Nicholas Eberstadt: Is the World Ready for the Population Bust? | Foreign Affairs Interview

[@clancywiggam]

House prices are destroying society. Having to have two wage earners in a house just to be able to pay the rent/mortgage is the reason society is falling apart where I live.

[@jamesbottoms8566]

I hate hearing these pretentious experts that are so far removed from normal people talk about normal people not creating the next untouchable generation as if they are colonial powers, worried about losing the ability to take advantage of impoverished workers.

[@sens36]

It is up to taxable entities like corporations that must cover the costs of destroying safety nets set up after Reagan arrived. Not for individuals to solely bare the brunt of something they had no say in.

[@boblee5556]

The price of rent bro... Me and my ex didnt have kids because of the price of rent. Me and my current partner are waiting because of the price of rent... I imagine the same corperate landlord bs is going on in Calcutta as it is in SanFrancisco... I posit the low birthrate is caused by a bunch of individual reactions to the cost of living compared to the actual purchasing power of wages.

[@nrm224]

If social trust and foresighted leadership are two things necessary for dealing with depopulation, I do not like where the United States is headed.

[@ziggiLarsson]

Superb interview! Both the interviewer and interviewee are eloquent and informed, to a level rarely encountered. Also, the quality of the English spoken is simply beautiful - from its grammatical precision and vocabulary deployed, to its pronunciation. A 'Gold Standard'!

[@thenoblegnuwildebeest3625]

This guest seems to use "volition" as a catch-all explanation for declining fertility rates, but that does nothing to explain why human desire for children has suddenly declined.

[@user-ju1qd3ok2g]

Some of the first countries to suffer from Depopulation and those economic consequences that follows... are Germany, Italy, China, South Korea, Russia Japan... together the size of the economic downsizing from these countries at the same time...will cause a major Global Economic setback?

[@_bhargav229]

Depopulation is almost certainly multicausal, but I wouldn't be so quick to separate human behaviour from biological factors. The behavioural choice to not have children might just be a manifestation of underlying biological infertility.

[@nathanngumi8467]

Great discussion!

[@yp77738yp77739]

Don’t understand why the state can not be honest with the population and inform people that immigration is needed by those countries where the young pay for social welfare of the old.

[@thecount1001]

but it has not begun. as a matter of fact, the planet is still growing and may reach 10 billion before declining. what should terrify anyone capable of critical thinking however, is what kind of world will it be, when Africa and India are by far the most populous people on the planet? total chaos and collapse if the future can be extrapolated from the past.

[@Nainara32]

It would be nice if biomedical technology can counteract or delay the impacts of fertility decline by making significant advances in improving longevity.

[@zacnewman7140]

And suddenly the callus policies of American conservatives toward birth control and abortion access, and also toward education, make a certain amount of sense. Also "some generation will lose out..." Gen X. You can just come out and say it, Gen X is the one that's going to get screwed over. We've known that for 45 years.

[@stevecatpatrick8056]

Pro-natal policies just don't go nearly far enough to make anyone change their mind. I know thinking about my own life, as the guest stated it's about what we want as parents. I could want more children, But I wouldn't want that with both parents working. And I don't want to lower my standard of living. So if you want to shift a family such as myself from one to maybe two kids, And you want to shift that to two maybe three kids, That's going to be very expensive because what a little subsidy doesn't do for you is give you more time. And then when you think about having 3 plus kids, from what I've heard is the world is just not designed for families of five plus. It just makes everything harder, occupancy in hotels, vehicles you have to drive, etc. I've heard it's a struggle If you have three or four kids because there's these built-in assumptions that a family is going to be two adults and zero to two kids no more. And If we need a 2.1 replacement rate then for every couple that doesn't have a kid you need a couple that has four, and for every couple that only has one You need a couple that has three. If they want to implement pronatalist policies that work, Make it so that me and my family can maintain the same standard of living and I can have the same amount of time for myself and my family as I would with one child, But with three or four. Again what I think that looks like is lots of subsidies including subsidies to work less. Honestly it would probably be something like $40,000 plus (this is canadian) per year for 18 years. And more than just money it would be a change in society so that people are around to babysit your kids when you need it. One big pro natalist policy I thought would make a big difference as if you could just do drop in babysitting whenever you needed it, maybe three times a month per family And then a reasonable fee afterwards. And I'm not talking about daycare this is in addition, This is running on evenings and weekends so you can actually have a date night and give some TLC to your spouse. And as for the pay-as-you-go versus building up savings for retirement, that will help but it doesn't really solve the population retirement problem does it? Saving up money or shares of a company doesn't generate more people to pick up your trash or to wipe your ass or to keep your power on. Those are people that need to be paid. If the elderly that need to be supported have more money from saving, then they will just have more money to bid up the cost of all that work. I mean saving can work on a country level but it can't be a solution at the global level. The only solution there is a standard of living cut for unproductive retired people, and technology. I just know as a millennial I am not signing up to be that sandwich generation. The seniors can die in the streets for all I care from their lack of foresight before I slave my only life away raising a younger generation while taking care of an older one and being rewarded with no good retirement of my own. One thing I would like to see is every individual having a personal retirement age, At which they can collect their full benefits. And just like how when you get insurance it's based off all your demographics and information on your health etc, I think that retirement age should be that as well for social security and such. I don't think it makes any sense thst a large 6' tall man with myself with a family history of heart issues should have the same retirement age as a petite woman who can expect to live on average another decade. Why should I be effectively subsidizing her? Because that's what's happening the current system is I pay more in than I will statistically expect to get so that people like that can pay less in than they statistically expect to get. It doesn't make any sense to me I think it should be ran like insurance where you get a predicted life expectancy based on all the information we know about your demographics like sex, vocation, and health, And you are retirement age to collect full benefits is maybe your life expectancy minus 20 years.

[@posterestantejames]

Media, education, i.e. greater awareness of others and ourselves in relation to the whole has affected micro choices family by family...who can tell where a new stasis-level will form...

[@dchappy6985]

Yes, "Sub-Sahara Africa," also known as Africa. 😂 the vast majority of Africa's land mass and peoples.

[@creativeslink]

Let’s make more people!

[@EnglishFolkWisdom]

Thank you for a measured, thoughtful discussion on a topic that typically generates lots of heat and not much light online. "Loyal and productive newcomers" - very nicely put. Aye, there's the rub.

[@NicholBrummer]

the population degrowth .. over the top, and learn to live with that.

[@penguinista]

He is forecasting economic growth without AI or robotics.

[@ceuser6119]

We Catholics are making babies. 😊

[@marchess286]

Thank you

[@jonlittle5032]

I would surmise no one in the podcast read Peter Zeihan's book nine years ago that laid out in detail the coming population collapse or how it would trigger what we now call deglobalization?