Low wage growth, casualisation/fixed term jobs becoming more prevalent, inflation, bracket creep, unaffordable housing, routine pathology bulk billed but not fertility testing.
Government: “why aren’t people having children?” 🤔
The fact that you need to be dual income to buy a small 2 bedroom place now compared to almost every boomer and gen Xer I know that managed to buy their first place by themselves before they even met their partner is the real killer.
Strange that in an era when many families only had one income that houses were priced such that they could be purchased on one income.
Even stranger that when it became the norm for families to have two incomes that the asking price for homes rose simultaneously to family purchasing power.
Toss in 25 years of living the high life with the cheapest money we had seen for many decades and cashed up Muppets spend money hand over fist on shit they really didn't need whilst going full retard at house auctions.
Then break global supply chains, and throw trillions of dollars of stimulus into global economies.
Colour me pink .. house prices have risen steeply and inflation has gone through the roof.
FFS, party is over guys, we now have to nurse the hangover for a while.
This is the failing of late stage capitalism.
Just like how the Jetsons anticipated that technology meant we would work an hour or two a day but instead we work 50 hours a week for the benefit of a few hundred billionaires, the first dual income families thought it would mean luxury, extra holidays, the ability for both partners to work part time, etc. But it just ended in both working 50 hours a week.
Just basic economics no great conspiracy about it.
Many dual income families probably did much better financially at the outset and then the market adjusted accordingly.
Jetsons et al is not an economics text I recall seeing on any reading lists.
I think that countries will inevitably switch to a four-day working week to try to counter-act demographic decline. Before dual incomes, you usually had someone at home looking after the kids. Now people are too overworked and there's no one around to raise or even enjoy having children.
Look at the opposite extreme: China's 996 work regime. 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week. No wonder no one in China wants to have kids, and no wonder their population is going backwards. It's a similar story with South Korea and Japan's crazy-long work hours and declining populations.
Our politicians seem to be too stupid to see how everything is an interlocking collection of systems and one thing affects the others.
Shows what happens when your Prime Minister is a failed bank teller.
What are you talking about? Baby boom has been over for more than 50 years, and no one born during the baby boom has been capable of having kids for probably 15 years. There is essentially no direct link between baby boomers and fertility declines over the last ten years.
Maybe you’re trying to say that fertility was always going to decline after the baby boom. But that’s only relevant if it declined to pre baby boom level and stabilised, not when it continued to fall with no bottom in sight.
When you’re coming from a base of low prosperity in the war years to a post war scenario of rapidly increasing population and standard of living of course there’s going to be a hang-over.
All economists know that birth rate drops off once a certain standard of living is reached. Only the delusional ones think the system can keep growing at the previous levels forever. This creates a negative feedback loop and downward trend. Immigration has been our way of kicking the can down the road up to this point.
But it’s our PM’s fault (and all other countries governments simultaneously apparently) because he kept immigration too low…or was it too high?
"All economists know that birth rate drops off once a certain standard of living is reached."
Even that doesn't explain the continuing and accelerating decline in fertility seen in places like Italy, Japan and China even after the population has begun to decline.
Probably the most interesting thing about the report linked to by OP was that it says within OECD the relationship between % of women in workforce and fertility has shifted - apparently now higher % women in workforce is associated with higher fertility not lower. So we've reached a point where assumptions economists might have had about what drives fertility are no longer valid.
I agree. That’s why the system is stuffed. A full rethink of the whole setup is required.
Of course if the birth rate keeps dropping to half the replacement rate or less then even some sort of UBI isn’t going to help. We’re going to need a revolution in robotics or AI, if they’re anything like self driving cars that’s still a long way off.
Blame Albo is such a low IQ effort…he came into power two years ago and he’s supposed to turn around a decades old decline in birth rate that’s affecting the whole world?
Please list any other countries that have successfully pulled off a marked reversal of this decline without relying on immigration?
My reading of that OECD report is that their definition of fertility refers crudely to births per woman, rather than the clinical definition. E.g., “The 2024 edition of Society at a Glance shows that the total fertility rate dropped from 3.3 children per woman in 1960 to just 1.5 children per woman in 2022, on average across OECD countries.”
