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Wasserschweinchen's avatar

For me, the smell test for these explanations is "Does this make sense with HK/KR/SG being the top 3?", and none of them does as far as I can tell. My bet is on primarily (1) better birth control & (2) urbanization and secondarily (3) a cultural shift as a result of the change induced by (1) & (2), i.e. it became normal to choose not to procreate, and it even became abnormal to procreate at a young age.

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forumposter123@protonmail.com's avatar

The issue is that old people might enslave the young to provide for their pensions. The young will respond to that enslavement by reducing their own fertility to compensate, causing a death spiral.

Not that this gets harder, not easier, to fix as there are more old people (they make up more of the voting public).

Also, young people whose jobs are caring for old people will likely throw in their lot with olds out of self interest.

If the Amish or whoever ever got big enough they would be drawn into this. Many of these are welfare sponges and even the Amish use technology and interact with the economy more than you think.

I don’t see a way around this beyond a constitutional change to voting, but I would support any legislation that tried to protect parents from confiscatory taxes.

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