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Comment by holonomically | Hacker News Reader

The world is expected to have ~11B people by the year 2100. There are plenty of people even if some countries have declining birth rates. [1] Better immigration policies solve any problems that nations with declining birth rates might have but that requires having politicians that are willing to put aside xenophobic concerns to implement sensible immigration policies.

1: https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth

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1. North America has less of a "problem" than nearly everywhere else, since (overall) it has traditionally tolerated extremely high immigration rates, and potential migrants see it as a desirable destination.

Politicians reflect their voters' views. In most countries immigration rates are at least an order of magnitude too low to compensate for low fertility and will stay that way.

2. Most of the projected increase in global population is due to an expected increase in lifespan, meaning a greater number of old people. They don't have kids.

The big reservoirs of working-age people are in sub-Saharan Africa and rural India. Not many of them have the skills and funds to enable intercontinental migration. Yet.

Not sure why declining birth rate is a problem, though. Maybe we'll get around to automating some of the things.

Good points. I'll elaborate what I meant by sensible immigration policies. Sensible immigration policies includes a better social safety net and education programs to allow people to immigrate even if at the moment they don't have the right skills or funds.

That is sensible only to you. I love how policies are designated as 'common sense' to try to promote acceptance. Let me decide what is common sense.

What exactly in what I said is not sensible?

There is substantial untapped and underutilized potential already within the country. Using tax money to support immigration of those that possess neither skills nor funds, is frankly a slap in the face to all tax payers, and a signal to Americans that we are giving up on them.

But of course one powerful group needs cheap labor, and the other powerful group needs more voters. Thus, with collaboration of the media apparatus, what you suggest will continue to be branded as sensible.

I really don't get how you inferred all that from what I said. A social safety net and better education programs are better for everyone, including the people in whatever country happens to be implementing those programs and policies.

The issue with media bias is another matter entirely and is unrelated to what I was saying but I recommend you stop viewing everything with a conspiratorial lens. It is not helpful for having a productive discussion.

Perhaps people who think like you, and that would include me, should pool our time and money and sponser immigrants. I wonder if we could. I think doing so would make the world a better place.

But I believe it is wrong to force people who disagree to participate via taxes. I believe it's wrong to impose on other people like that.

Do you suppose we could pool enough money to start a community college? Or do you suppose it would be better to utilize existing public school infrastructure and make it better at addressing the educational needs of potential immigrants?

I wish you success

A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.

Or maybe adopt them into a house, with people who have time to help them acclimate, while they take immigrant/english classes? Doesn't need to be a big production. Don't volunteers already do things like this?

They do, I have friends that are hosts for people/immigrants from Afghanistan.

I was just trying to gauge your commitment and sincerity to what you were saying.

I'm in a state of flux for the next few months, on the road a lot. But this is a great reminder, something I've thought of getting involved with in the past. Nothing beats people helping people. I wish all of us had more time to do such things.

Also not sure why declining population is a problem. The sheer number of human beings on the planet, however, is the root cause of many problems, climate change, habitat loss, water shortages, on and on.

When I imagine less traffic, less air pollution, more clean drinking water, grazing and farmland, per person; I see a better world, not a worse one.

Declining birth rate is a symptom, not a disease. Immigration may be a workaround but not a fix.

The key reason why young Americans don’t want to have children is because the cost of living including raising a child has been exploding for last 20yrs. Housing, healthcare, insurance, student loans and cost of education- all have gone up exponentially when the actual wages have not gone up.

Immigration is a workaround but it has inevitable side effects. Including dilution of labor, assimilation and not to say many Of the core issues mentioned above affect immigrants alike.

Then it's better to address those problems directly instead of scare monger about declining birth rates because the world has plenty of people and will continue to have more for the foreseeable future.

How do you square this with the fact that the birth rate is also low in European countries with reasonable cost of living and robust safety nets.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

Maybe people just don’t want kids when they’re educated.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/womens-educational-attain...

It's also still expensive to do have kids in Europe anyway. Safety nets aside. They purchasing power per capita is lower than in America.

Cost of living has been rising across the EU, as well. You can see it most obviously in the international cities.

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