Is it a problem if American's aren't making enough babies to replace themselves?

Please don’t put ideas in people’s heads.
There are enough people as it is.

What?

Well, if you have a birthrate low enough to not sustain your current population, then over time you will have more old than young people.
Old people that continue to consume resources and require to be taken care of.
So you either keep your diminishing pool of humans on task to create resources, neglecting the old refuse, or you divert an ever growing number of young people to perform maintenance on old people, with the rest producing less and less resources.
So you either have to import more stuff, or import more people.
That is a problem that Japan is having right now.

Or you start just killing off old people. That works, too.
Turn them into sausages, or something.

@Dutchess_III I was thinking out loud and typing in the same time.

But eventually the population would stabilize @ragingloli, wouldn’t it? And fewer people means less ravaging of natural resources.

So there’s an upside to teen pregnancies? I guess if we’re making babies who are addicted to drugs from the moment of birth or babies that can’t be taken care of because of the parents’ poverty, that’s not really a benefit.

I thought the problem was that we aren’t making enough white babies. That seems to be the complaint I hear most often from the anti-immigration crowd.

No its not a problem, its hopefully giving Mother Earth time to heal.

Furthermore human euthanasia could become available for some of us. When I start hurting ya’ll better have legalized everything!

Not having kids is such a big, personal decision, I’m just glad society is starting to see kids as one option.

In some countries, people starve to death by the thousands every day. If we can avoid that by having fewer babies, that is a good thing There is a limit to resources, and conservation is necessary to avoid the natural consequences.

I don’t see how Americans having few babies will affect people starving to death in other countries.

@Dutchess_III I meant we need to see
the lesson and avoid it.

There’s only one big problem with a a declining population, and we are actually experiencing it now. Capitalism is footed on growth. The only possible scenario where the illusion that WE Americans ALL get ahead lies in expanding markets, exploitable resources and cheap labor. Now we are living in a time when people are increasingly forced to recognize that they can’t afford children. In fact it is no understatement that today few things outside a critical illness or drug habit measure up to the struggle involved with child rearing. Single parenting is equivalent to a straight up vow of poverty, and 2 people with full time jobs scrape by paycheck to paycheck (if lucky). What we are seeing is a self enforcing loop. Profits are up at the top as those generating the profits receive steadily declining shares of the wealth.

I think we need fewer apostrophes.

—^^^ oops!

I’ll us’e u’p t’he r’est o’f th’e apos’tro’phe’s w’ith th’is p’ost!

So now Im all out when I need em.

Im sorry, its all my fault. ;-(

According to my findings, the world can only safely support a maximum of 500 million people.
There are almost 8 billion people here on the planet now. I wouldn’t worry about replacing anybody anywhere! (You shouldn’t either!)
The population will stabilize when there is only so much food and water and people. With every increase/decrease in the production of food, provide there is enough water as well, the population will increase/decrease to equalize the amount of food and water again.

It doesn’t seem to be working that way.

Depends on your perspective.

If you are inclined to think of ‘Murcans as Gods chosen, then yes but if you think of the population of the earth as a single set then no, there are plenty more people born in other parts of the world. Besides, it is only white people in America who are having fewer babies. But then again, that is what, or who, we think of when we say American.

What makes you think it’s only in America that people are having fewer babies, @rojo?

@Dutchess_III It isn’t working that way because the world hasn’t reached the saturation point yet. But it will!

It’s the distribution of resources that is the problem.
It’s hard to reach some of the places people are suffering the most. Many are very remote, or in active war zones. Lots of aid gets taken by people in power, and isn’t given to the needy. For reasons like religion, war, and power.

There are currently plenty of food, and resources. Think of the amount of food that gets thrown out after a Trump (pick your politician) fundraising event.
In this world, there are people who live off of elephant shit, and filthy water. Some people live in giant buildings, and eat like a king. A lot simply depends on where a person is born.

As mentioned above, older people require more resources. In addition, they are less capable. Can you imagine a workforce where %50 of workers are over 65 years old? The younger people are required for building infrastructure, defense, almost everything…

Thank you @MrGrimm888. That’s what I was trying to say, but couldn’t find the words.

Well. Think about disease too. If something wiped most of us out, we’d have to have enough people to gather the dead, and get things like water/sewage, hospitals, and power running.