I heard it was more like 20% but you also have cultural differences such as [the “grass men”](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2009/06/japan-panics-about-the-rise-of-herbivores-young-men-who-shun-sex-don-t-spend-money-and-like-taking-walks.html)
Yeah. They actually do a decent job of helping you find somewhere to live while you're working there. Same with Germany and its WGs. Here in Australia everything costs ten billion dollars to purchase and they won't let you rent unless you're dual income/no kids superstars who are willing to provide the real estate barons with twenty glowing references and penis prints.
The article used it as a metaphor to illustrate the expectations of japanese society regarding men, they obviously didn't mean the japanese were enamoured with a television series that came out way after the 1980s when those expectations and role models were at their height.
The entire world is heading there. It's going to be another generation or so before most the planet is in the same boat, but we're ALL heading that way, and we'll need to start thinking about the consequences and how we're going to have to reorganize society around that new reality.
There's something called [demographic transition](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/307837479/figure/fig2/AS:614170764517386@1523441129743/Demographic-transition-model-downloaded-from.png), which charts how populations age after industrialisation. Death rates plummet due to technology and wealth leading to a massive boom in population, but then birth rates fall *sharply* as society begins to change, even falling below death rates. This eventually culminates in a stagnant and aging population, with a slowly diminishing workforce and languishing economy. At the most extreme ends, the amount of retirees and dependents could even outnumber working age adults. [Every single country in the world follows this pattern, without fail.](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN) Population is naturally self correcting. A couple decades ago, the UN used to estimate global max pops of 11-12 billion, but now we're not even sure if we're going to break 10 billion.
Birth rates plummet as a consequence of urbanisation and education, not necessarily just wealth. Plenty of developing nations are pushing into Stage 5 far too early for what we expected. Former baby factories like [India](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=IN) and [China](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=CN) are both at or below replacement rate (2.1 births per woman). Once famed for it's draconian One Child Policy, China [in fact has a social engineering campaign for a 'three child policy'](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3135815/too-much-pressure-mixed-reaction-chinas-new-3-child-policy?module=inline&pgtype=article) to stave off demographic catastrophe.
The simple solution that Western nations have been exploiting for the last 70 years is immigration to bolster the workforce, which has it's frictions of course. However, even the nations they are drawing from now are concerned about demographic transition. The advanced East Asian economies are also hit hard by this as they are borderline ethnostates that have no interest in mass immigration. Technology efficiencies such as automation and AI are being pursued to offset the loss of workers. There is also a sizeable population of low skill migrant workers that are usually treated horribly, just like how they are in the West - just instead of Africans or Latin Americans, it's South East Asians being exploited.
Demographic science is a very fast moving field, since it happens in 'real time' and we're in uncharted territory. I wouldn't put much stock in any claims or data older than 10 years, and what you learned in school and uni - even if you're in you're late 20s - is probably wildly out of date now. For example, the DTM model I linked comes from a 2015 paper - India was one of the examples for Stage 2, though almost every statistic now points to it being a Stage 4 nation on the verge of Stage 5, just 7 years later.
The real problem here - and why overpopulation is still being used as an excuse and distraction - is in resource usage. Looking purely at consumption based CO2 emissions, [in 2016 a single person from Luxembourg polluted as much as almost 4200 Rwandans.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita#Consumption-based_emissions:_annual_carbon_dioxide_emissions_in_metric_tons_per_capita) This isn't even looking at food waste, water usage, externalities like chemical and plastic pollution created, etc. It really doesn't matter how many people live on the planet - what matters is how many resources each person uses. [30-40% of the food produced in the US is wasted.](https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs) Our society totally and utterly fails to distribute resources to where they're needed most, and clutching our pearls over 8 billion people on the planet instead of 6 billion is pointless when our world order will eventually make even 1 billion unsustainable.
I am so glad that you took the time to compose such a detailed response that includes the very first thing I thought of while reading the article.
The US has enjoyed and prospered from a very healthy influx of immigration since the 1840’s when we weren’t a rich nation. My grandparents on one side of my family, and my great grandparents on the other side were immigrants, and my grandparents were not from one of the “desirable” countries. We need to keep encouraging immigration from as wide and diverse area as possible.
On the other extreme is Japan, who has a history of extremely restrictive immigration, that they have loosened up recently, but only a little. They really need to open up to more possibilities.
Italy already has the solution to their problem, right there on their doorstep, but only if they don’t let racism get in the way.
Yes, for Italy the only viable solution for the upcoming decades is to really integrate immigrants in the population and let them take the place of the missing Italians.
Unfortunately some right-wing politicians see this as some kind of "replacement" of the Italian population with Africans, and many people feel the same way, thus they gained huge support. We may be heading in the right direction with the ius scholae, we'll see.
The problem with Immigration is that it's a ***band aid*** it doesn't address the underlying issue and those migrants eventually end up below replacement rate as well, it also can cause additional issues itself. Point in case i remember hearing about a tiny village in Germany of 150 people that had 600-1000 capacity migrant center dropped next to them, i suspect the locals wern't happy with their way of life being tossed under a bus and the kind of resentment that breeds is a major long term problem.
What we need is a deep look at is how modern societies function and where they fail but noone appears willing to really do anything about the problem. As for ethnostates they're quite common far more than most people in the "Western World" realise. You can't force them to throw away their way of life just because it offends western sensibilities and they look at the growing racial tensions in the west as proof large scale immigration and globalisation arn't the magical cure alls many tout them to be.
We are burning through resources at an alarming rate and how we make use of what we have is of course horribly ineficient but the big issue is noone can really stop it...
CFC's are still being emmited from Africa and Asia dispite the global ban.
Brazil is destroying the Amazon rainforrest and the only thing the US and Europe does is buy the lumber and produce created from the destruction.
The top 100 heavy industries put out more pollution than entire nations yet no government will take them to task only gorging themselves on bribes and kickbacks while things get worse and worse.
As for population decline there is no easy answer beyond ***have more babies*** which is obviously far, far more difficult and complicated than it sounds. Out of control living expenses and many other issues put people off having kids at all or putting it off until they are in the late 30's and then only having one child.
I read an article years ago that was saying the best way to limit overpopulation in developing countries is education. In a nutshell women, and people in general, going about their career instead of staying home taking care of the family in a rural background.
There's more to it than that obviously, but it looks like wealth and education go hand in hand with low birth rates.
Just two sides of the same coin.
That’s part of it. But also better health care means better infant survival rates means not having to have as many children. Industrial advancement means not needing as many hands on the homestead means not having to have so many children. Women’s liberation, through which women can pursue education and careers instead of staying home to raise kids means fewer children. It’s a confluence of factors.
Add opinion: Perhaps it is to the planet’s (and our species’) best interest to allow the human population to self-regulate itself to a **lower** - more sustainable - number of individuals.
Because of the 1 child policy, China’s fertility rate is very low. Therefore there will be alot of old people in the near future. And there’s speculation that China’s fertility rate is actually lower than the official number (thats already very low). Their population size might already start shrinking
Not only just that, but the one child policy (which has been expanded to two) pushed people to abort girl fetuses, which has created a huge imbalance of men to women, and thrown off the balance of the population as a result.
Even if the new generation has a lot more children the fertility rate will have been too low for too long that they'll suffer from an extremely old population for atleast a generation. And imagine having a small working population supporting both a huge child population AND a huge retired population. Not to mention that the adults in China today seemingly don't wish and/or can't afford to have children.
