Why the panic regarding dropping birth rate? I think less is more knowing where we are heading.

[iPilot05]

I think "dealing with" the elderly in a declining population is merely an exercise in innovation. Yes really.

For starters, retirement homes. They have a well deserved stigma but it doesn't have to be that way. My grandparents both went to extremely nice and comfortable senior living centers for their final years and ended up with a very good QOL because of it. They had the advantage of being able to afford them but still it's ultimately a much better and more efficient way to take care of elderly people than people insisting on staying in their own home. Naturally I think economics will drive people's behavior but I think building out senior living for every economic level will go a long way in spreading out finite care resources.

Also, and I admit this is even more grim than high density care facilities, end of life care is already seeing major changes. Hospice used to be a highly niche and quietly discussed topic. Most people demanded maximum health care treatment no matter how old or how terminal the condition. This is how we end up with elderly wiping out family fortunes in just a few years with very little to show for it as far as quality of those final years of life. I think going forward people will have more interest in intelligently planning when it's time to stop treatment and focus on being comfortable through the end. Heck even medically assisted suicide, once a forbidden topic in medical communities, is gaining legal traction. It could become common and even celebrated that thoughtful consideration of simply electing to leave the party at the proper hour is the preferred way to go. It doesn't have to be as flippant Soylent Green or Futurama style suicide booths, but we also don't have to delude ourselves into expending massive resources and physically suffer needlessly, either.

Anyway, this is all super grim to discuss but I tend to think declining population is not the senior citizen apocalypse people make it out to be. For one, I think we have a LONG way to go before it starts to dismantle the economy as we know it. Secondly as far as the senior care aspect we are an innovative species and will more likely just adapt to the times and likely end up doing a better job with managing people in their final years.

We certainly can't do much worse than we are today.

 

[Exordium01]

Most of the people who are actually concerned about this are racist and their concerns are motivated by their racism.

Immigration solves the problems associated with declining birth rates in developed countries.

Tangentially related, conservative media is now concerned that teen pregnancy rates are too low, but that may just be pretense for their desire to relax the rules on statutory rape in order to keep themselves out of trouble.

 

[GohanIYIan]

The demographic decline is real, but the 'panic' is from the billionaire class. A declining population means less future customers, and less laborers. Note that the people who pursue this also are frequently alarmed by low teen birth rates, which is about as gross as it sounds. In general, they seem more concerned by the decay in birth rates in the lower income percentiles than overall.

This is probably also because they know that information-averse voters come from there. It's a long-term play for creating more of "their" customers, workers, and voters.

They're not concerned over who's going to wipe grandma's butt. The billionaire class will always be able to afford nurses and first-class help. They're very definitely not concerned over who's going to wipe the little people's grandmas' butts.

I don't think that holds up if you look globally. Taiwan has a similar number of billionaires to the US (relative to country population), but South Korea and especially Japan are nowhere close. The reason those governments are trying to reverse these trends (and failing AFAICT) has to be something other than the billionaires.

I think it's just that the politics of any kind of policy where the government issues payments to retirees gets ugly. The value proposition of it's reasonable to ask me to pay social security taxes now because I'll get to collect benefits when I retire depends heavily on how confident I am that those future benefits will be there. There's a sort of self fulfilling prophesy where most people think there's got to be some break point where the taxes can't go any higher, so each time you need to raise taxes to stay solvent it's harder because fewer people are confident they'll get to collect when it's their turn.

 

[Robin-3]

I see this as an example of assumptions catching up with us, collectively and perhaps inevitably. Existing financial and social structures (mostly) developed or were built at a point when birth rates were higher and the percentage of older folks living long enough to need long-term medical care was lower. The fact that especially in the U.S. there's significant resistance to any kind of real social welfare reform really doesn't help.

The whole thing has always felt like a pyramid scheme to me: this assumption that there will be enough young/productive people to support the old, generation after generation. Of course that can't keep going indefinitely; of course there needs to be another plan. But I only see two real types of solution:

1. Artificially shift the balance. This is why senecide comes up as an obvious "solution": it directly removes a main part of the problem. But there are really, really, really obvious ethical concerns. And I say that as someone who's strongly in favor of expanding the availability of medically assisted suicide, and shifting societal discussions to a centering of individual choice and control (rather than defaulting to the assumption that the longest possible life is always the best choice). We can't--or at least, we shouldn't!--assume that sacrificing old people is the way out of this.
   1. (b) Of course you can also shift the balance by pushing birth rates up. That comes with its own ethical and practical concerns, of course. Beyond that, it also has a hard outer limit: the planet can only support so many people. So to me, this isn't a good option either.
2. Change how resources are distributed, so we can better support the population demographic as it is now and as we expect it to be in the future.
   
