China Population Set for 51 Million Drop as Pro-Birth Moves Fail (bloomberg.com) 125
An anonymous reader shares a report: China's population is expected to shrink by 51 million -- more than the size of California -- over the next decade as policymakers struggle to reverse the country's falling birth rate, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. By 2035, the population is expected to drop to 1.36 billion, levels not seen since 2012, down from a peak of 1.41 billion in 2021, BI senior industry analyst Ada Li estimates.
There could be a temporary spike in births in 2024 as the Year of the Dragon is considered an auspicious time to have children. But past single-year surges in birth rates have been short-lived, and this year may be no exception, especially with marriage rates at an all-time low, Li said. China faces a looming population crisis, with the United Nations projecting it could shrink to half its current size by 2100.
There could be a temporary spike in births in 2024 as the Year of the Dragon is considered an auspicious time to have children. But past single-year surges in birth rates have been short-lived, and this year may be no exception, especially with marriage rates at an all-time low, Li said. China faces a looming population crisis, with the United Nations projecting it could shrink to half its current size by 2100.
Isn't that good news? (Score:5, Informative)
I feel the Earth is overpopulated. There will be more place for everyone. People will tell stories about how people of earlier times lived their lives to pay endless EMIs, all for a house. GDP might shrink, but quality of life will improve for everyone.
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Indeed. I wonder for whom exactly it'll become a self-proclaimed crisis.
As if we lived in a crisis 100 years or longer ago.
Re:Isn't that good news? (Score:5, Informative)
The crisis is not that the population is decreasing; the crisis is that the number of senior citizens is growing while the number of working age people (the ones who drive the economy) is shrinking. This problem is not unique to China either; most industrialized countries are either facing this problem or will soon.
Re:Isn't that good news? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Indeed. Having potentially 4 seniors trying to live off the productivity of 1 citizen who is also trying to raise a kid is a bad thing. Especially if they don't have the kid to replace themselves because the seniors are sucking up all the excess already.
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Re: Isn't that good news? (Score:2)
Not much more you can ask people over 70 to do.
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The crisis is not that the population is decreasing; the crisis is that the number of senior citizens is growing while the number of working age people (the ones who drive the economy) is shrinking.
By the time this happens, the productivity of that one worker will be supplemented by that of several robots. The retirees will live as kings and queens.
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By the time this happens, the productivity of that one worker will be supplemented by that of several robots. The retirees will live as kings and queens.
That would be nice-- that's the Buckminister Fuller vision of the future-- but the way the current system works, the benefits of the robots goes to the people who own the robots, i.e., the stockholder class. Everybody else loses their jobs and has a subsistance-level living.
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It's all making a mountain of a mole heap. As if the world ends because we have a relative percentage more old people. Every time a change has been called a crisis, the world still continued revolving and humanity adapted and went on with their lives. It didn't end with the global pandemic, it will surely not end with more grey hairs.
Pensions didn't exist for centuries yet old and young people still lived on. There will be plenty of older people who will do their bit to support others or work part time and
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In a way Thanos was right.
Housing crisis and high inflation for basic products is driven by population growth. This is basic supply and demand logic.
Even Canada is eating crow on trying to grow their population through immigration.
https://www.ndtv.com/world-new... [ndtv.com]
I believe in immigration, being a migrant pretty much my entire life, but I also believe in processes to control undesirable side effects.
Inflation is about money (Score:3)
[...] and high inflation for basic products is driven by population growth. This is basic supply and demand logic.
Supply and demand is one reason why prices of goods can rise, but that explanation comes with conditions.
To draw a math analogy, you can use linear regression to find the optimal slope and intercept of a line that best explains the data, but that only works when the underlying mechanism giving the data is itself linear. You should only use that method and that explanation if the original condition (the underlying mechanism is linear) is met.
Supply and demand is conditioned on there being only one product un
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Housing crisis and high inflation for basic products is driven by population growth. This is basic supply and demand logic.
