1) Very insulated culture with nearly no immigration coupled with low birth rates.
2) They build houses very differently. They aren't generally made to last centuries if taken care of and renovated. The strategy is to build small units cheaply and tare down after 2- years. It's like Ikea for homes.
3) I agree, depopulation is a problem. We really need to incentivize middle and upper middle class people to have large families.
No, what we need to do is figure out how to run our economies without pyramid-scheme population growth. Human societies have managed to do this sort of thing for centuries, before the industrial revolution, and then the green revolution ballooned our population.
Surely, we can turn some of those productivity gains that technology has given us over the decades to solve the problem of a slightly smaller than-what-we're-used-to wage-worker-to-non-wage-worker ratio.
It's completely possible, but it may require the capital owners to take a haircut.
I have yet to get a valid reason as to why inflation is an inherent and necessary property without circular reasoning. The market will always reach some equilibrium, even with a fixed money supply.
we need to depopulate the billionaires and with the freed up wealth, fix the environmental problems so we have a chance at a future.
You don't free up wealth that way, more likely you destroy it.
"Having space and feeling like they can give them a better future" is about 1 thing.
Money
If you eliminated any of income taxes, or a combination of SS + reducing deficit spending (inflation), or the % of income going to heakthcare by eliminating its employee and employee subsidies (Medicares), there would be a populatiom boom.
All you need to do is free people from having to make money, to meet basic needs. And people Will have children again.
Instead, we have a social policy that everyone just needs to work in order to pay for the sins (and pleasure) of their previous generation.
Yes. Those Caribbean cruises , FL homes & racetrack bets, are paid by the empty silence of hospital newborn wards across the country.
This meme needs to die. People in poorer countries have more children than people in rich countries. Within countries poorer communities have more children than richer ones. There might be some exceptions but this broadly holds true across the world.
opportunity cost.
the opportunity cost of a parent in the 3rd world is negligible. income is very low as it is. theres not.much to do to make $$.
therefore, the benefit of parenting is MUCH higher, and the cost of raising a kid itself is low to zero , and in some cases positive (kids work on fielda or take care of siblings, therefore ROI is positive).
contrasts this with USA, where the opportunity cost of a developer to raise a kid is in the 200k level. ok so now what about alternatives for parenting?
well everything is regulated (daycare, schooling , extracurriculars), or hyperinflates (real estate), and every activity carriea an institutionalized bloat of an effective ponzi...to the benefit of the prior generation seniors in every activity.
So now what do you do? If raising kids is negative ROI and doing it yourself has a huge opportunity cost?
Is it a coincidence that wealthy families in wealthy contries like in Singapore, have more kids on average?
How do you explain that aberration?
For instance a couple with 3 kids and a home would have around $70k-$100k in deductions (60k kids, 10k-40k in state/local taxes etc). If they had an income of $120k it would be adjusted to like $30k and they’d pay essentially no taxes.
It’s a deduction and not a credit specifically so people that the state isn’t incentivizing clients of the state to have kids.
Since you believe that human reproduction is a de-facto property of the state, simply calculate how many women should have babies, for optimal society, and force them to?
No need to muck around with some tax incentives. Redistribute the true source "commodity".
As a bonus, if you're high up enough, you might even get to choose who mates with whom.
For poor people you continue to focus on helping with basics (food and shelter), family planning measures, and up-skilling towards becoming independent. Since a deduction probably isn’t helpful in these cases, a tax credit would continue to exist.