   This is the one I wish we were really investing in, not just financially but in terms of long-term planning, messaging, social discourse, etc. For example:
   
   We're likely to see huge increases in climate-driven migration and refugee relocation over the next century. A lot of that will be people from higher-population-growth areas wanting to move to lower-population-growth areas. And many of those lower-population-growth areas are already starting to face problems like shortages of healthcare and home-care professionals. This is an opportunity, if only there were the political will to see it that way.
   
   My country (Canada) did pilot programs on accelerated residency for certain immigrants who were skilled home care workers. I'd love to see something similar, but on a massive and long-term scale. Actively invest in training programs for home-care workers (or others in similar fields); make sure would-be immigrants know that there's an expedited or subsidized program for anyone who can (say) pass a professional training course to be an entry-level home care aide, and commit to work in that field for 10 years, as well as their immediate family. Set up programs to help these newcomers integrate into their new communities, and work with those communities to ensure placement matches what the community needs (so the newcomers are more likely to be welcomed).
   
   Nothing on this scale is simple or problem-free. But I'm frustrated because it seems like such an obvious opportunity for a solution that benefits everyone... but I doubt it will ever happen. Not only is xenophobia alive and well, but also most politicians know very well that short-term sacrifice for long-term gain typically loses elections.

... Long-term societal success means our collective descendants, in three or five or ten generations, are largely content and healthy regardless of what language they speak, or what culture or ethnicity they consider themselves part of. But I think society subconsciously teaches us that it's some kind of failure if "we" let in too many "different people," and so the next generation of "us" no longer looks the same as what we now consider "normal".

Oops, hit my limit on scare quotes for the day. Better quit before the grammar cops get me.

 

[Peldor]

The most pleasant outcome is AI and robotics providing essential labor that can't be sourced from pathetic creatures of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors.... sorry, uh.... providing essential labor.

 

[sword_9mm]

We certainly can't do much worse than we are today.

Bold prediction Cotton. Let's see how that pans out.

 

[herko]

I don't think that holds up if you look globally. Taiwan has a similar number of billionaires to the US (relative to country population), but South Korea and especially Japan are nowhere close. The reason those governments are trying to reverse these trends (and failing AFAICT) has to be something other than the billionaires.

I think it's just that the politics of any kind of policy where the government issues payments to retirees gets ugly. The value proposition of it's reasonable to ask me to pay social security taxes now because I'll get to collect benefits when I retire depends heavily on how confident I am that those future benefits will be there. There's a sort of self fulfilling prophesy where most people think there's got to be some break point where the taxes can't go any higher, so each time you need to raise taxes to stay solvent it's harder because fewer people are confident they'll get to collect when it's their turn.

I don’t want to discount that. That’s why I said the decline is real. Second-order effects are obviously also real.

All I tried to claim was that the panic about has other motivations. There’s plenty of people concerned about population decline for structural reasons like you mentioned. The alarmists are almost all right-wing, and pretty far right wing at that. It doesn’t “hurt” that higher fertility is women’s “natural” role to them, either.

 

[cgo_12345]

Is Jeffrey really a solution?

Certainly couldn't hurt, he makes everything better

 

[SarahSparkles]

Wow, I think that a mod deploying a tactical unicorn on page 2 is a new record. Or at least I hope.

It's really too bad. It's a serious topic, but mods saw what was coming the minute the thread was started. Every time this topic comes up, someone always has to go to "let's kill people".

@trapine just had to go there with "senicide". It was otherwise a solid post with relevant points, but I guess he felt he needed to be edgy or something because it was completely unnecessary term to throw in there that was bound to derail the thread.

Which of course it did as @Coriolanus went straight to the worst of interpretations in "kill all the old people" when clearly that wasn't trapine's point. And that was post #7.

So then we either lock the thread or it's ponies.

(FTR, folks are welcome to continue to discussing the thread topic seriously, as some have been, but they discuss at their own peril amongst the ponies)

 

[Coriolanus]

Which of course it did as @Coriolanus went straight to the worst of interpretations in "kill all the old people" when clearly that wasn't trapine's point. And that was post #7.

