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India's surprise baby bust

economist.com

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Re: India's surprise baby bust

#111

Post by RickJWagner »

triceratops wrote: post #73
arbll wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a significant risk it will lead to a large reduction in living standards. A lot of things like retirement funds are built with the assumption of infinite growth. This assumption will obviously break one day and when it does I don't see how it could go smoothly. On the plus side, it will likely lead to lower emissions, assuming it doesn't lead to massive wars or other destructive behaviors due to the instabili…

> retirement funds are built with the assumption of infinite growth Of workers. Because retirement funds take money from workers to pay for retirees. Assets and productivity, on the other hand, can grow a lot more than the population. Right now it's considered communism to tax assets. Once we get over that taboo things'll go a lot smoother.

That would destroy the incentive to save. Why put aside a dollar now, only to have it taxed every year? Better to spend it while it’s whole.

That changes future value calculations, too.

These are things not to mess with lightly.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#112

Post by triceratops »

RickJWagner wrote: post #111
triceratops wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> retirement funds are built with the assumption of infinite growth Of workers. Because retirement funds take money from workers to pay for retirees. Assets and productivity, on the other hand, can grow a lot more than the population. Right now it's considered communism to tax assets. Once we get over that taboo things'll go a lot smoother.

That would destroy the incentive to save. Why put aside a dollar now, only to have it taxed every year? Better to spend it while it’s whole. That changes future value calculations, too. These are things not to mess with lightly.

> That would destroy the incentive to save. Why put aside a dollar now, only to have it taxed every year?

Ok? If you choose to spend a dollar instead of saving it, that implies some business will get that dollar. That implies someone will still invest in, build, and run businesses.

> These are things not to mess with lightly.

I agree. It requires a lot of thinking, discussion, deliberation and all that. But the basic math doesn't lie. We will have fewer workers in the future. Machines will make more and more stuff. If you want to continue supporting retirees as promised, then taxing the machines is the only answer.

Otherwise you'll have to break some promises to retirees and pensioners; now that's a real disincentive to save.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#113

Post by tavavex »

calepayson wrote: post #84
happytoexplain wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a lot of our economics presumes growth and, if we don’t get it, a lot of terrible stuff happens What does this actually mean? Every time I try to wrap my head around why it's bad e.g. for a business to make a constant profit, rather than an increasing profit; or for the population to dip to some number and settle there, rather than increase; the explanations seem to become circular very quickly. I know it's partiall…

Honestly great question. I think of it as: I invest my wages to take advantage of compound interest. It’s kind of my only hope of having a family / owning a home / retiring. If stuff stops compounding, I’m fucked. Multiply by however many millions of people are on the same position. I don’t necessarily think the theories are making any assumption about what is good (except for the “greed is good dicks”)but more ackno…

But isn't this just a more abstract example of the 'circular explanations' thing that OP mentioned? The reason why we need compound interest on our savings accounts instead of just being able to put away some money every year is a product of having to counteract inflation, which is the result of policies trying to induce growth by making saving less appealing than putting the money into more companies making more things for more profit. We need infinite growth because everything around us is designed to expect infinite growth. But what happens as we start running out of headroom? Is there really no other way at all?

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#114

Post by ianm218 »

i_idiot wrote: post #8

What's the strong case against population dwindling other than supporting aging population? Given the AI armageddon, it just makes sense to reduce the population. If there's less population, we need less production and less workers. Of course, countries have to deal with oldest population for a brief period of time.

What is your case at all? AI could usher in a post scarcity world so why not have more humans who can enjoy better lives?

You just said AI Armageddon as if there is an already predetermined ending that is widely agreed upon.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#115

Post by MontyCarloHall »

mekdoonggi wrote: post #97
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd call it hedonism if a couple wants to be able to go out on a date on a whim, easily take a vacation, watch adult-appropriate movies on a big TV in the living room, maintain good sleep/health habits, keep a flexible schedule unconstrained by school pickups/staying home with a sick kid, etc. These are all real examples of why people I know delayed having kids, curtailed the number they had, or never had them altoge…

And do you think this is bad?

