The fact that if not for immigration the developed world (including China and, most seriously, Japan) would be declining is a difficult angle in the immigration debate.

Well the question is: would the decline eventually stop if we stopped "artificially" replacing people?

Not sure what you mean by "artificially replacing people" but when your birthrate is 1.93 or something the population would be shrinking over time.

Yes, but there's two questions there
Why are people having fewer kids?
Will they have more kids eventually? And if so when?
So 2.5 really

What we do now is, instead of asking that question, bring people over from other countries. Some of these countries have population problems of their own

problem is africa is fucking like crazy

and every chick there pops out like 4 children

That was the whole world not too long ago.

It used to be that kids were social security. We've now broken the link between having kids and security in old age. Women also work and many find fulfillment in careers equal to or greater than caring for children.

It's not realistic to expect constant growth forever though

I don't think anyone knows why there's so few births. the 19.3 was France, which, If I remember correctly, actually pays women to have kids at this point and pushes families very hard.

I think it's cultural and has to do with modernity. 10th amendment make sense.

If so, we should expect to see more births in Asia.

And with automation making economic productivity possible without people, is population deflation even a concern?

we're not really pair bonding anymore.

That's my other big point

The automation bit

That's a good question. Is births important.

young people aren't forming couples and marrying.

I think it is. There's limits on automation.

and without that stability it's not responsible for anyone to have kids.

If we eventually settle back to a couple billion peeps in the world, is that a bad thing?

Atkins is also right, the marriage rate for millenials is something like 30% by 35 last I saw.

Shouldn't we be concerned about the number of people we're bringing in when multiple job sectors will see shrinkage?

And yeah marriages have been fucked for decades now haven't they?

Rising divorce rates, declining engagement rates

when you get into your 30s, the dating market is almost entirely single moms.

those who aren't single moms either aren't dating or have some other arrangement.

I married at 19 and have been married for 29 years. Had two kid. Despite what you may think of my life choices, we're not part of this problem.

:p

i think you qualify as a special case, no offense.

I think you miss a lot of "special cases" because we're not the noisy ones

If the noisy ones would STFU you'd see there are a lot of normal people in the GLBT community

sure. but the GLBT community is very small.

True

But many of us are doing our part to preserve marriage and pop out babies

Just sayin'

that's great, but we need the other 95%+ to do the same

and they aren't

at all

No doubt