Pure unadulterated bullshit. There is no housing crisis in the US or Europe. None. Nada. Zilch. The number of housing units per capita is at or near the historical highs. At no time in human history, we had more housing units per family. And the population growth has basically stopped, the US and Europe population is not declining (faster) only because of immigration.
What _is_ happening is the density crisis. Cities became a black hole of density, making more and more people to move into ever denser condi
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The removal of the need to take your car with you will make it physically possible to use a bus for a portion of a trip, so there is some chance it will actually help buses. IMHO that will only happen though if the bus is both faster and cheaper than using the self-driving taxi, and that seems unlikely without isolated lanes for the buses, and probably rails to handle the necessary speed and size and to negotiate narrow tunnels.
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Pretty much the only area where buses excel is transportation to/from hotspots, like sporting arenas, where just the raw throughput is the problem.
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My feeling is that the "share" part is a problem. There is a big disadvantage in speed and convenience of sharing a taxi over using it exclusively to get between your location and a destination. If a system is able to overcome that disadvantage, it seems like it can just as easily overcome it for larger numbers of "sharers".
Self-driving taxis could concentrate a large crowd to a "shared" location (let's call it a "train station"), without being "shared" themselves, I really don't think people will use a "sh
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Self-driving taxis could concentrate a large crowd to a "shared" location (let's call it a "train station"), without being "shared" themselves, I really don't think people will use a "shared" vehicle without this.
Just doing one transit hop can easily add 15-20 minutes to your commute. It can be viable in some cases.
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Both Paris and London (and I suspect some others) are building extensive ring-layout subway systems for precisely the reason you state. Buses (unless they have isolated bus lanes) won't work because they will be stuck in traffic on the ring roads.
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What _is_ happening is the density crisis. Cities became a black hole of density, making more and more people to move into ever denser conditions via economic forces.
Maybe somewhere in the world, but in the US, no, cities are not growing.
Want to fix that? Promote suburbs and exurbs, via remote work and cap-and-trade for dense office space.
Suburbs and exurbs are in fact growing, exactly opposite to what you imply.
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Maybe somewhere in the world, but in the US, no, cities are not growing.
Look at the Seattle population ( https://www.macrotrends.net/gl... [macrotrends.net] ), NYC population ( https://www.macrotrends.net/gl... [macrotrends.net] ), Chicago population ( https://www.macrotrends.net/gl... [macrotrends.net] ). Most of large cities in the US are growing, at the expense of rural areas and small cities.
Suburbs and exurbs are in fact growing, exactly opposite to what you imply.
Exurbs started to grow after COVID, but this is not sustainable unless the dense office space is regulated. Suburbs have mostly been growing near larger cities.
I actually did an analysis of that using the Census data.
Cities aren't growing [Re:Isn't that good news?] (Score:2)
I stand by what I said. In the US, cities are not growing. Here's a good paper on overall demographic trends-- notice the large gain in suburbs and exurbs, and no growth in cities: https://www.pewresearch.org/so... [pewresearch.org]
That's from 2018, but the most recent census data shows no change in trend.
Learn the difference between cherry picked data and statistical data, and when you can tell the difference, get back to me,
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The overall stats are also misleading, you need to break them down by city size. It's really bi-modal, smaller cities are stagnant, larger cities are growing.
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It doesn't conflict with what I said. Rural counties are declining (as your article says), and cities are growing.
Cities:
2000: 31%
2021-16: 31%
I'd call that "not growing."
The suburbs that are growing are mostly located near the cities,
First, that's the very definition of suburbs: suburbs are located near cities. Second, your statement was "Cities became a black hole of density, making more and more people to move into ever denser conditions."
Do you claim the suburbs, that are actually growing (unlike cities), are "black holes of density"?
, and the growth is driven by the cities. Suburbs just become "extended city cores" in essence.
