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

[informationsuperhighway]

To the degree that there's any panic, it's just the broad realization that modern society is basically a Ponzi scheme that relies on more, newer entrants to keep the party going. You could argue about the freshness of innovative ideas, national security, and a whole host of other things, but a lot of that is viewed through a national/geopolitical lens, and then, of course, you have the far right that views it through a racist framing of genetics and identity.

Personally, I find all of the digital ink spilled around it to be kind of irritating, like reading a Malthusian view of population numbers. Maybe it will be terrible, maybe it won't.

It's also really hard to care in the slightest about population numbers when there are an absurd amount of people alive today and most of the arguments being made for people having more kids is being made by some of the worst people around who literally couldn't care less about improving people's general welfare in life. Doesn't really matter if the national GDP is could be 2.1% if people had more kids, when the country writ large didn't care to take care of its people when GDP was 1.8%.



Nursing pays decently well. Try home social worker or health aide. You know, the people that are going to help grandma safely get in and out of the shower. Bonus points if someone guesses the common demographics of those folks.

I find it interesting that the majority are hyper focused on the issue of people need to keep having kids to keep the taxbase growing for Senior care. Not why the population growth is declining. Zero concern it seems on why the problem is happening. I suspect a lot of "Techbro adjacent" people are incapable of seeing the problem at hand.

We have these ghouls worried about people not having kids so they can slave away at whatever soul sucking jobs these ghouls need going in the future. It turns out people have agency and do not want to have kids anymore.

Why would someone who had to borrow money to get a degree for a job that is not paying a good wage enough to raise a family, buy a home etc want kids? They see the struggle. Why have kids to barely see them after a long day at work.

Then the same ghouls are celebrating the death of employment. Our public education system has been gutted, daycare costs a fortune, commute is lengthy because "Work from home" hurts Commercial property owners etc..

Perpetually increasing birthrates aint happening. You would think with the trillions of wealth and modern technology there is some solution that does not require perpetual geometric population growth.

The diversionary tactics to attempt at not discussing the issue will be mentioning the only solution is somehow euthanasia because otherwise people might think there are other ways to fix the problem VS just popping out kids to make them another cog in the machine to continue to enrich the same small population.

 

[Gary Patterson]

I can’t help but feel it’s slightly dystopian to posit senicide as a solution. I don’t think life will feel much better when we’re tucking into a nice bowl of soylent “I can’t believe it’s not grandma!” (Spoiler - it is)

The real problem is the hoarding of wealth and resources at the top. We can feed, clothe and house the world but we (the human race) prefer a few to have obscene wealth while millions starve. A much better solution is plutocide. We should end the rich and distribute their wealth.

I’d buy a pouch of soylent plutocrat flavour. We can eat the rich.

 

[informationsuperhighway]

Okay, this thread escalated quickly. We're already at "kill all the old people" stage.

This is not a serious thread.

Sounds like you are working hard to push it into that discussion to derail and insure any other thoughts get quashed. I find the whole thing curious but it's very transparent.

 

[Coriolanus]

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?

You're arguing against an argument nobody made.

 

[crombie]

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

My backup job plan was the same as my old man's. Get a forklift ticket and work in a warehouse.

Except the other day I saw a news story showing Amazon has AI driven forklifts they are testing.

Along with other AI driven robots it is entirely possible they could do those jobs, too!

 

[Coriolanus]

I think that's a red herring.

How so? It's an observable phenomenon we can see in South Korea, Japan, and China.

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?

I didn't argue this.

