
Germany Fights Population Drop - danso
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/14/world/europe/germany-fights-population-drop.html?hp&_r=0&pagewanted=all
======
pessimizer
This is a dumb article, constantly repeated. Germany, like many countries
(though less so), is currently suffering from a demand crisis where there are
not enough well paying jobs for the current population.

The most important thing to consider is productivity growth, though, which
according to some random blog I just googled[1] was 2.5% from 1985-1990, 2.9%
from 1990-1995, 1.9% from 1995-2000, and 1.4% from 2001-2006. Assuming an
average of 2% productivity growth for the next 47 years, each the 2 2060
workers will be 1.02^47 (2.5) times as productive as today's employees,
allowing the three individuals (2 workers and a supported retiree) to live a
lifestyle twice as nice as the current population.

That calculation doesn't include the added benefits of a lower population,
such as more space and crime reduction.

(for completeness' sake, assuming a 1% productivity gain a year means that
these 3 individuals from 2060 would be living a lifestyle only 5% [edit: my
math was bad here, it's actually 33%] nicer than the current standard. Also,
both examples assume a reasonable distribution of wealth.)

[1] [http://www.ulrich-fritsche.net/blog/labour-productivity-
grow...](http://www.ulrich-fritsche.net/blog/labour-productivity-growth-in-
good-old-germany-is-germany-falling-further-behind)

~~~
brazzy
Assuming, of course, that productivity gains are shared equally across the
population. The problem: that's not what has been happening. Instead, median
wages have not quite kept up with inflation while the super rich and parasitic
industries like investment banks reap the gains.

~~~
Tichy
Exactly - so instead of giving people more money so that they can slack of and
have kids, make them work even more and take away their kids.

------
Tichy
"what you see is the higher the gender equality, the higher the birthrate"

Yeah, I am sure in Bangladesh and Nigeria they have great gender equality.

Have more children, we have the childcare also seems like a stupid
proposition. So you have the kids but no time to see them? 24h child care -
great signal. So I can work round the clock for nothing?

I have a different proposal: pay employers for every child that a women
employed with them has. So instead of being a liability, employers could earn
money by encouraging their employees to have kids.

~~~
brazzy
> Have more children, we have the childcare also seems like a stupid
> proposition. So you have the kids but no time to see them? 24h child care -
> great signal. So I can work round the clock for nothing?

Bullshit. "24h" child care simply means that you don't have to choose your job
to fit the opening hours of your child care provider.

> I have a different proposal: pay employers for every child that a women
> employed with them has. So instead of being a liability, employers could
> earn money by encouraging their employees to have kids.

And of course there's not chance that will be abused...

~~~
Tichy
How - faking child births? If society wants more kids, it should pay up.

The point about the childcare thing is: the solution is not providing parents
to get rid of their kids so that they can work. The proper solution would be
to enable parents to work less and still have time for their kids.

You think catering to parents with flexible work schedules will have a
significant impact on birth rates? How many people does that concern anyway?

~~~
toomuchtodo
The problem is, there are no good incentives to pay for you to have an 18+
year responsibility.

Pay to give birth? Wow, what a couple hundred bucks? Maybe a $1000? Pay
directly for services that children would use?

The problem is, there is no good way to subsidize being a good, responsible
parent. You have to want to be. And more people are simply opting not to have
children.

[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2148636,00....](http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2148636,00.html)

~~~
Tichy
"The problem is, there are no good incentives to pay for you to have an 18+
year responsibility."

If you think like that, don't have kids. I think people should have kids
because they like having them around.

If we go extinct because people don't like kids anymore, so be it. It would
just be a shame if we went extinct because people can't afford children
anymore.

But I didn't mean pay parents, I meant pay employers.

Also Germany already pays up to 20000€ for kids, if I remember correctly (they
pay a percentage of the mothers salary in her last job for 12 months).