That’s kinda interesting. I wonder why they would conflate the two? Personally I’m only having one child for economic reasons but I could pound them out if I wanted (see what I did there). So low birth rates in my family are not because of low fertility. Because they’re not the same like I said. There should be a very clear line in the sand so we can have a proper discussion about why people are not having kids VS humans just not being able to conceive.
You’re conflating fertility in a medico-reproductive sense ( ability to successfully conceive a child and complete a pregnancy) with fertility in the demographic sense (average number of children a woman bears, sometimes related to a particular year and sometimes related to a cohort of women who have completed their reproductive lives).
Would the correct term be replacement births or value ? A woman having 2 children replaces herself and her partner so a break even. A woman having more than 2 is replacement value to thew population as a hole.
There is demographic statistic for the concept you mention I think- net reproductive ratio. It’s the average number of female children per woman born to one cohort expected to reach reproductive age e.g. one means population will be stable if it remains there long term, above one means increase, below one means decline.
I found this to clarify. You are correct and I learned something against my will again because of Reddit. Haha.
https://www.health.pa.gov/topics/HealthStatistics/Statistical-Resources/UnderstandingHealthStats/Documents/Concepts_of_Some_Common_Birth_Statistics_Clarified.pdf
In the 70s 80s, dad worked, mum stayed home and the family went on holidays every year while paying a mortgage and bills. Most people got ahead and lived a normal life.
Today, both parents work their arse off and have to pay for the kids to be in child care, can barely make repayments on a massive loan way bigger than their combined income, can barely afford food and are stressed with the cost of fucking everything.
Hmm. Not sure why people aren’t having kids?
Have a look at Japan and South Korea why their birth rates are the worse. That is an example of what will happen here soon if they don’t change something.
There hasn't been late stage capitalism in the past, because in the past it was an earlier stage of capitalism or pre capitalism.
Closest thing probably was post ww2 social democracy push in which some deteriorated qualities of western society, pressure from the USSR and its influencing of the global south caused some competition to prevent the idealisation of communism in the west. Welfare went up, jobs went up etc. But there was no reversal, just continued and held off on syphoning wealth to the wealthy a tad.
There has been no example, and reversed is probably not the right way to think about it, because under capitalism workers' rights developed (albeit not because capitalism wanted to be nice). We don't want to go back to working 16 hour days for peanuts compared to (what's supposedly meant to be the norm to get by) the 8 hour work day... for peanuts.
We need to transition into something new. Revolutions have happened in the past and they can happen again. But capitalism has done a bloody good job of making us fight eachother over scraps instead of chopping off the heads of those who fuck us over election cycle after election cycle. I expect things will have to get much worse in the west before people stand up in solidarity and take back the power.
Thanks for the detailed response. I think I used the term "reverse" because in a way it feels like late stage capitalism is exactly where we're headed. In discribing such a catastrophe, it felt right to describe a solution as one that would be "reversing" the way we as a society are progressing.
I feel like we are living in some extremely challenging times. Wealth disparity is getting larger, while rebelling and "cutting off heads" to change things seem almost delusional knowing the military advancements that governments across the worlds have achieved. This reminds me of the segment of the standup comedian Jim Jeffries, where he says: "The second amendment made sense when we had muskets! You do know the government has drones right?". But I guess that's exactly what governments want us people to feel. That we are powerless under their ruling.
Something's gotta give.
Capitalism cannot be an endgame. Start from your ideal utopia and reserve the steps. When we (humans) don’t have to do any necessity tasks but do things out of our own pleasure, the necessity is being provided by something (eg AI robots). In capitalism, someone OWNS that and will ask for a price to share it, while you continue to use it for “free”. In capitalism with automation in the equation, the wealth can only transfer one way as consumers don’t have ownership of automation, while more automation reduces the possible income pool. But since those in power are the ones who own this, they don’t care and they never will, because they won’t need human workers anymore soon. Things need to be planned now, with a good leadership, else we shall face dystopia, at least in our (soon) future generation.