Your statement was "Promote suburbs and exurbs."
Now you're saying "wait, but not those suburbs. Other suburbs. Suburbs that aren't near cities.
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Yes, but housing per capita increases aren't enough to offset the decreasing number of children and general aging of society. When you have two parents and four kids, one house is fine for six people. When family size is four and there's less children in general, you need more housing.
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Look at it this way. Let's say there are 50 homes owned by 100 people. If the 100 people consist of 50 married couples, the home ownership is rate is 100%. (Woohoo!) But if the 100 people consist of 100 single people, the home ownership rate is now 50% (Oh the humanity! Our parents had so much more!)
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Housing crisis and high inflation for basic products is driven by population growth. This is basic supply and demand logic.
Pure unadulterated bullshit. There is no housing crisis in the US or Europe. None. Nada. Zilch. The number of housing units per capita is at or near the historical highs. At no time in human history, we had more housing units per family. And the population growth has basically stopped, the US and Europe population is not declining (faster) only because of immigration.
What _is_ happening is the density crisis. Cities became a black hole of density, making more and more people to move into ever denser conditions via economic forces. Want to fix that? Promote suburbs and exurbs, via remote work and cap-and-trade for dense office space.
And you don't have any other options. You can't "JuSt bUiLd mORe" out of high housing prices in cities. No large city in Europe, Japan, or the US managed to do that. Not a single one. Not Tokyo, not Berlin, not Moscow.
If the definition of avoiding a housing crisis is having the number of housing units equal the number of households across the entire country, then maybe we don't have a housing crisis. However, people want to live in certain places due to work, geography, family/friends, etc. Within those localities, there are some places with a housing crisis and others less so.
Here in Silicon Valley, building more housing units is not helping with increasing affordable housing. The new units being built are expensive
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I believe in immigration, being a migrant pretty much my entire life, but I also believe in processes to control undesirable side effects.
Every immigration is accompanied by an emigration. Every Indian or African doctor imported to the West means a doctor has left India or Africa.
As a man of the world (aren't you) what is the point? Do India and Africa have too many doctors?
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In a way Thanos was right.
Housing crisis and high inflation for basic products is driven by population growth. This is basic supply and demand logic.
Even Canada is eating crow on trying to grow their population through immigration.
https://www.ndtv.com/world-new... [ndtv.com]
I believe in immigration, being a migrant pretty much my entire life, but I also believe in processes to control undesirable side effects.
The US economy has been propped up by immigration for many years now. If it weren't for immigrants in low paying jobs, prices would be higher, and the supply of services and products would be lower. If Trump goes through with his immigrant purge, we'll get to experience this firsthand.
Re:Isn't that good news? (Score:5, Insightful)
For China, this is extremely bad. Several studies are suggesting China has overcounted it's population by 100-200 million people for a host of reasons. The issue here is that the most productive people in an economy, who generate the majority of tax receipts to the government as well as economic activity, are people in their late 20's to late 40's. Below age 20 (kids) they are a cost to society, and as people retire (over 50 and later) they become a cost due to various social safety net programs.
For China, because of their rapid industrialization and rapid rise in life expectancy, not to mention their one-child policies and such, the dropping population is with the wrong demographic: young people. It's speculated that China now has an even number of people over 50 as under, and the current generations of young people, whom will be working and paying into the system while people are drawing out, is just too small. If you have more people drawing benefits and fewer people paying into benefits, you have a very serious problem. This coupled with the fact that in China, there are not that many social safety nets; most people's retirement plan is "my kids will take care of me". This puts people in their 30's and 40's in a very sticky situation, where a couple without any siblings both most work to support 2-4 grandparents and possibly one child of their own, let alone not 2.
So this demographic issue could upend the Chinese economy in 10-20 years almost completely, which would be bad for everyone all around.
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Population growth is not slowing - It has completely stopped almost everywhere outside Africa.