 

[QtDevSvr]

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

From Wikipedia:

Deforestation in Indonesia involves the long-term loss of forests and foliage across much of the country; it has had massive environmental and social impacts. Indonesia is home to some of the most biologically diverse forests in the world and ranks third in number of species behind Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo.[1]

As late as 1900, Indonesia was still a densely forested country: forests represented 84 percent of the total land area. Deforestation intensified in the 1970s[1] and has accelerated further since then. The estimated forest cover of 170 million hectares around 1900 decreased to less than 100 million hectares by the end of the 20th century.[2] In 2008, it was estimated that tropical rainforests in Indonesia would be logged out in a decade.[3] Of the total logging in Indonesia, up to 80% is reported to be performed illegally.[4]

Large areas of forest in Indonesia have been cleared by large multinational pulp companies, such as Asia Pulp and Paper,[5] and replaced by plantations. Forests are often burned by farmers[6] and plantation owners. Another major source of deforestation is the logging industry, driven by demand from China and Japan.[7] Agricultural development and transmigration programs moved large populations into rainforest areas, further increasing deforestation rates. The widespread deforestation (and other environmental destruction) in Indonesia is often described by academics as an ecocide.[8][9][10][11][12]

So: Shortage for who? The endangered Orangs that died from habitat loss? The locals who lived independent and strong from subsistence hunting but now toil in a palm oil plantation? The billions elsewhere, breathing dirtier air and enduring more climate change effects? You want to look at this thing from the standpoint of: Oh, hey, we ate 22% of Indonesia's forest in the last 25 years, so that's more than a hundred years to go at the same rate!

It doesn't work that way. Especially since the same thing is happening in South America and Equatorial Africa. Forests are the lungs of the earth. Do you have any idea what it does to person to lose just one fourth of their lung capacity? I'm here to tell you it's the difference between surviving and thriving. Is that your pitch as a would-be politician? "Vote for me and, survive. (On my terms.)"

People want to thrive, and they can. But we can't as a species without governing our power in the interests of the thriving of the more-than-human world.

 

[Shavano]

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
View attachment 133102

There is no connection between environmental harm and population.

https://www.ccacoalition.org/resour...ta-source-apportionment-study-technical-brief

"Indonesia has the highest number of premature deaths associated with air pollution in Southeast Asia. In the capital city of Jakarta, the levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), the pollutant most hazardous to health, routinely exceed that of the World Health Organization’s air quality guidelines by four to five times."

 

[poochyena]

From Wikipedia:


So: Shortage for who? The endangered Orangs that died from habitat loss? The locals who lived independent and strong from subsistence hunting but now toil in a palm oil plantation? The billions elsewhere, breathing dirtier air and enduring more climate change effects? You want to look at this thing from the standpoint of: Oh, hey, we ate 22% of Indonesia's forest in the last 25 years, so that's more than a hundred years to go at the same rate!

It doesn't work that way. Especially since the same thing is happening in South America and Equatorial Africa. Forests are the lungs of the earth. Do you have any idea what it does to person to lose just one fourth of their lung capacity? I'm here to tell you it's the difference between surviving and thriving. Is that your pitch as a would-be politician? Vote for me, and survive. (On my terms.)

People want to thrive, and they can. But we can't as a species without governing our power in the interests of the thriving of the more-than-human world.

From the quote, it says the demand is being driven by China and Japan.. two countries seeing their populations shrinking.
Most importantly worth mentioning that, as the global population has grown, deforestation has slowed.

Although global forest area is decreasing, the rate at which we are losing trees has slowed. In the 1990s the world was losing 7.8 million ha of area per year, but in the 2000s this rate slowed to 5.2 million ha, and in the 2010s it shrank even further (down to 4.7 million). This pattern is due to the regeneration abilities of forests, as well as a conscious global effort to reduce deforestation. Plantation forests are one method of reforestation/afforestation that has become increasingly popular since the 1990s. Intensively planned to be biodiverse and well-managed, these forests exist for the purpose of regenerating our global forest cover.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_cover
Yes, its still happening, but its slowing as population increases. Its a matter of policy, not population.

 

[poochyena]

https://www.ccacoalition.org/resour...ta-source-apportionment-study-technical-brief

Does that not prove my point further? The US, with a larger population, does not have this issues.

 

[Shavano]

Does that not prove my point further? The US, with a larger population, does not have this issues.

The US has DIFFERENT environmental issues.

 

[poochyena]

The US has DIFFERENT environmental issues.

Are those issues worse today, with our population levels at its peak, or worse in the 50s - 90s? California is the classic example

https://www.aqmd.gov/home/research/publications/50-years-of-progress

 

[Macam]

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
View attachment 133102

There is no connection between environmental harm and population.