I feel that is a reasonable interpretation of the term senicide. Perhaps I could have worded it in a more nuanced way, but senicide is the killing the elderly, whether actively or passively through neglect or refusal to provide care and support.

 

[Coriolanus]

Hell, one of trapine's own examples is to divert funding from Medicare (the federal health insurance program for senior citizens) to Medicaid (which is aimed at low income individuals).

Considering the kind of health issues that seniors experience - doesn't that essentially amount to needless suffering or death for the elderly? People with diabetes are going to die because they can't get insulin. People with cancer won't get treatment. People like me with epilepsy will basically degrade away. That's an awful outcome in every way.

It's also a wildly unequal outcome, too. Wealthy seniors can pay for their own healthcare. The middle class and poor are basically left to spend the rest of their short life suffering.

 

[Gizmoh]

I'll just dust off this quote from the great "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri"

It is every citizen's final duty to go into the reclamation tanks, and become one with all the people

 

[Coriolanus]

I'll just dust off this quote from the great "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri"

 

[SarahSparkles]

I feel that is a reasonable interpretation of the term senicide. Perhaps I could have worded it in a more nuanced way, but senicide is the killing the elderly, whether actively or passively through neglect or refusal to provide care and support.

You took it as interpretation of the term. I took it as interpretation of the context.

Hell, one of trapine's own examples is to divert funding from Medicare (the federal health insurance program for senior citizens) to Medicaid (which is aimed at low income individuals).

Let's revisit what trapine said...

Society makes choices about how to distribute resources all the time. Should we spend money on a young person's education or a 96 year olds second artificial hip? Right now we're picking the stupid hip.
If there's a crisis incoming of how to take care of the elderly when there aren't enough young people to pay for it, we can stop spending resources where it doesn't do any good.
If we disenfranchised to ancient from voting, there will be different choices made. Currently the boomers vote for MediCare instead of MediAid.

So, my interpretation of trapine's point is that old people are happy to vote for what helps themselves (Medicare), but not so much voting to help others in need (Medicaid). That's a completely different point from the one you infer he's making.

As a moderator, my point in my previous post and this one is not to debate the topic, it's to suggest that a little more grace be given when having discussions. Like, we're just trying to have an interesting discussion here. This is not war.

 

[Kyuu]

So, my interpretation of trapine's point is that old people are happy to vote for what helps themselves (Medicare), but not so much voting to help others in need (Medicaid). That's a completely different point from the one you infer he's making.

Seems like a distinction without a difference. One of their stated solutions to this was to disenfranchise elderly people at some arbitrary age. The only logical conclusion of this is that they are hoping young people would make short-sighted decisions to strip old people of healthcare so they die faster to not be a burden on society. I don't see the difference between that and simply suggesting that old people hop on the nearest iceflow or head to the nearest reprocessing center to be recycled.

And of course the obvious result of any of this will be just as Coiolanus says: it's not the wealthy old people who will be recycled when they hit a certain age. No one is going to be pushing the Trumps and Kochs of the world into the vats.

 

[Karnak]

Immigration solves the problems associated with declining birth rates in developed countries.

Immigration only puts it off for a time. We're down to Africa and most parts of the Islamic world for positive birthrates. Even India is below replacement now. And due to the racists immigration is off the table. Heck, the racists don't even want the already educated people from these areas, insisting they are all backwards savages, let alone allowing the significant migration that would be needed to balance out, for now, the population growth/reduction. Even with all of that, it is only a solution for a generation or three until Africa's birthrate follow's India's which followed China's which followed Europe/North America and Japan.

 

[Welcome to Darwin]

Immigration only puts it off for a time. We're down to Africa and most parts of the Islamic world for positive birthrates. Even India is below replacement now. And due to the racists immigration is off the table. Heck, the racists don't even want the already educated people from these areas

They definitely don't want the already educated people. They'll make white Americans look bad.

 

[Yagisama]

This SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY!
Senior citizen thunderdome!
Two grannies enter... One granny leaves!

And a little while later, the second granny leaves!

 

[concernUrsus]

Immigration only puts it off for a time. We're down to Africa and most parts of the Islamic world for positive birthrates. Even India is below replacement now. And due to the racists immigration is off the table. Heck, the racists don't even want the already educated people from these areas, insisting they are all backwards savages, let alone allowing the significant migration that would be needed to balance out, for now, the population growth/reduction. Even with all of that, it is only a solution for a generation or three until Africa's birthrate follow's India's which followed China's which followed Europe/North America and Japan.

