I wonder how to nuance this message? From Shanghai, China: Have more children, but only have one child. Good luck with that.
A birth rate that has crashed to .88 children per woman and a population ageing fast have led officials in the Chinese coastal city of Shanghai to start knocking on doors to get couples to have more children. But they are still straight-jacketed by the national one-child policy, so only certain “eligible” couples can expect a visit along with counselling and financial advice.
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Brigitte wonders: How exactly does the first activity (city officials knocking on doors) encourage the, er, desired activity (couples doing, ah, what’s needed to have more children)?








The only way to maintain an ageing population is to breed more of the younger population to support them, which in turn means more of an ageing population seventy years down the line which means more children needed…
Social security is without doubt the greatest ponzi scheme ever created, and it isn’t even intentionally that way – but, like any ponzi scheme, it can work as long as the pool of investors keeps growing. With everyone an investor, that means so long as the population keeps growing.
Eventually it’s going to have to crash – there is only so much land on which to grow food after all, indefinate population growth is fundamentally unsustainable. When that happens… well, I’ve been saving for my retirement since I was twenty, because I’m not going to count on any sort of pension scheme continuing to function by the time I’m old enough to use it.