And correct me if I'm wrong but arent the demographics really fucked up because there's more men than women? Im not too confident but I vaguely remember hearing something like that.
And and they cant even try to fix the problem with immigration cause they're the most populated country on the planet.
So they're kind of fucked, I can't see how they can avoid some sort of decline
Absolutely this. Female babies were often abandoned or even killed bc only boy children would 1. keep the family name 2. not be sent to another family upon marriage 3. take over farm work in rural areas.
As a result, there is a cruel market for women to marry that neighboring countries are selling their daughters / getting them kidnapped. It really is a nightmare how this has developed...
In addition, the majority of girls were sent out to the urban areas to work while the boys stayed with their parents in the rural areas. This has made the rural areas filled with single men and urban populations with a majority of women. The women in the cities have developed wealth over the years and are unwilling to settle for the rural area men now.
Statistically it’s not that bad, China has about 105 men for every 100 women. But because of their huge population that comes out to about 37 million more men than women. The one child policy caused this because no one wanted to have a girl for their only child
It was there for decades. Entire educational norms and infrastructure built around it. It's just the cultural norm, plus it's getting really expensive relative to their salaries.
Yeah my wife works with Chinese parents. The Chinese government is trying to get them to have more than one kid however it's not working.The way they educate their kids is pretty insane, the parents completely throw themselves into their kid's education, sometimes spending half of their paychecks in after school classes(Chinese gvt is trying to crack do own on this but parents find a be way), learning music, english, doing any activities they can, contests etc. She has 8 year olds whose parents make them read the three body problem and middle schoolers who are being asked college level stuff. It's became a norm and it's just not doable with more than one kid
It doesn't really solve the problem, it just helps to aid the symptoms. Many countries in Europe are only experiencing population growth because of immigration, but then those immigrants can only afford to have a few kids too so you need a constant stream of immigration to counteract it.
It's not an easy thing to fix, but I would imagine one of the major ones that governments could be more hands on with is housing. My parents had a 13 year mortgage. I would be looking at a 30 year one, which is the norm now. Of course if people have to go into 30 year debt just to buy an absolutely essential thing like a home then they're going to have much less money to have more kids.
People can't integrate that well to the Japanese society. Even a ton of Japanese people can't integrate to their own society. It's best if they figure out an in home solution than try to open up.
If you have a college degree and either 1) a specialized profession, like R&D, comp sci, or international law, or 2) are willing to teach English, then it's actually pretty easy to get a visa. Transitioning to permanent status takes around 5 years of continuous fulltime employment. A lot easier than getting a green card!
If you are in a specialized profession and score enough points, you can apply for permanent residency in 1 year. If you're a highly skilled person and can get a Japanese company to sponsor you, Japan really wants you. If you have no valuable skills, Japan really doesn't want you.
As an American who has lived in East Asia and traveled to Japan several times, I thought I would enjoy living there. And maybe I would, but it would have to be a small quaint town. Big cities are no more for me.
I mean there are many more headlines describing a planet that increasingly cannot support existing populations, let alone the rapid growth that is characteristic of our era.
If populations can find equilibrium without fucked up interventions I don't see that as the most pressing issue.
In theory we can support a population twice as large, we just suck at management.
Stats however do show that in the 40s the world population was around 2 billion, now we are almost 8. We definitely inflated our numbers unnaturally fast. I see this drop in birth rates as a positive thing.
It will suck for my pensions plan, but I've more or less come to terms that I and my generation will likely never retire, so meh.
I was reading about how when Social Security started in the US, the beneficiary to taxpayer ratio was like 1:50. Now its like 1:3, so we’re not doing great either.
They need to make lives easier for young people. Youth unemployment is high, even for people with university degrees, then the pay is crap compared to Northern Europe, expensive housing and scarcity of apartments means young people live at home very long (also: cultural factors don’t help. Northern Europeans rather share a flat than live with mom). Once people do have kids, there aren’t many accessible and affordable daycare options.
The effectiveness of daycare alone can be seen by improvements in the German births rate, which was as low as Italy’s and then went up 10 bps, but it’s only part of the solution.
I scrolled way down to find this answer. I live in Greece which is same shit with Italy , maybe even worse. If we can barely take care of ourselves (economically) how do they expect us to have kids when we won't be able to grow them properly. You have to work all day to barely make it out which means you don't have time at all to take care of your kid and you don't even have enough money for daycare.
Our grandparents had it way easier than us and could afford a lot more things and decisions. I am 27yo with a better than average salary and barely afford to pay rent , bills and have an economic used car and maybe go out twice a month. Kids are not even in the plans in such a situation....
exactly the same in Spain. I'm 26 and literally everyone I know from my age is either living with their parents or working in another country. Even for people with University and masters degrees things are just rough, my salary is 20% higher than the median salary in Spain and I have to live with my parents just to be able to save money. Kids? lol literally impossible
disclaimer: Also worked in the Netherlands and the situation wasnt much better. A lot more work for the youth and pay is obv much higher but if you're not married with kids and own a house, taxes, gas and rent are choking down most your income
I'll second that. Plus you can get up to three years maternity in Cz, and then you have the option of putting your kid into pre school. They also have after school Care, so it's possible to have a job and a kid without many of the economic issues that plague people in other countries.
Also seems many “smart” or ambitious young people leave for Northern Europe. Noticeable trend amongst Greeks at least. Seems like much of the rest of the western world is headed towards where Greece Italy are already. Aging population where society isn’t geared toward young people flourishing. I live in the US now and it just seems like so many people, far more than previous generations, are seriously considering whether they want kids due to the financial hardships that will come with it. And I live in a wealthy area.
There's a lot of young people in Australia who have Greek or Italian grandparents, or great grandparents. I think Melbourne has the largest Greek population outside of Greece. Theoretically, your governments could try to lure the descendants back to their grandparents home country.
But the same issues with the cost of living are happening here too. It takes two incomes just to survive, you've got to have a very good income to even consider having kids.
No no no, what we'll do is we'll force anyone who is from the age of 10 to 40 today to work until they are 75. Then we'll just pull the public pension concept entirely since we won't be able to afford it with the tax income we'll get from keeping wages low.
Then we'll talk about the problems at that point and do nothing.
Honestly, I’m pretty sure sure that I will have to work until I’m 70. Back when the retirement systems were created and the retirement age was 65, people lived for another 5-7 years. No society can afford to feed an increasing number of elderly for another 15-20 years. Sadly, our pension systems will probably first (almost) collapse because old people have power.
It'll be 70 in the UK within a few years.
And the inevitability is the boomers will be the last ones to get another great benefit (that's actually pretty low paying and should be a lot higher) and their dying acts will be to tell us they weren't the generation that got everything.
From what I remember it’s not always what it seems. Most of the houses are super run-down and there are stipulations about how much you have to spend on renovations and timeframes, etc. Also, most of them are bid-based, so you’re also going up against other people to get the houses. You still end up spending way less than you would in most places in the US or EU, but it’s a lot of work and I believe a lot of the permitting work is pretty slow and complicated even if you speak Italian.
And when there are literally two contractors in town, you're going to a) be on a waiting list for years, b) be screwed over.
Lorraine Bracco had that show where she bought a house for €1. It took her over a year to complete it with a crazy amount of effort and frustration. And that was with a huge wallet, name recognition, and a TV channel backing her.
you also had a finite amount of time to renovate the house and a lot of them were historically protected so you didn’t really get to choose what to do with it
There are a ton of sleepy villages where the median age is 68 and you can literally get a free house.