This is a side topic, but this assertion is so breathtakingly ridiculous that I have a hard time believing someone is genuinely trying to make it.

Cherry picking a counter example of exactly 1, wherein the vast majority of the population earns about 1/35th of what a typical American earns and cherry picking a singular environmental metric is…a choice.

Indonesia is losing/has lost a lot of its old growth forests to palm oil and rubber plantations, has lead to some of the worst air pollution in the SE Asia because those forests were being burned down to make room for those plantations, and they’re currently in the process of moving their capital because it’s literally sinking due to over extraction of groundwater (most of the city may be submerged by 2050).

But, sure, none of that has anything to do with the vast amounts of people trying to eke out a living and is probably just due to the Sumatran rhinos running around.

 

[poochyena]

Cherry picking a counter example of exactly 1

1 is more than you provided.

But, sure, none of that has anything to do with the vast amounts of people trying to eke out a living and is probably just due to the Sumatran rhinos running around.

As evident by the fact the US does not have these issues, yes.

 

[concernUrsus]

https://www.msc.org/en-us/what-we-are-doing/oceans-at-risk/overfishing

None can tell me that we do not have an over consumption problem. We are literally eating other species out of extinction.

 

[Exordium01]

Cherry picking a counter example of exactly 1, wherein the vast majority of the population earns about 1/35th of what a typical American earns and cherry picking a singular environmental metric is…a choice.

Indonesia is losing/has lost a lot of its old growth forests to palm oil and rubber plantations, has lead to some of the worst air pollution in the SE Asia because those forests were being burned down to make room for those plantations, and they’re currently in the process of moving their capital because it’s literally sinking due to over extraction of groundwater (most of the city may be submerged by 2050).

I'm not the one you were responding to, but I'm glad you wrote these two back-to-back paragraphs because I'd argue that these two things are linked. I'd argue that the deforestation is more closely caused by concentration of wealth and maximization of profit for the few than it is necessary to feed the global population.

https://www.msc.org/en-us/what-we-are-doing/oceans-at-risk/overfishing

None can tell me that we do not have an over consumption problem. We are literally eating other species out of extinction.

I'm not debating the overconsumption problem. I'm just questioning whether or not it is the result of overpopulation. Since the majority of the global population is not overconsuming, I don't think it is.

 

[metlman13]

To answer the OP, I don't think most people really care about abstract crap like 'population replacement levels' as much as the news likes to talk about it.

What people do care about is that the cost of raising a child has now driven it to the point where it is increasingly unaffordable for the majority, and people are already overworked just surviving at this rate.

And thats probably the most real reason why many people arent having kids (among many other factors). Make it easier for parents to not have to make the kind of hard decisions that force them to either put off parenthood until later in life or force them to give up on the idea entirely, and you might see that turn around, but you're also not going back to people just popping out 10 kids because 3 of them died of scarlet fever before they turned 4 (then again, the way vaccine rates are going, that may be exactly where we are headed).

 

[SarahSparkles]

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

Personally, given the circumstances, I wouldn't have thought much of it if someone respectfully voiced a little frustration that a few people can ruin it for everyone. Really, the best advice is to just accept that's how things roll sometimes. But as a community member I do understand how frustrating threads like this can be.

As a moderator, I understand it a little differently. It wasn't my idea, but maybe a little pony time was what the thread needed to reset?

In any case, being abusively rude about it is not cool. Ejected from thread and issued an official warning for armchair moderation. But mostly because of the being really rude part.

 

[SedsAtArs]

The US has DIFFERENT environmental issues.

Not to mention that it (and other rich countries) export a lot of their environmental issues to other countries.

 

[sword_9mm]

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.

And it's fine when everyone else suffers that's not old? Why can't I get medicaid? Because I have a job? What makes grampa more important than me or anyone else that doesn't have oodles of money?

How about we combine Medicare and Medicaid into say a universal coverage for all us non rich folks? The old, the middle, and the young get to participate. Hell even the rich are covered; never know when they'll be poor and they may need it some day.

