If the share of people who do labor (working age) to people who don’t (children and the elderly) becomes too lopsided, the burden on those who work becomes unsustainable.
Except that raising children requires more time and resources than caring for elderly. So having less children frees up more resources to care for the elderly. Into the next generation there are now less people which require even less resources which means you need fewer workers to produce those resources.
History provides evidence for this. After every major war there were economic booms. This is despite wars killing off the able bodied workers leaving only the sick and elderly.
The only people who suffer from a lower population are the ownership class. They live by skimming a little of the productivity off of every worker.
Except that raising children requires more time and resources than caring for elderly.
Source on this? Doesn’t sound right at all. According to my findings after a quick search, LTC (long-term care) takes a significantly higher fraction of OECD countries GDP than e.g. childcare+early education.
Except that raising children requires more time and resources than caring for elderly. So having less children frees up more resources to care for the elderly. Into the next generation there are now less people which require even less resources which means you need fewer workers to produce those resources.
History provides evidence for this. After every major war there were economic booms. This is despite wars killing off the able bodied workers leaving only the sick and elderly.
The only people who suffer from a lower population are the ownership class. They live by skimming a little of the productivity off of every worker.
Source on this? Doesn’t sound right at all. According to my findings after a quick search, LTC (long-term care) takes a significantly higher fraction of OECD countries GDP than e.g. childcare+early education.
https://www.oecd.org/els/soc/PF3_1_Public_spending_on_childcare_and_early_education.pdf
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/cb584fa2-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/cb584fa2-en
I’ll dig up more sources but you compared public spending on childcare (which is minimal in the US) to private long term care costs.
The average cost to raise a child to age 18 is $310,000.
https://www.investopedia.com/how-much-to-save-for-college-4782579
How many days of intensive care is that? The resources we spend trying to keep dying elderly people around just a little bit longer are insane.
End of life care averages $80,000
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanam/article/PIIS2667-193X(22)00176-4/fulltext