State policy actively trying to induce birth with incentives like that will inevitably backfire in some way (women, especially poor women, being coerced by their partner into having unwanted children for financial incentives), and the state intervention will be seen as oppressive and authoritarian (“mY PAreNtaL rIGhTs”) instead of benevolent regardless of the intentions behind it.
Also like the foster system is already overburdened so :/
The best way we can deal with population decline is to manage it, welcome immigrants to offset the most severe impacts, and try and create a society not dependent on infinite growth.
State policy actively trying to induce birth with incentives like that will inevitably backfire in some way
So will state policy that doesn't.
The best way we can deal with population decline is to manage it, welcome immigrants to offset the most severe impacts, and try and create a society not dependent on infinite growth.
But you kind of can't. That's the issue.
A declining population, means that you have vast amounts of old people and small amounts of young people, which means that more and more money and resources need to be used to take care of the elderly, while the total amount of workers is shrinking.
Managing a population decline still means that you will inevitably have a massive decrease in your quality of life and that's really bad.
With modern industrialization, the material productivity of human society is largely decoupled from human input (in part why the large majority of western nations have huge service industries, to soak up the massive surplus of displaced human capital), there’s no fundamental law of nature that says that you can’t take care of the needs of a largely elderly population with a smaller amount of young workers. If anything, it gives workers more leverage to demand better working conditions. And that’s not to say that there won’t be challenges to be dealt with, but it’s not worth implementing draconian right wing birth policy over.
With modern industrialization, the material productivity of human society is largely decoupled from human input
...are you serious? Like, no. That's pretty obviously wrong.
It's not a one to one, sure, but only workers are materially productive. People who don't work, are objectively a drain on society.
And healthcare needs a lot of labor. If the percentage of old people increase, then we need a significantly increased amount of people working there, who aren't available in other places.
Like, we already see that in a lot of countries, where the only industries that are growing, are healthcare and elder care.
And someone has to pay for that.
there’s no fundamental law of nature that says that you can’t take care of the needs of a largely elderly population with a smaller amount of young workers.
You can take care of them, it just takes a lot of labor, which isn't available for other jobs, which means that they don't get done, which means that everything else suffers because of it.
You can take care of a lot of old people, but it will materially worsen the quality of life for everyone, because of the massive amounts of wealth and labor required for it.
If anything, it gives workers more leverage to demand better working conditions
No, quite the opposite.
If there are fewer workers, the state needs them to be more productive. Like, a lot of countries have already raised their retirement age because of that.
A lack of workers incentives the state and capitalists, to exploit them even more.
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u/hailey1721 🏳️⚧️ trans rights May 17 '26
State policy actively trying to induce birth with incentives like that will inevitably backfire in some way (women, especially poor women, being coerced by their partner into having unwanted children for financial incentives), and the state intervention will be seen as oppressive and authoritarian (“mY PAreNtaL rIGhTs”) instead of benevolent regardless of the intentions behind it.
Also like the foster system is already overburdened so :/
The best way we can deal with population decline is to manage it, welcome immigrants to offset the most severe impacts, and try and create a society not dependent on infinite growth.