global population) by 2050. This will (and already is) create a large immigration wave. It will mainly be internal migration in Africa and migration towards Europe due to the proximity but USA will of course also receive a share of the migration.
The
Re:India's going down too (Score:4, Informative)
There will still be migration, due to climate change and war. Climate change in particular is only going to get worse in the next few decades.
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Actually, I am predicting there will be migration for other reasons too ...
Most important is skilled labour.
The news in the past months show that most countries are suffering from a healthcare crisis.
These include UK, Canada, Germany, France and the USA.
The main factor is shortage of skilled nurses.
One big reason for that is many left because of the stress during the
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Even Iran and Italy where religion encourages large families there is population decline when there is education and affluence.
Even in societies with patriarchy and male dominance, wealth reduces fertility through a complex dynamic. Women are supposed to obey their husbands there, but if they come from wealthy families they get some say in the fertility decisions. May be not as much as in the West, but enough to make a dent in fertility rate.
P
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Menstrual cups for men aren't covered in Canada
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You are NOT stuck here, the USA has no emigration restrictions. Everyone is free to leave!
I would like to extend my personal invitation for you to do so as well. I don't know Canada will have you, probably not, Canadians are not know for their good taste, especially lately but they still like to pretend to be an enlightened western nation. I am sure there is a shithole you could go to somewhere. Still young enough to fight? Maybe Ukraine could use you for cannon fodder.
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Let's say we have a very traditional society where elderly depend on moving in with their own offspring for support. Except now let's say somebody doesn't reproduce. See? Still doesn't work, even without capitalism to blame.
Re: India's going down too (Score:2)
For developed societies automation could very easily plug the demographic hole caused by declining population. There will still be pain as the wants and needs of the population change, but if machines and software can pick up the slack then there's no reason to think some collapse of capitalist society is imminent.
But at some point we're going to have to stare down the fact that having children and ensuring they are raised well is a societal good, and should be rewarded. There used to be community infrastr
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But, I suppose our values are suitable to our time and the values of fu
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How exactly does stealing from one set of people and giving it to another solve the issue of declining population hurting the economy? Does mass theft cause increased birth rates?
You could take money from the rich people and pay people to have kids.
Or tax people depending on the number of kids they have.
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Lol so you think having kids in one of the world's wealthiest nations leads to a lower standard of living for parents than having kids in a poor nation?
Who put that crazy idea into your head? It's not related to anything I said.
Did you enough to notice not everyone in a wealthy country has the same amount of wealth?
And you say I'm the one who needs to think before posting?
Yes.
There's little point if you're not even trying.
It is a well known fact that in nations with more educated women the birth rates are lower. Period.
You haven't noticed any other differences between nations that allow and support women being educated and anything else? Education is the only difference in those nations you think?
It's almost as if in those nations women might be able to choose what they do with their own bodies.
You'll ha
Developing? (Score:5, Funny)
This is a developing story...
Huh? How? Because it's an annual report/statistic?
This is no more a "developing" story than Punxsutawney Phil. More like "We'll see you next year with a new number!"
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How cute.
Re: Developing? (Score:2)
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Just because something developes doesn't mean it needs to do so quickly. The developing part here is that the population trend changed. Next year we'll get another update on this new development.
Your UID is too low for you to be an impatient GenZer
This tracks (Score:4, Insightful)
The world's population is expected to decline for the first time sometime in the next forty years. [businessinsider.com] Which looking around, this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. There's little to no incentive to keep creating new human beings on the massive scales that the eons before now required. The exact reasons vary from region to region, but for the most part we just need fewer human beings to do the exact same labor to maintain society. In fact as the standard for living increases, we've hit a point in technology that we actually need fewer people each increase. Humanity has hit the same roadblock to growth that the horse hit when cars were invented, we just need simply less of them.
However, that said, various world economies have geared themselves for unbounded consumption. Population declines will absolutely gut these economies if they do not adapt to the world as it will be. The writing is on the wall for them but several wish to stay the course to see how much more "value" they can extract before finally pulling out. A dangerous game that will surely backfire spectacularly while the fallout from the ill fated risks will be once again propped up by the citizens of the society, only so that a handful may profit.
I think there's still some who think one day some magic man will show up in the political office that supposed to mean something in their country. And when that person does, we'll finally get something done. We will finally get back on a track to "good". However, just like the man who died from an infection the day before antibiotics were discovered, it's just not in anyone alive's timeline to see any semblance of what once was. That is just simply the lot we've all been given. There is no return to normal because what we are seeing, THIS is the new normal. We are already on a course and the timeline for a correction is long after everyone who can read this average lifespan. Even if we start this day in the utmost earnest to change our economies, change our consumption, change how we live, how we get to work, how we consume food, none of it will make a significant enough change until the children who have yet to be born hit middle age.
And that is why I feel there isn't a getting back to normal. Because it is asking for everyone to change their ways now, for someone whom they will never see or speak to's benefit. And I do not believe that humanity on average as it is now has the capacity to think outside any one self's ends. Perhaps the generation that can do that has been born, perhaps they need only enough time to rise into the ranks to take the helm that drives society. But the current captains of this ship clearly have one goal. "Fuck you, I got mine."
one child really hunt china! (Score:3)
one child really hunt china!