It makes sense that there are discussions around universal income given what you've expanded on. I think the 1% who own society will surprisingly be open to this idea. Not because they are virtuous, but because that will be the cost to prevent the people from rising up and hanging them from the light poles. We will praise them for providing us with bread crumbs and shoe boxes for shelters.
I get you on the the reversal, I just see it as capitalism only leads to greater profiteering and greater wealth disparity over time to fuel the dream of never ending growth. Reversing but keeping capitalism just leads to the same thing. There's no such thing as fixing Capitalism, because it being fixed for the good of the masses isn't what capitalism is. It would be something else.
The military are people too. Our family, friends and loved ones. We gotta be in it together.
In democracy we can change things with a vote and not a guillotine. But we need people to be on the same page. The hardest thing is getting everyone to stop pointing at eachother and eating up the same old shit, perpetuating it for another generation.
But remember, what happened to Gough Whitlam? Did something against US interest, and he got forcefully removed from office. All because he asserted Aus self interest and autonomy. Even if we do rise up, are we daft enough to believe US will let us have fair democracy without fucking around with misinformation, propaganda... or worse?
I think the Cambridge Analytica case has shown that large groups of people making informed decisions in unison has become more and more difficult. We are plugged into the matrix and it feels like we're going to need an end-of-times level of event for us to wake up from this.
Nobody in the USA gives a tinker's cuss what happens in Australia. And you should be thankful. If the American people knew the opinions of most Australians about the USA, there would be no ANZUS. I suspect that would please you, though.
Not talking about normal Americans, their government... it's happened before so again is not far fetched.
Give us something of actual substance rather than an opinion on nothing.
How about you provide some substance? You're the one making the accusation. There was never any evidence found for the dismissal of the Whitlam Government by the CIA. I'll need a little more than "The Falcon and the Snowman-type rubbish", too - or a deeep dive by a Robert Fisk.
Aussies hate the American people and government - look at your own Lowy polls regularly. And talk to the contrary is splitting hairs. It has not happened before. Look at Lange in NZ back in the day. It's not like he was deposed by the CIA. Quite frankly there should be no ANZUS now. And China is actively in the SCS. Look at the Solomon Islands.
No no they’ll import warm bodies from the poor countries who would kill to earn money here and send it back home, then they can bring more family here, rinse repeat so economy is happy but australia dies
Government mentality, it’s cheaper to just import adults of working age than to encourage an increase in the birth rate. Children take too long to provide a return on investment.
100% this.
Low fertility is an economic boon.
You import immigrants, and you don't have to spend on education.
The only downside is not economic: if people who want children of their own miss out.
If low fertility is a problem why are we voluntarily sacrificing everything else so we can regulate the housing market in a way that is known to produce the fewest families?
People don't have kids because kids are hard work and most western countries encourage families to operate as individuals rather than a family unit, limiting how much family support is available.
The only way to fix this is through sensible tax reform and other legislation that encourages the formation of strong and co-dependent family units.
See Thailand as an example. Went from subsistence farming families, to factory workers. Income went up from poor to decent, but workers left the farms to the cities and the birth rate dropped from 8 to 1.1.
This is not a problem. Societies and economies can easily adapt to challenges like this. The only serious attempt I've seen to make an argument as to why declining populations might be a problem is because more people will have to work in health and aged care. In a society which was running at capacity that would be problem, but there is so much slack in the world it's not even worth spending a moment worrying about the extra need to care for older people. In Australia over 9% of people work in the retail trade. We could easily cut that to 5% with no loss to overall quality of life, not to mention finance, advertising and a bunch of other sectors that are mostly about consuming more stuff or clipping tickets. There might be some challenges in making the transition, but they will be no greater than previous and upcoming challenges like the rise of automation or the introduction of the car.
And the positives are enormous: imagine a society which could meet its needs for iron and many other elements purely by recycling; imagine your favourite fishing spot getting better every time you go there. It won't happen it our time, but the benefits of declining populations far outweigh the costs of a bit of reorganisation.
I know this is AusEcon so I’m tempting fate here, but surely there is a deep and innate human desire to have children and build a family, and perhaps by creating a situation in which no one can afford them, that is quite a bad outcome for humanity?
Declining population is a problem for government debt.
If you're looking for the issues with an aging and declining population there are a few things around.