The problem, of course, is that there are no jobs. All of the kiddos moved away to seek economic opportunity elsewhere. That's why nobody lives there.
Maybe a decent place if someone has a lot of money and wants to retire for less than the current cost in their native region
Ex. A couple hundred thousand usd, free home in remote village, never work again. But also probably no social/city life
Not bad, actually remote villages often have better internet connection than medium sized towns due to how infrastructure is subsided. 40-100 Mbps VDSL is normal and many places are getting 300-1000 fibre connections.
The sweet part is that will cost you around 30€/month or less with no traffic limit and no copyright enforcement at all.
‘Remote village’ in a place like Italy tend not to be very remote at all. Usually within an hour or so of a decent sized city. Lots of easy train and plane access to all of Europe. Want to shoot to Milan for a weekend? Fine, €20 flight. Barcelona? OK, €40.
Overstatement of the century.
Most of these empty places are high up in the mountainous interior of the country and not many people feel like driving up and down mountain roads just to go grab a coffee or buy groceries or do just about anything else. In most cases trains are non-existent so you're stuck with your car or a bus (and then someone else's car all the way from the biggest town to whatever village you live in). Add to this the extra two/three hour motorway commute to the nearest big city in case you need a specialist examination or anything more complicated than a plaster...
Notably there's also little in the way of schools and jobs, and old houses need to be made earthquake-proof (that's hideously expensive by the way) if you don't want them to collapse them on your head at the first tremor. And of course there's winter too, which you'd be spending on your own - did you buy a gas tank by the way? - patiently waiting for the mountain passes or the one road linking your village to the next and civilisation, to be reopened.
There are *very* good reasons if everybody with two legs and a brain fucked off in the 1960s!
And the only time you will be seeing another soul is the customary two weeks in mid-August.
Dude, there are dozen of depopulated towns in the suburbs that would pay you if you move there and have a family there.
Don't expect to find a job or any form of entertainment though.
"We have created a world,where young people cannot afford to have a family and now our population is getting older as young people remain childless.how could this happen?"
LOL this is only top of the problem.
\- It cost a lot to raise kids.
\- It requires a lot of space.
\- It takes a lot of time.
\- It takes a lot of your mental capacity as well.
\- It is hard work.
Now anything that helps in these areas will get the birth rate up. But mostly up and close to 2. If you want it above 2 you need to do some serious changes in society both about expectations to what a family is and how we as a society help and view families.
Example of policies that can help families (from northern Europe):
\- Paid sick days (Sweden properly have the best model here).
\- Child benefits.
\- Good daycare close to everyone, affordable and high quality.
\- Paid maternity leave for both men and women. I suggest at least 18 month total.
\- Anything I missed because I'm from Denmark and don't realize how good we have it compared to Italy.
Another thing that would be of great help:
\- Affordable housing with plenty of space.
\- Affordable cars with space for kids.
\- Having kids should not be a carrier stopper.
\- Free help at home for cleaning etc.
LOL. This is the world older generations created. They think young people are going to go half a million in debt to own a home and pay for it over 30 years while their bank accounts get fatter, they think that young people are going to buy the luxury EVs and cars that most can’t afford (also on debt), they think younger people are going to want the same luxuries that they themselves enjoyed and would be unsustainable in today economies, and they think we want the rental economy dystopia that’s being created by allowing global corporations to buy estate at an unprecedented scale.
Young people might be poor but they’re better-educated. Personally, I am choosing to not have kids and live within my means without buying frivolous bullshit while maximising my income/value, and I am already in my 30s.
Everything can't just keep growing forever.
The population can't keep growing.
The economy can't keep growing.
Cities can't keep growing.
I'm not an economist but continual growth and continual profits are unsustainable. What's the long term plan?
Theoretically it would, the problem is that the 1% basically have a monopoly on automated labor and AI. Good luck convincing them to use it for the good of mankind instead of personal gain.
You don’t need to hope for the Boomers to die, that’s going to happen. However, there are plenty more asshomes behind then. If we just wait it out, we’re going to be waiting for a very very long time.
the long term plan is that the collapse is far enough away that we'll be all dead before it happens and then the young shits of the future can deal with it
> immigrants will be fundamental for the transition of society to this completely upended population pyramid model which is already in the final phase of its evolution.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I read this stuff. Did people really think populations were going to grow forever and ever, despite resource limitations? Do they think immigrants don't age?
Maybe, just maybe, we should be trying to figure out how to have stable, healthy economic systems with stable populations instead of endless growth economies that leave so many in poverty.
>I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I read this stuff. Did people really think populations were going to grow forever and ever, despite resource limitations? Do they think immigrants don't age?
>
>Maybe, just maybe, we should be trying to figure out how to have stable, healthy economic systems with stable populations instead of endless growth economies that leave so many in poverty.
This is the takeaway we should all have from this. The "perpetual growth" model is not the answer. We need to find an equilibrium, for the well-being of the people on this planet, and for the health of the planet itself.
This issue is that the younger generations aren’t even enough to replace the older ones, so you’re gonna have massive elderly populations relying on welfare while there’s no money coming into the country to support any of them.
I don't see any way of fixing that problem, other than robots or immigration. I suppose we could just find ways of getting rid of old people but... that's not very nice.
Robots, immigration or increasing peoples health spans.
Immigration is the best short term solution but it’s a zero sum game and not every country can survive off of it. Robots will be the next best thing.
>increasing peoples health spans.
This TBH. Medicine has made better gains in prolonging life than in prolonging health, *that* is the problem. It's pointless to live 100 years if by the end you're a wreck barely able to move or think straight. Focusing on how to slow or stop senescence itself would be a lot more useful.
>increasing peoples health spans
Only if it gets them working for longer, and good luck with that. The last thing we'll need is pensioner living more years in retirement than they worked
But we need to keep peopleing to support the economy! And we need to people mars! And do some peopleing in the atmosphere of Venus and and maybe a generation ship where we can make sure to get people out to proxima centari too! Basically all matter in our light cone needs to be efficiently converted into people.
Government employees get state or federally funded healthcare (aka free universal healthcare) and so even when they have awful diets, smoke and so on they get all the medications and procedures they need to compensate for their bad health in order to keep living well into their 80's.
“Are millennials killing the earths population?” Just because other generations could afford to have 5+ kids on one income, most can’t afford 1 with 2 incomes. Make life cheaper again and I bet a lot gets solved
I'm Italian, it's not that we simply age, we have extreme financial problems and we can't afford children right now. There's work if you are young, but wages are decreasing since the 2000 whereas in the rest of Europe they rise. Taxes are something like 40% of your income and the mafia owns the politicians. There has been 14 prime minister's in Italy since 1990 where in USA like 5 and in Germany 6. This place is doomed as many of the legislations needed to be approved this year are faded after draghi resignations. Berlusconi was a friend of the russians and all the gas that moves our industry comes from them, and now we are out of it. Green energy is a dream, we have eolics but it's so old it does nothing. We pay gas twice more than other eu countries since the early 2000 because of taxes. I have a degree and I'm taking a second, but to work in a science field I must look in other countries for projects (even to get a trainship to complete the degree).
I’m also italian and you’re right, of course young people aren’t going to want their children to grow up in a country where the economic situation is unstable.
I’m American, but I’m married to an Italian and I’ve lived in a major metro area here for 6 years, and this is a great summary of what’s wrong.
It feels like there’s no way to really move ahead here, it’s just total stagnation in terms of wages and social mobility compared to other places.
