I don't understand some peoples' concern that low birth rates

[raccoon]

Will cause labor shortages in the coming decades.
Robots will be filling a lot of the jobs anyway.

Your thoughts?

[DBoon]

1. the jobs will be filled by paying people more and treating them better

That is what they fear

[underpants]

2. Or workers might not be born here

Oh NOOOOO!!!

[jimfields33]

14. If we didn't have severe water and electricity problems

I’d say that’s great. We need to get a serious resolution on both before we claim that adding to our population is not going to bring

[Ferrets are Cool]

3. Just another false flag.

[underpants]

5. It's rooted in and a watered down/PC nod to the Nazi crowd

White nationals
White supremacists
Etc whatever
They are all Nazis to me.

The shrinking white population or growing nonwhite population feeds into THEY WILL NOT REPLACE US crap.

My 2¢

[Scrivener7]

4. The lower the birth rates, the better for everyone. The population of the US in 1970 was

203 million. Now it's around 335 million.

That's a 65% increase in 50 years. That's horrifying. And it only gets worse, and gets worse faster, as time goes on.

The earth can't sustain it.

[exboyfil]

7. In fairness a big part of the growth is driven by immigration

The native population is below replacement rate at 1.7 vs. 2.1 which is replacement rate.

Seems a carrot would do a lot more than a stick to get that rate up if that is what is desired. You want families that want children, but are not financially able to have them to have them.

[Scrivener7]

13. Point is, wanting families to want more children is slow suicide.

The increase in immigration is, to some extent, a sign that the same crazy increase is going on everywhere. The world population in 1970 was 3.7 billion. Today it's 7.9 billion. Crazy!

[Calculating]

6. I have no idea

We're at a point where adding more people is no longer a benefit. Where I live the traffic is insane, there's a shortage of housing, and everywhere I look they're tearing down places I loved growing up to build high density housing. Less people equals a higher quality of life for all.

[MissMillie]

12. don't forget climate change (n/t)

.

[Thomas Hurt]

8. Most of the concern about low birth rates is really about low white birth rates.

The christofascists are afraid of being the minority. They are afraid that they will be treated with the same hatred that they have in their own black hearts.

[Wounded Bear]

10. This

Low birth rates are normal in advanced societies.

[Vogon_Glory]

19. Their oh is that so many of the swelling numbers of Hispanic birth rates is

caused by the closure of so many Planned Parenthood and other family planning clinics in border states. The whingie—dingies shut down family planning clinics, High-Five themselves for sticking it to the libs, and now find their percentage of the population has decreased because there are more brown and black babies because kids and young adults don’t stop making whoopie because there isn’t access to birth control. That’s why Texas is no longer majority-white and this trend will continue to spread.

Wing-nut theory collided with reality. Reality wins.

[MontanaMama]

9. We've got labor shortages now.

Every place is hiring. We’ve lost over a million Americans to Covid, we’ve had hundreds of thousands of older folks in the work force that retired earlier than they would’ve otherwise due to Covid and that’s just a small piece of the labor shortage puzzle. That said, low birth rates among white women is their concern imho. Not enough white babies being born means POC will outnumber white people soon. I believe that’s their fear and also the reason for the current abortion debacle. Just my opinion.

[MissMillie]

11. Well, you're probably right

but between the robots and the lower birth rates there will be fewer consumers.

That could be a problem for the economy, especially since over the last 4 decades consumer purchasing power has shrunk dramatically and may not ever come back.


For better or for worse, we are a consumer-driven economy.

The whole supply-side crap has been proven to be just that--crap.

[NickB79]

22. Bingo. Robots don't go shopping

If goods and services are provided by robots, but there are fewer and fewer consumers, there's a falling level of profit.

[uponit7771]

26. Yep

[Bettie]

15. The whole thing is about stoking

white people's fear of brown people.

That's it.

Well, there's also the fact that if there are less workers they might have to pay people more.

[Vogon_Glory]

16. Republican-backed politicos and legislation is

anti-child. Don’t let the GQP and the Insane Clown Posse that runs Club Pachyderm scam you by waving their anti-abortion bills. These are the same folks who fight parental leave, funding for child-care, and recently sank the child tax credit. For all the anger directed at WVa’s Joe Manchin, he couldn’t have done it without the strength of numbers and political support of the Republican Party.

Many have heard of the closure of numerous Planned Parenthood clinics. Despite the lying polemics of the anti-abortion groups, abortion was always a small part of PP’s services. PP provided pre-natal care, access to contraceptives, and help to mothers and newborns. These clinics have often closed, leaving their struggling patients with the dubious services of so-called “crisis pregnancy clinics,” which rarely, if ever, practice medicine at all.

If folks wanted a higher birth-rate in the US, they’d throw out Repud politicians and NEVER, EVER, let them come back.

[Hoyt]

17. It could cause labor shortages, but we could increase immigration if that actually happens.

[dawg]

18. I thought millions of people were supposed to be pouring over our borders ...

to come take our jobs.

That's what the wall was for, wasn't it?

And the same small-business owning sonsabitches that always vote Republican won't stop whining about how they can't find anyone to take their shitty jobs.

Dumbasses.

[MineralMan]

20. It's low birth rates for WHITE PEOPLE that worry the right-wingers.

Since they can't create a race-based caste system in this country, all they can do is hope more white babies get born. They're idiots, of course, who can't think anything through with reason.

If it seems stupid to you, that's because those who want such things ARE STUPID!

Make no mistake, though: Their real goal is to create a society where Caucasians are a separate, privileged class, with everyone who is not Caucasian is repressed and delegated to do low-level, poorly paid jobs. A return to virtual slavery is what they really want. They just can't say that out loud.

[eppur_se_muova]

29. THIS !!! nt

[hunter]

21. The only birth rate that truly matters is the birth rate for all humans.

There's only one earth and one species of humans who have migrated by land and by sea throughout human history, populating all the continents and major islands except Antarctica thousands of years ago.

All the other concerns about birth rates are based on racism, nationalism, or religion, as expressed by people who believe in some sort of cultural purity, a sort of purity that has never existed even in places like North Korea where dissent is severely punished.

I'd flippantly say the ruling class is fearful of low birth rates because it reduces the number of naive young people they can exploit.

It would be a good thing if human population growth was zero or slightly negative. We humans are exceeding the carrying capacity of our environment.

We can achieve zero population growth by the political and economic empowerment of women, easy access to birth control, and realistic sex education. It's not a coincidence that these are the progressive goals that "conservatives" of many different nationalities and religions oppose.

[NickB79]

23. Human labor is cheaper in the short term

A robotic system will pay for itself over time, but you need millions upfront to finance them at first. Not a big deal for big corporations, but a killer for smaller businesses.

Unless we get to the point that we have self replicating robots, in which case, we may find ourselves all out of jobs.

[Calculating]

25. Then the robots decide they don't need us anymore

At that point we will have created our successors.

[Iggo]

24. Only takes a split second to read between the lines on that one.

[themaguffin]

27. well, this plays into the right's "white replacement theory" as the

non white population is growing faster both because of immigration and also higher birth rates.

[LeftInTX]

28. What if everyone decides to be abstinent, what will they do then?