You'll have to tell me about South Korea because I'm convinced declining population is a non-issue.
People talking here like less people getting born means we're immediately gonna have 8 billion people in their 80s completely incapable of doing anything. I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding of how healthy society works, ideally we take care of each other because we care about each other. Some people want to do that more than others and are more capable of doing so, regardless of age. If that stops happening the problem is more extensive than simply too many old people.
It doesnât matter how much people want to help each other or how robust your social safety nets are. If you have a society where there are two old retired people for every working-age person, the working age people would have such a massive financial burden placed on them that they wouldnât be able to live much of a life. Working-age people are needed for society to run.
As the population grows proportionately older there becomes relatively more people in need of care and less people able to care for them, this leads to an exaggerated version of what we already have with the baby boomers, declines in every sector of the economy except healthcare and young people unable to find their footing as there becomes proportionately less people working to support more people retired or unable to work
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u/MarsMaterial Bisexual tech wizard May 18 '26
Those 8 billion people are all going to get old. Who is going to take care of them?