We need to start talking about population decline

[user4567890754]

The first signs of it are starting to show in the UK, with primary school closures. Secondary school closures will follow.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/11158f12-0133-11ee-a364-04e704863f75?shareToken=5ef47b2b4776be376153089146c8bacf

Italy is a few years ahead of us.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/01/plunging-birthrate-threatens-italian-schools

Japan shows where every country is headed - towards a crisis where they are on the brink of being unable to maintain social functions.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/13/asia/japan-population-decline-record-drop-intl-hnk/index.html

And yet there are still people who think that we have a problem with overpopulation. It’s the opposite.

Issue is increasing numbers of people are requiring quite complex care. No longer for many settings are carers and some nurses with weekly GP visits or whatever sufficient; there needs to be teams of other AHPs along with more accessible facilities. Even with the high fees its not profitable enough for companies (they're businesses at the end of the day) and also not enough staff.

Take some of the run down seaside towns and turn them into "silver cities" for elderly people with facilities and businesses catered to the elderly. Private housing as well as care homes to make the transition easier.

I don’t know. I agree population decline is going to be very very painful for us! But the benefits to generations after us could be great. What do you think OP? What would you prefer for your children?

Also I shiver at the thought of just creating children to care for others and be wage slaves who in turn need an exponential amount of future children to do the same. Is that what we want for the future? All while competing for ever depleting resource.

In a sense it doesn’t really matter whether you think global population decline is a good thing or a bad thing. It is going to happen, whether we like it or not. No, it is not happening across the world YET, but it is in some countries and it is going to happen in the UK too. That’s why we need to start talking about it now! We can’t just put our heads in the sand and wait until it hits us. We need to start planning on a personal and a National and a global level. The birth rate in the UK has already collapsed, the demographic change has already started (more older people than young working people) and the population decline will inevitably follow.

The UK’s natural population will go into decline in 2025. Immigration can stop immediate depopulation, but there isn’t a baby factory in a far-off land that will continue to supply people indefinitely to prop up our society and economy. We need to come up with some other solutions, that don’t involve sacrificing reproductive rights or bumping off the elderly and disabled!

We are not breeding exponentially. Far from it! Birth rates are absolutely collapsing, worldwide. The most we can hope to do now with births is to perhaps slow the rate of decline so we can have a managed depopulation strategy and make the necessary social and economic changes, rather than suddenly dropping off a cliff.

I think the challenges of climate change, pollution, resource usage etc are well-known and discussed by many people, but a lot of people don’t appreciate that depopulation is also a massive issue that needs to be front of mind in future planning, probably because we’ve had decades of grim warnings about increasing populations.

https://www.ft.com/content/7a558711-c1b8-4a41-8e72-8470cbd117e5

Agree. That poster is welcome to remove their own voting rights not other people’s.

On op population decline won’t be nice but continuing the increase isn’t either

We’re also seeing medical breakthroughs, early days on cancer blood tests and Alzheimer’s disease. This could further increase age

OTH AI sounds like it will change the labour market

I think we decrease because what’s the alternative- continual increase

You can't do that (although I find it strange that 16-17 year olds are considered too naive/immature but the very elderly with often very slowed down cognitive functions and retired for decades are fine.

I think a lot of it is due to the number the likes of the Daily Mail have done on the older generations (those that still read newspapers). The fear they spread and pure propaganda has poisoned so many minds.

Most won’t agree but there is a potential solution. Nobody over the age of 80 is allowed to vote. That way they can’t vote as a block in ways which screw the young who they need to help them. Stops them voting against their own interests

That's quite extreme. I'd rather they gave the vote to younger people. I do take the point though the demographics impact voting outcomes.

There’s also issue of some countries becoming more inhabitable- I heard the median age of a country in Africa and was amazed at how low it was. Just googled and Japan at 48.6 years. Niger has the lowest average age at only 14.8 years.

It’s not going to be smooth, how difficult idk but climate disaster the other factor

Of course we’re feeling it now. I’m working FT and paying tax through my ears. Meanwhile the country is crumbling. One of the roads near my house looks like something you’d see in downtown Mogadishu, it looks like it’s been shelled, there are that many potholes. Where are the ever increasing taxes going? Then you get Labour announcing they will introduce even more taxes. Seriously thinking of emigrating to a younger country already, the workers can’t continue to be squeezed like this.

I think a lot of it is due to the number the likes of the Daily Mail have done on the older generations (those that still read newspapers). The fear they spread and pure propaganda has poisoned so many minds.

I think that's why so many think it's the fault of immigrants or the feckless having too many babies.

@Endlesssummer2022 if you can I would tbh. I'm encouraging my dc to do the same. We are lucky to be unaffected by Brexit.

Our population won't decline though (unless it's by choice). People will always want to come here, particularly given the effects of climate change.

There's plenty of the globe still breeding like rabbits.

It doesn't matter how much tax we pay, as long as the public sector isn't reformed to make it much more efficient, things will keep getting worse.

There's plenty of the globe still breeding like rabbits.

🙄

Seriously thinking of emigrating to a younger country already

Where are you thinking?

In terms of demographic change I think the short-term solution is for us to continue working in some fashion as long as we are physically able.

Increase rights to WFH and part-time to retain more older people for longer.
Investigate ideas like the 4 day week so that people aren’t burned out by 65.
Facilitate and encourage retraining and reskilling in middle age.
Get rid of the expectation of a long healthy retirement, start trying to achieve a work-life balance now.
If people have more leisure time they will have more time to serve their family and the community in other ways, caring for children and the elderly etc.
I think we’re going to need to be more community-minded and less individualistic in general.

There's plenty of the globe still breeding like rabbits.

Aka theres millions of women still without the access to reliable contraception and some of those women live in countries where marital rape is legal

OP, you're the person who is so fixated on the uncomfortable change bear charging towards you that you're completely oblivious to the meteor hurtling towards earth which will soon eradicate all life. It's human exceptionalism run amok.

This isn't true though. There's more than enough English speaking, educated, qualified and intelligent people waiting to come here if we want them. We are already enormously underutilising the migrants that are here.
Of course it would be immensely immoral, and currently incredibly unpopular amongst voters, but we certainly could (for now) import enough of the "right" people.

No. Schools in London are also closing because they are UNDERsubscribed, and we have been told that is because the kids are moving out of London. If you think they are moving to London and I'm being told that they are moving to rural areas where are they going? I didn't know that schools in London were closing until a close teacher friend told me about a few well known schools that have now closed. I was really shocked. I mean, schools closing in London?

I agree with this although not sure about immoral as it depends a bit on how habitable the countries are over time

Also agree on voters not wanting it but wouldn’t we just face the same issue?

People arriving would age and we’d need to increase ages arriving lower down

Unless there is a time limit which some countries I suppose do with limited time visas

What younger places are you talking about? The overlap between places with a significantly younger demographic than the UK and countries with a general attractiveness as good as or better than the UK (eg no wars or major terrorist insurgent threat) is pretty small unless you fancy life on a really tiny island nation.

Singapore if you can get a visa. Uruguay and Chile maybe, not sure what they're like at the moment. The fall in fertility rates is a worldwide phenomenon, and the countries where it isn't happening (eg Nigeria, Afghanistan) tend to have serious issues, because the reason they don't have declining birth rates is largely because they're unwilling or unable to educate their girls.

Yes, allow 16 year olds to vote.

The voting age is the age of majority. Do you want to lower the age of majority to 16? There's more of an argument to raise it back to 21, than to lower it.

But why does it have to be the age of the majority? Maybe it should be weighted more towards those with more to lose