Everywhere else, the population is already shrinking - the effects just aren't being seen yet.
Re:Isn't that good news? (Score:4, Insightful)
But those countries rapid population growth is seriously offset by the developed economies, many of which are far below replacement levels now. South Korea, Japan, many parts of Europe, all have aging populations and not nearly enough young people. The US is doing ok, but mostly due to immigration and the fact that the US in general readily accepts other cultures, at least when compared to China or Germany or France where being "Chinese" is tied to your ethnicity as opposed to your nationality like it is in the US.
But it's definitely slowing all over; India is now by far the world's most populous country and is growing still for example.
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It's sort of good news. A gradual population decline is a good thing. A crash is not. It's rather like deflation, 2% a year is easily managed, 10% a year is not.
Five million a year out of 1.4 billion doesn't sound too serious to me. That's one third of 1%. If Gina is wound so tight that even that collapses them they were in bad shape anyway.
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The Earth isn't overpopulated though. ... the smaller estimates almost all are doing things like assuming people are eating lots of meat daily, driving large personal cars and have giant American size homes ...
In other words we can increase the population a lot more if we accept living in pods and eat burgers made from bugs. The point of this?
World overpopulation is overstated (Score:2)
The biggest reason you feel the Earth is overpopulated is probably because of a lifetime of Malthusian propaganda, where we should have all starved a couple centuries earlier. Technological development, which kind of requires a large population to generate the excess for the research and development, efficiency of scale, has negated that at every turn.
Still, we've also reached the point where pretty much every "developed" economy has negative population growth. Some, like South Korea, are looking at a cli
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I totally understand and share your sentiment. I used to think exactly that myself. However, I'm no longer sure that the Earth is actually overpopulated. The biosphere is a massively-interconnected network of organisms.
The total biomass of homo sapiens is hardly more than a rounding error on the total biomass of the planet, although that's decidedly not true when you include all anthropogenic biomass, but that's a problem specific to our current methods of food production, not population size.
We currently
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I feel the Earth is overpopulated. There will be more place for everyone. People will tell stories about how people of earlier times lived their lives to pay endless EMIs, all for a house. GDP might shrink, but quality of life will improve for everyone.
We had a hell of a lot less humans on this earth when the Romans were conquering and humanity was enslaving.
Numbers alone, do not prove the quality of life will improve for everyone.
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I feel the Earth is overpopulated. There will be more place for everyone. People will tell stories about how people of earlier times lived their lives to pay endless EMIs, all for a house. GDP might shrink, but quality of life will improve for everyone.
The problem isn't a lower GDP. It's a lower per capita GDP coupled with fewer services and products because the economy will be out of whack. Oh, and economic problems invariably lead to populist leaders that blame their problems on a scapegoat, including foreign scapegoats, thus leading to war.
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I feel the Earth is overpopulated. There will be more place for everyone. People will tell stories about how people of earlier times lived their lives to pay endless EMIs, all for a house. GDP might shrink, but quality of life will improve for everyone.
No, all news has to be manipulated into bad news. I don't know whether you live in the US, but right now, as I speak, there is a health movement that believes manufacturers are making food too delicious.
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The "bad" news I keep hearing is the growing elderly are going to want labor done for them. But last I checked there's already a way to buy people's labor, you trade your own crystalized labor (money) for it. I know I'll certainly be expected to.
If this is intended to be serious, and not irony: no, this merely shows that you don't understand what money is or how it works on a macroeconomic level.
The fact that you can buy labor with money does not mean that labor is money. Some person still has to perform the labor.
It's like saying that, if there's a drought, no problem, I will just trade my own crystalized water (money) for it.
The birthrate worriers just want workers (Score:5, Insightful)
The "birth rate catastrophe" all over the world is not a real problem. The only people it's a problem for are the corporate business owners that are worried they won't have an endless steady stream of workers to chain to their machines. That's what this whole concern is about.