Also it's hard not to be angry at the group who pulled up the ladder behind them (sadly my parents are part of that; I'll bet a lot of ours are).

The New Deal? Nah that's the old deal. We get New Feudalism. Thanks mom/dad.

 

[Coriolanus]

And it's fine when everyone else suffers that's not old? Why can't I get medicaid? Because I have a job? What makes grampa more important than me or anyone else that doesn't have oodles of money?

How about we combine Medicare and Medicaid into say a universal coverage for all us non rich folks? The old, the middle, and the young get to participate. Hell even the rich are covered; never know when they'll be poor and they may need it some day.

Also it's hard not to be angry at the group who pulled up the ladder behind them (sadly my parents are part of that; I'll bet a lot of ours are).

The New Deal? Nah that's the old deal. We get New Feudalism. Thanks mom/dad.

Sure, and that's a perfectly fine proposal. There are any number of choices that get ignored when a problem is simplified into a false dichotomy situation.

 

[N4M8-]

To answer the OP, I don't think most people really care about abstract crap like 'population replacement levels' as much as the news likes to talk about it.

Because they lack the experience or perspective to imagine how it will impact them.

My father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in the mid-2000s and suffered through it over the next dozen years. As the sole surviving child, managing his care and affairs fell to me. So I spent significant amount of time in elder care facilities. Even the best of them has high turnover, are understaffed, and the are quite expensive--with worse ones still being expensive.

I do not have children. I cannot reasonably expect my cousin's, half of whom are older than me with their own family obligations, to look out for me. The thought of even greater understaffing caused by a smaller working cohort due to anti-immigration hysteria and low birtrates is terrifying before we get to people arguing senecide, as it is a reasonable chance I could end up in one. It is what happened to my grandmother's younger sister who had no children when it was no longer safe for her to live alone, and I saw how miserable she was. What I am facing looks to be worse.

People abstract away the future, but it is going to be the present someday.

 

[Slothur the Hasty]

Also it's hard not to be angry at the group who pulled up the ladder behind them

There is no reason to be angry at them. Society has trained us all to pull the ladder up behind us, no matter what generation they belong to. The default setting is basically "I got mine, fuck off". That mentality is everywhere around us.

It is kind of funny though, the more technologically advanced we get, the less humane we become.

 

[sword_9mm]

There is no reason to be angry at them. Society has trained us all to pull the ladder up behind us, no matter what generation they belong to. The default setting is basically "I got mine, fuck off". That mentality is everywhere around us.

It is kind of funny though, the more technologically advanced we get, the less humane we become.

Yeah it's crazy.

You'd expect parents to want their children to have a better life but it doesn't present that way at the macro level. Folks keep voting against themselves and their families even when they see the issues that occur.

I also think kids are more a what you 'do'; not what you 'want'. Also the stigma of folks being truthful about kids. Rarely do folks introspect and say 'man I really wish I didn't have little Johnny'. That's taboo! You want kids. You need kids. The machine must be fed at all costs.

Time to tear down the machine and make a better one.

 

[Slothur the Hasty]

Time to tear down the machine and make a better one.

Money is becoming anachronistic in this day and age. Nothing will really get resolved until we look at society with a new set of eyes. Most of the current policies around the world is not so much about improvements, it is feeding the old system and narrative. The other option is the following:

The boomers had a different society in many ways, and I believe a huge part of the reason why things are fucked up is that the megacorps replaced the local stores where the money never trickle down to the local communities anymore but becomes reliant on national/federal support to stay alive. Yes, sure, we do not want to pay more than we need to for goods and services and I have been taught the same just as everyone else, but this is basically how a few ended up with everything.

I am trying to do my part though where i can, i am trying to develop a new Social Utility Network with this topic in mind, not the population part, but how things circulate.

 

[TheGnome]

My conviction [that overpopulation is a fundamental problem] 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.

