Demographic decline is only a bad thing from a fairly singular, industrialist, globalist perspective.
While it definitely means some reduction and prestige and power, and in some areas scale does provide advantage - in most ways, it's not decline in anything but the 'major shareholders of the economy'.
It's a 'Investor Problem' for the most part.
Japan never needed 180M people to maintain their standard living, so from the average person's perspective it looks different.
Otherwise, it's a little bit of an economic Ponzi scheme.
Of course, 'permanently fewer children' to the point where population goes to 0 - well that's a problem, but hopefully they will mitigate that and find a happy equilibrium.
While it definitely means some reduction and prestige and power, and in some areas scale does provide advantage - in most ways, it's not decline in anything but the 'major shareholders of the economy'.
It's a 'Investor Problem' for the most part.
Japan never needed 180M people to maintain their standard living, so from the average person's perspective it looks different.
Otherwise, it's a little bit of an economic Ponzi scheme.
Of course, 'permanently fewer children' to the point where population goes to 0 - well that's a problem, but hopefully they will mitigate that and find a happy equilibrium.