Far-right authoritarian pundits and political actors, from Matt Walsh to Elon Musk, all seem to have gotten the same memo instructing them to fixate on “low” fertility and birth rates. Musk has claimed that “population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming” and that it will lead to “mass extinction.”
Some liberals are flirting with this narrative, too. In a February New Yorker essay, Gideon Lewis-Kraus deploys dystopian imagery to describe the “low” birth-rate in South Korea, twice comparing the country to the collapsing, childless society in the 2006 film Children of Men.
It’s not just liberals and authoritarians engaging in this birth-rate crisis panic. Self-described leftist Elizabeth Bruenig recently equated falling fertility with humanity’s inability “to persist on this Earth.” Running through her pronatalist Atlantic opinion piece is an entirely uninterrogated presumption that fertility rates collected today are able to predict the total disappearance of the species Homo sapiens at some future time.
But is this panic about low fertility driving human population collapse supported by any evidence?
I mean, it might not be a threat to humanity but it’s certainly a threat to my ability to retire. Right now the money I put into CPP is funding the boomers’ current retirement and their children’s retirement. Who’s gonna fund mine? But it’s not like my generation could have kids anyway. The same boomers fucked the world so badly that we’re only barely able to scrape by. I’m in my 20s, I shouldn’t even have to worry about this bullshit.
As a friend who was going through the process of getting citizenship once said “I think Canada wants me as a citizen for the tax revenue.”
Yup. That’s the deal… immigration = more tax revenue. It’s actually way better than having more children. Society has to pay for the education and healthcare for children and doesn’t see a dime of tax revenue until the very earliest 18 years, and more likely >20 years. An immigrant that’s already educated immediately starts working and paying taxes.
Immigration is basically the cheat code for demographic problems.
The main problem is that boomers didn’t move out of their houses into nursing homes (or at least small apartments) as early as previous generations so we have some housing problems. But the boomers won’t live forever and when they die off, housing will be freed up.
You’re in c/degrowth. Retirement from economic growth “generating” “passive income” isn’t a feature.
I’m well aware of the community I’m in. My support for reorganizing our society doesn’t change the facts of our current reality. And maybe I’m a cynic or a pessimist, but I don’t see developed nations shifting to degrowth until all us peons have been milked for ever last drop of energy we can muster. Even though we need to shift to a model that isn’t dependent on infinite growth, there is little likelihood that will happen in the remainder of my lifetime.
Degrowth supports UBI. Isn’t that a form of passive income?
People eventually retire whether they want to or not. Their body breaks down and they can no longer work. These people need some kind of support or they’re going to die in miserable circumstances.
The only way not to die in miserable circumstances is to die suddenly, and retirement homes typically take away people’s ability to choose even that.
I would not wish my grandmother’s “well-earned retirement” on my worst enemies.
retirement homes are not what almost anyone means when talking about retirement, most are simply talking about a form of quitting where you never work again (or never need to).
No, there are many circumstances in between.
My grandparents both lived in a retirement home for the last few years of their lives. My grandfather died suddenly but my grandmother did not.
My grandmother had a long, gradual decline with dementia. We visited her often and took her out of the retirement home for tea. Her accommodations there were very nice and our family would visit several times per week (grandma had 6 adult children). We would have lunch there and the food was very good. Her dementia meant she could not remember people visiting her but she was not unhappy. She was always happy to see us!
I’m so sorry your grandmother faced miserable circumstances. In Canada we now have legal MAID which I am a supporter of. No one should be forced to live in constant pain without a choice.
You will receive less retirement money than Millennials (who will get less than Boomers), while the percentage of your income for pensions increases monthly, and the retirement age rises. This change won’t happen suddenly but in waves.
Many liberal governments in Europe are currently pushing to raise the retirement age. For example, in my country, reforms have already ensured that by the time I reach retirement age, it will be set at 74.
And then we’ll find that all the stress that we’ve gone through due to poor planning and policy has taken 10 years off our lives and we’ll all have heart attacks at 70 before we even get to retire. Those that survive will be kept on life support to continue being worker drones for the billionaires. Changing the age of retirement isn’t the solution. And if they do decide to do that, then it makes it all the more important that they enact policy to make life easier right now.
Thats not a problem that can’t easily be solved. All the resources needed for you to retire exist in abundance.
Sure, if you’re a nice person who people want to help out of love. But what about the assholes who can’t get people to interact with them without the threat of homelessness?
Please, won’t someone think of the narcissists?
Does it? The Canadian fertility rate dropped below replacement in 1971, which is also the case for most other Western countries.
Well, yes. Families have been getting smaller. This means there’s a smaller pool of people to support the fund and ensure that the money in the fund grows. If the money in the fund does not grow then the people currently in retirement lose value on their contributions, or in other words, get less out of the fund than what they put in. So young people have to pay more into the fund because there aren’t enough of us to support all the boomers at previous rates. Millennials, GenZ, GenA, all fucked.
And I want to be clear: I’m not saying that the CPP is worse than the alternative. Having a ton of seniors homeless due to being unable to work would cost everyone a lot more than the CPP does. All I’m saying is that it’s unfair that my contributions will not fund my retirement because they’re currently funding someone else’s. Especially when I could really use that money right now to, yknow, afford food with actual nutritional value.
And all the more: this is a time bomb waiting to blow. The CPP is only projected to be sustainable for the next 75 years. When GenA is retired, they won’t be able to rely on it. It’s a robbing Pete to pay Paul sort of situation.