We do have a lot of people still. Just look at the unemployment rate. There is also the fact that if we really can cut back on consumption, marketing, financial, etc, We can allocate more resources to the need instead of want (medical care, housing, clothes, food). Honestly, entertainment/education is surprising cheap if you can control you want. Public library probably can provide all your entertainment ended. Even with the increase cost of Netflix, it is not that expensive if you do not keep it every month.

I think we certainly need to talk more about quality of life vs. length of life. However, it is a difficult topic. I do worry that we just end up senicide. Even some of us want to plan our exist in advance, it may be difficult to monitor our mental deterioration and trigger our exist in appropriate time.

If all else failed, I welcome the raise of our Cetacean overlord. I am okay with pony overlord also.

 

[trapine]

Time to step back into the fray.

I did use Senicide as a provocative term, although I didn't understand that people would interpret it as a purely involuntary action. As others have pointed out, there are other options to enable people who wish to, to check out early. Medically assisted suicide may turn out to be more acceptable than jumping off a cliff.

In an ideal world, we would provide all the basic comforts to all the people. We don't live remotely in a time or place that even pretends to. Just above this post Coriolanus makes the point that the wealthy won't suffer this fate while failing to acknowledge that the well connected or politically powerful won't either. Hence my point that with limited funds, why do we advantage MediCare over MedicAid. One rewards those with influence at the expense of those without.

All of this is a derail (my fault) of the main issue I wanted to address.

This planet cannot support infinite exponential growth, and we have structured our entire society on this falsehood being true. Declining human population is actually a great step in a positive direction. I don't know how to calculate the proper carrying capacity of the planet for humans, but we've exceeded it already with our current technology. There is no serious plan to address this. Fewer humans can help.

Now there are arguments that we need more young people to keep all the (well connected) old people comfortable until the last possible moment. I argue that we should be reducing our population (hopefully relatively peacefully). Others think we should just breed like rabbits and everything will be A-OK. Someone is going to get the sticky end of the stick. Whether it's equatorial people who cook in their now inhospitable climate zones, young people who slave away to keep the geriatric comfy, billionaires parting with some stocks - or maybe we stop spending every available resource because some people might depart this earthly paradise a few years early.

I do hold that with finite resources, hard choices are inevitable. I suggested a few, and apparently now I've gone beyond the pale.

I don't think I have all the answers, it's a main reason I follow the discussions in the soapbox.

 

[SunRaven01]

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that if you throw out "senicide", people will take that to mean you mean killing old people, because that's what the word means. No amount of hand wringing over what you interpret someone else's post to mean, or imagine the context to be, changes the fact that this happened:

Vlip asked, "How do you take care of all the elderlies financially and practically when there are more old people in pension homes than young productive people."

And trapine answered that specific question with, "Senicide. There's no reason to pour vast resources into the final months/ years of people's lives. No one wants to die in a nursing home - especially the ones that poor people end up in."

THAT is the actual context, the end. "How do you take care of old people" was answered with "Kill them."

 

[Slothur the Hasty]

A natural global decline in population would be very good. This topic ties into so many other problems in the world, but in my opinion, two things need to happen if we are going to survive as a species:

1. Money as a concept needs to be removed - Time should be the only currency. Every problem in the world basically boils down to the concept of profits, taxes and so forth. We are more worried about money than people, animals, nature etc., and we cannot consume our way out of fixing anything. We think we can, but usually it just makes the problem worse.

2. Remove all borders. One world = One "country". We already have the UN, just expand upon it.

 

[reimu240p]

https://www.npr.org/2026/04/09/nx-s1-5779627/birthrate-united-states-babies-immigration

NPR article on lowering birth rates. Why the concern, if it's because they need new people born to take care of old people/pay for them that is a stupid shortsighted idea. Find another solution for that. Is that really the reason?

Few reasons, some you already mentioned
1. Smaller tax base with a lower quality of life for newer generations in the short term due to heavy taxation.
2. Kenysians (infinite growth cultists) panicking because their multi-century scam is getting exposed.
3. The 1% throwing a fit about their unrealized wealth evaporating
Personally I do agree with you that birth rates aren't an issue because societies are ultimately cyclic.

