In 4 years, 2029, UK deaths will exceed births!

I have a friend who works in debt recovery for the Child Maintenance Service, and whilst it's a while since we've talked about it, she had a fair amount of power! For example, she could view the defaulting dads' bank accounts, then would phone them. "I can see you have £500 in that account. We're taking it to put towards your child maintenance arrears".

They didn't passively benefit from it. They intentionally voted for it, in GE after GE. They voted in Thatcher instead of Kinnock for example (not saying I favour Kinnock). They voted to demutualise their building societies and insurance providers to get a windfall. They bought shares in privatised utilities and sold them on within days to make a quick profit.

These are examples of how voters of that time voted for policies that benefitted them, so can't now say were merely bystanders in the decades where they massively benefitted.

I'm not convinced it would happen anyway. Newer housing stock is poor quality. Houses will deteriorate faster then demand will reduce in my opinion.

Yes the whole system is bonkers. Hopefully ID cards will come in and finally we will link HMRC to everything else to catch the cheats in the system. I also think we should make fathers actually pay for their own kids to get mother's off welfare. It's crazy that that idea is seen as Radical.

When competition for houses drops the prices will drop and they will become more affordable rebalancing the market.

That can't be allowed to happen. Too many people have too much invested to allow it.

I agree with you. It is why Elon Musk and co are always crying about the birth rate. If you are very successful in this system why would you want to change it? Even more important for those of us thinking like this to protect our “future” children and sadly that means for having less or none of them. I’m not producing the worker bee class in a technofeudal era - life is likely to be very hard for them. I hope at least with all the bad, fewer workers means they have more rights to negotiate a better life for themselves. I will likely suffer though.

Oh yes, but women are the unpaid labour that keeps it afloat. If there are fewer of us then that care gap goes and they have to actually pay for it (unless we want swathes of elderly dying in the street or alone at home). Easier to make women have kids and force women to take on care roles by not giving them real paid work, so they can be controlled and used as free labour. This is what I fear for my daughter (also happy to go to Dignitas when I get a terminal diagnosis so hopefully she won't have to do that for me).

Our current system of funding social care is utterly unsustainable, which is why many councils are on the brink of bankruptcy, and have resorted to selling off their assets as a short-term fix. The whole system needs a total overhaul and fast. I don't think there's any alternative but to return to using central government funding, and also to bring more care facilities "in house", i.e. use fewer private care companies.

We might then be able to afford to pay care workers properly. For example, not paying carers for their travel time between domiciliary appointments is completely unacceptable.

It doesn't. But there are posters who are very bitter towards 'boomers' on the back of it. I'm saying that it was circumstance and outside sources that created the 'boom', which the generation of the.time were lucky enough to benefit from.

Of course it's not necessary to have children to have a fulfilling and rich life. What concerns me is that many younger women seem to be rejecting motherhood based on its downsides (which are many, to be fair) rather than considering the bigger picture - not for society, but for themselves. They are choosing not to have a baby. The thing is, choosing not to have a baby means choosing not to have an 8 year old, not to have a teenager, not to have an adult child. It is a massive choice that has lifelong implications. If someone has considered all that and still thinks not having children is right for them, fair play. But I am not convinced everyone is thinking it through, partly because they are so defensive about it. Any attempt to discuss it always gets shouted down with 'you think women are only good for procreating,' and other such nonsense. The time to really consider the impact isn't when you're 60 and your friends are all busy visiting their adult children.

@OutsideLookingOut this is what govt's like the Trump administration are trying to change though - through the trad wife movement and anti-abortionist propoganda, controlling women will be easier for them than thinking of a "new way". Sadly only women think like that, men in power want to keep it.

And I can see the other side! It is going to be awful to be old or sick or disabled during this transition period with an inverted pyramid. But women would be the sacrifice even if we could go back (which at this point is not possible).

They do but I don’t blame people for being scared about it. Our system also depends on the oppression and exploitation of others. I wonder of instead of trying to patch the old system we can think of a better one. So many technological advances are coming but I don’t think it is in the interest of the wealthy to change anything.

Agreed plus more and more women are waking up to the fact that it isn’t necessary to have children in order to have a fulfilling and rich life.

Nail on the head. Population growth is a ponzi scheme and all ponzi schemes eventually collapse.

We can’t feed out population with the land we have so a shrinking population is long term needed anyway

we can’t house our population

we have high carbon footprint per head of population and reducing the numbers of people seems easier than getting people to do less harm

what is needed is a way to mange the downsizing - shouldn’t be beyond the wit of women

constant growth is a stupid thing to aim for and is bound to fail - manage the transition or crash your society - that is the real choice not trying to artificially keep to an arbitrary balance

Yup, our kids should be paid more for labour based jobs than immigrants, even if ours didn't pass GCSEs and they have a degree. It's unfair for them to expect a better job if they weren't born here, right?

Of course it's possible. But far too many people think that everyone else should be the ones to compromise.

We want to know exploit but not be exploited. Is it possible to have a functioning economy without exploiting someone? It seems many people on this thread don’t care, they just don’t want to be inconvenienced.

Nah, the state would be more than happy to kill off those pesky ill / old people on benefits and in poor health. Far cheaper than providing decent quality care and medical treatment. And many safeguards quickly watered down

Euthanasia dressed up as "assisted dying" to imply autonomy and choice

It's almost inevitable we'll have to go cap in hand to the IMF for emergency bail outs, and heaven knows what conditions they'll force upon the UK.

It's going to be painful

Part of me thinks that the politicians want it to happen as then they're not the ones making the hard decisions that have needed to be made for 2 or 3 decades (or more). Whoever is in power will be able to stand back and say "not me guv" when the IMF instructs us to massively raise taxes, impose new taxes, start charging for the NHS, means test ALL state benefits (inc state pension etc) - all of which are necessary NOW, but weak politicians won't do it and probably hope they'll be retired on their gold plated pensions before the shit hits the fan!

I think this is true now & actually don't blame them because people don't want to hear it.

Look at some of the stupid comments on this thread, people talking about their gps providing childcare.

They want cheap labour but not migrant labour, yet wouldn't want their kids working in that field for that wage. They'd rather see them out there sticking flags on lamp posts.

We can’t pretend like it is only social contagions:

• every population where women have education and freedom, the birth rate falls
• having contraception to plan family size
• thoughtfulness about suitability to parent
• weighing up affordability (which politicians especially right wing ones have advised for years)
• having children with more thought for the children themselves
• AI will replace many jobs and people thinking about this

I personally refuse to have children to take on low paid hard work. We need carers, but how many of them want to be or can get by without benefits?

@Strawberriesandpears people are talking collectively. I'm not even young but I worry about sitting in my own shit & being left to starve.