With too dramatic shift you can’t take care of old people anymore. People will reject essentially murdering old people to save the environment.
I think birt rates around 1.8 - 1.9 is probably a sensible rate. That will cause a gradual decline. 1.2-1.3 is way too low and will cause a lot of problems.
Troublingly, the crisis in U.S. healthcare suggests otherwise. We're currently murdering old people not for the survival of the species and/or civilization, but to increase healthcare and insurance industry profits.
Recent U.S. politics has shown that exterminating the elderly/sick/poor/dissenting is essentially a marketing problem. Don't call them "old people," call them "welfare queens." Convince people that it will only ever happen to someone else (immigrants, people with different skin color and/or ideology than you, "poor people" who deserve what's coming to them -- quite unlike temporarily embarrassed millionaires like yourself, etc).
Yessir, market your mass-murder correctly and people will think it's "business as usual."
Basically austerity for health insurance middlemen and schools but no charge for education or healthcare. For example, I see a big push to air condition schools and I'm left unsure how my generation (Xennial) even survived. Not only my schools but my home never had air conditioning either.
These things are not necessities. Neither are health insurance profits.
...because the giga-rich stole from us. Let's not couch their actions in the passive voice, or pretend this situation just happened somehow. The "neoliberal" (ie not new or liberal) takeover of America was orchestrated by the rich for their own benefit, and almost 40 years later we're still suffering the effects: stagnant wages, rising profits, and ever-increasing wealth inequality.
There is indisputably enough of wealth for everyone on Earth to die with dignity. The problem is distribution, not quantity.
> several hundred thousand to multiple millions of dollars in healthcare costs
Healthcare price, not cost. The underlying cost is quite affordable.
The price is not because the insurancestudent debt/pharmaceutical/healthcare industries extort obscene profits (and taxpayer subsidies!) by leaching off a life critical, non-negotiable service. See above.