I see some local news talking about some minor labor shortages with convenience stores and whatnot, but opening up BBC or CNN you'd think Japan is on the brink of absolute collapse due to being underpopulated with only 120 million people on a tiny, mountainous, barely arable archipelago.
This isn't the cause of two-income households because Japan is quite broadly one-income households...? This is almost entirely irrelevant to two-income household discussion. (I'm not decided personally how I feel about it, merely pointing out this specific comment is making 0 sense to me)
Having more people is better for us on net because it gives us more human capital and allows us to develop technologies that pay off at scale.
As the world population has grown, our society has gotten wealthier on a per-capita basis, and we still have more than enough food to go around.
It’s not true that overpopulation is happening or that increased population is a negative phenomenon.
They already have more pensioners than children being born. The same trend can be seen in virtually every single developed country. We are soon to going to not be able to afford to pay these pensioners if there are not enough people paying taxes. Hopefully you don't actually think pensions are somehow grown on trees.
Yes, we can print the money and the world won't end. There's not some automatic hyper-inflation that happens when money is minted. There's so much around already you see.
Think of cash as points in a game. If we keep playing games, racking up points, the points don't necessarily become worthless. They may change a little as confidence varies.
It's not about the imaginary points. Its about the goods and services. Goods depend, these days, mostly on automation which isn't going away. So little problem there.
That leaves services. Yes, they depend entirely on human capital. So we're going to have to automate, train assistance animals, or use technology to do away with the need. Especially among the elderly who traditionally require more services.
One can look at Germany's perspective on migrants as a direct consequence of that (more people working and contributing to the social fund means less of threat of the social structures hitting insolvency).
Though, there's no banners saying, "because of 'x', this is 'y'," one can still derive the subtext from the concerns that the nations are voicing.
So, all of this was just a long-winded way to say that it is a bit disingenous to say that people are complaining about falling birth-rates but it is still a valid concern for many countries - even if they don't come out and explicitly say it.
[0] - https://www.thelocal.se/20190216/hungary-family-plan-reeks-o...