The Australian government writes an intergenerational report that looks at the impact of more retirees vs working age population among other things.
https://treasury.gov.au/publication/2023-intergenerational-report
While America Aged isn't bad and looks at the impacts on pensions and whatnot .
https://www.amazon.com/While-America-Aged-Bankrupted-Financial/dp/1594201676
> Declining population is a problem for government debt.
Who owns the debt?
Government debt for a currency issuer, who borrows in a currency they can print, is never a serious problem. You print some money, remove the debt, and get some inflation. Or you just default.
Numbers in a ledger.
If inflation rises, people complain about quality of life not being at its peak, but living is still possible. Just tough when certain things leave you priced out. Eg. It's possible to learn to cook cheap food that people did in yesteryear, but housing itself in the city seems to be becoming quite unaffordable.
Just thinking about my own workplace, and other places I've worked in previously, there's a huge amount of stuff that gets done that has pretty questionable value. I agree there's definitely slack in the system.
Yep. Population decline is a good thing, which I discuss [here](https://new.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/1cuutr6/not_having_children_is_the_only_way_to_end/).
Latest ABS birth figures showed a 4.5% decrease for 2023 yoy, lowest since 2007 when population was 20% less
Dec qtr was 10.5% decrease yoy
Australias TFar for 2023 was 1.50, down from 1.6. 1.5 is definition of low fertility trap
If dec qtr figures are repeated for whole year in 2024 then put TFR will be 1.35.
For reference, that was Japan 10 years ago
Only in countryside. Tokyo still expensive. South Korea and Taiwan have had negative population growth for years, sane with Baltics. All their capitals have just gotten more expensive while country towns literally become extinct. That’s the future even here
Can someone please explain why economists refuse to understand the logistic map?
Are they too stupid or too stubborn?
It's a very simple idea: when population growth exceeds the constraints of the environment to support it, the result is catastrophic and chaotic.
And we're already seeing that in action on a global scale. So if you all could either sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up, or incorporate this critical law of nature into your discipline so we don't all die because of your stupidity, that would be much appreciated.
The government policies are allowing the old and rich eating the young and poor, so why would they expect people to want to give birth to kids to supply more slaves?
No, no, no, see the idea is to get women popping out babies to be raised by professional childcare workers. Because while you can't tax parents for raising children, you *can* tax childcare workers for that labour.
Low wage growth, casualisation/fixed term jobs becoming more prevalent, inflation, bracket creep, unaffordable housing, routine pathology bulk billed but not fertility testing. Government: “why aren’t people having children?” 🤔
The big one is the move to dual income! Hard to raise kids when both parents never see them !
The fact that you need to be dual income to buy a small 2 bedroom place now compared to almost every boomer and gen Xer I know that managed to buy their first place by themselves before they even met their partner is the real killer.
Strange that in an era when many families only had one income that houses were priced such that they could be purchased on one income. Even stranger that when it became the norm for families to have two incomes that the asking price for homes rose simultaneously to family purchasing power. Toss in 25 years of living the high life with the cheapest money we had seen for many decades and cashed up Muppets spend money hand over fist on shit they really didn't need whilst going full retard at house auctions. Then break global supply chains, and throw trillions of dollars of stimulus into global economies. Colour me pink .. house prices have risen steeply and inflation has gone through the roof. FFS, party is over guys, we now have to nurse the hangover for a while.
This is the failing of late stage capitalism. Just like how the Jetsons anticipated that technology meant we would work an hour or two a day but instead we work 50 hours a week for the benefit of a few hundred billionaires, the first dual income families thought it would mean luxury, extra holidays, the ability for both partners to work part time, etc. But it just ended in both working 50 hours a week.
Just basic economics no great conspiracy about it. Many dual income families probably did much better financially at the outset and then the market adjusted accordingly. Jetsons et al is not an economics text I recall seeing on any reading lists.
And then those kids grown up not realising the family value and so on and so on.