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Couples thinking about having a baby, don't ask themselves questions about whether society "needs" more people. What they do ask themselves is, Can we afford this child? How will a child affect our lives? Do we have the time to take care of a little one? Many couples these days are answering those questions with "No," including in China and India.
Another reason the birth rate goes down in developed countries, is the widespread availability of contraceptives. If you're extremely poor, or in a remote area, yo
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The biggest single factor in declining birth rates is increased education for women.
The other things yes but that's the biggy.
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I would suggest that it's not the education itself, but what the education leads to. Specifically, education leads to better jobs and higher income. This in turn increases the cost of stopping that new, lucrative career to have a child. Raising children takes a lot of time and effort from both parents, so when both are working in careers, the drain on energy and time is felt more sharply, reducing the motivation to add more stress to already busy lives.
So yes, education is a contributing factor, but not the
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Couples thinking about having a baby, don't ask themselves questions about whether society "needs" more people. What they do ask themselves is, Can we afford this child? How will a child affect our lives? Do we have the time to take care of a little one?
This is true, but is not the reason for the global decline in reproduction[*]. If you look at how family size correlates with income globally (and throughout the last few centuries), you'll see a very clear and strong correlation: Poorer families are larger families.
The two factors that most strongly negatively correlate with family size are wealth and education, especially female education. People who have more resources and better ability to plan for the future have fewer children and invest more heavil
Re:This tracks (Score:5, Informative)
When I suggest that wealthier couples might not be able to "afford" children, I'm not speaking in real dollars. The question they ask themselves is, "Can we have a child without giving up our lifestyle or careers?" Poor people have no lifestyle or career to give up, so having children is less of an impact.
Ironically, government assistance to the poor in the US has the perverse result of encouraging more childbirths. This happens because the amount of government assistance is tied to the number of children. For them, the math means that more children = more dollars. In my volunteer work with low-income parts of our city, I see many cases where women have children for the sole purpose of increasing their government income.
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Ironically, government assistance to the poor in the US has the perverse result of encouraging more childbirths.
I think in the next decade or two most of the rich world is going to stop considering this a perverse outcome. Well, parents having kids to get more money is a perverse outcome, of course, but encouraging childbirth is going to become a goal, I expect. Personally, I think we should focus more on encouraging/allowing immigration. We might need to do both.
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I agree with you on immigration!
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Ability to save for retirement also changes fertility decisions. I was really shocked when I immigrated to USA to hear the finance planners say, "Always put your retirement savings
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You are assuming that people on government assistance think that far ahead. I volunteer with an inner city charity that works with people who are on government assistance, providing them with job training and other ways to help them become more independent. They are NOT thinking about the long-term future.
Perversely, government assistance rewards mothers who have more children, because their assistance is calculated based on the number of children they have. We work with many who literally have more childre
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There's little to no incentive to keep creating new human beings on the massive scales that the eons before now required. The exact reasons vary from region to region, but for the most part we just need fewer human beings to do the exact same labor to maintain society. In fact as the standard for living increases, we've hit a point in technology that we actually need fewer people each increase. Humanity has hit the same roadblock to growth that the horse hit when cars were invented, we just need simply less of them.
Sorry but baby making doesnt happen based on supply and demand. If it did it wouldnt be poor third worlders driving all the population growth as they certainly dont have a driving need for even more people when they can barely support the ones they have and definitely dont have enough work for them.
Fortunately the US and Europe still... (Score:2)
...attract immigrants. It was only a matter of time before China, and eventually India, faced population decline. History shows that population growth leads to GDP growth. I'm not aware of many seeking to immigrate to China.
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. History shows that population growth leads to GDP growth.
Increasing GDP by increasing your population is not much of an achievement, surely. (It would be truly remarkable if GDP *didn't* increase with a growing population; that would imply that the new members of your population had zero or negative productivity). What would be more meaningful is if rising population increased GDP per capita, and if that increase was greater than what you found in countries with stable or shrinking populations.
Even then, you'd have to distinguish between the intermediate-term ef
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Increasing GDP by increasing your population is not much of an achievement, surely. (It would be truly remarkable if GDP *didn't* increase with a growing population; that would imply that the new members of your population had zero or negative productivity). What would be more meaningful is if rising population increased GDP per capita, and if that increase was greater than what you found in countries with stable or shrinking populations.
This, 1000 times. Politicians and administrators want aggregate GDP growth. Individuals want per capita growth (their own capita!).
For many years, I didn't really understand why capitalism -- or at least nominally capitalist societies -- place such an emphasis on population growth. I scoffed at a professor in college who said (verbatim) "The end goal of capitalism is the complete destruction of life in the biosphere." Ok, I still scoff at that, but the point he was hysterically making is that pretty much al
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100% on this. 'We' are generally fed the idea that innovation drives economic growth. But it really does seem that at every level of government the true driver is just a ponzi scheme of population growth. That the prior generation, rather than being harder workers, or smarter, or something like that are simply benefiting from the economic output of the next generation. That is necessarily unsustainable, but as you point out, it's the easiest thing to sell to a voting populace.