For the other 99% of the population, it's a good thing. It means less competition for jobs and housing and other necessities and luxuries for future generations.
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I suspect the competition for jobs will increase instead, because there will be fewer of them. Less need for housing, less need for products, even less need for storefronts beyond what amazon and other online retailers will cause to go out of business, less need for agricultural land, less need for government services, lower demands for healthcare... all leading to fewer jobs. Increased automation will reduce jobs producing fewer products further. And the jobs that exist will be higher end, leaving more of
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I suspect the competition for jobs will increase instead, because there will be fewer of them.
Nope. Fewer workers and proportionately fewer consumers would be a wash. What you would get would be some oversupply of factory capacity, as the output decreases,
However, what happens first is that have fewer workers but not fewer consumers (because old people leave the workforce but continue to consume). So you have a relative undersupply of workers, leading to decreased competition for jobs.
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Short term vs long term. Let's just say it will be bumpy.
Exactly.
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You know that's where good stuff like your food and your clothing and your housing comes from, right?
"Less competition for jobs" is nice in your role as a job hunter. In your role as a consumer, it's a synonym for "inflation."
If you are young, the upcoming rapid population drop is going to make YOUR "golden years" quite difficult. (Absen
Re:The birthrate worriers just want workers (Score:4, Interesting)
In nations that live closer to the bone and having steeper population drop, it's worse - lifespan is going to plummet.
You probably end up like Japan - retirement isn't, can't, be a thing. As long as you can work, you have to work. Even if you're 90, if you're a homebuilder, you're still building homes.
I use homebuilding as an example because I remember seeing a special showing a bunch of geriatric Japanese workers putting a house up. Yes, they were very skilled at it.
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This - for all the talk about about tax receipts and stuff its not about that, its going to be about having enough bread.
Money is line on a ledger, those can get changes with some degree of violence ranging from none, to a lot. What you can't do is get a septuagenarian to harvest much grain, nor can you get them to roll around in the dirt and replace the transmission in the otherwise fully automated GPS controlled combine harvester for that matter. I have my doubts as to if you can send a full automated lif
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Fewer people is good in some cases, bad in others. If having fewer people were always better, the logical conclusion is that zero people is th
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... a lower population means fewer service providers. ... but it'll suck when you want to see a doctor and there are fewer of them around. There will also be fewer people to build houses
But there will be fewer people needing to see the doctor, fewer people needing houses. As it happens, the wait to see a doctor in the UK these days is far longer than it was when my parents were young and the population was half what it is now : in those days I'm told you just turned up and were seen, but these days you need an appointment 1-2 weeks ahead. Anyway, the optimum distribution of skills within the population is a different matter from the total number.
If having fewer people were always better, the logical conclusion is that zero people is the best number. The simple truth is there is no ideal number, only trade offs between alternatives.
That's just silly. There is obviously an o
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It means less competition for jobs and housing and other necessities and luxuries for future generations.
On the contrary. The idea that there are a fixed number of jobs is the Lump of Labour Fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. More people mean more people doing more things. It means more ideas, more discoveries, more books, more new music, all of that. As for ho
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The "birth rate catastrophe" all over the world is not a real problem. The only people it's a problem for are the corporate business owners that are worried they won't have an endless steady stream of workers to chain to their machines.
Manufacturing productivity is rising. No, corporate business owners don't need an "endless steady stream of workers to chain to their machines." Manufacturing is a very small part of the economy.
What does need workers is the service economy. Older people need services. When you have a large number of people needing services, and a smaller number of people providing services, that makes a problem.
However, it has an advantage: as the pool of workers shrinks, the wages increase. This effect was seen, for exa
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The "birth rate catastrophe" all over the world is not a real problem. The only people it's a problem for are the corporate business owners that are worried they won't have an endless steady stream of workers to chain to their machines. That's what this whole concern is about.
