Yea, I was gonna say! The current administration has this weird fixation on "babies" and encouraging people "having babies" and incentivizing "baby production" with these new savings accounts that are essentially baby bonds, and weirdly trying to denigrate childless people. Why this sudden politicization of childbearing?

Well population decline is a very real threat and with the conservative scapegoating of immigration (the only thing keeping the US growing) they need to get labor somewhere.

Plus it fits right in with their anti-woman and anti-lgbt sentiments. Good god-fearing Christians should be having children after all. But of course child poverty and healthcare is not their concern. Labor should be hungry and desperate.

I remember when the "threat" was out-of-control overpopulation. Most developed countries have finally solved that, and now the "threat" is underpopulation? It sounds like we're just justifying everything as a threat. In any well-run society that isn't a ponzi scheme that relies on ever-increasing labor, population decline is what you want, given the extreme environmental footprint of every single person. The Earth has fixed and limited resources, so the fewer people competing for them, the better.

Population decline is an economic issue not an ecological one. How do we support a larger population of non-working elderly with an ever decreasing population of workers. I don't see how without a restructuring of our economy and society which doesn't seem to be on the table.

South Korea is essentially already doomed. In 25 years over half their population will be over 65. It's workforce will be half what it is now. It simply will not be able to care for the elderly. They will work until they die in poverty.

Ideally as society advances and productivity increases the necessary ratio of workers to non-workers should decrease as well but, the gains of productivity increases have historically not translated to wealth of the populace. And even if productivity does shift to benefit the worker it has to outpace population implosion which seems impossible considering the compounding nature of the decline.

> population decline is a very real threat

A threat to what? How can it be that AI is poised to eliminate large numbers of skilled jobs but we still don't have enough humans? Both can't be true simultaneously. One of them has to be a lie.

Even if you believe AI will eliminate a significant portion of skilled labor do you honestly believe that the increased productivity will be used to support our aging population?

If the productivity isn't well-distributed, it's all the more reason to have fewer mouths to feed.

Have you pictured what that will look like in practice?

It can't be worse than too many children, not enough work. We've had that for most of our history.

Have you pictured what a society with mostly unproductive humans (relative to AI) and no income redistribution looks like? Peaceful and tranquil aren't words I'd use to describe it.

A false dichotomy. I did not suggest rampant population growth. Not that I agree with your characterization anyway.

> I did not suggest rampant population growth

Neither did I. My argument is we need a long-term population decrease to maintain a stable society if all the wild AI predictions come true. We simply can't have 25% unemployment for multiple generations without something like UBI. And even with UBI there will be lots of idle hands and unrest.

In that sense we're lucky that the AI boom and a trend toward smaller family sizes is happening roughly at the same time.

A halving of the world population is like the world as it was in 1970. Not some Dark Age devoid of prosperity. Getting to that in 2 or 3 generations, in the absence of a climate change calamity, wouldn't be the worst thing.

I don’t personally see AI as replacing a significant portion of workers any time soon, nor our government implementing UBI if it does. But should both those things come to pass then sure, the devastating effects of population decline on our economy could be mitigated to some degree.

The population doesn’t just halve. Instead the population ages dramatically.

Look to history[1][2]. In short, it’s an old tactic for increasing nationalistic sentiment, growing targeted demographics, and putting pressure on women’s rights/bodily autonomy.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_for_Births

2. https://ahistoryfactaday.org/the-nazi-lebensborn-program-a-c...

>The current administration has this weird fixation on "babies"

This is not a Trump or American thing... This is a problem in EU too.. Lack of births is a very real issue and will only get worse.

I live in Sweden where you get 480 days off work already to split between 2 parents already and has for years. Births are in record decline.

Imo we are just too comfortable and don't need kids the same way we used to.

Traditionally higher population means a bigger workforce and army. Things a country can use to become "great." The US reaped a demographic dividend from the Baby Boom and is now feeling the pain of Baby Boomers retiring and transitioning to needing elder care. The Trump Administration is overlooking how US led free trade, security alliances, and R&D funding were also important factors in the US becoming the wealthiest and most powerful country.

They're equally as likely to reintroduce the medieval policy of prima nocta.

gotta have more wagies to do the drudgery