Population issues

Best thing about us so called "Boomers" was we did normal stuff like party hard, work hard, play hard, fornicate and breed hard then along came the Millennials and the Gens who thought having children would screw with their screen time and non producing LGBTQ relationships no wonder you young ones are now screwed! So do we blame the "Boomers" for that also? PS I'm doing my bit to help you out with with three kids and four grankids!

Gen Z is pretty big and they are having lots of kids. but it will take 20 years for them to come online, so it will be 20 lean years and then we will be fine from a capitalist, consumption perspective. I dont think the world will look the same in 20 years though, a lot of new tech coming down the tubes.

You have to remember that the ones screaming the most about population decline are billionaires! The ones who want, or cant see an alternative to, what we currently have and want to keep the status quo - growth. We have already lived on this planet with lower populations except we now have a lot more knowledge & tech. I dont see a problem.

The governments seem to always fall back on immigration as the source for "ready-made taxpayers" to fill the gap. Even with the housing crisis at the moment, these tens of thousands of migrants don't have a place to stay. With the loss of the building industry and the lack of apprentices becoming our future tradies, the housing issue will only exacerbate further. The housing issue is something that can take a decade to even make a dent in.

My theory as far as "future housing" is instead of just forever extending the outlining suburbs of cities, they need to focus on more self-contained satellite cities.
These estates would need their own mini-CBD zone and the government should encourage big inner-city businesses to branch out to sub-offices in these satellite cities for their workers to work and live in. Naturally, these areas would have their own school systems and hospitals, shopping centres etc.
In my view, something along the lines of this theory would have multiple benefits to living overall. The biggest factor this would help towards is transportation. Because at the moment, the developers keep building all these mega suburbs but not upgrading the surrounding road networks to suit them. Take for instance North Lakes north of Brissy. Mega suburb development has the approval to extend all the way up to Caloundra on the Sunshine Coast, making it a super mega housing suburb over 62Km of Hwy and yet the vast majority of the people living here will still jump on the Bruce and drive to the city each day for work having massive bottlenecks once they start to reach Carseldine and Chermside.

I know this satellite city idea may read like the WEFs dream of 15min cities, but not really as they would be larger than that once you put in a mini-CBD and other public infrastructure.

Because of the poor city planning or major centres, I'm glad I live in a remote town 200Km from the nearest traffic lights lol

I'm an elder Millennial. We have three kids. Want an interesting anecdote? When covid lockdowns happened, I paid off the $7k outstanding on my car loan because I didn't have to pay childcare for that period. In eight weeks. EIGHT WEEKS. $7k. In the cheapest not for profit daycare in the area, but at the national average. There could be cheaper daycares, but they certainly weren't within a half hour drive of where we lived. That much money just to have children exist while you work. Not to provide the food, healthcare, clothing, education etc. that was outside of childcare hours as well. Just for them to exist while you work.

For a little perspective, my boomer generation mum used to pay $2 a week for the local community daycare when I was a toddler.
In today's money, that's about $5.50 for a full week of childcare. If she'd had to pay today's prices back in 1985 for my care, she would have been paying $286 a week for childcare.
I was paying about $875 a week until 2 years ago.  The average wage in 1980 was apparently about $13,458. The cost of childcare for her if she'd had to pay at the rates that we did, would have been $11,440 a year for 40 weeks of care.
That comparison tracks with the amount we paid per year of approximately $35000 in today's dollars. For our kids to simply exist while we worked.

Think back to your wage in the mid-80s. If someone had said "You need to have more kids" on your wage as it was in 1985 and you were paying $286 a week, what would your first thought be? Not to mention the cultural shift away from older generations caring for children full time while their parents are at work. That's no longer a common expectation. We didn't have either set of parents living close to us to offer assistance, but even if they had been, they had either full time work themselves or no inclination to care for young children.

Millennials aren't having less kids out of spite or selfishness. They're simply thinking with their wallets far more often than they are with their nethers.

This is not an attack on the boomers, I understand that with changes to healthcare, contraception, peacefull existence, and urbanisation, the need for lots of kids just wasnt a cultural push all pushed the data that way. I also dont blame individuals, as it shouldnt be an expectation to breed at any rate. but there are global consequences to that. My discussion of boomers is an observation, and one that continued as less and less kids arrived through each generation. all of those things that influence boomers keep piling up of peoples decision making today.

part of the picture is delaying having kids, which is making it hard to even have kids. this is such a common issue today. people past 30 wanting to have kids is crazy from a biological view. its 50/50 at best that you will have a kid past 30.

we dont have the generations coming through to maintain everything we have. growth is required. we have seen in japan where population and the economy hasnt grown, that external investment in growing economies is required. if the lack of growth is global, the Japanese example is irrelevant.

The US is by far the best set to weather the future. they have energy and food independence, cheap skilled manufacturing labour in mexico, resources in canada, a navy to protect the trade that it does maintain, physical room to grow, and technological and techical exellence in every field. Their demographics are also probably the best in the world for growth. sure they are missing some things, but with their navy, culture, and knowledge, they can onshore any activity or resource.

I don’t care what happens to society or the country. I’ll never forget the way us purebloods we’re treated by government, police, business and the vast majority of the general population. I won’t lose any sleep if they all drown in the cesspit of declining population. All I care about is making sure my children and grandchildren survive in comfort.

So they're the ones who got lucky...got it.

And next time we get a pandemic...a real one...you'll make your own luck there too.