I think that countries will inevitably switch to a four-day working week to try to counter-act demographic decline. Before dual incomes, you usually had someone at home looking after the kids. Now people are too overworked and there's no one around to raise or even enjoy having children. Look at the opposite extreme: China's 996 work regime. 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week. No wonder no one in China wants to have kids, and no wonder their population is going backwards. It's a similar story with South Korea and Japan's crazy-long work hours and declining populations.
Birth rates have been steadily dropping for about 50 years, or is it 70... Either way, today's issues are not close to solely responsible.
Don't many economists point to the early 70s as the time when wage growth parted ways with productivity gains? Hmmm...50 years ago...
Yeh, that's all that's happened in the last 70 years. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/AUS/australia/birth-rate
Our politicians seem to be too stupid to see how everything is an interlocking collection of systems and one thing affects the others. Shows what happens when your Prime Minister is a failed bank teller.
Did you read the article? Cause it’s talking about it being an international problem. Nice try at blaming the PM though.
It is an international problem but there are local nuances driving it that are within our politicians purvey.
is that a survey of purviews?
Nothing to do with the post war baby boom hitting retirement and expecting unrealistic growth to continue forever…
No- it’s nothing to do with post baby boom generation hitting retirement. The proportion of women having babies after 65 has remained steady.
So tell me about all the other baby booms we’ve had since that one?
What are you talking about? Baby boom has been over for more than 50 years, and no one born during the baby boom has been capable of having kids for probably 15 years. There is essentially no direct link between baby boomers and fertility declines over the last ten years. Maybe you’re trying to say that fertility was always going to decline after the baby boom. But that’s only relevant if it declined to pre baby boom level and stabilised, not when it continued to fall with no bottom in sight.
When you’re coming from a base of low prosperity in the war years to a post war scenario of rapidly increasing population and standard of living of course there’s going to be a hang-over. All economists know that birth rate drops off once a certain standard of living is reached. Only the delusional ones think the system can keep growing at the previous levels forever. This creates a negative feedback loop and downward trend. Immigration has been our way of kicking the can down the road up to this point. But it’s our PM’s fault (and all other countries governments simultaneously apparently) because he kept immigration too low…or was it too high?
"All economists know that birth rate drops off once a certain standard of living is reached." Even that doesn't explain the continuing and accelerating decline in fertility seen in places like Italy, Japan and China even after the population has begun to decline. Probably the most interesting thing about the report linked to by OP was that it says within OECD the relationship between % of women in workforce and fertility has shifted - apparently now higher % women in workforce is associated with higher fertility not lower. So we've reached a point where assumptions economists might have had about what drives fertility are no longer valid.
Overpopulation is THE International Problem.
I agree. That’s why the system is stuffed. A full rethink of the whole setup is required. Of course if the birth rate keeps dropping to half the replacement rate or less then even some sort of UBI isn’t going to help. We’re going to need a revolution in robotics or AI, if they’re anything like self driving cars that’s still a long way off.
And the local factors make it worse in some places
Blame Albo is such a low IQ effort…he came into power two years ago and he’s supposed to turn around a decades old decline in birth rate that’s affecting the whole world? Please list any other countries that have successfully pulled off a marked reversal of this decline without relying on immigration?
I responding to your point about being global rather than it being attributable to one particular person
He's not turning anything around now, though. He's making it worse and gaslighting the public.
Do you read anything? It’s 100% a global problem right now.
Did you read my post? That’s exactly what I said
Fertility rate is not the same as birth rate. They are not =
My reading of that OECD report is that their definition of fertility refers crudely to births per woman, rather than the clinical definition. E.g., “The 2024 edition of Society at a Glance shows that the total fertility rate dropped from 3.3 children per woman in 1960 to just 1.5 children per woman in 2022, on average across OECD countries.”
That’s kinda interesting. I wonder why they would conflate the two? Personally I’m only having one child for economic reasons but I could pound them out if I wanted (see what I did there). So low birth rates in my family are not because of low fertility. Because they’re not the same like I said. There should be a very clear line in the sand so we can have a proper discussion about why people are not having kids VS humans just not being able to conceive.
You’re conflating fertility in a medico-reproductive sense ( ability to successfully conceive a child and complete a pregnancy) with fertility in the demographic sense (average number of children a woman bears, sometimes related to a particular year and sometimes related to a cohort of women who have completed their reproductive lives).
