Alarm as South Korea sees more deaths than births
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
If what we've read about climate change and so on can be considered true, then surely it's better to hurt economically for one generation (as fewer young people support greater numbers of retirees), than to drive the world into disaster potentially forever.
With climate change likely to affect the habitability of many of our current settlements, as a species we’ll need to support massive migration shifts over the next few hundred years.
So the problem kind of solves itself if we manage migration and resources correctly.
Why is that the answer? This creates its own problems as well, especially in countries like Korea that are extremely homogeneous.
Realistically the global population cannot keep growing so we'll need to adapt to stagnant and potentially decreasing (at least for some time) population at some point.
So IMHO the best long term answer for countries facing this now is to accept it and to start changing paradigms and the economy instead of trying to keep on growing the population.
Rich countries pay a lot, poor countries are growth opportunities — in both the personal and business senses of the phrase.
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20170216060417/https://www.tillv...
Apart from that, simply replacing the population also presents quite a few challenges that are likely to result in a very infected and polarized debate regarding the future direction of the societies that such replacement takes place in.
That being said, I believe you're right about the fact that there's going to be a lot of migrations going on around the Globe for the next few hundred years. It's just not automatically going to solve the birth rate issue.
[0] technically, if not legally or morally
It's not as if people and culture where fungible. Multiculturalism is just a naive dream that as been elevated as a dogma in certain countries, but it doesn't work on the ground.
Do you think your ancestors would recognise your culture? Will your descendants?
(Hint: They would/will not.)
However people are both fickle and in many cases easily influenceable by populists and in-group/out-group is the oldest trick in the book. And it still works.
So there is definitely a big risk there.
Replacing large parts of a country's population, culture and traditions won't be possible without 1) societal changes affecting the existing population and 2) societal changes affecting the migrant population. In the end, neither the existing population nor the migrant population are likely to be happy about the end result.
1) Being a part of a cultural minority is a very different experience from being a part of the majority population, and the experience of simply having one's expected but unborn children/siblings replaced as suggested, would, to put it plainly, fuck with a lot of peoples' minds by messing with peoples' sense of belonging, identity, and general trust of society. In other words, if societal cohesion is a priority then replacing the populace will be tricky; many countries have raging debate about immigrants despite having an immigrant population of less than 5%. Imagine the debates if that number was steadily increasing and approaching 50%. My guess is it won't be pretty.
2) Whenever this topic is brought up, the main issue is usually that modern society needs to import workers in order to fill the positions open at the bottom; the existing populace is progressing upwards, since employees are scarcer and wages go up; while the low-paying jobs get filled by immigrants. The problem is that the migrant populace probably aren't really aiming for those jobs; moving halfway across the World to clean toilets simply isn't what most people want, and since linguistical, educational and cultural differences will shut the doors for more than a generation (assuming we don't get _much_ better at integrating migrants into our societies), migration won't provide what many migrants are looking for.
It is definitely possible to compensate for falling birth-rates by the means of immigration. It just won't be a drop-in replacement and it won't be easy. In the end, especially considering other issues, I'd say it's time to have a look at having a look at how to structure our societies in order to manage declining birth rates over an extended period of time. Migration is not inherently bad, and cultures can and will continue to evolve, but importing people to handle the shittiest of jobs available simply isn't a good way of welcoming anyone into your own society.
(Long-Term question I’ve had: how does this compare with UBI, which is kinda like a pension but for everyone?)
That's not necessary. They require that the active workers (plus capital) are productive enough to keep life standards for everybody. There is not theoretical limit for how many workers are necessary. In the extreme it could be with one or zero workers.
Cows can milk themselves these days, but the cow self-milking machines can’t make themselves yet.
More workers than pensioners is required when the system works by using current contributions to pay current pensions (which is usually how state pensions work). [Which should also provides some information about how (un)realistic UBI is]
I am in a country which has the s.k. problem since a decade and since then tried to push retirement age over and over with extremely bad results (one of the higher young unemployment rate in the whole eu area).
Add to this that already now losing your job, especially if low-skilled, in your 50ies it's basically a sentence to never find another one and live under unemployment benefit until you get your small state pension.
For my generation (Born 1985-1995) it is already planned we will have to retire minimum at 74yo in the most optimistic situation. I mean, I don't even see myself capable of doing well my work at 65, and probably no one will want to keep me after 60, doesn't matter how sharp I will be. All supposing I am not gonna get pretty sick around that age, which is highly probable.
False dichotomy.
First: Employers which don’t allow people who are better suited to a role to have better chances to be hired for those roles, don’t grow as fast as those companies which do allow better candidates to get those roles.
This is basically what causes the situation in your 3rd paragraph, and is still more appropriate than relying on eternal population growth.
Second: Unless they are literally destroying value in their work (not merely being cost-ineffective, but actively damaging), then the economy still benefits from having more people working — the more value an economy creates, the more any given currency unit can buy, the more people are available to be customers, the more business can be supported by their spending, in a virtuous cycle.
This is why everyone is encouraged to work in the first place instead of jobs being treated as luxury or status symbols available to only the elite few.
But that would not necessarily be a bad thing as that would force to indeed focus on productivity growth and growth of indicators per capita instead of overall indicators.
Many of the recent advances in human rights are from people protesting, convincing other people that their plight is real, and slowly turning the tide.
In dictatorships this doesn't happen for obvious reasons so social progress can be frozen by 1 person or maybe a 1 group for decade after decade.
Similar story from Romania, where I'm from. Not necessarily with women's rights, but with other kinds of human rights.
Until we get there we import people from other countries.
As long as we depend on dwindling supplies of fossil fuel to send things in space, we're certainly not going anywhere.
But if we accept that the people leaving will never see the end of the journey then the problem is one of keeping a liveable, self-contained environment in space for 100+ years, which does not require crazy physics breakthrough at all, just technological advances.
This is not going to solve Earth's problems, though.
What is the situation in South Korea when it comes to paid parental leave, employment security for parents that do take parental leave, cost of birth, cost of child care and so on?
Anyway, this will happen all over the world over time; birth rate is dropping in Europe and N-America because of the current economic climate, that is, people can no longer afford to have children, because they have to work tons of hours and multiple jobs just to keep afloat. The boomers were able to buy a big house and cars in the suburbs in their early twenties on a blue collar job. Not going to lie, I'm jealous of that.
Meanwhile, I was a single white collar worker who had to live in substandard 'student' housing for close to a decade before finally my wage and the housing market aligned enough for me to be able to buy a modest house. Not complaining about the house or anything, but I already feel very privileged and since then the housing prices have gone up by another 10-20%, making owning a house and therefore the stability to start a family unreachable for a lot of people.
What I'm trying to say is, to slow down or reverse birth rate decline in 'the west', we need financial stability and security. We need to be able to afford a decent house on a single income, and to get rid of the stress of living in debt and from paycheck to paycheck.
People no longer want to commit half of their life for nothing.