------
parennoob
It's surprising how immigration is almost never mentioned as an alternative to
these "population-drop-fighting" measures. You'd think one of the things
they'd do was make it easier for immigrants with some level of skill to get
permanent residency.

~~~
rayiner
Immigration isn't a panacea. You have to be able to absorb and acculturate
those immigrants, and you have a finite capacity to do that.

This will yield down votes, but I'm an immigrant from the subcontinent and I
understand what I'm talking about when I say this: it is vital to preserve
western culture. Immigration done right can strengthen it and keep it vital,
but done wrong it can dilute and corrupt the culture.

Germany is better than India or China or the Middle East or the other
countries immigrants would come from. Full stop. Westerners don't appreciate
the extent to which a lot of the bad things we perceive to characterize those
countries is baked into their culture. Sexism, racism, corruption at the
basest level. That will follow immigrants into Germany and take root there
unless immigration is slow enough to acculturate the immigrants.

~~~
kamakazizuru
That has to be the most ridiculous statement - especially since you claim to
come from the subcontinent yourself. Every country has its share of problems
and cultural differences - but you're looking at it from a very pessimistic
and negative perspective. Germany and any other country can put in measures to
ensure the kind of people do immigrate are also ones that would fit into their
societies. They don't need to haul them over in boatfulls.

~~~
rayiner
For immigration to serve as a counterweight to declining birth rates, you do
need to haul people over in boatfulls. And its a modern classist conceit that
the virtues of western culture come from education and wealth rather than
socialization and upbringing. There are plenty of educated wealthy middle
easterners who cover their daughters faces in public and believe its morally
acceptable.

~~~
kamakazizuru
Actually - in a number of those countries its legally required for them to be
covered. The point is different - you can't use an extreme example of a hijab
to claim that western values are uniquely good - and those coming from eastern
countries only create a negative cultural impact. If you understood the point
of the article - the goal isn't to increase the birth rate. The goal is to
make sure the population doesn't fall to a level where it will not be able to
sustain the social structures that exist. This can be countered by controlled
highly skilled immigration and is working perfectly fine in Canada and New
Zealand among other places. For what its worth though - of all people you
should probably be glad not everyone thought that people from the east should
stay where they are - otherwise you with all your extreme views on this
would've still been stuck in your walled garden in India. Driving around in
your foreign car. What an unfortunate existence!

------
adventured
Whenever I see these concerns about population decline (occurring in many
parts of the world now), I can't help but think: why fight population decline?
Embrace it, focus on improving the quality of life per citizen. Leverage
robotics to bring drastically higher productivity to a smaller base of
workers. Massive populations will be a liability in the not-so-distant future,
as nearly all forms of repetitive manufacturing is performed by robotic
platforms. For most countries, the larger the population, the more social
upheaval there will be in the transition.

Within 20 years there will be wide-spread protests against robots in the US,
with calls to outlaw robotic manufacturing, union calls to limit robot use and
artificially increase robot cost to make it "fair" for human labor, and
lobbying efforts to restrict which tasks robots are allowed to take over.

~~~
drone
The problem is still there with any social support system for retirement: to
work effectively, you need enough people paying now to cover the people on the
rolls. If the population drops too much, the social safety net for retirees
becomes insolvent. You can, of course, do the opposite of adding new workers:
simply cause every new worker to pay more than the previous worker - but at
what point do workers decide it's simply not worth it to work, when so much of
their income is being spent paying for earlier retirees?

It's a balancing act for sure. Previously, most western countries enjoyed a
population growth, which meant more workers paying in than taking out, as this
trend is reversing in nearly all western countries, it will be interesting to
see how each country deals with it. In the U.S. the focus is on immigration
and putting additional limits on what one can take out of the system - I'm not
entirely sure that this is the right response, but I don't think simply
ratcheting costs up on tomorrow's workers is the right answer either.

As to robotics, well, that's a whole 'nother basket to deal with. I don't
think that expanding robotics automatically creates worker revolts - if done
well, it can create opportunities where they didn't exist before. Where once
the only low-skilled jobs available were heavy labor and highly fungible
services, we could create whole new classes of jobs relating to less fungible
services (e.g. hyper-localized services), and with the possibilities of
expansion off of the planet - there will be many opportunities for new work. I
do believe that robotics will reach the tipping point right around the time
that space exploration truly opens up. If it doesn't, my prediction that most
employment will be in the armies of nations - as we fight over dwindling
resources.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
The US focuses on immigration but also investment schemes like 401Ks, which
require a continuously growing economy to work. Thankfully, we have lots of
land to grow on.

As for robots, watch Japan: they have an aging population, an aversion to
immigration, and a love for robots.

------
lucaspiller
What's the deal with working in Germany as a non-German speaker nowadays? Is
it possible to get on alright in tech companies or are they still very much
German only?