We did fine in 1950s with a significantly lower population than today. In fact we had a bigger middle class, etc. With AI supposed to remove the majority of jobs according the the "Techbroligarchy" Then why push for a surplus unemployed population taking up resources if we will need less and less people.

It just seems less is more in terms of resource destruction etc.. when it comes to the Human race. With modern technology etc.. won't the world be a better place with let's say 2.5 billion (1950s world population estimate) vs 8.1 billion today.

The "techbroligarchy" is banking on wars to cull excess population and surveilling the rest in their city states. It's very stupid, but these are very desperate people who think they have a chance at taking the reins from the dying neoliberal guard.

It seems we are starting to reach the "Behavioral Sink" stage as in the John B. Calhoun experiment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink

I do ascribe to some parts of the behavioral sink theory, but the biggest thing about the rat experiment is that there was they couldn't escape the "utopia". Currently (in the west at least), younger generations are getting their social mobility removed (can't open a shop/do a factory job/open a lasting business) and are becoming stuck. Interestingly enough, socially isolated communities like the Amish/Mennonites aren't being affected by the "falling" birth rates.

 

[QtDevSvr]

I don't know how to calculate the proper carrying capacity of the planet for humans

I do. It's 300 million. I can be talked up from there if non-pipe-dream non-techno-fantasy rationality supports it, but I have a hard limit at 3 billion and it would take a lot of convincing for me to accept that humans could manage themselves sustainably at such a number, with extensive more-than-human thriving life and life systems.

There is no serious plan to address this. Fewer humans can help.

I'm not a population numbers whiz but when I tried to figure it out I came up with a 100 years as a timeline whereby we could reduce from where we are to where it should be, and that was based, IIRC, on average 1 child per couple reproduction. (Maybe it was 2 children per couple, on average? That would be more accommodating, obviously. Perhaps an average number in between could work.)

 

[derMarc]

If all else failed, I welcome the raise of our Cetacean overlord. I am okay with pony overlord also.

For some reason I like this so much.

 

[Exordium01]

Why are so many of you treating overpopulation as a truism instead of as a hypothesis? Where’s the evidence?

 

[Shavano]

It's a developed world problem. Developed economies are the ones experiencing reductions in fertility rate. In places like Africa, the fertility rate is steady or increasing.

indeed. For example Egypt:

Spoiler: Egypt population pyramid

 

[Shavano]

Damn, that's low. I spend 1/10 of that on just daycare.

Having kids nowadays is a goddamn luxury. A luxury that drives you nuts and are whiny and snotty and constantly coughing in your eye.

and whose job prospects are competing for the few jobs that can't be replaced by AI. So plumbing, cutting hair, or landscaping.

 

[Shavano]

Why are so many of you treating overpopulation as a truism instead of as a hypothesis? Where’s the evidence?

The world is already overpopulated. That's why the environmental degradation.

 

[Shavano]

It's really too bad. It's a serious topic, but mods saw what was coming the minute the thread was started. Every time this topic comes up, someone always has to go to "let's kill people".

@trapine just had to go there with "senicide". It was otherwise a solid post with relevant points, but I guess he felt he needed to be edgy or something because it was completely unnecessary term to throw in there that was bound to derail the thread.

Which of course it did as @Coriolanus went straight to the worst of interpretations in "kill all the old people" when clearly that wasn't trapine's point. And that was post #7.

So then we either lock the thread or it's ponies.

(FTR, folks are welcome to continue to discussing the thread topic seriously, as some have been, but they discuss at their own peril amongst the ponies)

Or you could use moderation for what it was meant for.

 

[TheGnome]

I actually suggested to her an animatronic version of me with my skin as the outer covering, but she found it really off putting.

Tell her you need an auto-icon like Jeremy Bentham.

 

[Thunderforge8]

I'm not a population numbers whiz but when I tried to figure it out I came up with a 100 years as a timeline whereby we could reduce from where we are to where it should be, and that was based, IIRC, on average 1 child per couple reproduction.

Wouldn't that basically be China's one-child policy (1979–2015)?

It was definitely effective at reducing the population (the CCP says it prevented 400 million births). But its enforcement led to severe human rights violations and encouraged sex-selective abortions and infanticide (and consequently a really skewed gender ratio of as high as 117 boys for every 100 girls).

Also once the population got to "where it should be" and the CCP ended the one-child policy, they found they couldn't stop the decline as society has become broadly resistant to having more than one child. A 2024 UN report predicts the country's population will drop from 1.4 billion to 639 million by 2100, which will have a lot of serious societal effects. So the CCP is now implementing pro-natalist policies.