[my addition for context]

As others have commented, I cannot believe that anyone is seriously arguing that overpopulation is not a problem. @QtDevSvr's four points are well made and I have no disagreement with any of them, but this can be made even more simple; it's basic thermodynamics. Humans are not photosynthetic, and there is therefore a maximum population the biosphere can support. But it's not a simple logistic growth model; we're not paramecia in flask in some grade-school science classroom. The biosphere is complex and buffered, so we can get away with exceeding our carrying capacity for quite a while, but only at the expense of damaging the life-support system of the planet, which we have clearly been doing for longer than anyone here has been alive.

Human activity is unequivocally damaging the biosphere, so we are, by definition at an unsustainable population. Decreasing our population is ultimately the only long-term solution to this problem. Technological developments (clean energy, genetically engineered crops, etc.) may help (but some, like AI, will certainly make things worse), but ultimately we need socioeconomic changes that depreciate unsustainable economic growth and profit maximization at all costs will be necessary.

There are too many variables and too many unknowns to be able to calculate a sustainable carrying capacity for humans on earth (and doing so would require defining what an acceptable standard of living is - we can obviously have more people living in squalor on a minimal daily diet of nutritional yeast gruel, than living what most of us would consider comfortable lifestyles). But I can imagine a world in which a few billion humans can live sustainably with the rest of the biosphere, especially if we posit the emergence of a new economic model that prizes sustainability and ascribes value to ecosystem services.

 

[Coriolanus]

I cannot believe that anyone is seriously arguing that overpopulation is not a problem. @QtDevSvr's four points are well made and I have no disagreement with any of them, but this can be made even more simple; it's basic thermodynamics. Humans are not photosynthetic, and there is therefore a maximum population the biosphere can support. But it's not a simple logistic growth model; we're not paramecia in flask in some grade-school science classroom. The biosphere is complex and buffered, so we can get away with exceeding our carrying capacity for quite a while, but only at the expense of damaging the life-support system of the planet, which we have clearly been doing for longer than anyone here has been alive.

But humans aren't automatons that will just consume resources and expand indefinitely as long as some resource is available. There are sociological, economic, and quality of life constraints, too. At some point, life will get miserable enough due to some particular factor that people will slow down reproduction and the population will decrease.

You see this already in most developed or developing countries already. Population growth is slowing or below replacement levels due to a number of factors, whether it's lack of women or expensive childcare costs or perpetually online people not meeting potential partners, or simply choosing it for lifestyle purposes.

 

[TheGnome]

At some point, life will get miserable enough due to some particular factor that people will slow down reproduction and the population will decrease.

Certainly; at some point Malthus rules. But the point is that if we don't voluntarily control our population, Nature will do it for us, and the mechanisms Nature uses (war, disease, famine, etc.) are decidedly unpleasant. So rather than 'panicking' about low birth rates and declining population, we should be celebrating it.

 

[Coriolanus]

Certainly; at some point Malthus rules. But the point is that if we don't voluntarily control our population, Nature will do it for us, and the mechanisms Nature uses (war, disease, famine, etc.) are decidedly unpleasant. So rather than 'panicking' about low birth rates and declining population, we should be celebrating it.

I am the product of an attempt to do population control by policy (one-child policy).

Let me tell you - it SUCKS. You have to be very careful about what you are doing, because the second and third order effects you don't foresee will be brutal.

Also, who is panicking in this thread? The only people who are panicking are conservative Christian Nationalists and guys like Elon Musk. Fairly sure there's not many of them in this thread.

 

[TheGnome]

Also, who is panicking in this thread? The only people who are panicking are conservative Christian Nationalists and guys like Elon Musk. Fairly sure there's not many of them in this thread.

The panic is referenced in the thread title, but I agree; it's the racist christofacisist white-nationalist shit-stains like Musk and Trump that are loosing their minds about this. The problem is that those cockwombles control the conversation on traditional and social media, and therefore create the information bubble most people live in.

I would hope we don't have many of them around here, but I was responding to a few posts arguing that overpopulation isn't the problem. It may not be the only problem, but it certainly is a problem, and it's also at the root of many problems that don't seem to be population-based at first glance.

 

[Coriolanus]

The panic is referenced in the thread title, but I agree; it's the racist christofacisist white-nationalist shit-stains like Musk and Trump that are loosing their minds about this. The problem is that those cockwombles control the conversation on traditional and social media, and therefore create the information bubble most people live in.

