Quote (dro94 @ 16 Jul 2024 20:50)
Western countries, including Canada, need to import hundreds of thousands of third world immigrants every year to offset the demographic decline due to their ageing populations and lower birth rates.
You could then say, fair enough, it's necessary to have mass immigration to pay for public services and state pensions in the long run. But why aren't we trying to address the root cause of demographic decline?
Surely it would be a better long term strategy to subsidise childcare, give grants/loans to married couples that have more than 2 children, and build more affordable housing. But Western governments choose not to do this as it's much cheaper to have mass immigration and it doesn't require a long term strategy that costs a lot of money and will only have an impact after 20+ years.
Put in place the long term strategies to increase the domestic birthrate or the domestic population will be the minority within 2 generations and unable to control and shape policy as the main electoral force in the country. If that happens, you'd better hope the people you brought in have the same values as you ;)
It wouldn't actually be that difficult to cope with a declining population, it's just that it would mean declining revenue and power for the politicians and their donors.
Regarding the pro-natalist policies: those have mostly been a failure wherever they were tried out. People living in modern societies have easy access to contraception, education and endless exciting pastimes, plus a solid pension system. Perhaps the natural birth rate you can voluntarily get from people living under these conditions is simply below the replacement rate and no amount of incentives or support can change that? Perhaps the only thing that stood in the way of plummetting birth rates throughout human history were unreliable contraception and the lack of a better retirement option?
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jul 17 2024 07:04pm