"23 countries will lose half their populations by 2100." Fears of growing overpopulation now misplaced

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mdgspencer said:
23 countries will lose half their populations by 2100 » MercatorNet

I remember how some decades ago married couples were told to use birth control because great overpopulation problems were on the horizon, which is a great danger to the human race. While these people weren’t looking, something very different has happened.
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Yea. That’s not very good logic, trying to solve human problems with less humanity. Interesting where idolization of prosperity leads to.
 
mdgspencer said:
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I remember how some decades ago married couples were told to use birth control because great overpopulation problems were on the horizon, which is a great danger to the human race. While these people weren’t looking, something very different has happened.
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The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich, 1968, sold millions of copies, and Zero Population Growth (Z.P.G.) was founded by Paul Ehrlich that year, promoting birth control, abortion, sterilization, and pregnancy prevention.
 
We’re seeing the consequences today. Italy has been seeing it for the past 20 years and recruited immigrants, especially from Asia, to move into the villages and towns of Northern Italy to help support the overwhelming elderly population, and to help keep towns from going extinct.

The result of course was last February right after the Chinese New Year when many of those immigrants returned home, then returned to Italy bringing COVID-19 with them.

Japan is on the edge of going extinct soon, especially because of the anti-immigrant policy, the younger generation will not have the population to support the elderly. Things aren’t changing as I post this.
 
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Anyone remember Battlestar Galactica (the newer series) where the president had to decide to outlaw abortion…a position she had always defended before the Cylon attack. She realized that the survival of the human race depended on women having babies and while reluctant to do so, she outlawed them?

If we ever reach the point where we realize that our rapidly decreasing population comes with real consequences, will we also change societies feelings on the worth of a child? This, more than any law, will cause abortion to become a horrifying thought. This is my hope…that society actually changes its mind on the value of a child.
 
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This is all overblown hype. I don’t buy for a second that having fewer people on the planet is somehow going to cause some kind of catastrophe. There is no proof, or even logic, for that at all.
 
80 years ago we would have made really poor predictions about the world today. Most decisions on how many kids to have now days seem rooted in economics. It’s difficult and expensive to raise kids and earn a living.
 
Was it less expensive and difficult a 100 years ago (or any other point prior to that)?
 
During the agrarian past, children were seen as a source of labor early in life and social security for their parents when grown.

That is no longer the case. Now they are no longer seen as free labor but as an expense.
 
Sarcelle said:
During the agrarian past, children were seen as a source of labor early in life and social security for their parents when grown.

That is no longer the case. Now they are no longer seen as free labor but as an expense.
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That’s exactly right. I could live like a king on my modest retirement income, if I didn’t have my son to provide for.

I have never spent a nanosecond regretting this. Money is not all there is.
 
I’d say it was difficult in different ways. Single income households certainly were more viable 75 years ago than today. That doesn’t mean there weren’t other challenges of course.
 
Seems to me that perpetual population growth is unsustainable and problematic. Given the advances over the last few decades it seems the problems are mostly economic, not technical.

Current economic and social systems rely on infinite growth. Maybe the system needs adjustment?
 
Yeah – population growth starts slowing and people start getting scared…

But (just as a point-of-reference), consider some of the other happenings:
  • There’s been an uptick in police-related violence recently and people are getting scared.
  • Climate change is causing massive fires and rising ocean levels and people are very concerned.
  • Several new lethal viruses are on-the-loose throughout the world, antibiotics are losing their effectiveness, and people are growing very afraid.
OK.
At the end of the day one has to “turn off the news” and just have faith in God.
 
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Keep in mind that another factor in population growth in the 20th century was our longer lifespan. In the U.S., it went from 48 to 78 years (approximately) between 1900 and 2000. It’s not just a matter of number of births. As someone who left age 48 in the rear view mirror many years ago, I am very happy that we’re living longer.
 
HerCrazierHalf said:
Current economic and social systems rely on infinite growth. Maybe the system needs adjustment?
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Most definitely. Everything feels like it’s on hold right now. Maybe if anything good comes out of the current situation it will be that there’s a realisation that more of everything isn’t necessarily a good thing.
 
JimR-OCDS said:
Japan is on the edge of going extinct soon, especially because of the anti-immigrant policy, the younger generation will not have the population to support the elderly. Things aren’t changing as I post this.
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And it seems that Japan’s strategy is to rely on robots to take care of the elderly. They are betting big on robotics.
 
Interesting article. It’s from 1986 and is wrong on several of its hopes and cures. Everything that it states is needed to improve the situation has mostly gotten worse.

The biggest problem is the reshuffling of tax structures to encourage the family and fertility…the tax benefits that have been instituted have mostly benefited the wealthy and the individualist, not the family and fertility.
 
I certainly agree that tax structures need to be drawn so as to encourage families. My parents had five children and received a tax exemption for each. I recall my Dad filing his taxes on what was essentially an IBM card, listing his exemptions, and his tax was always zero.

The encyclical “Rerum Novarum” encouraged what was called a “living wage” but what was really a “family wage.” The worker should receive a wage sufficient to support his family. (At the time of Rerum Novarum the one income family was the norm.)

The idea was not implemeted by most employers, but some aspects of it were adopted in some places. My first real employer paid me somewhat less than a married man, since I was single at the time. The stated reason was that married men have a family to support. Of course such a family based pay scale would be illegal now, but it would not be out of line with Church teaching.
 
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