Jislizard said:
Scale that up to a whole economy and you need more people creating more economic activity to get more sales, so you can either breed more or import people from elsewhere.
This all relies on a model of perpetual expanding business.
Business needs to expand to keep an expanding population gainfully employed so they can pay more taxes to pay for the expanding social costs.
But if the population stops expanding (ageing population, smaller families) there seems to be an idea that we need to keep importing people so that the economy can keep expanding.
Why this desire to make more than we need?
If we can feed and employ the dwindling population with what we already have then that is a bonus. Business might like to keep expanding to make the bosses richer but from a welfare point of view how do the people benefit?
It isn't just a case of scaling down (if that's what people in the UK thought they were voting for), but being able to scale down proportionally and sustainably. That's not going to happen by simply leaving the EU.
For example, Britain's fertility rate is 1.8 births per woman. You need 2.1 just to replace the native population as they get old and die, otherwise the population shrinks. If that's what you're aiming for, that might sound great but 2.1 to 1.8 is a very big drop. Even that 1.8 figure is being propped up by migrant families who have a higher birth rate of about 2.25. Obviously that's a relatively small group compared to the total population, but subtracting those second generation migrant babies and the net figure would be even less than 1.8. For perspective, 1.4 is considered "wasteland in 3 generations" territory.
The problem is that halting and stabilizing that kind of trend is very difficult.
Population replacement is important because there's going to be a hell of a lot of old aged pensioners hitting up the taxpayer for an income and healthcare in the years to come. They're going to go from being net contributors to net recipients of taxpayer funded welfare.
Across the EU (and Britain is roughly average) there are about 3.5 workers per retiree. By 2040, that's going to drop to about 1.9 workers per retiree. The ratio is going to pretty much halve, which means the workers are going to have to double the amount of resources they devote to looking after old people. Hopefully new technology and increases in productivity will make up some of the difference, but there will have to be a cash component to that as well i.e. taxes. Basically, the UK is going to need a lot of young people to come in to maintain the amount of economic activity going on so that the government can keep appropriating bits here and there to pay for the old people. The alternative is a lot of old people living in poverty.
Again, that kind of trend is very difficult to stop once it gets going. If taxes have to increase, native born young people leave and foreign born young people never come in the first place. The burden falls on those who remain and the whole thing becomes a vicious cycle.
Purely keeping Britain's economy and population stable means it needs to keep importing young people. In order to scale down sustainably, it would need to get rid of a lot of old people.
Ironically, it seems the old people voted to stay where they are and cut off the supply of young people, which is basically the exact opposite of what they needed to do in order to protect their own interests.
), I have a fundamental faith in human nature's capacity to rise up and meet challenges with technological/political/philosophical innovations. Sustainability is a concern to most people, entrepreneurs will attempt to meet that market, if given the opportunity.
