> A shrinking, aging population would fix this problem. The demand for labor will go up, the supply will go down. Bad for the investor class looking for profits, good for reducing economic inequality. People will be able to profit from labor again.
Except in terms of pure economics, labor won’t necessarily become more valuable, because with less population there will be less consumption and less demand for goods. So even though the dwindling supply of labor will have an upward effect on labor’s value, the dwindling demand for goods will have a counteracting downward effect. And this will only be exacerbated by increased automation.
Economic inequality and lack of economic opportunity is going to be a problem regardless of the population growth rate, and the solution will require something more substantial than simply have less/more children.
The point about it being an aging population is that the proportion of consumers to producers will change. The demand for goods might shrink as an absolute value, but the demand for labour should increase more, as a higher proportion of the population just can't work. In addition, part of the demand which increases will be for forms of labour that we currently don't have an automation plan for.
To balance out the automation question, it's just as likely that technical advances will improve the ability of older people to do economically useful work that they want to do. There's a lot of mental horsepower, life experience, and will there, if you can work around physical and metabolic limitations.
Except in terms of pure economics, labor won’t necessarily become more valuable, because with less population there will be less consumption and less demand for goods. So even though the dwindling supply of labor will have an upward effect on labor’s value, the dwindling demand for goods will have a counteracting downward effect. And this will only be exacerbated by increased automation.
Economic inequality and lack of economic opportunity is going to be a problem regardless of the population growth rate, and the solution will require something more substantial than simply have less/more children.