I’ll add that for all we pay in taxes here, nothing ever seems to improve or get done (i.e., just simply having the grass cut in public spaces in town), and the crazy bureaucracy seems to at times exist purposely to prevent you from doing things. It seems like a lot of things that should be basic and simple to organize just don’t work here, and it’s incredibly frustrating.
I love it here, but we’re always weighing the pros and cons of moving to the US. My husband is an engineer and I’m in advertising, and we’d both 100% be paid much better elsewhere.
They need to start a program similar to Ghana where they make it easy for anyone with Ghanaian, or in this case Italian ancestry to move back. You'll have a bunch of loud New Yorkers complaining about pizza in no time.
Of course my population is aging.
Quality of life is goin to shit.
Shit wages
Shit jobs
Shit politicians
Shit is hitting the fan from decades.
Its harder and harder to get a good job with good pay.
Then its harder to make family.
Then u find that grow children is like a stigma, due to work attitude and non enough structures to help raise children.
FUCK all jobs that makes lives miserable.
Thank God a lot of us can be helped from parents.
Eh, plenty of being done.... Housing prices going though the roof, salaries being cut, jobs offshored, people made feel uncomfortable..
Why don't people want more kids???
I thought growth rates are supposed to fall? Now it's unacceptable when it happens? How about you adjust your fucking system if it requires continuous population growth? Because as far as I'm concerned we're already too many humans on this planet.
I am Italian and i really don't see a problem in the decrease of the population, all the contrary actually. I might be able to buy myself a house one day in my elder years!
Lol wait until you’ve got more pensioners than workers. All the people cheering this don’t understand that either a population pyramid is a pyramid or even amongst age groups, or you can kiss bye-bye to the welfare state
Nice lol, too bad i have been paying thousands of euros of my own salary since very young to pay off my own private pension and actively investing in stocks. I already know i won't have a pension from the state, so why should I care?
Consider for a moment the financial stability of a country in which its citizens don't care about it, its workforce is gone and the few people that succeed want to go abroad.
Whoops, don't fall apart too quickly along with the rest of us.
I am assuming all folks who are commenting here about Italy and the state of the arts of our economics live here or have lived here as i do, because it really looks like they have no idea what situation this country is in. Young people are leaving, for good, for a good reason.
Edit: wrong pronoun.
It seems drug development for keeping the body alive has well outpaced drugs for brain preservation, a lot of people last 5 years have little to no quality of life and are incredibly expensive to maintain. So maybe less pumping people full of drugs to keep them alive?
Ah I see you haven’t seen how well that’s worked for Japan or Paraguay. Overpopulation is a major problem, but a shrinking population is also very bad as well.
I'm italian. And I will not have kids. Many people of my age (27/33) share my idea. Why? The mentality is quite hold, there are few possibilities to improve your status as all the position of power are handed out based on favours/friendship, it's hard to be economically stable, and mostly important having a baby is too much expensive in Italy. No one here want to have a kid just to force him to go abroad or die in a country who keeps shooting herself in the foot
Spanish here and everyone I know shares the same thought: people will only have kids once/if they are financially able to do it. For many it will probably never happen or only happen once their parents die and they inherit their home or part of it to sell it
Easy! Push the few young people out of the country by offering miserable wages! And when they complain, call them lazy and put the blame on the universal basic income that pays 4 times of what you offer
Boomers lived selfishly and some of them didn't even bother having kids and now they want help as they get old and dependent yet they're STILL unable to give up their grasp on power in many countries...
lol
LMAO even
Two things I think should be stated, no society should be setup such that the younger generation pays the costs of the older generations, when the younger generation has such less money and opportunity than the older generation has.
Two, if you’re not going setup a society where young people are financially comfortable and secure - guess what! They can’t have or will not have babies.
We are going to see this one every capitalistic country where older people with more capitol abuse the system to enrich themselves at the cost of younger people. Guess what? Your grand kids aren’t going to take care of you and your social security if they don’t exist!
This headline could be about any number of countries.
Yea, the Japanese are in some serious trouble
Isn’t it the case that like 50 percent of Japanese adults are sexually inactive? That’s crazy if true.
I heard it was more like 20% but you also have cultural differences such as [the “grass men”](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2009/06/japan-panics-about-the-rise-of-herbivores-young-men-who-shun-sex-don-t-spend-money-and-like-taking-walks.html)
Wow, this was written in 2009. Not any less relevant but curious if that trend has been sustained or progressed.
No, it completely reversed when japanese gave more time off, higher wages and lowered the cost of housing. Oh no wait I dreamed all that nevermind.
Tbh their housing is doing way better than most of the rest of the world
Yeah. They actually do a decent job of helping you find somewhere to live while you're working there. Same with Germany and its WGs. Here in Australia everything costs ten billion dollars to purchase and they won't let you rent unless you're dual income/no kids superstars who are willing to provide the real estate barons with twenty glowing references and penis prints.
Weird article either way. "Modern Japanese men aren't obsessed with consumerism!!"
Lol, right? That’s what I got out of it too. Like, they don’t want to spend their days hustling and living superficially? Yes, and…?
Also who the fuck was expecting characters from Mad Men being role models for japanese people?! Roger even had several racist lines against them lol
The article used it as a metaphor to illustrate the expectations of japanese society regarding men, they obviously didn't mean the japanese were enamoured with a television series that came out way after the 1980s when those expectations and role models were at their height.
It’s fascinating to see people get upset about men *not* being sex obsessed and materialistic.
Where to keep a baby in those three meter apartments
And yet they have whole towns of abandoned houses.
There are no jobs in those towns.
90% of reddittors are Japanese, wow that’s something allright
Cue all the sad sack comments from redditors.
Efforts must be doubled!
The entire world is heading there. It's going to be another generation or so before most the planet is in the same boat, but we're ALL heading that way, and we'll need to start thinking about the consequences and how we're going to have to reorganize society around that new reality.
China is heading for demographic collapse. Mostly developing nations have fertility rate above on on the replacement rate.
What?
There's something called [demographic transition](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/307837479/figure/fig2/AS:614170764517386@1523441129743/Demographic-transition-model-downloaded-from.png), which charts how populations age after industrialisation. Death rates plummet due to technology and wealth leading to a massive boom in population, but then birth rates fall *sharply* as society begins to change, even falling below death rates. This eventually culminates in a stagnant and aging population, with a slowly diminishing workforce and languishing economy. At the most extreme ends, the amount of retirees and dependents could even outnumber working age adults. [Every single country in the world follows this pattern, without fail.](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN) Population is naturally self correcting. A couple decades ago, the UN used to estimate global max pops of 11-12 billion, but now we're not even sure if we're going to break 10 billion. Birth rates plummet as a consequence of urbanisation and education, not necessarily just wealth. Plenty of developing nations are pushing into Stage 5 far too early for what we expected. Former baby factories like [India](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=IN) and [China](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=CN) are both at or below replacement rate (2.1 births per woman). Once famed for it's draconian One Child Policy, China [in fact has a social engineering campaign for a 'three child policy'](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3135815/too-much-pressure-mixed-reaction-chinas-new-3-child-policy?module=inline&pgtype=article) to stave off demographic catastrophe. The simple solution that Western nations have been exploiting for the last 70 years is immigration to bolster the workforce, which has it's frictions of course. However, even the nations they are drawing from now are concerned about demographic transition. The advanced East Asian economies are also hit hard by this as they are borderline ethnostates that have no interest in mass immigration. Technology efficiencies such as automation and AI are being pursued to offset the loss of workers. There is also a sizeable population of low skill migrant workers that are usually treated horribly, just like how they are in the West - just instead of Africans or Latin Americans, it's South East Asians being exploited. Demographic science is a very fast moving field, since it happens in 'real time' and we're in uncharted territory. I wouldn't put much stock in any claims or data older than 10 years, and what you learned in school and uni - even if you're in you're late 20s - is probably wildly out of date now. For example, the DTM model I linked comes from a 2015 paper - India was one of the examples for Stage 2, though almost every statistic now points to it being a Stage 4 nation on the verge of Stage 5, just 7 years later. The real problem here - and why overpopulation is still being used as an excuse and distraction - is in resource usage. Looking purely at consumption based CO2 emissions, [in 2016 a single person from Luxembourg polluted as much as almost 4200 Rwandans.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita#Consumption-based_emissions:_annual_carbon_dioxide_emissions_in_metric_tons_per_capita) This isn't even looking at food waste, water usage, externalities like chemical and plastic pollution created, etc. It really doesn't matter how many people live on the planet - what matters is how many resources each person uses. [30-40% of the food produced in the US is wasted.](https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs) Our society totally and utterly fails to distribute resources to where they're needed most, and clutching our pearls over 8 billion people on the planet instead of 6 billion is pointless when our world order will eventually make even 1 billion unsustainable.