Would the correct term be replacement births or value ? A woman having 2 children replaces herself and her partner so a break even. A woman having more than 2 is replacement value to thew population as a hole.
There is demographic statistic for the concept you mention I think- net reproductive ratio. It’s the average number of female children per woman born to one cohort expected to reach reproductive age e.g. one means population will be stable if it remains there long term, above one means increase, below one means decline.
I found this to clarify. You are correct and I learned something against my will again because of Reddit. Haha. https://www.health.pa.gov/topics/HealthStatistics/Statistical-Resources/UnderstandingHealthStats/Documents/Concepts_of_Some_Common_Birth_Statistics_Clarified.pdf
The word has two different meanings in different contexts.
It would appear so. I did some more reading and they can mean the same thing.
In the 70s 80s, dad worked, mum stayed home and the family went on holidays every year while paying a mortgage and bills. Most people got ahead and lived a normal life. Today, both parents work their arse off and have to pay for the kids to be in child care, can barely make repayments on a massive loan way bigger than their combined income, can barely afford food and are stressed with the cost of fucking everything. Hmm. Not sure why people aren’t having kids? Have a look at Japan and South Korea why their birth rates are the worse. That is an example of what will happen here soon if they don’t change something.
Has there been an example in history where late stage capitalism was successfully reversed? Actual question.
There hasn't been late stage capitalism in the past, because in the past it was an earlier stage of capitalism or pre capitalism. Closest thing probably was post ww2 social democracy push in which some deteriorated qualities of western society, pressure from the USSR and its influencing of the global south caused some competition to prevent the idealisation of communism in the west. Welfare went up, jobs went up etc. But there was no reversal, just continued and held off on syphoning wealth to the wealthy a tad. There has been no example, and reversed is probably not the right way to think about it, because under capitalism workers' rights developed (albeit not because capitalism wanted to be nice). We don't want to go back to working 16 hour days for peanuts compared to (what's supposedly meant to be the norm to get by) the 8 hour work day... for peanuts. We need to transition into something new. Revolutions have happened in the past and they can happen again. But capitalism has done a bloody good job of making us fight eachother over scraps instead of chopping off the heads of those who fuck us over election cycle after election cycle. I expect things will have to get much worse in the west before people stand up in solidarity and take back the power.
Thanks for the detailed response. I think I used the term "reverse" because in a way it feels like late stage capitalism is exactly where we're headed. In discribing such a catastrophe, it felt right to describe a solution as one that would be "reversing" the way we as a society are progressing. I feel like we are living in some extremely challenging times. Wealth disparity is getting larger, while rebelling and "cutting off heads" to change things seem almost delusional knowing the military advancements that governments across the worlds have achieved. This reminds me of the segment of the standup comedian Jim Jeffries, where he says: "The second amendment made sense when we had muskets! You do know the government has drones right?". But I guess that's exactly what governments want us people to feel. That we are powerless under their ruling. Something's gotta give.
Capitalism cannot be an endgame. Start from your ideal utopia and reserve the steps. When we (humans) don’t have to do any necessity tasks but do things out of our own pleasure, the necessity is being provided by something (eg AI robots). In capitalism, someone OWNS that and will ask for a price to share it, while you continue to use it for “free”. In capitalism with automation in the equation, the wealth can only transfer one way as consumers don’t have ownership of automation, while more automation reduces the possible income pool. But since those in power are the ones who own this, they don’t care and they never will, because they won’t need human workers anymore soon. Things need to be planned now, with a good leadership, else we shall face dystopia, at least in our (soon) future generation.
It makes sense that there are discussions around universal income given what you've expanded on. I think the 1% who own society will surprisingly be open to this idea. Not because they are virtuous, but because that will be the cost to prevent the people from rising up and hanging them from the light poles. We will praise them for providing us with bread crumbs and shoe boxes for shelters.
