World demographic collapse
While for the last fifty years or so the news has been reporting many issues that threatens to effect our lives there has been one problem that hasn't been really talked about and that there is a problem that world population is not only not growing but it is actually deceasing world wide. In many of the industrial countries of the world there is talk that there isn't going to be even younger working age people to do enough work to support those that are retired. I wonder what the thoughts are of the members of this forum on this subject.
Comments (39)
The labor shortage means a decrease in tax revenue for the state, which in turn means less state services for those who were promised retirement, healthcare, and so on, in their twilight years.
One might logically think that with a decreasing population, the size of the state would decrease in tandem, as it has less people to account for overall. Government for the people and all that. But the state refuses to decrease. So it will move to replace the waning population with new populations. Therefor immigration and campaigns to increase the birthrate is their only choice, and I suspect this is the way they will hitherto move.
Many countries have no social security like the US or Europe. The dynamics of aging and surviving do not rely solely on 'artificially' formed social security. The concepts of resourcefulness and adaptation have been around before social security was implemented.
If you mean that we would revert back the longevity that we've gained as a population because the comfort of social security is threatened, I'd like to hear about the relative costs to longer life and happiness. A five-year gain in longevity does not equate to five-year gain in happiness. The proof? Prior decades, when people lived 5 year less, but happier 5-year more.
This is an issue that gets talked about all the time, including here on the forum. The current world population is about 8 billion. Thats expected to reach about 11 billion within 70 years I think. Then its supposed to shrink. I dont think that takes into account the possible consequences of climate change.
It's the fertility rates that are dropping, all over the world and consistently over a long period now. Population will still increase for a while, because of increased life expectancy, but probably will start dropping rather sharply somewhere in the latter half of the century.
The long and short of it, is that it's good for the biosphere and bad for human societies.
Ecologically a lot of the issues are downstream of the sharp increase in population after the industrial revolution because we have taken in a lot of space and our production and consumption has become a strain on the natural world. From that perspective it is good that human population doesn't seem to be increasing indefinitely.
Economically and socially however, a society, or maybe rather our kind of modern societies, will have trouble keeping afloat. Economic growth is assumed and necessary because we rely on it to pay off our debts. For an economy to grow you typically need a constant influx of people of working age. Innovation, another necessity for economic growth, will presumably also decrease as the demographic ages because that generally comes from younger people.
Politically, parties and people tend to view it exclusively from one or the other perspective, even though both are true. It's easier to deny one or the other perspective, because the idea that both are true is rather unsatisfactory as the problem seems hard to solve then... either you get economic and social issues because of decline in population and a skewed demographic pyramid, or you get worse ecological problems because of ever growing economies which will eventually also cause social and economic issues.
I don't think the politics of it matter all that much either way, because policy efforts to increase fertility rates have hitherto been mostly unsuccessful.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/09/1065135/japan-automating-eldercare-robots/amp/
This article touches on some of the concerns: Population decline's effects on global economy.
South Korea is often held up as an example of negative growth that has passed the point of no return (where the present population no longer has the means to reverse negative growth.) The challenge is adapting to a no growth economy, which is foreign territory for a large chunk of the human population. AI and robots to the rescue?
There are enough people younger than 25 in the world -- 42%, +/-, to solve the problem of declining population, at least for a period of time. However, Europe and China would have to be open to admitting ethnically diverse people.
I have no idea how population will be distributed by age, location, and income in 100 or 200 years, under future conditions at least as good as the past 1 or 2 hundred years. "At least as good" is unlikely to prevail, if it hasn't already come to an end.
Global warming, rising and warming oceans, more irregular climate behavior, declining supplies of fresh water, changing disease patterns around the world, problems with food production, etc. ALL make future conditions probably very challenging and possibly catastrophic. Specific populations and economies may not just decline, they may crash. These will all affect demographic disorder.
All the data I see points to a 1% growth, decreasing steadily. Population is predicted to peek at 10.3 billion in 2084.
The relation between labour and tax was broken long ago. Labour force size and tax revenue are no longer tightly coupled, but the way tax systems are structured means they still matter. Tax on capital rather than labour can make good such shortfalls.