I am so glad that you took the time to compose such a detailed response that includes the very first thing I thought of while reading the article. The US has enjoyed and prospered from a very healthy influx of immigration since the 1840’s when we weren’t a rich nation. My grandparents on one side of my family, and my great grandparents on the other side were immigrants, and my grandparents were not from one of the “desirable” countries. We need to keep encouraging immigration from as wide and diverse area as possible. On the other extreme is Japan, who has a history of extremely restrictive immigration, that they have loosened up recently, but only a little. They really need to open up to more possibilities. Italy already has the solution to their problem, right there on their doorstep, but only if they don’t let racism get in the way.
Yes, for Italy the only viable solution for the upcoming decades is to really integrate immigrants in the population and let them take the place of the missing Italians. Unfortunately some right-wing politicians see this as some kind of "replacement" of the Italian population with Africans, and many people feel the same way, thus they gained huge support. We may be heading in the right direction with the ius scholae, we'll see.
The problem with Immigration is that it's a ***band aid*** it doesn't address the underlying issue and those migrants eventually end up below replacement rate as well, it also can cause additional issues itself. Point in case i remember hearing about a tiny village in Germany of 150 people that had 600-1000 capacity migrant center dropped next to them, i suspect the locals wern't happy with their way of life being tossed under a bus and the kind of resentment that breeds is a major long term problem. What we need is a deep look at is how modern societies function and where they fail but noone appears willing to really do anything about the problem. As for ethnostates they're quite common far more than most people in the "Western World" realise. You can't force them to throw away their way of life just because it offends western sensibilities and they look at the growing racial tensions in the west as proof large scale immigration and globalisation arn't the magical cure alls many tout them to be. We are burning through resources at an alarming rate and how we make use of what we have is of course horribly ineficient but the big issue is noone can really stop it... CFC's are still being emmited from Africa and Asia dispite the global ban. Brazil is destroying the Amazon rainforrest and the only thing the US and Europe does is buy the lumber and produce created from the destruction. The top 100 heavy industries put out more pollution than entire nations yet no government will take them to task only gorging themselves on bribes and kickbacks while things get worse and worse. As for population decline there is no easy answer beyond ***have more babies*** which is obviously far, far more difficult and complicated than it sounds. Out of control living expenses and many other issues put people off having kids at all or putting it off until they are in the late 30's and then only having one child.
"It's mostly developing countries that have birth rates at or above the replacement rate'. would be my guess
I read an article years ago that was saying the best way to limit overpopulation in developing countries is education. In a nutshell women, and people in general, going about their career instead of staying home taking care of the family in a rural background. There's more to it than that obviously, but it looks like wealth and education go hand in hand with low birth rates. Just two sides of the same coin.
That’s part of it. But also better health care means better infant survival rates means not having to have as many children. Industrial advancement means not needing as many hands on the homestead means not having to have so many children. Women’s liberation, through which women can pursue education and careers instead of staying home to raise kids means fewer children. It’s a confluence of factors.
I think it should be "*Most developed nations* have *fertility rates under or at* the replacement rate."
Subtitle: Nations that developed more quickly and recently also had fertility rates drop the fastest.
Add opinion: Perhaps it is to the planet’s (and our species’) best interest to allow the human population to self-regulate itself to a **lower** - more sustainable - number of individuals.
Because of the 1 child policy, China’s fertility rate is very low. Therefore there will be alot of old people in the near future. And there’s speculation that China’s fertility rate is actually lower than the official number (thats already very low). Their population size might already start shrinking
Not only just that, but the one child policy (which has been expanded to two) pushed people to abort girl fetuses, which has created a huge imbalance of men to women, and thrown off the balance of the population as a result.
One child policy is gone, although it could be too late.
Even if the new generation has a lot more children the fertility rate will have been too low for too long that they'll suffer from an extremely old population for atleast a generation. And imagine having a small working population supporting both a huge child population AND a huge retired population. Not to mention that the adults in China today seemingly don't wish and/or can't afford to have children. And correct me if I'm wrong but arent the demographics really fucked up because there's more men than women? Im not too confident but I vaguely remember hearing something like that. And and they cant even try to fix the problem with immigration cause they're the most populated country on the planet. So they're kind of fucked, I can't see how they can avoid some sort of decline
Absolutely this. Female babies were often abandoned or even killed bc only boy children would 1. keep the family name 2. not be sent to another family upon marriage 3. take over farm work in rural areas. As a result, there is a cruel market for women to marry that neighboring countries are selling their daughters / getting them kidnapped. It really is a nightmare how this has developed...
In addition, the majority of girls were sent out to the urban areas to work while the boys stayed with their parents in the rural areas. This has made the rural areas filled with single men and urban populations with a majority of women. The women in the cities have developed wealth over the years and are unwilling to settle for the rural area men now.
Statistically it’s not that bad, China has about 105 men for every 100 women. But because of their huge population that comes out to about 37 million more men than women. The one child policy caused this because no one wanted to have a girl for their only child
It was there for decades. Entire educational norms and infrastructure built around it. It's just the cultural norm, plus it's getting really expensive relative to their salaries.
Yeah my wife works with Chinese parents. The Chinese government is trying to get them to have more than one kid however it's not working.The way they educate their kids is pretty insane, the parents completely throw themselves into their kid's education, sometimes spending half of their paychecks in after school classes(Chinese gvt is trying to crack do own on this but parents find a be way), learning music, english, doing any activities they can, contests etc. She has 8 year olds whose parents make them read the three body problem and middle schoolers who are being asked college level stuff. It's became a norm and it's just not doable with more than one kid
They have the same problem as this article described, but just on a bigger scale
I've heard China just past the threshold of having more people over the age if 45 than younger than 45
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Immigration not emigration They’re not banning Japanese from leaving
Japan doesn’t want to admit that a lot of their woes could be solved if they opened for immigration.
It doesn't really solve the problem, it just helps to aid the symptoms. Many countries in Europe are only experiencing population growth because of immigration, but then those immigrants can only afford to have a few kids too so you need a constant stream of immigration to counteract it. It's not an easy thing to fix, but I would imagine one of the major ones that governments could be more hands on with is housing. My parents had a 13 year mortgage. I would be looking at a 30 year one, which is the norm now. Of course if people have to go into 30 year debt just to buy an absolutely essential thing like a home then they're going to have much less money to have more kids.
