other than to ensure a cheap exploitable workforce, who cares? Why is it a bad thing?
With supply and demand, you'd expect a decline in workers would mean higher wages down the line. But the ruling class will always make sure there is endless immigration and free trade agreements to keep the average citizen broke and miserable.
Do you have data to back up this assertion? My understanding is that the poor still have the highest birth rate in the US.
(Not sure what makes you say “cheap and exploitable”, are future generations somehow more exploitable than current or past generations?)
Basing success on always being able to find a fresh mark perhaps isn't sustainable.
I'm not saying I have all the answers, or that we can keep this game going forever. But let's not pretend everything will be better when we finally stop having future generations to build our cars or take care of us in our old age. And no, robots wont do it for us (maybe cars, but damn, I hope I don't have robots taking care of me in my dotage).
After spending time mapping entire countries for resources and having travelled through roughly two thirds of the 190+ countries I can report first hand that the earth is finite is size.
People familar with growth on a medium in a finite petri dish and increased cattle stocking on land, with fishing, and general consumption will be happy to tell you that infinite growth cannot be sustained from finite resources.
At some point metrics have to flip about and measure innovation and efficiency in a sustained economy.
Even should we branch out into space that still leaves the earth as a constrained system now exporting support to a outlier that needs time to itself become self sustaining .. Mars won't be suppporting Earth for many centuries to come, if indeed ever.
This is further complicated by modern medical science which is prolonging the life expectancy of people and making the overall cost even heavier. That's why countries are trying to raise the retirement age.
The solution should be a major leap in productivity coupled with a more progressive taxation system. Neither one of these seem to be happening right now, I hope this changes.
This morning (I'm in GMT+8) my father (born 1935) was out for five hours delivering Meals on Wheels to older people that have difficulty cooking for themselves.
Wow. My mother was born in 47 and is now wheelchair bound. Barely functioning. It's probably that clean farm life that keeps your father vital at that age.
My experience of Japan was that older people stay active longer .. and people like to have purpose and part of that can include looking after each other as people grow old and diminish in function at differing rates.
My experience of parts of some countries such as the UK and the US is that people get fat and relatively inactive some what sooner than I'm used to seeing in here in Australia and elsewhere (Vietnam, Nigeria, etc).
My father had a farming life early on, he's returned to a farm adjacent life in his early 80s, otherwise he's worked largely around minesites as a worker, foreman, manager but has stayed active walking about plants and constantly improving land they've owned by building walls, shovelling tonnes of literal shit for the garden, etc.
Fostering a sense of local community helps ease the changes as people age and there's a place for cross generational interaction in life also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13_rJVvxx_g
Global replacement rate of ~2.1 is approaching (at the low end of estimates we're past it already), we're at 2.2 or so and population peak estimates keep getting lowered as models are updated with newer numbers, even with people living longer.
https://www.healthdata.org/news-events/newsroom/news-release...
Then change the economy to a more sustainable version of itself instead of predicating that people must multiply themselves to make another rich asshole even richer. Problem solved.
But this is the problem. We already know with climate, that there is limit to the growth anyway.
1. Assuming you didn't study economics or anthropology or sociology.