Currently everyone (except the Chinese) is in debt and countries are close to defaulting on their debt, or becoming crippled by it. Unless there is a global solution found to address this countries will begin to fail like dominoes. The vultures will move in and things are going to get messy. And `I havent factored in climate change yet.
Chinese debt is about 75% of GDP.
Obviously we will see a shift in demographics as people move into more technologically developed countries form their own as well as technological growth in said countries that have a surplus of younger people.
How this will pan out overall is for fortune-tellers and demogogues to weave whatever story best fits their agenda.
Ok, who did they borrow it off?
It would be interesting to know how much money is owed to the Chinese by comparison.
The USA is again outstanding in being a huge net debtor.
Australia is an interesting case, since it has such a high rate of Superanuation. An example of how the relation between labour an tax was broken. Wealth can be structured so that retirees are supported by accumulated savings and productivity, not simply by taxing the next generations wages. But not if it is concentrated in the hands of the few.
I took your point to be about the development of those countries - Brazil, Indonesia, Pakistan. As in, not about the population emigrating to Europe or North America. And that's a very good point - that is were the growth will be found for the next fifty years.
There are two main factors in the UK. The first is that those applying to stay are more readily accepted and the second is that the universities prefer international students because they pay more for their education than domestic students.
Overall, the UK is pretty strict when it comes to immigration. All that is counteracted by the number of applications for asylum and such.
Whoever is in power will keep immigration high because they have too ot the country fails very, very quickly.
Maybe people will not realise this straight away sadly?
I imagine it will be both the development of those countries domestically as well as the dispersion of manpower from them. I would never suggest it is simply one or the other. Maybe both at the same time, maybe one more than the other first, whatever, they will have a large populations of people looking to live their lives as best they can.
There is a growing feeling in the more right wing of the population that immigration should be drastically reduced, regardless of the consequences.
There is a necessary see-sawing action I feel. I think Isaiah Berlin views on political philosophy outline the major problems we are constantly faced with.
We have the same outcome here in Canada. It has caused some problems - as governments everywhere seemingly retreat from open borders, Canada under Mark Carney has tried to follow suit. But many colleges and universities were relying on these premiums and are now under threat of closing campuses, cancelling classes, etc.
Quoting I like sushi
I think it's pretty clear that a lot of politicians from wealthy nations, globally, are playing the immigration card to address demographic decline? Certainly the WEIRD world?
But I find it problematic that some hide this behind moral reasons for allowing immigration? I find the UK fascinating in this regard - I started reading conservative newspapers and websites a few years ago when I became concerned about living in a progressive bubble.
The coverage is so wildly different. So many progressive or centrist sources refuse to even mention issues like the small boat crossings, or the grooming gangs scandal - issues which obviously dominate on the right.
Our former PM used to scold critics of open-door immigration policies as racist - that strikes me as wildly unhelpful.
Have you or anyone else here read Eric Kaufmann's "Whiteshift"? The volume of data and analysis really helped me look at the issue outside of traditional ideological reference points.
The only thing I can be confident asserting is that immigration, globally, has become a fundamentally different enterprise in the past decade or so, and I fear too many politicians are stuck with old models.
The news is necessarily hyperbolic and sensationalised. I do not pay that much attention to it to be honest other than as a means of understanding how they are falling prey to popular trends or how stories misrepresent and confound for political gain.
What is not being said is more interesting and pertinent most of the time. What is presented is usually trival slop made out to be vastly more significant than it actual is. This has been the case for the news industry ever since its conception.
Here in the U.K., the government raids the superannuation (national insurance) funds regularly.
Bad timing, over the last few years (since the Brexit vote in 2016) the conservative leaning press in the U.K. has been going through a nervous breakdown, along with the Conservative Party. They finally lost touch with reality around the time of the 2019 general election and now are just babbling basket cases.
This is a serious problem in the U.K. because at least 90% of the media landscape is right leaning with maybe 40% veering sharply to the right. Even the one serious left leaning newspaper thats left, The Guardian, has become more centrist now. There is no representation of the left outside of social media.
Still none of this has changed the rates of immigration at all. There was a sudden halt in the numbers coming over from EU countries, but this was rapidly replaced by migrants from outside the EU. The small boats issue, despite being an intractable problem only contributes 4% to the immigration figures. It is only being shouted about because the right wing press in desperation (following the demise of the Tory party), is throwing everything behind Farage and overt racism is becoming normalised now in that endeavour.