I never made any value judgment on whether it’s bad or good. “Hedonism” is simply the focus of individual pleasure and happiness above all else, and everything I listed is an example of things that lead to individual happiness that are antithetical to having many children.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#116

Post by MontyCarloHall »

happytoexplain wrote: post #88
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #69

This has happened to every single society [*] as it industrializes [0], and offering extensive support and incentives to parents (e.g. as has been tried in Scandinavian countries) does very little to reverse this trend [1, 2]. My hypothesis is that as societies industrialize, they afford their population more and more activities that are simply more fun and rewarding than having children. So many people I know put of…

This seems like the obvious explanation, though I think your use of the term "hedonism" is distracting. People are inherently selfish (how could any entity not be "self"-ish to some degree?). The bottom line is that we do things because we want to. Even selfless activities feel good . That's fine, honestly. But having children is not intrinsically non-hedonistic. It's just one of many self-fulfilling activities we ch…

Agreed with everything you wrote. I meant “hedonism” in its non-colloquial, neutral sense, i.e. the pursuit of individual pleasure and happiness above all else, which judging by the other replies was a mistake on my part.

>But having children is not intrinsically non-hedonistic. It's just one of many self-fulfilling activities we choose from

Exactly, and my point is that all the activities I listed (which only become abundantly available in rich, industrialized societies) are more self-fulfilling than having children.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#117

Post by Ajedi32 »

kranke155 wrote: post #104
Ajedi32 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They tend to overgrow their environment, outstrip resources, and then collapse. That's not what's happening here. Birth rates are below 2.1 in many countries who are no where close to "outstripping their resources". There are other factors causing the contraction which have nothing to do with resource limitations. In fact it seems like it's the opposite: richer nations with more resources tend to have lower birth r…

Has any organism ever extinguished itself as you describe ? This whole human extinction thing… isn’t that catastrophising? We are a 7-8 billion individuals away from extinction.

All plausible theories I've heard for the cause of humanity's unprecedented, historically low birth rates are things that could not occur in less intelligent species. (Birth control, women's rights, hedonism enabled by modern technology, etc.)

> isn’t that catastrophising

Yes, I'm only putting that forward as the worst case scenario to make the point that this can't just be ignored. As I said in other comments, this almost certainly won't actually result in extinction because there are other corrective factors which would occur long before that, but none of those scenarios are particularly desirable either. (E.g. Civilizational collapse returning humanity to pre-industrical birth rates, global takeover by theocratic governments that ban birth control, etc.)

The only non-catastrophic corrective factors that sound plausible to me involve some kind of intentional collective action on our part that reverses the trend, which won't happen if everyone's attitude is the same as the root commenter's. (Granted, maybe there are other possible corrective factors I haven't thought of, but if so I'd like to discuss what those are rather than just have the problem dismissed with a hand wave.)

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#119

Post by red-iron-pine »

mywittyname wrote: post #16

> One study showed how the arrival of cable television in Indian villages in the 2000s led to a moderate fall in fertility. Soap operas depicting urban, middle-class women with small families may have changed norms (though some wonder whether people were just watching TV rather than having sex). The latter part seems like the most meaningful cause world wide. Sex is a boredom activity and we just aren't bored in the…

> Sex is a boredom activity

making a pretty strong statement about yourself there mon ami. that ain't the case for plenty of people

and keep in mind that India has arranged marriages

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#120

Post by red-iron-pine »

ianm218 wrote: post #114
i_idiot wrote: post #8

What's the strong case against population dwindling other than supporting aging population? Given the AI armageddon, it just makes sense to reduce the population. If there's less population, we need less production and less workers. Of course, countries have to deal with oldest population for a brief period of time.

What is your case at all? AI could usher in a post scarcity world so why not have more humans who can enjoy better lives? You just said AI Armageddon as if there is an already predetermined ending that is widely agreed upon.

it could. but it won't.

ai only solves labor, it doesn't solve human greed.

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