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tehjoker 3 hours ago

American capitalists and economic planners fret about "Japan Syndrome". To have more productivity and more consumption i.e. GDP growth, you need more people as a core driver. We don't actually need this, we could do fine with a stable population, but capitalism needs to grow or perish.

Declining populations are trickier for most economic concepts though. Less labor, less consumption. That said, a slight decline can leave more houses unoccupied which can be good. A major decline would mean so many unoccupied houses that you would have broken and abandoned houses though because it would be too costly to deal with the abandoned units.

bpt3 2 hours ago | parent [-]

If you or anyone you care about is or will be elderly and is not financially independent, you should care.

This has nothing to do with capitalism; it's a resource allocation problem. We spend inordinate amounts of money on end of life care, and any changes are currently unacceptable to voters.

tehjoker 13 minutes ago | parent [-]

You're talking about age structure, but overall population age-structure can be adjusted by immigration flows, births, deaths, etc. My point was about the total population number.

You can imagine a steady-state population where the age structure is stable and productivity is high enough to sustain the retirees, trainees, and disabled.