An interesting observation I heard from a prominent commentator the other day was that it is considered now far worse, to be accused of being racist than to actually be racist. Also we have the weird spectacle of people going around erecting British and English flags on lampposts (covertly overnight) and then shouting why are you taking down our flags, its unpatriotic (when no one is actually taking any down) and this is my country and my flag I can fly it whenever I want.
If you want a level headed (sane) commentary on U.K. politics you couldnt do better than listen to James OBrien, on LBC radio, on Global player, 10.00am until 1pm U.K. time every weekday. He has kept a lot of people sane during these interesting times.
One thing that is rarely mentioned is how long actually this decrease of fertility has been going on, because population growth has increased by infant mortality dramatically falling (thanks to modern medicine etc.) and people living longer.
I think the main issue here is that authorities and academics has a genuine problem to handle this issue as it relates also to changes in behavior that is very difficult to actually point out specifically. History has shown just how badly authorities have forecasted the future: China and Singapore are perfect examples of authorities thinking that population growth will create a crisis like famines etc. where the actual history shows a totally different outcome. If you create more prosperity, people simply will have less children. A quite universal outcome in every country that has become more prosperous.
The real question which seldom seems to be answered is how our economic system that is fundamentally based on growth can handle the decrease of global population. Our financial system simply needs growth, just like the pension system. When the whole system is based on debt, you need that perpetual growth. If Japan (or now South Korea) shows us what will happen, the future seems to be of anemic growth.
Quoting I like sushi
If Elon Musk (and the kind) are worried about something, the issue will likely be treated as hyperbolic and sensationalized. Political discourse makes it so.
Yet this change won't be a dramatic event, but a thing that basically countries will cope, somehow, but it will have huge effects. Yet just like climate change, the real outcomes will be disguised as political crises that cannot be directly linked to such subtle change as this one. Just like climate change.
Quoting ssu
But you do see it now that the system will have to change... the stars are aligned (population decline, climate change, geopolitical shifts etc). Political crisis and conflict are typically the way these changes get implemented, in leaps and bounds, Trump is just the start of it.
I see the change coming with simply the society adapting to the "new normal" in a way that isn't obvious to everybody. Likely there's not going to be a "policy change" because of this because of the demographic transition, which btw. is now totally evident in Japan:
The consequences are basically hidden. Yet the fact is that population growth has been a key reason for economic growth: more people need more homes, more of everything, and the biggest investment ordinary people make is when they start a family, invest in a home raise children.
Once when the Stock bubble burst, the slow growth economy shows evidently in the Japanese stock market for decades. Let's face it, an investment strategy to buy the Nikkei index in 1989 wouldn't have been the best:
And then you have to take into account inflation, which makes the above graph even worse!
Hence when the we get the non-growth thanks to decreasing population, it will simple a prolonged recession with the symptoms that we are already seeing around us.
A lot more elderly people everywhere.
The difference now is that it will be happening on a global scale and in the centre of the 'empire' that conceived of and constituted the global order.
Also the Japanese are probably a little less prone to revolting than the western world.
There are these moments in history where a large enough group are fed up the current order and everything gets thrown in the balance, and you basically get a different system before and after.
Bookburnings and iconoclasm are not just some temporary outbursts of collective insanity, but a conscious effort to wipe away existing traditions. I think we might be due... but I hope you're right.
Hi Punshhh, thanks for the reply.
The Guardian was one of the papers I used to read that lead me to seek an escape from my progressive bubble. I used to find them serious.
I assume you have been a reader for while? I noticed a downturn towards woke dogma almost a decade back.
Not to dismiss concerns about media ownership / bias on the right. I read broadly as a counterweight to bias (hopefully).
Quoting Punshhh
4% is a lot of immigrants. Migrant hotels in smaller communities are raising difficult questions. Many of the protestors at those things, like the big London rally, seem to be 'ordinary moms' and such. Certainly, there are creepy elements, like the organizer of said London rally.
But 'a nation of strangers' seems a fair concern?
I support thoughtful immigration. I don't see that though, certainly not here in Canada. I do see people like our dearly departed leader Justin Trudeau calling opponents of immigration racist. That's not helping people have deep, meaningful conversations.