Even many of the responses
I have 5 kids and know other large families (Score:2)
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but to get past the HR drone
So... HR is driving down births. :D
Either the wife can't physically have more or the thought of taking care of a child till they finish university after you possibly retire scare the heck out of them.
Victoria, Australia, recently voted for free kindergarten. It's this kind of thing that's needed that has any chance of not-discouraging women to have babies.
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What's the typical age for your kindergarten over there? I ask because kindergarten has been free in the US for well over a half century so I suspect Australian kindergarten serves a lower age range. Basically I think we're using the same word for different things as occasionally happens between us English speaking nations.
In the US kindergarten is for 5 year olds and happens at the local public grade school. It has been free since well before I was born.
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Uh, go look up the phrase baby mamma and think about how the popularity and wide spread use of that phrase jives with your theory.
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So the social sciences are all wrong but this random on the internet has all the answers?
If you really have a point then you can post supporting citations but I strongly suspect you don't.
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Of all the problems a society might face, having not insanely high real estate prices is a very easy one for a country like the USA to fix. It is even very easily fixed in the SF Bay area, if only the voters would tolerate not sky high prices.
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On the contrary, there's a lot of evidence that women's education and higher standards of living result in lower birth rates.
I've never seen of any evidence of this. And I haven't seen evidence of any epidemic of not having men with stable careers. Of course, almost by de
This is what happens (Score:4, Interesting)
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Heh, yeah, shocked face, no one predicted this result at the time.
Re: This is what happens (Score:2)
When you institute a policy that has utterly predictable consequences, and those predictions come to pass, then you are responsible for those consequences. End of.
Re: This is what happens (Score:2)
The consequences of the one child policy were foreseeable and foreseen.
This is good (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a *good* thing to let the population fall to a more sustainable level. The earth started degrading as we passed 2 to 3 billion people. Technology has improved so 3 billion is probably a good idea.
But you'll see lots of horror stories from the wealthy and powerful because the current economic system is basically a ponzi scheme that depends on ever increasing population ( and I do mean *ever* without limit to the point of pain).
Real estate *requires* ever increasing population to go up in value.
High population is the root cause behind many of our problems.
The longer we put off stopping population growth the more brittle things will be and the harder the economic disruption will be.
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The core issue though, as you glimpse, is not # of people, but rather long-term sustainability. With the caveat that we are not even close to be able to have a true circular economy, the aim is to get as close as possible to this equilibrium:
things_spent = things_produced
New economic model? (Score:2)
Re:New economic model? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is an interesting question that few economist seem to be talking about. Technically you can still have economic growth in a shrinking population if you do things like increase workforce participation (jobs for old people, unemployed etc) and if you can get enough productivity growth. But most western countries seem to have either stagnated or gone backwards on those two measures over the last few decades.
Other than immigration (as you mentioned) that leaves really only one other option which is that everyone has to accept gradually falling standards of living as the burden of supporting an ageing population grows. I actually don't think that needs to be a huge issue, since the two parties are not waring factions, but parents/children of each other. I'd be prepared to pay much more tax if I saw it was required to prevent widespread poverty among old people - keeping in mind that I will be a an old person eventually.
But what we have now is this stupid situation where some oldies have made out like bandits, mostly due to luck, and they want to blast around the world on holidays and own multiple family homes while many young workers can't even get a start in life. There has to be some semblance of compromise from everyone, but we just seem to have this 'I've got mine F you', or 'it's the immigrants fault' thing going on, rather than any attempt at a sensible plan.
Re: (Score:2)
But that's not the point. The point is that capital only gets invested for profit. If the economy is shrinking & stagnating, then overall there's little or no return on investment. Capital will end up playing a game of musical chairs. What's the alternative?
Re: (Score:2)
The value of their labor is falling, has been falling, for a long time. So people can't afford to buy even basic needs by selling their labor. So what to do?
There is another way to get the basic needs. Steal them, rob them from others. If they get caught they get punished severely so they are constrained to work. If the section
one child really HELPED China! (Score:2)
Love it (Score:2)
I love how people are concerned about this right in the face of several different global resource crises. Hormones gonna hormone I guess.
The reliance on growth is also how the political class in many countries have set their economies up. Convenient, since it helps maintain their advantage in wealth and power.
There's a huge opportunity for everyone to live better, but I'm sure humans will still find some way to fuck it up.
This was predictable (Score:2)
Chinese people don't want more children (Score:2)
They can't afford it. The cost of taking care of a child and sending them to school is extremely high in China. The one child policy accelerated the problem, but the birth rate was always going to trend down as their standard of living improved. I lived there many years and watched all of my friends struggle with the cost of an apartment and taking care of even just one child - none were interested in having a second. Nothing that Xitler does will change this either. China is already several years into