The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

Most men can’t even get a date anymore, but we’re not allowed to talk about the reasons why.

Good. As the working population stagnates perhaps employers will attach some value to workers. Of course, without an underclass of immigrant labor, prices will rise and the US will have to import more food. And temporary heathcare workers can be brought in to help the aging population. It's good that America's cordial relationships with key trading partners will facilitate the free movement of goods and labor ...

#1 story on BBC news: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpw052pkvl0o

(Comedy writing mode ON: )

"We need to flatten the curve..."

(Comedy writing mode OFF: )

You know, to re-quote the powers-that-be and the mainstream news media...

What, no takers?

You know, "flatten the curve... of population increase?" -- what, still not funny?

Hey, I'm just re-quoting what other people said... (a whole lot of people, incidentally!) but in the context of the article, above!

What, still no takers?

You people have no sense of (dark, very dark, let's be completely honest about that!) humor!

:-)

Good? Population can't grow forever. We're not even fucking close to going extinct, and if we did start trending that direction countries like the USSR demonstrated that simple objectives like promising a medal to anyone who pops out 7 kids solves that problem overnight.

Next steps should be raising the quality of life globally, to make this trend universal.

Mass human behavior in regards to fertility, climate destruction, and social decay is much more sensical if you frame it as species-wide suicidality.

ICE works :0

I'm struggling to see why this is a problem.

Poor people. Start pumping out kids to be future wage slaves in this corpo dominated country. Carls Jr loves you.

I've said it before on HN, but it's worth repeating: When my parents started a family in the late-60's, my dad had only a high school diploma, yet he supported his wife, 2 kids, 2 cars, and a brand new house. Heck, one of their cars was a 1964 convertible Corvette (my mom still talks about how much she misses that car). That is basically unheard-of these days.

I approve. The population shrinks until we build more god damn housing in these major cities where all the fucking jobs are!!

We are in dire need of housing in these cities. I don’t think we should keep trying to recreate 1920s tenement conditions.

If productivity gains had ever filtered down to the population instead of being frittered away by the wealthy in orgies of creation and destruction, it would be easy to afford a population decline.

Productivity went up 90% since 1979, and pay went up 30%. We could support 2x the ratio of retirees to workers as 1979 at the same level of comfort. Instead, we build huge houses (for wealthy people) and tear them down, and build a military to kill impoverished foreigners (for our wealthy investors), blow it up, and build it again.

The "demographic crisis" people are a child-sacrificing cult posing as a child-worshipping cult. They want more people to keep the prices of labor down, and they act like that's a concern that you should share. Unless you're in the top 20-40% in the West, you're going to work until you die, or get sick and die in the gutter.

If you really wanted the population to go up, maybe don't engineer society so that all of its wealth lies in the hands of boomers and their failchildren who don't work. Governance would improve instantly and vastly if only people who worked got a vote.

The funny thing is that the right-wing pro-natalist points at wealthy elites and concocts a conspiracy that they want to reduce the population (for unknown, nefarious reasons.) No, they love cheap servants. They spend all of their effort in bombing and sieging poor countries on bizarre pretenses then opening the doors to their own countries to let them rush in. The only difference between the right-wing pro-natalists and wealthy elites is that the elite will happily import the servants from the South to wherever they want to live, and right-wingers (even if they call themselves "liberals") are secretly just doing the 14 words. We don't need more immigrants or more babies, we need to shed parasites.

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Shithole country

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Capitalism. The problem is capitalism. The endless quest for ever-increasing profits just expands wealth inequality. Millennials went through this when the job pipeline died in 2008 (ie entry level positions disappeared). We now have a huge number of people who are laden with debt they’ll never repay and many will never own a home or retire.

Illegal immigration exists to suppress wages of both documented and undocumented people. It’s to increase profits. Certain industries will collapse without it.

And as the global hegemonic superpower, imperialism is the highest form of capitalism. Destabilizing other countries is a tool for exploitation.

Immigration has been the only thing propping up population growth.

I honestly see the US collapsing in our lifetimes. The billionaires will flee. Empires don’t die quietly or quickly however. It’s going to be violent and drawn out.

Deporting hundreds of thousands of people might have something to do with that. Economic contraction seems to be a certainty.

Good. Reduce population growth until housing buildout can catch up with population. Trying to create more babies and allowing immigration when there aren't enough homes is dumb.

Sounds hellish.

"His administration is focused on delivering on his promise to reduce the immigrant population and argues, despite the protestations of economists, that doing so will mean greater opportunities and wages for native-born workers and will reduce the cost of everything from housing to health care by reducing demand.

“There is no shortage of American minds and hands to grow our labor force, and President Trump’s agenda to create jobs for American workers represents this Administration’s commitment to capitalizing on that untapped potential while delivering on our mandate to enforce our immigration laws,” says Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman."

this is the quietest crisis in the us right now. our entire insurance and social safety net system (especially ltc and social security) is mathematically dependent on a forever growth pyramid.

once that population curve flattens or flips, the risk pooling math just breaks. you can’t underwrite a 30-year health or life liability for a cohort when the generation behind them is 20% smaller. we’re looking at a fundamental failure of the actuarial models we've used since the 50s.