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Comment by gregorymichael | Hacker News Reader

What are the economic ramifications of fertility rate being below the replacement level?

There will be a lot more older folks, who expected to retire and collect social security, still in the workforce as a result of diminishing payments by youngsters into that program. Demand for medical care will continue grow as the majority of the population gets older.

I believe Japan is experiencing this right now at a large scale.

There are also ramifications with older people who have no one to care for them at the end of their lives.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/world/wp/2018/01/24/feat...

Japan is transitioning from traditional family-based care (which fails when children are absent or nonexistent) to government-funded social-safety-net care. USA has already made that transition (with Medicaid for nursing home care).

Yep, the Boomers are really going to suffer when they're elderly. But they kinda deserve it: they're the ones that screwed up this country so badly.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/17/generation-soc...

A generation full of sociopaths will be getting their just desserts when they're wasting away in poorly-run nursing homes with no one visiting them.

Not just social security: it's public pensions and health care too - every program that expects a pyramid population shape with many young workers supporting a few older ones is going to implode in the next few decades. It's gonna get ugly.

Retirement ponzi structure won't hold.

And the masses of childless elders will happily vote into office anyone who promises to take care of them.

I wonder why this isn't causing a swing to the Dems in the US already. Republicans admit disliking both immigrants and entitlements.

Because these elders hate immigrants and foreigners. They'd rather starve to death in their trailers than have immigrants take care of them.

There are also military ramifications. If we get into a big skirmish with China, they will overwhelm us with soldiers and high-volume weapon manufacturing capability.

I thought nukes solved that. What's the point of them if someone can overwhelm you with soldiers...

China is perhaps not the best example. Given their one child policy that was in place for a long time, and the fact the fertility rate there is still well below that of the US, the relative size of the pool for soldiers will shrink faster than in the US.

Not to get too deep into the weeds but troops require logistics. Food, gear, etc. Aircraft Carriers are the great equalizer, as they provide mobile shears for cutting those lines. The USA still has the most and that's why we keep it that way.

Soldiers can't march across an ocean.

In a debt-based growth-dependent (to repay ever the increasing debts) economy, it crashes everything. Turns out assuming infinite growth does not produce a stable civilization. This is why there are concomitantly erstwhile calls for people to both reduce their "footprint" by not reproducing and also that immigration is crucial to every (western) society's survival.

Do you know of any good example steady state economies for contrast?

Why does criticizing an impossible assumption put the onus on me to identify economies that do not make that assumption or to envision what such a state of things might look like? Is it not sufficient to refrain from obvious error?

That wasn't criticism, just curiosity. I'd like to have such an example to refer to and thought you might have one.

If there are any, they're probably in ancient societies, and as such are probably poorly understood now.

Unfortunately, the exponential-growth economies ate them all.

For the time being, immigration is still causing the millennial generation to increase and is the reason why US population continues to grow. So for at least the US the result is that we may not face the same problems as other developed countries or the problem of an aging population may be reduced.

It will cause the US to continue to be a nation of immigrants and the resentment that may cause.

It is disingenuous to assert that immigration de facto causes resentment instead of the source population of the immigration.

I am not sure how you are implying those two things can be seperate. All immigrants have a source. Throughout US history there has been waves of immigration. Where that source is has changed along with the resentment of that source. It is not from any particular source that resentment occurs, but that there is immigration from a source at all.

That view is ahistorical. Anti-immigrant sentiment has always been directed at the source of the immigration. When Chinese began immigrating in the mid-late 19th century, immigration was suddenly a problem and so we had the national origins formula which ruled until 1965.

See Japan and Italy....

Japan is a prosperous high HDI nation. They have clearly decided that making bankers happy is not worth sacrificing their national identity by inviting mass immigration. They may not appear to be "winning" to those who measure civilizational success by the quarter but I bet their way wins out in the long run.

> They may not appear to be "winning" to those who measure civilizational success by the quarter but I bet their way wins out in the long run.

I'll bet the opposite. The long run is really long and if your population is in decline then you either up the numbers or sooner or later it will be game over for your branch of the tree.

Populations can grow geometrically at any time. What matters to a particular "branch" is that it remains a cohesive and clearly demarcated appendage while it weathers hostile conditions. Grafting on another branch is what ensures its demise as a distinct entity.

Hehe, there is no society on earth right now that never incorporated substantial numbers of outsiders. The relatively placid world that we live in today is in no way the historical norm. Hostile conditions are the norm. Ask the Palestinians, the Iraqi, the Iranians, the Panamanians, the Native Americans and Native Canadians and lots of people living elsewhere in Europe and the world (or anybody else for that matter, but for first or second generation immigrants it is obvious) to see how far back their roots go. In most cases you won't have to go much further than three or four generations (assuming you can trace them back at all) before you land abroad and in many cases in wildly different cultures due to wars, colonialism, trade, famine or natural disasters. Japan is due to its state as an island an exception, not the rule and even Japan is subject to the maxim that you use it or you lose it.

It is interesting that you listed a number of peoples who have at various times been subjected to genocide because of their initial accommodation of outside populations in your rebuttal of my affirmation that Japan refusing to compromise its stance on immigration is vital to its survival as a cohesive and distinct nation.

>you use it or you lose it

Please explain in direct language the point your deployment of this aphorism was intended to convey as I find it wholly inapplicable.

> It is interesting that you listed a number of peoples who have at various times been subjected to genocide because of their initial accommodation of outside populations in your rebuttal of my affirmation that Japan refusing to compromise its stance on immigration is vital to its survival as a cohesive and distinct nation.

Exactly for that reason. Note how the Japanese have had their various wars of conquest in the past. At that time they had no problem with their 'stance on immigration'.

You're not answering the question at all. Being an imperialist power and oppressing other people is good for you as a society if you win (just ask the British; they're still enjoying the fruits of their imperial policy after all this time), even if other people find it morally reprehensible. This doesn't equate in any way to believing that accepting immigration is helpful to the society.

Just look at modern-day China: the Han Chinese ethnic group dominates, and oppresses all the minority groups. China is not a country with a lot of immigration either (nor do they have a shortage of people). So far, it seems to be working out for them, though admittedly it sucks for the minorities.

Actually I agree with you, if a society at some point believes it has progressed enough and feel happy enough, there is no internal reason to pursue growth at any expense.

Japan may decide that being self sufficient and self reliant offers them the best return on their lifestyle.

Clearly infinite growth is the only way. /s

They should be mild, really, so long as immigration makes up for it, and the US is historically good at attracting and assimilating immigrants. Trump aside (which is indeed a big aside), it seems like that will probably continue.

Politically, it probably means increased racial tensions as the majority white population finds itself on a more and more equal footing with other ethnic groups.

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