I don't think climate change will prevent reaching that number, but it will increase the suffering. If we don't start reversing climate change I believe we will try to adapt to it until we reach the limit of our ability to adapt before we perish. If we are lucky, a small fraction of the species will survive long enough for something to be able to change, but I'm talking a really long time.

Yeah, I can think of people of many different colors and varieties who would jump at the chance to go over there and help with whatever work they need doing for a decent wage.

I agree with you 100%. Capitalists need to complete the logic loop: we’ve built amazing tech, machinery and processes to get incredible productivity gains and production of goods with less labor. So we should be able to get by with less labor, right?…

It's not emmigration. If it was then what you said about labor prices is correct.

It's about too many old people who will die in the next decade and the lack of new babies to keep Japanese culture going

I'd like to take the part of the baby churning plan where a homemaker is part of each household. Like, subtract the misogyny where it's automatically assumed it would be the woman but households with children take a lot of work.

Less productive means less things for you.

Suppose you ate 100 bananas this year. Suppose you were told that next year you are only allowed 90 bananas, and what's more you will never have 100 bananas a year again. Even worse, after next year you will never have 90 bananas again. And the same is true of everything else you enjoy.

Most people hope, at a minimum, that next year will be no worse than this year. They do not like knowing, for certain, that every year will be worse than the one before. Forever. But that's what happens when production inexorably declines.

In fact, in this situation the only way to make things better, for anyone, is at someone else's expense. There is no win-win outcome. That makes for a very unpleasant society.

They want the fantasy of a one income household but aren’t willing to increase wages to make it reality.

The right wing uses this as a dog whistle to rally the uneducated.

Even if you provide good living conditions to people they will choose to not have enough kids to sustain the population if they're given the choice. Statistics from the past 100 years clearly show it in all rich and even poor countries.

We reached 8 billions humans because people, especially women, didn't have any other choice.

Even countries that try to enable it don't renew their population, no matter the level of socio-economic equality.

The only way you're reversing the trend is by taking rights from women and I sure hope you don't want that.

In a world where you can automate everything it's not an issue.

We can't, so we need specialized labor to accomplish some tasks and not everyone has the potential to become specialized labor even if they're given the chance.

With people retiring and less people to take their place it becomes an issue, no matter how much you pay people, if there's no one to take a position then the seat stays empty.

I'd love to be a stay-at-home parent, but I make more money because I have the outside genitalia whereas my partner has the inside genitalia plus chest ornaments, so she'd be the smart choice. That's literally the biggest difference (beyond her being a much harder worker and my having a disability), yet I make 1.5x her salary. Humans are fucking stupid.

We only make it because of our two incomes, so no one gets to stay home or have kids. Yeah America!

There's a surprising amount of green for major cities that otherwise look like concrete jungles. There's usually plenty of parks and kids are in general very safe. Maybe this is just my comparison from originally living in the states, but it is super safe for children and the amount of expected unsupervised travel kids do in Japan is astonishing.

In Japan they let kids go outside without supervision starting a really young age.

this story comes out every so often about japan, rarely if ever mentions (slightly) lower births per woman in italy, china, spain, or the same 1.3 as poland, finland, canada

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?most_recent_value_desc=false

those are 2022 figures but i doubt there's been significant change

there's basically no first world country above the 2.1 replacement rate

Do you have any links to studies/articles about that?

I still don't understand the obsession. Not everything has to be a ponzi scheme where line go up. Things can shrink, it's ok. Not everything lasts forever. At some point you can abandon areas and let them decay.

Yeah, we both would love to be able to be a one income household, but it's just but feasible.

I'd say all those EU (and Canada) countries aren't striving to be the economic powerhouse that Japan is and China already has 1.5 billion people compared to Japan's 125 million. Plus most countries rely on immigration to make up the difference while I've heard (but maybe not true) that Japan is hard to immigrate to due to the disapproving culture toward foreigners.

Just stats from a bunch of countries, look at the birthrate over the past 100 years to see the trend, even in Scandinavian countries where socio-economic equality is the highest. If you look at Canada there's quite a drop right as the pill was made available.

I fully agree, but also, the whole concept of a pension plan only works if the next generation pays it forwards. Meaning this generation is paying for the current retired group, and no one will pay for them.