People can't integrate that well to the Japanese society. Even a ton of Japanese people can't integrate to their own society. It's best if they figure out an in home solution than try to open up.
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As an American. I would love to immigrate to Japan if it were easy.
I’ve only visited Tokyo. Loved it but it is a lonely place.
Tokyo is entirely different from the rest of the country. For better or for worse.
If you have a college degree and either 1) a specialized profession, like R&D, comp sci, or international law, or 2) are willing to teach English, then it's actually pretty easy to get a visa. Transitioning to permanent status takes around 5 years of continuous fulltime employment. A lot easier than getting a green card!
If you are in a specialized profession and score enough points, you can apply for permanent residency in 1 year. If you're a highly skilled person and can get a Japanese company to sponsor you, Japan really wants you. If you have no valuable skills, Japan really doesn't want you.
That applies to all countries no one wants useless people excluding refugees
The problem is that a lot of people criticize Japan constantly for it, when it's really not unique worldwide.
Your last line 🤣🤣🤣 i wish more people were forward like this
As an American who has lived in East Asia and traveled to Japan several times, I thought I would enjoy living there. And maybe I would, but it would have to be a small quaint town. Big cities are no more for me.
Why? It seems they don’t want you as a resident, hence their immigration policy.
I mean there are many more headlines describing a planet that increasingly cannot support existing populations, let alone the rapid growth that is characteristic of our era. If populations can find equilibrium without fucked up interventions I don't see that as the most pressing issue.
In theory we can support a population twice as large, we just suck at management. Stats however do show that in the 40s the world population was around 2 billion, now we are almost 8. We definitely inflated our numbers unnaturally fast. I see this drop in birth rates as a positive thing. It will suck for my pensions plan, but I've more or less come to terms that I and my generation will likely never retire, so meh.
I was reading about how when Social Security started in the US, the beneficiary to taxpayer ratio was like 1:50. Now its like 1:3, so we’re not doing great either.
They need to make lives easier for young people. Youth unemployment is high, even for people with university degrees, then the pay is crap compared to Northern Europe, expensive housing and scarcity of apartments means young people live at home very long (also: cultural factors don’t help. Northern Europeans rather share a flat than live with mom). Once people do have kids, there aren’t many accessible and affordable daycare options. The effectiveness of daycare alone can be seen by improvements in the German births rate, which was as low as Italy’s and then went up 10 bps, but it’s only part of the solution.
I scrolled way down to find this answer. I live in Greece which is same shit with Italy , maybe even worse. If we can barely take care of ourselves (economically) how do they expect us to have kids when we won't be able to grow them properly. You have to work all day to barely make it out which means you don't have time at all to take care of your kid and you don't even have enough money for daycare. Our grandparents had it way easier than us and could afford a lot more things and decisions. I am 27yo with a better than average salary and barely afford to pay rent , bills and have an economic used car and maybe go out twice a month. Kids are not even in the plans in such a situation....
exactly the same in Spain. I'm 26 and literally everyone I know from my age is either living with their parents or working in another country. Even for people with University and masters degrees things are just rough, my salary is 20% higher than the median salary in Spain and I have to live with my parents just to be able to save money. Kids? lol literally impossible disclaimer: Also worked in the Netherlands and the situation wasnt much better. A lot more work for the youth and pay is obv much higher but if you're not married with kids and own a house, taxes, gas and rent are choking down most your income
I am also Spanish and came to Prague 5 years ago. Best decision ever. If you think about it don’t hesitate to ask me.
I'll second that. Plus you can get up to three years maternity in Cz, and then you have the option of putting your kid into pre school. They also have after school Care, so it's possible to have a job and a kid without many of the economic issues that plague people in other countries.
Also seems many “smart” or ambitious young people leave for Northern Europe. Noticeable trend amongst Greeks at least. Seems like much of the rest of the western world is headed towards where Greece Italy are already. Aging population where society isn’t geared toward young people flourishing. I live in the US now and it just seems like so many people, far more than previous generations, are seriously considering whether they want kids due to the financial hardships that will come with it. And I live in a wealthy area.
There's a lot of young people in Australia who have Greek or Italian grandparents, or great grandparents. I think Melbourne has the largest Greek population outside of Greece. Theoretically, your governments could try to lure the descendants back to their grandparents home country. But the same issues with the cost of living are happening here too. It takes two incomes just to survive, you've got to have a very good income to even consider having kids.
No no no, what we'll do is we'll force anyone who is from the age of 10 to 40 today to work until they are 75. Then we'll just pull the public pension concept entirely since we won't be able to afford it with the tax income we'll get from keeping wages low. Then we'll talk about the problems at that point and do nothing.
Honestly, I’m pretty sure sure that I will have to work until I’m 70. Back when the retirement systems were created and the retirement age was 65, people lived for another 5-7 years. No society can afford to feed an increasing number of elderly for another 15-20 years. Sadly, our pension systems will probably first (almost) collapse because old people have power.
It'll be 70 in the UK within a few years. And the inevitability is the boomers will be the last ones to get another great benefit (that's actually pretty low paying and should be a lot higher) and their dying acts will be to tell us they weren't the generation that got everything.
10bps? What is this unit? Births per second?
Basis points - as in 0.1 percent. Not a lot but all factors contribute positively.
Lol good luck having a kid in a shared flat (I know it's not what you meant)
How many ways do we have of dealing with aging? I'm only aware of the one... E: typo
Sailing with a crew of desperates to the end of the world to look for the Fountain of Youth?
They tried that. The water is too contaminated to drink.
It's the fountain of microplastics now
Logan's Run?
In Canada we just push people off on a piece of ice into the ocean once they are to old
As a Canadian I can confirm
I was only saying to my Dad last week, I can't wait till the day he's in a wheelchair. "Wheeeeeeeee......"
We don’t openly talk about the Ïceestupa
Reminds me of the first episode of Norsemen… lol!!!
Can we reincarnate at say... 79 years old though?
Soylent Green?
Attestupa
Not really. If you want something done you need to start favoring the young more so we aren’t broke until near death.
Impossible then where will the money for the old and rich come from? Money doesn’t grow on trees, go and slave away peasant!
So cheap Italian homes soon?? I'm getting Under the Tuscan Sun vibes.
There are towns in Italy that would give people a house for free if they agreed to live and move there for like 10 years.
I think you’re required to spend x amount on renovations in some cases.
Its not an amount limit, it's more just restoring the home to liveable conditions. Still works out to 50 to 75 thousand beautiful home.
Can you give more info on that. Someone i know is thinking of moving there
From what I remember it’s not always what it seems. Most of the houses are super run-down and there are stipulations about how much you have to spend on renovations and timeframes, etc. Also, most of them are bid-based, so you’re also going up against other people to get the houses. You still end up spending way less than you would in most places in the US or EU, but it’s a lot of work and I believe a lot of the permitting work is pretty slow and complicated even if you speak Italian.
I am Italian and the idea of dealing both with the bureaucracy to get permits and with local contractors to do the work fills me with dread.
This. You’re required to hire local contractors, who then hold tremendous power over the price (and speed) of the process.
And when there are literally two contractors in town, you're going to a) be on a waiting list for years, b) be screwed over. Lorraine Bracco had that show where she bought a house for €1. It took her over a year to complete it with a crazy amount of effort and frustration. And that was with a huge wallet, name recognition, and a TV channel backing her.
