Inflation. War. Lack of jobs. No retirement. Global warming. How and why could anyone consider having children in a world like now!?
31-35, F
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ArishMell · 70-79, M
There are anecdotal accounts of couples choosing not to do so for those reasons, but how widespread this is, is probably unknowable.
No retirement though? In which countries? Some nations are increasing by a few years the normal retirement / State Pension ages, partly because people are living healthily for longer and partly for better balance between working and retired proportions of the population. This is necessary because state pensions in a system like that of the UK, are paid from taxes levied on those still in work. Some people want to continue working as long as they can, but by choice. No retirement at all though, is a different matter - I have not heard of any countries removing that need where it is currently met.
Inflation has always occurred: all that varies is the rate.
Less work available though, is a relatively newer problem, for various reasons. The main ones:
- Commercial competition moving a lot of production work to other countries;
- Machines (not only computers or so-called artificial-intelligence) replacing large swathes of work, or greatly reducing the number of staff necessary for the same or indeed greater volume of work.
- Large-scale moves to other fields of work such as the "service industries" (money-trading and IT, mostly) that can earn companies and nations' exchequers vast amounts of money but need relatively very few people to do so.
Climate change, to use the more formal term, is something warned of more than 100 years ago! The predictions then were based on the world-wide consumption of coal at the time as that was the prime fuel for almost everything; and their danger times forecast so far ahead that they were ignored. This was compounded by a touching faith in science and engineering being able to "tame Nature" and solve all the world's problems - not solve some but introduce new ones! Though to be fair much of the latter is at the behest of commerce and politics, not the science and engineering as such.
No retirement though? In which countries? Some nations are increasing by a few years the normal retirement / State Pension ages, partly because people are living healthily for longer and partly for better balance between working and retired proportions of the population. This is necessary because state pensions in a system like that of the UK, are paid from taxes levied on those still in work. Some people want to continue working as long as they can, but by choice. No retirement at all though, is a different matter - I have not heard of any countries removing that need where it is currently met.
Inflation has always occurred: all that varies is the rate.
Less work available though, is a relatively newer problem, for various reasons. The main ones:
- Commercial competition moving a lot of production work to other countries;
- Machines (not only computers or so-called artificial-intelligence) replacing large swathes of work, or greatly reducing the number of staff necessary for the same or indeed greater volume of work.
- Large-scale moves to other fields of work such as the "service industries" (money-trading and IT, mostly) that can earn companies and nations' exchequers vast amounts of money but need relatively very few people to do so.
Climate change, to use the more formal term, is something warned of more than 100 years ago! The predictions then were based on the world-wide consumption of coal at the time as that was the prime fuel for almost everything; and their danger times forecast so far ahead that they were ignored. This was compounded by a touching faith in science and engineering being able to "tame Nature" and solve all the world's problems - not solve some but introduce new ones! Though to be fair much of the latter is at the behest of commerce and politics, not the science and engineering as such.