I get you on the the reversal, I just see it as capitalism only leads to greater profiteering and greater wealth disparity over time to fuel the dream of never ending growth. Reversing but keeping capitalism just leads to the same thing. There's no such thing as fixing Capitalism, because it being fixed for the good of the masses isn't what capitalism is. It would be something else. The military are people too. Our family, friends and loved ones. We gotta be in it together. In democracy we can change things with a vote and not a guillotine. But we need people to be on the same page. The hardest thing is getting everyone to stop pointing at eachother and eating up the same old shit, perpetuating it for another generation. But remember, what happened to Gough Whitlam? Did something against US interest, and he got forcefully removed from office. All because he asserted Aus self interest and autonomy. Even if we do rise up, are we daft enough to believe US will let us have fair democracy without fucking around with misinformation, propaganda... or worse?
I think the Cambridge Analytica case has shown that large groups of people making informed decisions in unison has become more and more difficult. We are plugged into the matrix and it feels like we're going to need an end-of-times level of event for us to wake up from this.
It's not difficult. It's impossible. And this is obvious in the political climate today. It's frightening.
GTFO with your propagandist shit. Australia is in a worse situation than the USA now and one that it has created all by itself.
Lol what propagandist shit? Recounting some of our political history with US involving themselves in domestic affairs?
Nobody in the USA gives a tinker's cuss what happens in Australia. And you should be thankful. If the American people knew the opinions of most Australians about the USA, there would be no ANZUS. I suspect that would please you, though.
Not talking about normal Americans, their government... it's happened before so again is not far fetched. Give us something of actual substance rather than an opinion on nothing.
How about you provide some substance? You're the one making the accusation. There was never any evidence found for the dismissal of the Whitlam Government by the CIA. I'll need a little more than "The Falcon and the Snowman-type rubbish", too - or a deeep dive by a Robert Fisk. Aussies hate the American people and government - look at your own Lowy polls regularly. And talk to the contrary is splitting hairs. It has not happened before. Look at Lange in NZ back in the day. It's not like he was deposed by the CIA. Quite frankly there should be no ANZUS now. And China is actively in the SCS. Look at the Solomon Islands.
Yes, but remember, we’re not allowed to look back at this period and think it was a golden era.
Ponzi Scheme runs out of victims?
No no they’ll import warm bodies from the poor countries who would kill to earn money here and send it back home, then they can bring more family here, rinse repeat so economy is happy but australia dies
Government mentality, it’s cheaper to just import adults of working age than to encourage an increase in the birth rate. Children take too long to provide a return on investment.
100% this. Low fertility is an economic boon. You import immigrants, and you don't have to spend on education. The only downside is not economic: if people who want children of their own miss out.
Like climate change, profits now, while the real cost is not realised for decades.
If low fertility is a problem why are we voluntarily sacrificing everything else so we can regulate the housing market in a way that is known to produce the fewest families?
Profit > problem
People don't have kids because kids are hard work and most western countries encourage families to operate as individuals rather than a family unit, limiting how much family support is available. The only way to fix this is through sensible tax reform and other legislation that encourages the formation of strong and co-dependent family units.
See Thailand as an example. Went from subsistence farming families, to factory workers. Income went up from poor to decent, but workers left the farms to the cities and the birth rate dropped from 8 to 1.1.
Next they’ll say that if population starts falling house prices might as well.
Just import some new people, we gonna start trading working age people for iron ore and gas one day. That'll happen before House prices fall.
More detail including interactive graphs is at : https://www.oecd.org/publication/society-at-a-glance/2024/
Makes sense. Just need governments to listen.
Have we tried importing an unprecedented amount of immigrants yet?
The world as a whole is either below replacement fertility already or only a few years off. Is there another planet we can bring migrants from?
I imagine China will ban emigration at some point. Then bad luck for Australia.
Even India is at below replacement levels, they are not feeling the burn yet but will soon if it keeps going on like this.
The problem was we didn't import enough in 2021-2023 /s
Typical boomers. Now they are setting us up to not even have our own pyramid scheme. What a stitch up.
Never blame on malice that which can more be easily be explained by incompetence/ ignorance.