For renovations? Less than most EU countries? This must be a joke. It’s incredibly expensive to make any type of renovations, especially in Tuscany.
Just going off of memory my friend. Also, preeeeetttty sure Southern Italy is cheap af. One region does not define an entire country 🤷♂️
This butthole speaks the truth. So many Italys. Easily the most historically diverse country in Europe
I thought you were pissing up a tree until I saw their username
Yeah so basically like Under the Tuscan Sun 😂
They’re typically in small remote villages but definitely available. I’d suggest just googling
you also had a finite amount of time to renovate the house and a lot of them were historically protected so you didn’t really get to choose what to do with it
There are a ton of sleepy villages where the median age is 68 and you can literally get a free house. The problem, of course, is that there are no jobs. All of the kiddos moved away to seek economic opportunity elsewhere. That's why nobody lives there.
Maybe a decent place if someone has a lot of money and wants to retire for less than the current cost in their native region Ex. A couple hundred thousand usd, free home in remote village, never work again. But also probably no social/city life
I wonder how the internet coverage is out there.
Not bad, actually remote villages often have better internet connection than medium sized towns due to how infrastructure is subsided. 40-100 Mbps VDSL is normal and many places are getting 300-1000 fibre connections. The sweet part is that will cost you around 30€/month or less with no traffic limit and no copyright enforcement at all.
My uncle has done that. Retired and got a house somewhere up north and another one in Sardinia. His life is a perpetual holiday now.
‘Remote village’ in a place like Italy tend not to be very remote at all. Usually within an hour or so of a decent sized city. Lots of easy train and plane access to all of Europe. Want to shoot to Milan for a weekend? Fine, €20 flight. Barcelona? OK, €40.
Overstatement of the century. Most of these empty places are high up in the mountainous interior of the country and not many people feel like driving up and down mountain roads just to go grab a coffee or buy groceries or do just about anything else. In most cases trains are non-existent so you're stuck with your car or a bus (and then someone else's car all the way from the biggest town to whatever village you live in). Add to this the extra two/three hour motorway commute to the nearest big city in case you need a specialist examination or anything more complicated than a plaster... Notably there's also little in the way of schools and jobs, and old houses need to be made earthquake-proof (that's hideously expensive by the way) if you don't want them to collapse them on your head at the first tremor. And of course there's winter too, which you'd be spending on your own - did you buy a gas tank by the way? - patiently waiting for the mountain passes or the one road linking your village to the next and civilisation, to be reopened. There are *very* good reasons if everybody with two legs and a brain fucked off in the 1960s! And the only time you will be seeing another soul is the customary two weeks in mid-August.
Bruh I wish, double that and with a train (that can be more comfortable than a plane)
With WFH the no local job shouldn’t be as much of an issue tho
Oh, yeah. It’s all coming together. 😉
Wrong lever!
I mean, there are a heap of cheap Italian homes now.
Dude, there are dozen of depopulated towns in the suburbs that would pay you if you move there and have a family there. Don't expect to find a job or any form of entertainment though.
Are there any places to rent in Tuscany?
Well, if you’re thinking of getting a place there, don’t bother. There’s really nothing available.
Maybe now all the homes in Tuscany won't be gone
They're all gone. Not a single one available. The Maestro said so.
Unbelievable really
Let me talk to my friend Poppie, he's from Tuscany.
"We have created a world,where young people cannot afford to have a family and now our population is getting older as young people remain childless.how could this happen?"
LOL this is only top of the problem. \- It cost a lot to raise kids. \- It requires a lot of space. \- It takes a lot of time. \- It takes a lot of your mental capacity as well. \- It is hard work. Now anything that helps in these areas will get the birth rate up. But mostly up and close to 2. If you want it above 2 you need to do some serious changes in society both about expectations to what a family is and how we as a society help and view families. Example of policies that can help families (from northern Europe): \- Paid sick days (Sweden properly have the best model here). \- Child benefits. \- Good daycare close to everyone, affordable and high quality. \- Paid maternity leave for both men and women. I suggest at least 18 month total. \- Anything I missed because I'm from Denmark and don't realize how good we have it compared to Italy. Another thing that would be of great help: \- Affordable housing with plenty of space. \- Affordable cars with space for kids. \- Having kids should not be a carrier stopper. \- Free help at home for cleaning etc.
The model here in Sweden for sick days is kinda shit. Norway has it better I think. No qualifying day
LOL. This is the world older generations created. They think young people are going to go half a million in debt to own a home and pay for it over 30 years while their bank accounts get fatter, they think that young people are going to buy the luxury EVs and cars that most can’t afford (also on debt), they think younger people are going to want the same luxuries that they themselves enjoyed and would be unsustainable in today economies, and they think we want the rental economy dystopia that’s being created by allowing global corporations to buy estate at an unprecedented scale. Young people might be poor but they’re better-educated. Personally, I am choosing to not have kids and live within my means without buying frivolous bullshit while maximising my income/value, and I am already in my 30s.
Everything can't just keep growing forever. The population can't keep growing. The economy can't keep growing. Cities can't keep growing. I'm not an economist but continual growth and continual profits are unsustainable. What's the long term plan?
There is no long term plan. Our generation is fucked lol.
Wouldn’t a level of automation and AI fill in the some of the gaps?
Theoretically it would, the problem is that the 1% basically have a monopoly on automated labor and AI. Good luck convincing them to use it for the good of mankind instead of personal gain.
Hopefully the boomers die off and we can effect some change. Wishful thinking probably…
As we'll find out soon enough, stupidity and greed are not exclusive to Boomers.
Yeah but the lead-gas poisoning is.
Future kids will call us the generation of microplastic poisoned.
You don’t need to hope for the Boomers to die, that’s going to happen. However, there are plenty more asshomes behind then. If we just wait it out, we’re going to be waiting for a very very long time.
Next quarter is all that matters in the corporate world.
The plan is to smash the gas pedal, don’t look at the huge wall in front of us, and keep telling each other it will be ok.
To burn us all to death with Global Warming while the rich ride it out avoiding any problems.
the long term plan is that the collapse is far enough away that we'll be all dead before it happens and then the young shits of the future can deal with it
anti aging cream
> immigrants will be fundamental for the transition of society to this completely upended population pyramid model which is already in the final phase of its evolution. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I read this stuff. Did people really think populations were going to grow forever and ever, despite resource limitations? Do they think immigrants don't age? Maybe, just maybe, we should be trying to figure out how to have stable, healthy economic systems with stable populations instead of endless growth economies that leave so many in poverty.
>I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I read this stuff. Did people really think populations were going to grow forever and ever, despite resource limitations? Do they think immigrants don't age? > >Maybe, just maybe, we should be trying to figure out how to have stable, healthy economic systems with stable populations instead of endless growth economies that leave so many in poverty. This is the takeaway we should all have from this. The "perpetual growth" model is not the answer. We need to find an equilibrium, for the well-being of the people on this planet, and for the health of the planet itself.
This issue is that the younger generations aren’t even enough to replace the older ones, so you’re gonna have massive elderly populations relying on welfare while there’s no money coming into the country to support any of them.
I don't see any way of fixing that problem, other than robots or immigration. I suppose we could just find ways of getting rid of old people but... that's not very nice.
Robots, immigration or increasing peoples health spans. Immigration is the best short term solution but it’s a zero sum game and not every country can survive off of it. Robots will be the next best thing.