I would hope we don't have many of them around here, but I was responding to a few posts arguing that overpopulation isn't the problem. It may not be the only problem, but it certainly is a problem, and it's also at the root of many problems that don't seem to be population-based at first glance.

As I said, I don't think overpopulation is as huge an issue as stated. Population growth is declining worldwide except for Africa and a few other places in the global south. We are already economically and sociologically pushing ourselves to decrease our numbers.

 

[Coriolanus]

Certainly; at some point Malthus rules.

Historically speaking, Malthusian theory has had a pretty bad track record.

 

[Demento]

Peak population growth is long past us. The figures I've seen suggest the world might top out around 10B people before settling into a long, slow decline.

 

[TheGnome]

As I said, I don't think overpopulation is as huge an issue as stated.

I respectfully disagree and would ask that you consider the following issues:
1) climate change
2) global ecological collapse (including most alarmingly global fisheries)
3) the catastrophic loss of biodiversity over the last century

The impact of 8 billion humans on earth is likely to be worse than the impact of the comet that killed the dinosaurs; the Anthropocene is shaping up to be one of the biggest mass extinction events in earth's history.

 

[TheGnome]

Historically speaking, Malthusian theory has had a pretty bad track record.

Simple logistical growth models can't be applied to real world ecosystems; sure real ecosystems are too complex to model like this. But the math is irrefutable. Thermodynamics does not care if you do not believe in it.

 

[Coriolanus]

I respectfully disagree and would ask that you consider the following issues:
1) climate change
2) global ecological collapse (including most alarmingly global fisheries)
3) the catastrophic loss of biodiversity over the last century

The impact of 8 billion humans on earth is likely to be worse than the impact of the comet that killed the dinosaurs; the Anthropocene is shaping up to be one of the biggest mass extinction events in earth's history.

I think all of those things will probably just work to arrest human growth.

As far as whether human caused mass extinction will be worse than the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs - well, we can wait a few million years and see if that's true or not.

 

[Coriolanus]

Simple logistical growth models can't be applied to real world ecosystems; sure real ecosystems are too complex to model like this. But the math is irrefutable. Thermodynamics does not care if you do not believe in it.

If the mathematical models doesn’t accurately model the system, then the math isn't irrefutable.

 

[concernUrsus]

The panic is referenced in the thread title, but I agree; it's the racist christofacisist white-nationalist shit-stains like Musk and Trump that are loosing their minds about this. The problem is that those cockwombles control the conversation on traditional and social media, and therefore create the information bubble most people live in.

I would hope we don't have many of them around here, but I was responding to a few posts arguing that overpopulation isn't the problem. It may not be the only problem, but it certainly is a problem, and it's also at the root of many problems that don't seem to be population-based at first glance.

It is not just Christofacisist. There are xenophobic from other advanced nations as well. There are push back in Japan right now. Korea is not supposed to be any better. China is not yet dealing with immigration problem, so it is hard to say but the Han Chinese culture is also very strong in China. I expect China will try to import foreign Han Chinese before deal with non-Han immigrants.

India has cast system. A lot of Muslim countries have religion laws codified. The world is... very xenophobic in general.

Long-term, immigration is not a answer anyways. I do not think we can or should grow ourselves out of our current problems. I think this over consumption is eating our mind alive. We are less creative and productive than we should be. We are not doing more valuable works (care for others, scientific advanced, care for the biosphere, etc.).

 

[metlman13]

So I spent significant amount of time in elder care facilities. Even the best of them has high turnover, are understaffed, and the are quite expensive--with worse ones still being expensive.

I wonder why these places have high turnover and have staffing issues. Is it the nature of the job itself? Management? The people they deal with?

 

[QtDevSvr]

I wonder why these places have high turnover and have staffing issues. Is it the nature of the job itself? Management? The people they deal with?

Demanding job with low pay, and run on a business model when the nature of the work means it will only go well if run with a more moral focus. So in addition to the hard work and low pay, the work gets no respect, when by it's nature it requires respect if done well and with caring.