Korea's Birthrate Hits Another Record Low
Korea's Birthrate Hits Another Record Low
Korea's birthrate in July dropped to an all-time low, further highlighting the country's swift transition into an aging society.
Of course this is a good thing, but there are still serious negative consequences to a reducing population, which must be mitigated. Primarily, old people who are past working age are an expensive population to maintain. When there are as many or more old people as there are young, the burden is too heavy for young people to bear. And I say this as a 70 year old. Young people today CANNOT hit old age without their own substantial retirement resources.
A new robot factory is going live in Oregon that is manufacturing general purpose humanoid robots, so guess you could just buy a few to keep around the house.
But, maybe the idea that the young should support the old in their retirement is bad idea.
Why shouldn't it be someone's responsibility to finance their own retirement? Why should it be expected that the younger generation supports the old?
It has always seemed insane to me that I'm expected to fund the retirement of people 25+ years older, and I'm counting on people 25+ years younger to take care of me. Of course purely individual retirement planning only works for the rich and the lucky. But, you pay into a pot that helps with retirement costs, they should be the retirement costs of people roughly your age.
If a generation is funding its own retirement, then it doesn't matter if people are having fewer kids. In fact, if they have fewer kids they'll have more money left over to put into the pot for their own retirement.
As you know, the current system in America is that we pay into the retirement system. In the present time those funds are used to support present day seniors, and then when you have reached the proper age the people currently paying into it are supporting you but can (supposedly) expect to be supported the same way. I started paying into it at age 16, and now at 69 I am collecting. And additionally, I need to have saved up.
I don't know how we would transfer out of this system and into a completely self sufficient one. I DO know that this system mitigated the deep deep poverty many elderly used to experience. Because for the working and poor classes, no one realistically makes enough to set aside for retirement.
You could make this argument about literally anything in a modern society.
"Why shouldn’t it be someone’s responsibility to finance their own education?"
"Why shouldn’t it be someone’s responsibility to finance their own healthcare?"
"Why shouldn’t it be someone’s responsibility to finance their own social care?"
"Why shouldn’t it be someone’s responsibility to finance their own fire department?"
It has always seemed insane to me that I’m expected to fund the retirement of people 25+ years older, and I’m counting on people 25+ years younger to take care of me.
I think it's just common decency to help look after your fellow people? Not everyone in retirement is going to require a lot of financial help, but there maybe others who do. Some may not have been so lucky in life to be a position to fund it themselves. What happens to these people if the funding isn't there? Do they literally starve to death on the the streets?
Sorry but this is a good thing. Earths population is too large for the resources available.
My instinct is that you’re right, but I wonder if what we’re really saying is that earth’s population is too large under the currently dominant socioeconomic and lifestyle constructs.
It's clearly the current lifestyle. Africans are destroying the world much less than the industrialized world because they're too poor to live the climate-wrecking lifestyle of the West.
A key issue though is that it takes a while for lifestyles to change. The higher the population, the quicker the switch needs to be done to avoid catastrophic consequences.
If the Earth's population were 100 million, it might be fine to take a century to switch away from fossil fuels. But at nearly 10 billion, if it takes a century, the results will be catastrophic.
In the end, that's more or less the same thing. But the question is, do we need more people? It's also easier to be sustainable if we require less.
I mean, yes but also no. There's just way too many people, period. Merely 60 years ago the human population was sitting around 3 billion people. Now it's 8. Earth's resources are finite, and at this rate of growth I would not be surprised if we ran out of non-renewables (with no renewable alternatives that scale as well as non-renewables) in our lifetime or our children's.
How do you know this?
The esteemed Mr. Malthus wrote about it. The admirable J. Swift has also written a wonderful proposal for how we may deal with it.
I am not an expert, but it seems like most developed countries are learning to deal with a shrinking population. The current decline hasn't had effects like loosening up the job market, so it seems to me this means it's not currently causing any problems that would be catastrophic. There's clearly enough workers for the work that needs to get done.
I think there's not yet been a article of all the 'doom and gloom' of population decline that actually explains why it's worse than overpopulation.
Because the problems come years after the birthrate decline when a large portion of your population is retired and you don’t have enough young workers to fill the roles they typically fill
It's going to be tough but it needs to happen eventually, plus now we have ai which should help alleviate some of that once it really gets going
You'll also run out of young people who can just take care of the elderly.
For one, those roles dont pay worth a damn anymore. Two, many roles are being automated.
This society we built is now too expensive for anyone but the top 10 to 20 percent to afford. All these old people are expecting youngsters to foot the bill, but the young cannot even afford to look after themselves let alone an entire generation of seniors. How the hell are they supposed to afford kids?
Except we need really tight labor shortages to jack up wages and house prices to go down
2050 is gonna be crazy
This is because by and large koreans are smart.
Yay for Korea! A constantly growing population is not sustainable.
This isn't a Children of Men scenario, so there's no need to fear intentional low birthrates.
Except
- Young Koreans aren’t getting better jobs
- Housing isn’t slowing down fast enough
- Yoon and South Korean Government are trying to raise working hours
Koreans are having a low birth rate because they are destroying their youth