Complex Numbers

How Low Can You Go?

Well, look at that. Two touchy subjects in as many days.

Before I get started, though, a brief rant:

I just had to delete no fewer than 10 emails with a subject line beginning: "Tis the season..." This has got to stop. Yes, I let some businesses send me email because I actually, you know, do business with them. This might change if they can't come up with a more creative way to try to suck money out of people than overused, trite, cliché and lazy lines from annoying earworm Christmas carols.

So it looks like I'm going to have to set up a filter like I did with Mother's Day: Anything with that subject goes directly to trash, unread and unnoticed.

Sick of this shit.

Anyway...

How Low Can America’s Birth Rate Go Before It’s A Problem?  

I describe it as "touchy" because, often, population issues can be racist dogwhistles. As in "OMG not enough white people are having kids." I'm just going to state up front here that this is not how I'm using it, as if that's something I'd have to state.

The U.S. fertility rate hit a record low in 2020 — just as it did in 2019, and 2018. Although the COVID-19 pandemic seems to have accelerated this decline, the drop has been underway for years.

I gotta say, I was bracing myself for simpering "lockdown baby boom" stories, but as usual with my cynicism, I'm just glad I was wrong about that.

When the fertility rate falls below replacement level, the population grows older and shrinks, which can slow economic growth and strain government budgets. Today’s babies are tomorrow’s workers and taxpayers: They’ll not only staff the hospitals and nursing homes we’ll use in old age but also sustain the economy by funding our pensions when we retire, paying the taxes that finance Social Security, Medicare, and many other government programs we’ll rely on, and buying the homes and stocks we invested in to build our savings.

Maybe stop thinking about it as a fertility problem and start retooling the economy so it's not a fucking Ponzi scheme?

In fact, low fertility poses some advantages: easing ecological pressures, preventing overcrowding and reducing the infrastructure costs that come with a growing population.

Our economy isn't currently built to allow for a decrease in population. It's set up so that there must always be more and more people. And yet, this is unsustainable; the population cannot grow infinitely. Nor, as the article goes on to point out, is a continuous decrease in population sustainable in the long run. Averaging out to a steady state, that is, one where births and deaths are roughly equal, would be ideal... though we'd argue endlessly over where that level should be.

Personally, I'd put it at maybe half of the current 8 billion (the article is mainly about US population, but I tend to take a more global perspective). There were fewer humans than that on Earth when I was born. But others will disagree with the number. So be it.

Every time I mention that the population could be lower, though (mostly because every single environmental problem we face would be at least partly improved if there were fewer people), I get, "So why don't you start by killing yourself?"

I wish I could understand the mindset behind that. But I don't. I'm not talking about removing people who are already here; I'm talking about not bringing more people into an overcrowded, overheated world. I mean, I understand that someone would want me gone, but for that reason? I simply don't get it.

Later in the article, they talk about some ways to reduce the economic impact from having a smaller population. Then:

Taken together, these findings suggest that we could ease the problems of a low-fertility society if we’re willing to invest in children’s education and better support women in the workforce.

Welp, we're boned, in that case.

Others point out that the problems of low fertility may get thornier when the overall size of the population begins to shrink. “What happens to mortgages in a country where real estate depreciates like a used car because the population is falling and we need fewer and fewer houses all the time? We’re totally unprepared for that,” said Lyman Stone, a demographer and research fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, a conservative-leaning think tank.

Oh no! The price of housing may decline! More people might actually be able to afford to have a place to live! Homelessness might decrease! The horror!!!

And countries like the U.S., Canada and Australia rely on net immigration as well — and could probably continue doing so for decades if they choose to embrace it.

Here's the thing about immigration (and now I'm shifting focus back to the US alone):

When a kid is born, they are completely useless for about 20 years, sucking up resources while contributing nothing. Oh, sure, to the parents they're precious (sometimes), though it's not like the old days when you could put 'em to work on the farm. But from society's perspective, you invest in them for 20 years in the hope that they'll eventually become "productive." And sometimes they don't.

An adult immigrant, however, can hit the ground running and contribute to the economy right away.

To me the choice is clear: immigration is preferable from an economic standpoint. The only way it wouldn't be is if you're concerned about race or some nebulously-defined "culture" (In America? Come on) that's going to change over time anyway.