The Great Depopulation

A lot of the people who want to have children simply cannot - they have done the math and it’s a wildly financially irresponsible path.

Wages are too low

Both parents need to work just to survive

Homes are too expensive

Food is too expensive

Clothing is too expensive

Post-secondary education has become a scam

One serious sickness and - in America, at least - you are bankrupt for decades

The list goes on and on.

The number of childless couples will go up as the need for children decreases - this is obvious from places like Norway and Finland - but a focus on strong nuclear families with little to no financial stresses arising out of having children will encourage most who do want them to actually try to have them.

He had me up till the end. Talking about the low birth rate in Japan. “If you want to keep the population steady you import foreigners.” Um. Ask a Japanese person (any person at random) if they want or will allow that. You’ll always get the same answer.

So that leaves us with some populations dropping by 90% in a matter of decades (which is wild to think about). And the associated problems of top heavy economies. (More old retired people needing medical care than there are young people to support them)

And that brings us to wildly off remark #2 “If, thanks to artificial intelligence and robotics, a lot of jobs can be done by computers and robots, and that generates a lot of economic growth and that helps us to pay for Social Security, that will make the transition much easier.”

Ok. Consider the top 7 companies in AI. Lest start with Amazon. (Because that’s where 90% of people host their compute, so they might just use bedrock) what does Amazon pay in corporate income tax? Zero. Well that’s not going to fund anything. Ok let’s do Google. They’re pretty big in ai. Both founders are moving out of state rather than pay the modest billionaire tax. Ok that one is out too.

Ok what about that dude making the mecha Hitler thing. Humm he’s taken more government money across his companies than they’ve paid in taxes. (Or said another way his activities are a net negative for government revenue)

Just sayin, that plan ain’t gunna work (ai paying for the top heavy demographic shift) I don’t know what’s going to happen but the rosy predictions are impossible so that only leaves less optimistic options.