The grooming gang / rape gang scandal, these are a minority of migrants, but they also have to be considered a national scandal, no? A clear example of the worst sort of immigration policy - one that people refuse to discuss, for fear of giving offense?
I taught ESL in high school for years here in Toronto. I loved those kids. It was a different era of immigration, and we were lauded for our points-based system. I think naive, open-door approaches to immigration do a disservice to kids like the ones I taught.
With globalization skyrocketing, an ever-growing ease of maintaining an international identity of a local one, old approaches to immigration simply do not work the same as they used to.
Do you see no major concerns with UK - or EU, for that matter - immigration policy?
I dont buy newspapers, havent done for a long time. I follow a broad range of news outlets and commentators on Twitter and Bluesky and rely on U.K., Channel 4 News for broadcast news. Along with U.K. LBC radio, as I mentioned before.
In the U.K. what is referred to as Woke has been present since the early 1980s and hasnt increased particularly. In the 80s, it was called the looney left and in the 90s it was called political correctness What has increased is a populist backlash against it as a means to turn the electorate to the right. But the reason for this is not as an alternative, or correction to woke in our culture. That is a scape goat. The real reason is to steer the country towards a free market, neo-liberal agenda and follow the lead of the US. towards an Oligarch ruled, free market, utopia*.
Regarding immigration, the 4% is the proportion of the net migration who came in on the small boats. Roughly about 30,000 per year whereas the total net migration is around 600-700,000 per year.
I do see this as problematic, but more in regard of the increased pressures that we will face in the future due to climate change, than the current rate of immigration.
The small boats issue is symptomatic of this trend. As Asian and African countries struggle with the current economic climate, climate collapse and the spread of failed states. The flow of desperate migrants will only increase and countries on the front line, like Greece, Italy, Romania, Spain etc have it much worse than the U.K.
This is fertile ground for the rise of race based populism.
*Thatcher took up the neo-liberal ideology from the US in the 1980s and we have been drifting in that direction ever since.
The grooming gang scandal is a social problem, due to the cultural differences between the British population and the Asian, mainly Pakistani and Bangladeshi people who came in to the U.K. in the 1970/80s. Although in terms of grooming gangs, it wasnt such an anomaly as is portrayed in the media. There were and are many such gangs amongst the British community, which are not talked about. The problem which you highlight is the way it was responded to. The police turned a blind eye to it and let it go on too long with out bringing them to book. But this wasnt due to politeness, or woke rationale, but fear of being labelled racist, or prosecuted for racial discrimination.
In the U.K. there isnt an open door policy, again this is a populist lie. There are strict controls on migration, the reality is that governments want skilled workers to come in to bolster the economy and fill the gaps left by a dismantled and failing vocational training policy at home. But it is political suicide to say that you want to encourage immigration, so they all just go along with the claims of wanting to reduce immigration, while secretly not restricting it.
There are problems with abuse of the system, but this is largely the result of a failing and dysfunctional migration system. Rather than a policy choice. You see the migration system along with all other public services are either failing, under resourced, or dysfunctional as a result of the 14 years of Tory austerity and cuts. Compounded by their abandonment of any real government following the Brexit vote in 2016 and the years of Tory Brexit chaos and clowns like Boris Johnson and Liss Truss, Royaly f*cking the country over for Kompromat, or looney ideology.
So the Labour Party inherited a broken country and its going to take a lot of hard work to put it back together again.
Either we figure out how to make people smarter OR those with enough cognitive clout step up. I am more optimistic about the former than the latter if I am honest.
Japan is a great example because the population decrease has already dramatically started, the economy has underperformed for a very long time, yet there hasn't been a collapse. It indeed may show how countries with enough social cohesion can weather this storm without any collapses.
There is hope though, which was tackled head on by Starmers keynote speech at the Labour Party conference yesterday. To expose Farage as a racist, running a party fuelled by the politics of grievance. When the above cohort realises the extent of the racism, sufficient numbers of them will turn away from becoming associated with it. Also to expose the faux patriotism used to disguise overt racism, which Farage also hides behind.
Quoting Punshhh
That's an awfully charitable way to put it. Another way is to say that certain cultural groups viewed poor western girls as beneath contempt, and due to clan / familial hierarchies, entire closely related groups engaged in predatory grooming and rape over decades, throughout England. Lots of evidence on these points, including direct quotations from victims, abusers and authorities. Happy to provide sources if you want.
