AIBU The global fertility crisis is the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced?

@MuckFusk I would absolutely be behind taxes that balance wealth inequality to help with this, although with the ever growing costs of health care and new drugs we still need to apply limits

Wealth tax, land tax, property taxes - bring them all on

Not sure any of the current political parties are up for that though - hoped Labour might be brave, but they are proving cowardly.

Overpopulation is a huge issue. I believe quality of life was better when the UK population was 56 million, now we’re nearer 68 million. It contributes to water shortages, climate change, pollution, stress.
Endlessly increasing the population is a Ponzi scheme.

There's a very simple solution to this though, which is for young people to get off their arses and VOTE in the numbers that old people do. We can argue the problems and limitations of that, but until they at least take that step it's hard to have much sympathy for them.

I suffer from suicidal ideation myself, so I did try and frame as gently as I could.

My problem, with those whose sole response to the demographic crisis is "good, humans should die out" is that it ignores the suffering that'll be placed on the subsequent generations. Its extremely trite, and akin to those people who dont care about the climate crisis because they "wont be around to see it".

Its just selfishness, particularly if you still want to cling onto a long life, supported by working age people, while telling them you dont give a flying fuck and it'd be great if they all died.

I think it's more that people just don't get it. And that's kind of understandable, given just how radical and unprecedented a change of mentality is required.

For pretty much all of human history, the one all-consuming issue has been "getting more". Having enough to eat and live (still a challenge for plenty of people in the developing world) or, since agriculture made it possible to amass surpluses for the future, having ever greater wealth as an insurance policy against that future.

Now that very same drive is literally killing us - destroying the very Earth that sustains us. At the same time, the technology of the developed world is getting to a point where, with the right approach to social and political organisation, it really should be possible to support people materially with a greatly reduced number of working hours and a greatly reduced consumption of energy.

I earn less than the average wage and will probably not have paid off my mortgage by the time I retire. But I'd gladly accept a lower standard of living imposed as part of a genuine national (or better, international) plan to turn this around. WTF use is the value of my house going to be when my children are dying of heatstroke?

It astounds me that people on six figure incomes, or sitting on amassed wealth far beyond what they need for the practicalities of life, can't get their head around the fact that the materialist drive is killing us, and needs to be abandoned for a different set of priorities. To be that intelligent and capable to earn that kind of money in the first place, and yet that stupid...

@MuckFusk I totally disagree that the elderly have paid their share.

Some have paid nothing at all, most have paid too little, some have paid enough.

The amount that their retirement and health care is costing is far far above what was expected when they started working life - and far above what they paid to the generation above them.

Personal care should be paid by individuals - it's no different to child care and is entirely predictable that it is needed as you age. It simply replaces the things you can no longer do.

Pensioners in the UK are the wealthiest groups in the UK - they have the capacity to pay for what they take out, to make up for what their group has not paid.

They don't want to do this and bitterly complain - they want to take health care resources, benefits, state pension and receive free personal care with some other person paying for it who is likely to be poorer than them and never receive anything similar in their own life time. They want to keep their own 'wealth' which is almost entirely unearned - simply the rise in house prices that now means the young cannot own housing.

That is unfair. It is unfair for one group to be given so much and demand more whilst others will never have the same.

Understood and I thank you for a civil debate as well. I didn't mean to suggest you were uneducated. We can't know everything though, can we, and I have found that plenty of educated people don't realize how crucial to our survival the survival of others species is. I'm sorry if my comment came across badly.

Weird article. I thought it was pretty much accepted that with the emancipation and education of women, the birth rate falls. But she’s decided it’s all down to smartphones?
And as for ‘Are we entertaining ourselves into oblivion?’ Roger Waters was more eloquent with This species has amused itself to death….

Human population is not out of control due to new births, that’s the point!! It’s due to people living much longer into old age. Take Japan for instance which has a very unbalanced population something like 30 percent of the population is over 65 while roughly just 11 percent are under 18.

Whilst I see so many are happy for the population to decline, and don’t get me wrong I’m not blind to the benefits to nature and the planet etc, but population decline in the nature that we are facing now has never happened before. This is not a decrease due to war or plague etc this is ever decreasing circles of humanity and that is something worth sitting up and seriously taking notice of if for no other reason than to simply acknowledge it.

Agree. Voluntary euthanasia is a valuable thing and I hope to be able to make use of it myself when the time comes. If it becomes mandatory and involuntary, it's not euthanasia, it's very obviously murder.

It would do no good unless millions of others killed themselves as well and most people aren't willing to do that to their loved ones. Full disclosure; I've been deeply suicidal in my time (PTSD) but I still couldn't do that to my family. Thankfully I still had some control over myself even in the depths of it.
I'm actually surprised you would even ask somebody that question.

I'm all for a more radical solution, I just don't expect voters to support it (at least, not pre-emptively - people seems unwilling to act to mitigate a future crisis, we probably have to wait until current systems abruptly collapse, and the resulting suffering is enough to make people accept a change it needed).

It'd be nice if that didnt happen but, as with the climate crisis, people are too selfish to voluntarily make meaningful sacrifices.

Irrelevant, since it still doesn't mean cutting off care is the appropriate response. The principle remains that if you pay into a service you should be able to use that service. It's not the taxpayer's fault that governments failed to account for a shift in demographics.

I know you're being slightly tongue-in-cheek, but those issues are because of a) not enough midwives (as you say) and b) too many inductions / rising c-section rates meaning women are stuck on the ward for longer. The birth rate in the UK is undoubtedly declining!

It's nobody's business but yours and your partner's. A handful of children makes for a happy house.

I assume you mean in the UK.

https://equalitytrust.org.uk/news/press-release/uk-still-taxes-the-poorest-more-than-the-richest/

A contribution that was largely determined on age demographics stabilizing, not getting exponentially worse, now requiring the next generation to make bigger contributions (which further exacerbates the issue, through increased cost of living).

There are countries with more progressive taxation, but AFAIK there are no countries which tax the wealthy at the rate they would need to pay in order to fix the eldercare crisis. It needs to be a sweeping change, not a tweak, if it's to make a difference. I do take your point though.

I'm a midwife, and it certainly doesn't feel like the population is declining when our 58 bed maternity ward is full to bursting every single day with not enough midwives to look after the amount of birthing women coming through the doors!

It seems like this is the next bandwagon that the enlightened progressives will use to drive their own agenda and line their own pockets. The next thing to cause mass hysteria about. After all, the climate bandwagon is starting to fizzle out. The DEI one is almost dead.

There is no fertility crisis. Women can have babies if they want to. And will if they need to. Human race isn’t going extinct anytime soon.

Just as there is no climate crisis. The climate is changing and incompetence and corruption from governments causes adverse impacts on people. They then gaslight the public further to rip us off even more by blaming it all on climate change.

A contribution they've already made by a lifetime of paying their taxes.

I'm not suggesting they should contribute more? Unless you mean by extending their working life and reducing their retirement? Which is what subsequent generations would also have to do.

We either share the burden of the demographic crisis, or greedily maintain current standards and increase suffering for future generations.

I expect greed will win out until it forces a dramatic collapse.

Wouldn’t this be the best thing for the world / nature etc? Surely the worst thing to happen to the planet was over population / pollution etc

What is WFA?