Sorry, but even ChatGPT would call bullshit on that one. AI is still very much THE answer for greedy execs hell bent on chaining the cheapest solution to a machine that can be worked 24/7. And forget this perfect AI defense. Even good-enough AI will be good enough to replace the average worker. And that is a LOT of workers.
For the other 99% of the population, it's a good thing. It means less competition for jobs and housing and other necessities and luxuries for future generations.
If they can artificially inflate the price of a gallon of gas practically overnight AND tie that cost to the overall cost of damn near every other commodity you rely to be moved close
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However, anyone with any grasp of mathematics must realise that it cannot go on for ever like that - the Earth has a fixed area and fixed amount of natural resources. You can sque
You like Social Security?...a functioning economy? (Score:2)
The "birth rate catastrophe" all over the world is not a real problem. The only people it's a problem for are the corporate business owners that are worried they won't have an endless steady stream of workers to chain to their machines. That's what this whole concern is about.
For the other 99% of the population, it's a good thing. It means less competition for jobs and housing and other necessities and luxuries for future generations.
You like Social Security, right? There are several legitimate worries: 1. less workers paying taxes into social programs. 2. less customers for every business. Long-term? A lower population is a good thing, but short-term?...well a lot of people are going to get FUCKED, especially by the boomers...and for once it's not because of their many shitty inconsiderate decisions, but because of their sheer size as a demographic. I'm late Gen X, my taxes are going to be a LOT higher than those of my parents
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The "birth rate catastrophe" all over the world is not a real problem. The only people it's a problem for are the corporate business owners that are worried they won't have an endless steady stream of workers to chain to their machines.
Errr no. Not in the slightest. In fact corporations are one of the few groups who *aren't* concerned. The issue is more fundamentally that we have built an entire society on the concept of growth, to the point where when we don't grow for two consecutive quarters the entire economy goes into a panic mode. The concept of growth drives things such as your ability to one day retire: someone has to pay for you when you burden the medical system and stop paying taxes.
The people most worried about birth rate drop
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They *are* doing that.
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No it does not sound like they are allowing immigration (of "non skilled" workers) even though a lot of people think it would help: https://www.ispionline.it/en/p... [ispionline.it].
I think I was getting confused with stories about internal migration, where they are trying to fill the jobs by getting the rural population to move to cities. I guess that is the same thing if you assume the rural and urban areas are different countries.
Welding people into their homes will do that (Score:2)
For all the sinophiles and CCP shills in the audience...y'all do realize that this is a country that literally laid seige to its own cities for almost a year straight? In what world is that a morale-building exercise that inspires the confidence and hope young adults usually need to feel in their lizard brains as a precondition of reproducing?
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Declining birthrates are happening in most first world countries. Pretty much just means that China is joining the club.
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Oh, China have been overcounting their population by hundreds of millions for years. The root cause is their one child policy that favors male baby and massive amount of aborted or killed female ones.
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Population growth there was way faster under a far *more* oppressive regime, so your explanation is wrong.
Re: Welding people into their homes will do that (Score:2)
Yes, but they weren't actually literally locking you into your own apartment.
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Mao used house arrest. Though you were probably lucky if that is what happened.
This is a problem for America too (Score:2)
Not unique to China (Score:2)
Every country outside Africa has a shrinking population.
What's more, demographers are *constantly* having to revise their trends downwards as they underestimate how quickly societies stop having kids as they progress. It is accelerating exponentially.
End the perpetual growth ideology (Score:3)
People really ought to be thinking about what a post growth economy looks like, because right now it looks an awful lot like war until the population decreases enough to start growing again.
Is that really what you want for your family?
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Yeah, it's always governments and economists that insist that endlessly growing the population is a good thing.
Maybe for tax collectors, and businesses....but not for society or the environment.