Quoting Punshhh
'Wokeness' denies that intent matters, so I don't see how intent factors in here - the outcome of woke thought is this fear of being 'labelled racist'. Sure, this predates wide usage of the term, but it's the same project we called political correctness in the 90s, the same ideas going back to Marcuse and others in the 60s.
I see nothing kind towards immigrants as a whole in allowing a small subset to taint the whole project. Societies need immigration. But the models that exist do not reflect our global realities.
I just read "Infidel" by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She was fighting against honour killings and female genital mutilation in the Netherlands decades ago, and faced the same issues - a public that refuses to confront dark elements of immigration. Nothing has changed today, as we pass the 20 year anniversary of the Danish cartoon controversy.
Quoting Punshhh
I don't see the term 'populist' as automatically a negative, and I'm happy to use a different term if 'open-door' is too loaded to serve.
The entire WEIRD world empowered a boom in low-skilled workers during COVID. I would certainly argue that 'open-door' describes Canada, and we only have one neighbouring country to worry ourselves with.
Quoting Punshhh
We radically disagree on this. Social media + smart phones essentially enabled woke institutional capture across WEIRD governmental agencies - public ed, universities, immigration, medicine, law, etc, etc. It's why your UK wokists talk about BIPOC, or chant 'hands up don't shoot' at cops. (And yes, of course, other institutions and sectors have seen the same tech trend empowering conservative institutional capture).
I agree with you that the right is weaponizing this. I find it harder to make my case under Trump v2 since he has gone all 2025 on the world.
But surely we can agree that Trump is a dreadful, destructive figure, that some conservatives are crass opportunists at best on woke issues, and that woke / leftist / progressive / whatever term you like ideology also has major flaws?
Quoting Punshhh
Woke is inherently neo-liberal, and neo-liberals are not all conservatives - Blair and Clinton were the ones I saw a young guy coming up.
I read "When McKinsey Comes to Town" last year. I think we'd agree they are 'neo-liberal'? I kept reading their documents (the journalistic work was impressive, they had a lot of evidence) thinking, why does this language sound so familiar?
It's the legalese of woke. Check out McKinsey's own publications - they are, themselves, woke.
This McKinsification of world leader groupthink is to me a larger concern than the excesses of woke or the ____ right, whatever term you like.
To loosely paraphrase Marxist thinker Adolph Reed, who cares if the top leaders in the company are a diverse group if neoliberalism continues to propel income inequality?
These are the same people driving the conversation around immigration.
I'm sure you see it differently!
Racial sensitivity is not a result of woke ideologies, its an inevitable result of having groups of immigrants living in an area. And if you think the police in the U.K. are woke, then you havent been paying attention. They are being widely described as institutionally racist and misogynist on todays news, following the Panorama documentary a couple of days ago.
This is right wing propaganda, maybe its different in Canada, but in the U.K. all these institutions already had what could be called woke policy.
As I was just saying.
Trump is a stupid wanna be dictator, he should never have been given a second term.
Well I certainly agree with this.
This is false. Per capita, certain Muslim populations are far more likely to abuse children in Britain.
You are suggesting that there is no element of Islam, as currently practiced, that is more misogynistic than Christianity, as currently practiced.
Does that even sound plausible, if you ignore ideology?
I can provide data. Ask me, if you want some. That would indicate that you care to engage. Otherwise, not worth my time.
Quoting Punshhh
Yes. And we should ignore this? Pretend that if we didn't have so many dumbass poor white people around, it would all work out?
Quoting Punshhh
I am not right wing. Prove your assertion with some sort of data / evidence, or I will continue to trust my years of research and front line experience. I fear you spend two minutes or less on your comments to me.
Any comments on the dude named Jihad who just attacked and murdered Jews in Manchester?
I assume it will amount to something like 'watch out, those dumbass poor white people are going to weaponize this'.
Note. I am not populist / conservative / neoliberal / Christian / etc, so you can't dismiss my points with broad generalizations about groups. As if that's how the social sciences work in the first place.
I appreciate that you reply to me man. I used to be progressive. I hope for substantive engagement though, not talking points.
Dunno. Banks?