[g9yuayon]

Honest question: why are we so afraid of population decline? For people on the left, it means less consumption, less environment impact, less carbon footprint, and in general fewer damn evil people who are destroying the mother earth. For the right, everyone is responsible for their own destiny including their retirement life so they worry about their retirement spending solely on their own anyway. In practice, Japan seems to be fine. In particular their young people have so many job openings to fill.

So, what exactly are we worrying about? The social security is not sustainable? The medical cost will go through the roof? There's no enough military power? There won't be enough consumption to support the growth (in that case, why do we have to keep growing? Why can't we just stay where we are? Again, not rhetorical questions but honestly curious about the answers)?

[simonsarris]

Mostly because when social security was designed there was a retiree to worker ration of 1:130. Today it is closer to 1:3. Soon it will be 1:2.

We already allocate immense resources to the elderly (over 50% of US federal budget is for old people + national debt, where debt accrues for fungible reasons but the biggest explosion is money transfers/healthcare to the old). We have a few levers we can pull there - we don't have to give money transfers to the wealthiest members of what are, in fact, the wealthiest generation by taking from younger people. We could maybe means-test some of it. But they are politically hairy and come kind-of late. All that debt is essentially already borrowing from people who don't yet exist to pay off the old of today.

So it would be somewhat nice to have more people in the future because we have already borrowed their money (or if you are 30, our money).

That makes things difficult. Even if we did not set up the entire USG to do this, having more retirees than workers makes it hard economically. You could imagine a decade where every 4th person is working in a nursing home, basically.

But other than the massive looming financial crisis and the care problem, yeah, its not so bad.

[46493168]

>In practice, Japan seems to be fine

Japan seems to be fine? Japan, which created its own lost generation [0]? Japan, which has a word for "death by overwork" [1]? Japan, which has 9 million abandoned homes in ghost towns [2], the highest public debt in the developed world [3], and healthcare system under strain because old people are being left there for no other reason than there's no one to care for them? [4]

In what way is Japan doing fine?

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoshi

[2]https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/15/in-japans-ageing-co...

[3]https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/123015/3-eco...

[4]https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7533196/

[Herring]

+ The far right is rising there too.

[phendrenad2]

I haven't been able to get a good answer to this, but gently asking this question of people around me, I've noted that even people who aren't usually tuned-in to social issues have an opinion on it (specifically that it's vaguely a bad thing). I suspect that there's a bit of latent tribalism inherent in people. People don't like to see their "tribe" get smaller. It just instinctively gives people anxiety. (I somehow dodged this sentiment, maybe a benefit of my neurodivergence).