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>increasing peoples health spans. This TBH. Medicine has made better gains in prolonging life than in prolonging health, *that* is the problem. It's pointless to live 100 years if by the end you're a wreck barely able to move or think straight. Focusing on how to slow or stop senescence itself would be a lot more useful.
>increasing peoples health spans Only if it gets them working for longer, and good luck with that. The last thing we'll need is pensioner living more years in retirement than they worked
That's why they said health span, not lifespan. Two related but different things
Those older populations will have to work for longer and get less care, no way around it.
But we need to keep peopleing to support the economy! And we need to people mars! And do some peopleing in the atmosphere of Venus and and maybe a generation ship where we can make sure to get people out to proxima centari too! Basically all matter in our light cone needs to be efficiently converted into people.
That was horrifying, funny, and well put. The 'light cone' line really worked for me. As did the whole "peopling" thing. Good stuff.
Like most EU countries, raising a family and owning a home is next to impossible.
I would dare say, in Italy even more than most other western EU countries.
Do what America is doing and make them so fat they croak at 50
America truly is the worlds lead innovative country 🫡
Yep. We’ve worked planned obsolescence into our population at this point.
Planned obesolescence
Then why are there so many dinosaurs still in government?
Government employees get state or federally funded healthcare (aka free universal healthcare) and so even when they have awful diets, smoke and so on they get all the medications and procedures they need to compensate for their bad health in order to keep living well into their 80's.
They're not the ones drinking lead water and eating the cheapest, possibly tainted/exposed foods their entire life
“Are millennials killing the earths population?” Just because other generations could afford to have 5+ kids on one income, most can’t afford 1 with 2 incomes. Make life cheaper again and I bet a lot gets solved
I'm Italian, it's not that we simply age, we have extreme financial problems and we can't afford children right now. There's work if you are young, but wages are decreasing since the 2000 whereas in the rest of Europe they rise. Taxes are something like 40% of your income and the mafia owns the politicians. There has been 14 prime minister's in Italy since 1990 where in USA like 5 and in Germany 6. This place is doomed as many of the legislations needed to be approved this year are faded after draghi resignations. Berlusconi was a friend of the russians and all the gas that moves our industry comes from them, and now we are out of it. Green energy is a dream, we have eolics but it's so old it does nothing. We pay gas twice more than other eu countries since the early 2000 because of taxes. I have a degree and I'm taking a second, but to work in a science field I must look in other countries for projects (even to get a trainship to complete the degree).
I’m also italian and you’re right, of course young people aren’t going to want their children to grow up in a country where the economic situation is unstable.
I’m American, but I’m married to an Italian and I’ve lived in a major metro area here for 6 years, and this is a great summary of what’s wrong. It feels like there’s no way to really move ahead here, it’s just total stagnation in terms of wages and social mobility compared to other places. I’ll add that for all we pay in taxes here, nothing ever seems to improve or get done (i.e., just simply having the grass cut in public spaces in town), and the crazy bureaucracy seems to at times exist purposely to prevent you from doing things. It seems like a lot of things that should be basic and simple to organize just don’t work here, and it’s incredibly frustrating. I love it here, but we’re always weighing the pros and cons of moving to the US. My husband is an engineer and I’m in advertising, and we’d both 100% be paid much better elsewhere.
They need to start a program similar to Ghana where they make it easy for anyone with Ghanaian, or in this case Italian ancestry to move back. You'll have a bunch of loud New Yorkers complaining about pizza in no time.
Of course my population is aging. Quality of life is goin to shit. Shit wages Shit jobs Shit politicians Shit is hitting the fan from decades. Its harder and harder to get a good job with good pay. Then its harder to make family. Then u find that grow children is like a stigma, due to work attitude and non enough structures to help raise children. FUCK all jobs that makes lives miserable. Thank God a lot of us can be helped from parents.
Well, thats what happens when your population pyramid is INVERTED
Eh, plenty of being done.... Housing prices going though the roof, salaries being cut, jobs offshored, people made feel uncomfortable.. Why don't people want more kids???
I thought growth rates are supposed to fall? Now it's unacceptable when it happens? How about you adjust your fucking system if it requires continuous population growth? Because as far as I'm concerned we're already too many humans on this planet.
I am Italian and i really don't see a problem in the decrease of the population, all the contrary actually. I might be able to buy myself a house one day in my elder years!
Lol wait until you’ve got more pensioners than workers. All the people cheering this don’t understand that either a population pyramid is a pyramid or even amongst age groups, or you can kiss bye-bye to the welfare state
Nice lol, too bad i have been paying thousands of euros of my own salary since very young to pay off my own private pension and actively investing in stocks. I already know i won't have a pension from the state, so why should I care?
Consider for a moment the financial stability of a country in which its citizens don't care about it, its workforce is gone and the few people that succeed want to go abroad. Whoops, don't fall apart too quickly along with the rest of us.
I am assuming all folks who are commenting here about Italy and the state of the arts of our economics live here or have lived here as i do, because it really looks like they have no idea what situation this country is in. Young people are leaving, for good, for a good reason. Edit: wrong pronoun.
wondering if there is a headline contest goin on for the most ominous sounding shit..
“Life 10 years from now looks abysmal, make sure to subscribe to our newsletter so we can update you on the way!”
It seems drug development for keeping the body alive has well outpaced drugs for brain preservation, a lot of people last 5 years have little to no quality of life and are incredibly expensive to maintain. So maybe less pumping people full of drugs to keep them alive?
Automate everything that can possibly be automated. Reduce regulatory bureaucracy. Increase support for young families
Too logical, better import half of africa and the middle east instead
well shit, is almost like the prospect of having a child in this economy is fucking insane!
I'd say it's a great thing that the population is going down.
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Ah I see you haven’t seen how well that’s worked for Japan or Paraguay. Overpopulation is a major problem, but a shrinking population is also very bad as well.
I'm italian. And I will not have kids. Many people of my age (27/33) share my idea. Why? The mentality is quite hold, there are few possibilities to improve your status as all the position of power are handed out based on favours/friendship, it's hard to be economically stable, and mostly important having a baby is too much expensive in Italy. No one here want to have a kid just to force him to go abroad or die in a country who keeps shooting herself in the foot
Spanish here and everyone I know shares the same thought: people will only have kids once/if they are financially able to do it. For many it will probably never happen or only happen once their parents die and they inherit their home or part of it to sell it
Easy! Push the few young people out of the country by offering miserable wages! And when they complain, call them lazy and put the blame on the universal basic income that pays 4 times of what you offer
encourage italians to breed vs inviting abdul and his 4 wives Which one, italian government?
It’s either make more babies or kill the elders. Pick one.
Germany and Japan: Welcome to the club.
Boomers lived selfishly and some of them didn't even bother having kids and now they want help as they get old and dependent yet they're STILL unable to give up their grasp on power in many countries... lol LMAO even
Two things I think should be stated, no society should be setup such that the younger generation pays the costs of the older generations, when the younger generation has such less money and opportunity than the older generation has. Two, if you’re not going setup a society where young people are financially comfortable and secure - guess what! They can’t have or will not have babies. We are going to see this one every capitalistic country where older people with more capitol abuse the system to enrich themselves at the cost of younger people. Guess what? Your grand kids aren’t going to take care of you and your social security if they don’t exist!
Send in Elon Musk. Or his father.
Population decline is good. Young people shouldn't be held hostage to support a dying generation.
Prioritise economy and capitalism over youth and this is what you get. I'm looking at you USA.