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South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

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Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#191

Post by [deleted] »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #135
csomar wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Immigration has become an issue lately because a human (or a bare-human) is worth much less. 1.000 years ago a bare illiterate human had some considerable value. He could work in the field or he could fight. More humans, more food and production. More humans, more manpower to fight your enemies. Now a bare semi-educated human is a liability. Which is why most countries are refusing their entrance. Times h…

There's only so much juice you can squeeze out of a shrinking workforce, though. And as retirees continue to make up a larger portion of the popular vote - they'll continue to demand more from a shrinking workforce. At some point (I imagine in my lifetime) - the straw will break the camel's back.

[deleted]

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#192

Post by gruez »

phkahler wrote: post #75
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> going to be one of the grand challenges of the 50 years I’m sceptical of this claim. Demand per capita grows unabated. Working lives are lengthening. A smaller population living well is economically indistinguishable, in the aggregate, from a large one living poorly. Maybe post-industrial civilisations settle into a lower-population steady state than ones requiring lots of unrefined labor. Yes, dependency ratios wi…

>> Demand per capita grows unabated. I don't see that. Demand for what? Consumption? Increasing the flow of "stuff" from store/Amazon to the landfill? If we account for inflation, what's increasing?

>If we account for inflation, what's increasing?

GDP per capita growth is still growing a few percent (accounting for inflation).

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#193

Post by spothedog1 »

slothtrop wrote: post #178
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's only so much juice you can squeeze out of a shrinking workforce, though. And as retirees continue to make up a larger portion of the popular vote - they'll continue to demand more from a shrinking workforce. At some point (I imagine in my lifetime) - the straw will break the camel's back.

Automation is progressing faster than new 'types' of jobs are created. In many sectors they'll be poised to be oversaturated with workers. Owners are happy to remove the human element wherever reasonably possible.

Except the US has a large labor shortage that predates covid in construction, agriculture, domestic work, scientists, engineers and more. If automation comes then great but the basic principals of more people in an economy means more demand for goods and services still applies.

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#194

Post by Retric »

dragonwriter wrote: post #154
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's only so much juice you can squeeze out of a shrinking workforce, though. And as retirees continue to make up a larger portion of the popular vote - they'll continue to demand more from a shrinking workforce. At some point (I imagine in my lifetime) - the straw will break the camel's back.

> There's only so much juice you can squeeze out of a shrinking workforce, though. For the developed world, where a lot of the wealth coming in is capital returns from global corps whose ability to generate wealth isn’t constrained by local population size, that just means you need to tap that more effectively. It’s a problem for the payroll tax model of social support funding, perhaps, but unless you are emotionally…

Yes, similarly retiree savings isn’t limited to your economy. A country could have a continuous stream of goods imported that’s supported by past investments, which is more or less the goal of sovereign wealth funds.

However, it requires great long term management making the system overall less stable.

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#195

Post by novok »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #169
forkLding wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is actually quite hard to raise the birth rate, Japan has been trying for years (see https://japantoday.com/category/features/lifestyle/Tokyo%E2%... ). The real impediment is that it is now too costly to raise more than 1-2 children and also not enough time. UN 2015 report on Japan's birth rate policy attempts: https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/events/pdf... To summarize, they've started policies a…

There's trying and then there's trying. Japan is doing the first kind, where you put some effort in, but it's kind of limp. The other kind of trying is when you put vigorous effort into making it easier to have children. Dramatically ramp up childcare support. Strongly enforce anti-discrimination laws, particularly in the case of discrimination against mothers. Forbid employers from requiring more than 40h of work pe…

I think the real changes needed are also politically unpopular with a bunch of old people and other politically powerful classes. Making children more viable for the young will probably mean making real estate not a good investment for one example, making house spouse / the homer simpson lifestyle more viable, thus reducing the labor force and increasing the cost of labor and so on.

For now, it's easier to kick the can down the road.

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#196

Post by BurningFrog »

calmd wrote: post #7

SK is committing demographic suicide though, so whatever you think of its success, it has a pretty fatal disease. It has the lowest birthrate in the world. This is going to cause significant economic problems quite soon, or they will have to open up massive immigration which will completely change the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_birth_rate_in_South_Korea How does the developed world pull out of this ty…

Extrapolating current trends to infinity always predicts some kind of disaster.

But current trends never continue forever. In large part because we like to avoid disasters.

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#197

Post by novok »

twelve40 wrote: post #170
dragonwriter wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is actually quite hard to raise the birth rate, Japan has been trying for years Not...really. > UN report on Japan's birth rate policy attempts: And details defects in the specific policies (notably, these defects are, one who is familiar with policies of the type will notice, ways they fall short of the support policies in many European countries that aren't even specifically trying to boost birth rates .) E.g.…

> Encouraging births isn't hard if a government decides its important Do you have any examples or even just any precedents how decades of declines and lowest birth rate in the world have been easily and successfully turned around, or this is all just hypothetically probably not hard?

The examples are older and from authoritarian countries, but china and iran had state sponsored baby booms. China was started by mao, iran was also started by the revolutionaries shortly after the revolution.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2009/06/why-does-iran-ha...

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#198

Post by sandworm101 »

calmd wrote: post #7

SK is committing demographic suicide though, so whatever you think of its success, it has a pretty fatal disease. It has the lowest birthrate in the world. This is going to cause significant economic problems quite soon, or they will have to open up massive immigration which will completely change the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_birth_rate_in_South_Korea How does the developed world pull out of this ty…

Why is immigration the answer? All you need is workers, not immigrants. SK will probably do what the gulf states do. They will bring in foreign labor but with a clear separation between expat workers and potential "immigrants". These people will work finite contracts and then be literally sent home once the contract is over, mooting any concept of naturalization. Gulf states have done this relatively successfully for decades.

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#199

Post by baybal2 »

nodejs_rulez_1 wrote: post #182
baybal2 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How does the developed world pull out of this type of tailspin? 1. Find a young woman 2. Make her happy, and confident in you 3. ? 4. Pull your family for the next 30-40 years With all respects, I always seen a family as a man's responsibility, and a failure at creating/maintaining one to coming from man's deficiencies first. In virtually every human culture in the world, even matriarchal societies, it is by defaul…

A man can always always find another woman if one does not want a family with him up until mid-thirties. A lot of time. If you filter out the overweight, tattoo-covered ones, having kids by another man etc. you are left with just a few percent though.

In comparison to Russia, or China, America is a paradise for late marriage.

The higher up you are on the social ladder, the quicker are the spouses taken from the marriage market.

I was fortunate to go into somewhat prestigious highschool back in Russia. The last 3 bachelors from my class are all the people who managed to get it abroad.

Everybody else was gone by mid-twenties, anybody with higher education by 23 at most.

Seeing an unmarried woman with PhD level education, job, own roof over her head, and no skeletons in the closet over 30 in Russia is likely a hallucination. In Canada, I met new such almost monthly, and I grew rather rather complacent.

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#200

Post by novok »

asoneth wrote: post #164
calmd wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So urban cities are anti-child? Thus we will see cites change or depopulate? Does low fertility correlate with dense urban dwelling and sky high real-estate prices? I suspect it probably does, but I haven't seen any proof. Maybe this shift to remote-first work that happened over the last 18 months will help....

> we will see cites change or depopulate? Or neither. Cities since at least the Roman era have been considered "population sinks". That is, they often maintain or grow their population by attracting surplus population born outside of the city. As an experiment, if you ever find yourself in a large city like San Francisco, New York, London, or Tokyo, ask around and note what fraction of the residents you meet were act…

There are many cities that seem more child friendly than others although. Like berlin, or even new york compared to SF.
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