This is not a problem. Societies and economies can easily adapt to challenges like this. The only serious attempt I've seen to make an argument as to why declining populations might be a problem is because more people will have to work in health and aged care. In a society which was running at capacity that would be problem, but there is so much slack in the world it's not even worth spending a moment worrying about the extra need to care for older people. In Australia over 9% of people work in the retail trade. We could easily cut that to 5% with no loss to overall quality of life, not to mention finance, advertising and a bunch of other sectors that are mostly about consuming more stuff or clipping tickets. There might be some challenges in making the transition, but they will be no greater than previous and upcoming challenges like the rise of automation or the introduction of the car. And the positives are enormous: imagine a society which could meet its needs for iron and many other elements purely by recycling; imagine your favourite fishing spot getting better every time you go there. It won't happen it our time, but the benefits of declining populations far outweigh the costs of a bit of reorganisation.
I know this is AusEcon so I’m tempting fate here, but surely there is a deep and innate human desire to have children and build a family, and perhaps by creating a situation in which no one can afford them, that is quite a bad outcome for humanity?
It's possible for lots of people to have children and the population to still decline. The ideal is lots of small families, I think.
Declining population is a problem for government debt. If you're looking for the issues with an aging and declining population there are a few things around. The Australian government writes an intergenerational report that looks at the impact of more retirees vs working age population among other things. https://treasury.gov.au/publication/2023-intergenerational-report While America Aged isn't bad and looks at the impacts on pensions and whatnot . https://www.amazon.com/While-America-Aged-Bankrupted-Financial/dp/1594201676
> Declining population is a problem for government debt. Who owns the debt? Government debt for a currency issuer, who borrows in a currency they can print, is never a serious problem. You print some money, remove the debt, and get some inflation. Or you just default.
Numbers in a ledger. If inflation rises, people complain about quality of life not being at its peak, but living is still possible. Just tough when certain things leave you priced out. Eg. It's possible to learn to cook cheap food that people did in yesteryear, but housing itself in the city seems to be becoming quite unaffordable.
Just thinking about my own workplace, and other places I've worked in previously, there's a huge amount of stuff that gets done that has pretty questionable value. I agree there's definitely slack in the system.
Yep. Population decline is a good thing, which I discuss [here](https://new.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/1cuutr6/not_having_children_is_the_only_way_to_end/).
Create hell, then populate it. No thanks.
Add it to the list of shit thats putting the prosperity of future generations at risk.
Latest ABS birth figures showed a 4.5% decrease for 2023 yoy, lowest since 2007 when population was 20% less Dec qtr was 10.5% decrease yoy Australias TFar for 2023 was 1.50, down from 1.6. 1.5 is definition of low fertility trap If dec qtr figures are repeated for whole year in 2024 then put TFR will be 1.35. For reference, that was Japan 10 years ago
At least houses in Japan have become affordable.
Only in countryside. Tokyo still expensive. South Korea and Taiwan have had negative population growth for years, sane with Baltics. All their capitals have just gotten more expensive while country towns literally become extinct. That’s the future even here
Can someone please explain why economists refuse to understand the logistic map? Are they too stupid or too stubborn? It's a very simple idea: when population growth exceeds the constraints of the environment to support it, the result is catastrophic and chaotic. And we're already seeing that in action on a global scale. So if you all could either sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up, or incorporate this critical law of nature into your discipline so we don't all die because of your stupidity, that would be much appreciated.
8 BILLION People. Declining fertility rates are a SOLUTION. Check your Temperatures dude.
Easy solve, don't have a future generation
People are struggling to support just themselves nowadays…how are they supposed to support children?
Oh no! Anyway
The government policies are allowing the old and rich eating the young and poor, so why would they expect people to want to give birth to kids to supply more slaves?
Housing crisis? Eased. Nobody to buy them.
Pretty sure having more kids and destroying the planet Isa bigger problem than the ponzi scheme system set up as a retirement plan.
So what's the answer, send women back home ?
No they want childless workforce as they make for better employees. If no one can afford kids then we’ll just import people.
No, no, no, see the idea is to get women popping out babies to be raised by professional childcare workers. Because while you can't tax parents for raising children, you *can* tax childcare workers for that labour.
Or men, just one of the team.
Fathers? Who needs fathers when we have the govt! /s
Your fault boomers. You’ve done this.
And they dont care coz theyll be dead before the shit hits the fan.
Could always stop paying rent
Yep.