[typon]

Even though it feels depressing right now, I think the post-boomer world is going to be an amazing place.

[somenameforme]

There's an interesting aspect of fertility rate that most don't know. They also determine the exact age ratios within a society! Imagine a population has a global fertility rate of 1 (and in Singapore it's even lower, though not globally - yet). That means each successive generation is half as large as the one prior. And we can approximate the age of fertility as between 20 and 40. So now let's start with 1 newborn and we can work backwards from there.

---

1 new born ->

2 20-40 year olds ->

4 40-60 year olds ->

8 60-80 year olds ->

16? 80-100 year olds

---

Just ignoring the 80-100 year olds, we end up in a scenario where you have 6 people in the working age for every 8 people of retirement age. And if life expectancy inches up, then it may be closer to 6 working age people for every 16+ retirees.

You can see this visibly playing out in Singapore right now with their population pyramid [1]. They had a nice solid pyramid in the past, so you end up with a very healthy economy and society - lots of young people for relatively fewer older people. But as fertility rates declined you can see it start to flip, so right now it looks a bit like a vase, and in the future it will be an upside down pyramid.

So basically as the old folks move on, they are replaced by even more old folks. And this never really stops until we return to being societies that are having enough children to sustain ourselves.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Singapore#/med...

[somewhereoutth]

Indeed. And this burden of a top heavy population pyramid is a major reason for not having [more] kids - a vicious circle, which, if left to continue, will result in humanity simply evaporating.

A pretty depressing place, with whole towns and cities abandoned, as the dwindling population huddles closer together. Not just geography though, there would also be a retreat in the arts, sciences, etc as there are simply not enough people to maintain let alone advance these endeavours. Life would be about eking the last out of what was left over from the 'glory days', a sort of slow motion apocalypse.

[drekipus]

Thankfully there's infinite people from other countries who can migrate freely and replace the aging population, right?

(Serious question)

[justonceokay]

We will be them soon enough. Don’t cut your nose to spite your face

[typon]

We will be old, not boomers. Boomers are a special generation at a special moment in world history - they made decisions based on the limited amount of knowledge they had about how the world works and while some think those decisions have doomed us forever, I remain optimistic.

[fooker]

If we don't get into a world war, sure.

[GJim]

Nice bit of agism there.

[philwelch]

It’s more generational-cohort-ism.

[xboxnolifes]

Boomer isn't an age group, it's a generation.

[heavyset_go]

The next generation of the ownership class they raised will gleefully usher in the fascism some of their cohorts fought physically and ideologically against, and there isn't the threat of global communism to keep them in check anymore.

I wish I had your optimism.

[Gud]

The capitalist will NOT produce the rope that hangs him, but the tech nerd will design, and the labourer assemble, the robot that will replace them.

[837263292029]

What a shame communists failed every time they gained power.

Oh, and killed 145.000.000 people in the process.