Perhaps part of the problem is that we see individuals only as workers?
Supposedly we've had decades of productivity growth, so you'd think that it would be possible for a smaller cohort of workers to keep everything going, and yet it is apparently a creeping disaster that there may not be enough of them to maintain modern civilization in the not-so-distant future. Like many aspects of modern life, it just isn't really adding up to me.
There is a glaring contradiction there that I think has more than a little to do with the way capital dictates the shape of modern political discourse.
I also think we are being subtly prepared not for a crisis of demography or a crisis of automation but instead a crisis of oligarchy.
It's a great thing less people are being pressured into starting families or having unplanned families.