 

[Exordium01]

The world is already overpopulated. That's why the environmental degradation.

This is exactly what I mean. Environmental degradation is the result of our lifestyles not our population.

 

[QtDevSvr]

Why are so many of you treating overpopulation as a truism instead of as a hypothesis?

My conviction is grounded in the following:

1. Human existence is arose from and continues to depend upon the biosphere.
2. Human wellbeing requires a way of life close-coupled to more-than-human nature.
3. More-than-human nature is on the run from human impact.
4, Therefore we can not only provide for our own continuing existence by accommodating ourselves to the needs of the rest of the biosphere (both species and habitats), we can also enhance our well-being and sense of belonging as a species.

 

[QtDevSvr]

Wouldn't that basically be China's one-child policy (1979–2015)?

It was definitely effective at reducing the population (the CCP says it prevented 400 million births). But its enforcement led to severe human rights violations and encouraged sex-selective abortions and infanticide (and consequently a really skewed gender ratio of as high as 117 boys for every 100 girls).

Also once the population got to "where it should be" and the CCP ended the one-child policy, they found they couldn't stop the decline as society has become broadly resistant to having more than one child. A 2024 UN report predicts the country's population will drop from 1.4 billion to 639 million by 2100, which will have a lot of serious societal effects. So the CCP is now implementing pro-natalist policies.

Yes I'm familiar with the basics of China's one-child policy. It's certainly a cautionary tale for any society that might attempt population control/reduction. A few things occur to me initially:

1. I do believe in democracy and so I wouldn't be in favor of any population control plan that was undemocratically imposed. (One might consider this a fatal flaw vis a vis any hopes of establishing population control.)

2. One thing we've learned since China's experiment is that you can get a lot of population control for the mere price of providing women freedom, equality, and opportunity.

3. I haven't worked out the details but I'm intrigued by a population control policy that has some sort of "child credits" for flexibility. The people who don't want to and haven't reproduced could "sell" their child credit to a lottery pool from which a couple who wanted more than the one or two children otherwise allowed could draw from. Maybe what the childless seller gets in return is an enhanced old-age subsidy?

 

[poochyena]

The world is already overpopulated. That's why the environmental degradation.

Since 2007, population in the US has grown while co2 emissions have shrunk.
Indonesia, a country with only ~10% fewer people than the US, produces 80% less CO2 emissions than the US

There is no connection between environmental harm and population.

 

[QtDevSvr]

There is no connection between environmental harm and population.

I have fucking seen virgin tropical forest fall to logging in Indonesia with my own eyes.

 

[poochyena]

I have fucking seen virgin tropical forest fall to logging in Indonesia with my own eyes.

Isn't the entire country essentially a tropical forest? There isn't exactly a shortage of forests in Indonesia.

 

[informationsuperhighway]

There's a smaller tax base to support an aging population that will have increasingly more expensive needs and medical treatments and social safety net programs.

Can you clarify what you mean by this being a short term problem? Who do you think will pay for a growing elder population? This is not a problem that can be easily handwaved away.

You described the short term problem. "A smaller tax base to support an aging population....."

The solution is not infinite growth of humans like a metastatic cancer to support an aging population.

Robots/AI who knows but the solution should not be more children to hope they generate tax income to support an aging population.
Tax the Billionaires significantly? Maybe Capitalism is not the solution?

 

[llanitedave]

There's a smaller tax base to support an aging population that will have increasingly more expensive needs and medical treatments and social safety net programs.

Can you clarify what you mean by this being a short term problem? Who do you think will pay for a growing elder population? This is not a problem that can be easily handwaved away.

I think that's a red herring. All my life I've heard policy makers crowing about the constantly increasing productivity of the worker. Now we see companies crowing about how they can use AI and robotics to replace workers entirely. Obviously the individual worker is no longer the root of the tax base. We can stop the CEO class from skimming excessive benefits from the workers productivity, and we can tax the machines that are replacing workers. Fewer people can now support a much larger population. With improved healthcare, which doesn't HAVE to be at its currently overpriced state, people can live longer and retire later.

We have not seen the benefits of increased productivity because of corporate greed. Society can address that greed, and return that money to be used for those who produce it.

Why should we want to increase the birth rate just to make more unemployed citizens?