Maybe in China, but Russia ... (Score:3)
Russia bans 'child-free propaganda' to try to boost birth rate [reuters.com]
Russia's lower house of parliament voted unanimously on Tuesday to ban what authorities cast as pernicious propaganda for a child-free way of life, hoping to boost a faltering birth rate.
The law, expected to be swiftly approved by the upper house of parliament and Putin ...
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Obvious Solution (Score:2)
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And, I'm not convinced that Africa will be adding as many people as projected. Some parts of Africa are already experiencing the transitions that sunk birthrates in more advanced countries, and a huge chunk of the continent is basically on fi
This problem could be easily solved (Score:2)
Create a hookers and blow dream vacation for pre-retirement older people. They get a year or five years or whatever will attract people to it, where they are catered to with drugs, sex and whatever else they might desire. At the end of that time, they gently go to sleep and expire. Those who don't choose this option get to age and die as normal.
Fine tune the conditions to get the uptake you desire.
Amusing, but there's one problem...boomer honor... (Score:2)
Create a hookers and blow dream vacation for pre-retirement older people. They get a year or five years or whatever will attract people to it, where they are catered to with drugs, sex and whatever else they might desire. At the end of that time, they gently go to sleep and expire. Those who don't choose this option get to age and die as normal.
Fine tune the conditions to get the uptake you desire.
Everybody talks a big game about mortality until it is time to die. Like that saying "there are no atheists in fox holes". Nearly everyone who signs up for this will get cold feet on the 5th year and demand the latest and most expensive medical treatment to repair their livers. I like where you're going with it!...but how much do you trust the boomers retiring to "go out with honor?" :)
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The law would have to make the contract inviolable. You signed up, you are doomed. Might as well have fun. Otherwise it doesn't work.
The government does this with security clearance stuff, so it's not like it's impossible.
I think i'd take this option, and lots of people with chronic diseases or say family histories of dementia might be well advised to take this. Nice government headstone marking you as a patriot also :-)
the only solution...make parenthood less shitty (Score:2)
This means:
Affordable housing
Subsidized childcare
Parental leave
Subsidized medical care, especially for children
Either make minimum wage a living wage, god forbid...o
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Usually when people talk about overpopulation they mean that there's not enough resources to go around. Space for all the people isn't the issue.
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The world is quite empty.
Obviously never been to the UK, India,
Re:There's little evidence of an issue either way. (Score:4, Informative)
Try this - we are starting to experience severe negative consequences from the resource use required to support our desired standard of living.
If we halve the population, we immediately halve that issue. All those tourist sites getting locked down? Open again. CO2 emissions? Cut in half overnight. Water use? Enough for everyone!
Imagine if we dropped to 1/10th how much better we'd have it. We could increase our personal resource usage while still having much less net pollution, more personal space, etc.
So yes, we're over populated.
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Beat me to it. If I had mod points I wouldn't be commenting. :D
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There's a huge difference between making half the population disappear and deciding that a population decline that is already happening isn't a bad thing.
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Economics doesn't work like that. You have to address specific numbers in the context of material availability, not relative numbers compared to prior circumstances. Halving the population does not - repeat NOT - inherently benefit anyone unless you have by sheer chance been in a situation where there were twice as many people as the equilibrium condition.
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Fewer people means a reduction in our gross impact on a finite biosphere even if our per capital impact remains stable.
This is Fact with a capital F. To deny it is to deny reality.
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It has nothing to do with space and everything to do with energy usage per capita.
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That seems like fantastic wishful thinking. Forty thousand years ago, when the largest beasts all went extinct, stone age cultures were born that survived a lot longer than we have, with very little (by comparison) technology. That's a much more likely scenario than humans living off-Earth.
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There's enough time that humans won't even be humans anymore.
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The probability of humans surviving in for "a long time" off the Earth is dwarfed by the probability that a much smaller number of humans will survive on the Earth for a very long time. The two numbers aren't even comparable. Exponential growth on a finite world does not work in the long term. We might find that out in the very somewhat near term.
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