~~~
timme
In Berlin: no problem. In the rest of Germany: probably problematic.

~~~
parasight
I know several companies in Hamburg where English is the corporate language.

------
hawkharris
Contrast this with the United States, where overpopulation is a growing
challenge and some organizations are suggesting policy changes to achieve a
smaller, more sustainable fertility rate. This nonprofit, called NPG, is a
pretty interesting and reasonable one; it advocates for the majority of
American women to have fewer than three children, and it calls for non-
coercive tax incentives that encourage Americans to have smaller families:
[http://www.npg.org/faq.html](http://www.npg.org/faq.html)

~~~
jonknee
There are plenty of examples of over population in the world, but the US is
not one of them. Our growth is slowing and there are huge amounts of available
land. The country could easily be several times its size in population.

~~~
hawkharris
Your statement about the United States' available land makes the assumption
that the American population is evenly distributed across urban and rural
areas. In reality, more than 80 percent of the country's population lives in
urban areas. The population in those areas grew by 12.1 percent between 2000
and 2010. Just because spacious rural areas exist doesn't mean that Americans
are willing or able to move to them.

[http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/2010_census...](http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/2010_census/cb12-50.html)

~~~
yardie
Then which is it? Is the US overpopulated or just the cities you particularly
like?

Here are a few places in the US that don't have an overpopulation problem:
Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Hartford.

~~~
hawkharris
Those are interesting examples worth discussing, but, as you know, a handful
of anecdotes doesn't invalidate national statistics reported by the U.S.
Census Bureau.

~~~
yardie
You said the US was getting overcrowded. Overwhelming evidence says this is
hardly the case. Statistics cannot tell you a city is overcrowded, that is a
judgement call. And as far as density no city in the US rates even in the top
20.

~~~
hawkharris
Check out some of the sources provided in one of my comments above, including
the one that shows growing homeless and food shortages in 21 major American
cities, and urban school systems that are 200% over capacity.

------
cenhyperion
What's the development job market like in Germany? How hard is it to immigrate
if you have skills and are willing to try to learn the language?

~~~
brazzy
Developers are in high demand in cities like Berlin, Munich and Frankfurt.

Immigration is probably a major feat of beaurocracy but not too hard in
principle if you have looked-for skills ( see
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Card_%28European_Union%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Card_%28European_Union%29)
).

------
niels_olson
And in other news, American women envy the work-life balance of their
counterparts in Europe:

[http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2010/11/going...](http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2010/11/going_dutch.single.html)

------
pmtarantino
I'd move to German. Where have I to sign?

~~~
bebna
There you go: [http://www.auswaertiges-
amt.de/EN/EinreiseUndAufenthalt/Uebe...](http://www.auswaertiges-
amt.de/EN/EinreiseUndAufenthalt/Uebersicht_node.html)

~~~
pmtarantino
I was looking for something simpler :P

------
fotoblur
"If Germany is to avoid a major labor shortage, experts say, it will have to
find ways to keep older workers in their jobs, after decades of pushing them
toward early retirement"

Doesn't it suck when a society is forced into valuing its elderly.

It actually seems responsible of a society to balance itself with its
environment. Population overgrowth is a major issue in the world and I applaud
the people of Europe who, and possibly unconsciously, are reaching a greater
balance with their environment in the hopes of securing an actual future in
it.

Can't help to think of...

Humans are a virus:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Na9-jV_OJI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Na9-jV_OJI)

Humans as Cancer:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0R6EvtGnoE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0R6EvtGnoE)

~~~
VMG
Must be depressing to think of yourself as a cancer cell. Who do you think is
the host?

~~~
fotoblur
The idea is that humans exhibit the characteristics of a cancer within its
environment. Its only a metaphor for how humans have treated their environment
and is not meant to be taken literally.

