I don't live in the US so mostly I'm thinking of who's gonna pay for my retirement and healthcare when I'm old.

I'm paying for the current old people's retirement and healthcare. That's fine, it's the social contract we have in our nation: everyone gets taken care of and those who can work, pay a lot of tax to make it happen. If the population decline gets bad enough, there will be no one to do the same for my generation.

Oh and they populist conservatives did a pension reform so you can take out whatever you've gathered in your second pillar even at age 20 if you want (at which point it'll probably be in the hundreds of euros lol) and can't resume payments (which were matched by the government - you pay 2, 4 or 6 percent and government pays 4% of your gross income) for 10 years. Worst deal ever for most people taking it out if they want to retire at one point. And a third of the population took it out. They now have to fully depend on the first pillar (government) pension, which isn't based on past investments at all, it's taken from the working population's social taxes when you retire. So far more directly affected by the population decline. I'm betting they'll eventually forcibly fuck it up for the rest of us to pay for the retirements of those who took it out.

All retirements will collapse not just public ones. It's called the asset meltdown hypothesis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqSwRHc-1MQ

Old people aren't investments

The oligarchs haven't figured that out quite yet. They want to starve us out of existence, but still want to pig out at the government troughs. Where is that money going to come from when all the jobs are being done by AI and robots?

Voting Republican.

I'm not going to fault someone who has the means to provide for a child for making that choice. It's a very personal one, just as not having a child is.

The sperm bank would

I don't see how this is a solution so much as delaying the problem for future generations to deal with. What happens when the countries the immigrants are coming from start to face the same issue (if it isn't happening for them already?) It's basically the population equivalent of the "one more lane bro" philosophy.

I don't know if I plan on being around that long

I agree with you that there are too many people on this world, and yes, we can do with way less.

Having said that

A little bit lower that the 2.1 birthrate is fine, A very low birth rate is very bad for everyone. Sudden changed on demographics will fuck your country up and can make it disappear in a hundred years without you realizing it until it's too late

Demographics is like a slow moving cargo train, you only hear some humming and then some blaring and then when it hits you it won't stop or even slow down for a second

Countries like South Korea are at risk for their very existence and really should act now to avoid the day that North Korea can just walk in because they won't have enough people left to even take care of themselves

China has a similar problem and it's bad. They have a huge amount of people becoming old and unable to add to the economy anymore and requiring more and more help from others... That means that more money will go out to the old, and there is less money for the young to get kids and add to the next generation. This is in part why there are so few kids these days, it's simply too expensive to have any.

Lowering your population slowly and carefully is fine. Having your population drop off a cliff like it's happening in many counties world wide is a disaster

The machine needs cogs!

Way ahead of you.

Not really, we're just being looted and exploited by the ownership class. We have plenty of productivity to take care of everyone: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

Why not make billionaires an illegal thing. Poof! You have money for retirement for everyone