> someone keeps posting population doomerism to HN. Why do you think this is relevant
While a lopsided population pyramid does cause issues, it's not the end of the world for a lot of countries.
A lot of the population doomerism I'm noticing started off as a Zeihan or Perun trope that was repeated ad nauseum on certain subreddits and percolated into HN because of readership overlap.
If you want to see a country that has been old before it truly became rich, just take a look at Thailand.
They are a large country with a very low TFR, a high median age, and a low median household income ($7k/yr) yet they have not collapsed.
Most of this is because of social welfare - most high revenue industries are very highly skilled and this require a small skilled or semi-skilled population.
Think industries like Automotive, Semiconductors, ONG Refining, Finance, etc - this is the Thai economy (tourism is actually a relatively small portion compared to those).
Deploying tax money generated from those industries into social welfare such as expanded healthcare, expanded social services, etc helps minimize a lot of the issues at hand.
Japan's population has also been shrinking, for decades now, and it's the same story, as has Italy's.
Countries like Japan, Italy, Korea, and Thailand do supplement their unskilled sector with migrant workers - they just don't get counted as immigrants (eg. Most "Work Trainees" and "Interns" in Japan and Korea are actually Indonesian and Vietnamese migrant workers who are doing low prestige jobs like gutting fish, working at a below minimum wage factory, cleaning toilets, working at nail salons, etc)
And workers will always chase a higher salary - the same Thai people who wouldn't clean toilets in Khon Kaen (and thus depend on Cambodians, Laotians, and Burmese to do it) would clean toilets in Korea or Italy, and then Koreans and Italians themselves try to emigrate abroad to the US or Canada because of better salaries and easier work culture, etc.
Realistically, Korea will leverage the Vietnamese population pipeline (it already has) and maybe NK down the line if relations start to warm up again.
While a lopsided population pyramid does cause issues, it's not the end of the world for a lot of countries.
A lot of the population doomerism I'm noticing started off as a Zeihan or Perun trope that was repeated ad nauseum on certain subreddits and percolated into HN because of readership overlap.
If you want to see a country that has been old before it truly became rich, just take a look at Thailand.
They are a large country with a very low TFR, a high median age, and a low median household income ($7k/yr) yet they have not collapsed.
Most of this is because of social welfare - most high revenue industries are very highly skilled and this require a small skilled or semi-skilled population.
Think industries like Automotive, Semiconductors, ONG Refining, Finance, etc - this is the Thai economy (tourism is actually a relatively small portion compared to those).
Deploying tax money generated from those industries into social welfare such as expanded healthcare, expanded social services, etc helps minimize a lot of the issues at hand.
Japan's population has also been shrinking, for decades now, and it's the same story, as has Italy's.
Countries like Japan, Italy, Korea, and Thailand do supplement their unskilled sector with migrant workers - they just don't get counted as immigrants (eg. Most "Work Trainees" and "Interns" in Japan and Korea are actually Indonesian and Vietnamese migrant workers who are doing low prestige jobs like gutting fish, working at a below minimum wage factory, cleaning toilets, working at nail salons, etc)
And workers will always chase a higher salary - the same Thai people who wouldn't clean toilets in Khon Kaen (and thus depend on Cambodians, Laotians, and Burmese to do it) would clean toilets in Korea or Italy, and then Koreans and Italians themselves try to emigrate abroad to the US or Canada because of better salaries and easier work culture, etc.
Realistically, Korea will leverage the Vietnamese population pipeline (it already has) and maybe NK down the line if relations start to warm up again.