Comment by robocat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by robocat | Hacker News Reader

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The issue is what to do about aging demographics?

My few paragraphs or your few paragraphs can only encompass trite answers.

There is no obviously good solution. We can only hope our glorious leaders find good compromises.

I am mostly trying to suggest you look at how different countries manage (positively and negatively) their "demographic time bomb".

It is unclear whether immigration is a strongly beneficial solution since it does cause friction.

> Australians online > same sentiments

Please take care with your arguments because anecdotal evidence generalises poorly (especially for topics that are common in echo chambers - it is difficult to avoid ones own biases).

It is clear that immigration is broadly unpopular. The question is whether the rewards are worth the risks?

https://www.amp.com.au/resources/insights-hub/the-economics-...

Immigration is an economic response to aging demographics. It is a very imperfect response.

> Japan

"South Korea is over" is a response to that: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufmu1WD2TSk

I predict Australia and particularly New Zealand will continue to use immigration to help their economies, despite pitfalls.

I don't feel confident to predict anything about the US. The government there (either party) continues to surprise me with its recklessness; however systematically it surprises me with its resilience.

Last year I was in New Orleans for a month and as an in person snapshot I saw a lot of negative signals for the future.

I try to care about economics as a topic because for retirement investment I kinda have to invest overseas. However, this year I've withdrawn from the US stock market (later I will learn if that was a mistake).

Your link is irrelevant because (a) New Zealand already has that specific problem in spades - it isn't a scare tactic here, and (b) while it is difficult to find unbiased links - you can try to avoid obviously biased links

Link about problems of shrinking population demographics:

https://www.250bpm.com/p/life-at-the-frontlines-of-demograph...

All of these countries had massive population increase in past 100 years. It is natural especially for high density, smaller size regions to experience a reversal in growth rates of population which is the natural and desired compensation to previous eras of huge population growth given finite space, and other resources and the zero-sum nature of all of this including political power and representation.

Importing foreigners makes your own domestic birth rates worse than they otherwise would be! Some levels of automation will make the overall labor needs lower than they have been in the past. Countries that import many millions of (often) 3rd world populations or in general more bodies wherever they come from that must be employed (or subsidized by taxpayers) and also that are going to want to be married and have children are simply going to exacerbate the fiscal problems, the social problems, the unemployment problems, the family formation problems, while creating resource constraints you otherwise wouldn't have.

So much of this nonsense talk of need for immigrants is policy based on propping up the asset values and lifestyles and subsidization of the elderly which apart even from immigration is arguably the 2nd biggest travesty western nations are subjecting their young people to (prioritizing everything related to interest of the old at the expense of the young, see: COVID). The natural course of events MUST be population growth slow/decline until elderly die out and while you back-fill growth from younger people from your own country to have their own ability to grow, buy real estate, have families, have jobs, not pay exorbitant transfer payments to old and immigrants either through social services, or lost wages. Stealing this opportunity by giving this slack away to foreigners is just so evil in my view.

The carrying-capacity in terms of "comfortable lifestyle" akin to what our recent ancestors experienced in their nations during peacetime is what it is, and when we bump up against those limits, we can't fool ourselves that whatever pain comes next can be solved by causing other worse problems of filling our countries up with more people we have to compete against for everything and making already tough resource constraints worse. How much more unhappy and hopeless for housing and family formation will Australians be as millions and millions more immigrants come in? Why would anyone want that and how does it solve whatever demographics problem you think exists? The solution is population decline, which would help young people. Of course if there is some iron law of politics or the universe that states young people must bear the burden of subsidizing the complete comfort of old people from birth to death, well then we're already screwed.

I don't think it's just anecdotal it's a loud chorus over many decades of popular opposition from large portions of western nations in our supposed "democracies" that is ignored by most players in politics.

https://machielreyneke.com/blog/vampires-longevity/#:~:text=...

“Why shouldn’t our old people, namely those who have no other recourse, likewise suck the blood of a youth?”

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