WHAT?!

My intuitive answer here was gonna be "Expropriate the Boomers" (or, alternatively, some nastier verb, jk!)

buy-in? They require buy-in?! (THE CONTRACTS ARE VOIDED?! Holy shit. Oh motherfucker... IYKYK.)

"The hardest part of 'sensible forethought' is how to win support from the elderly.""The hardest part of 'sensible forethought' is how to win support from the elderly."

ah, fuck 'em.

Only in recent years has the economic impact of declining populations begun to be seriously discussed. Japan, whose population peaked in 2008, was a forerunner, but many other countries have since joined it: there are, according to the un, 63 countries with shrinking populations, accounting for 28% of all people alive in 2024. These include China, Germany, Russia and South Korea.

"The central question is whether falling populations should worry us. Martin Wolf argues in the Financial Times that there is “no powerful reason” to fear them.""The central question is whether falling populations should worry us. Martin Wolf argues in the Financial Times that there is “no powerful reason” to fear them."

This would be true-ish in a free market with good money; alas, we live in a regulated, socialist disaster with crap money. So no, growth (of which population is one component) is our only way out (...of the disasters the Boomers made; fuck 'em.)

1. Maybe our friends over in AI land can rescue us... higher productivity, robots doing shit. #1492590

This is an orthodox economic argument. I myself held that view as a young economist in the 1980s when the issue was starting to be debated in Japan. My growing question—grounded in long-term observation of Japan’s economic and social evolution—is whether an acceleration in productivity growth, or even the status quo, is feasible as a population falls rapidly

uh-hu, it was always democracy's fault:

One reason for my doubts is the effect of the “grey-hair democracy”. Older voters naturally prefer government spending that benefits them—such as social-welfare programmes—over spending on basic research or higher education, whose positive effects on growth take much longer to materialise.

2. AGEING slows tech adoption anyway, soooo, we fucked?

Constantly confronted with new digital devices and new ways of doing things, older people face greater technical and psychological challenges than the young. Age-related differences in the speed of technology adoption can produce big cross-country differences in productivity growth.
A minimum level of infrastructure spending must be maintained even in areas that are losing population. The fewer people remain, the more expensive this becomes, eating into productivity. Economy-wide productivity is strongly influenced by the speed at which people and capital shift from shrinking regions to expanding ones.

oh, sadge.

3. It was all the toxic masculinity's fault??

Man, I sort of like Claudia Goldin... #1004941. this isn't exactly what I'm used to hearing her say.

also: we get fertility decline with reduction in couples rather than from a reduction in child-bearing! #1491154

In Japan, unlike in Western countries, births outside marriage are extremely rare. The decline in the birth rate has therefore been driven mainly by the rise in the number of unmarried individuals, rather than by married couples having fewer children. That is why Japan did not witness a third baby boom when the “second baby-boomers”—the children of the generation born between 1946 and 1949—reached marriageable age.

Yes, truly; fuck the boomers... says even this former central banking boomer.

Older people naturally prefer to be well treated in social-welfare programmes, yet they also care about the financial burden placed on future generations. People, in other words, are both egoistic and altruistic. Yet, with weakening ties to future generations, older voters are becoming less inclined to support long-term solutions—and happier to put up with fiscal deficits that weigh on those future generations.

archive: https://archive.md/0mgGK