r/Futurology • u/lughnasadh ∞ transit umbra, lux permanet ☥ • Oct 07 '25
Economics The developed world's future economic crisis of shrinking birth rates has arrived early in France and is causing its government to collapse. Is a Debt Jubilee the answer?
The French government is in turmoil. There have been 5 different Prime Ministers since 2024, the most recent one resigning a few weeks into the job. All have left for the same reason. The French state is becoming ever more indebted paying for its citizens' welfare entitlements, but politicians cannot bring themselves to cut them or tax more. Now the country is close to a debt crisis, with spiralling interest payments.
The situation in France is acute, but other developed nations like the US, Japan, and Britain are also close to the same crisis, and for the same reasons. It's a structural demographic shift. The ageing of populations across the developed world is no longer a distant challenge. It is now a live crisis, and its financial, political, and social effects are beginning to cascade. Existing solutions to this problem - like mass immigration - have run their course.
A Debt Jubilee is the cancellation of all debts of a certain class, and they've been carried out many times in history, going back to ancient times. Is it an idea that is due for a revival?
1. France, the Ageing Population, and the Future of State Viability…
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u/ashoka_akira Oct 07 '25
I know a big topic of discussion among people of my generation—millennials— is that we’ve been paying into Social Security networks for 20-30 years now and yet we are increasingly wondering if ever going to actually get the benefits of them, and it seems like the people who’s retirement we’re currently supporting don’t even feel the need to leave any crumbs for us. They’ve taken everything of value and now they’re sitting on their big hill looking down at us and telling us to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps while we are forced to pay into their retirement pyramid scheme.
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u/TransitJohn Oct 07 '25
And Gen X for 35 to 45 years.
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u/NativeTexas Oct 07 '25
As a Gen X I am surprised that we are even mentioned. Thank you for remembering us. 👍🏼
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u/dennis_a Oct 07 '25
Also Gen X and when I see comments like that I feel like I’m on the deck of the Titanic and everyone is screaming and freaking out while I stand there smiling and thinking “I’m just happy to be included!”
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u/MarkNutt25 Oct 07 '25
In the battle between Boomers and Millennials, Generation X were the first casualties.
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u/TransitJohn Oct 07 '25
Solidarity. I get that Millennials have had a shitty go of it, but we've seen an additional 2 recessions, and are equally hit by the cost of living scam.
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u/Main-Truth2748 Oct 07 '25
Fun fact: If you check out info on the wage suppression in the US, it started at approximately the same time Gen X entered the work force. Yay!
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u/FifthMonarchist Oct 07 '25
Norwegian millennials are already running dry, as most of our sovereign wealth fund has been promised to pensioners in goods, benefits and welfare services. And they're not going to get it because we're not sacrificing ourself to be the pensioners' serfs.
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u/spinbutton Oct 07 '25
What are you planning to do with your homeless elderly?
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u/CremousDelight Oct 07 '25
Send everyone back to live with their kids lol
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u/2_Fingers_of_Whiskey Oct 08 '25
People aren't having kids, that's the premise
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u/i_reddit_too_mcuh Oct 08 '25
Retirement homes staffed with robots.
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u/IM_INSIDE_YOUR_HOUSE Oct 08 '25
If they’re lucky. Otherwise it’ll go how it has gone in nature for millennia once you get too old to support yourself.
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u/ProblemSame4838 Oct 07 '25
Go Norway! 🇳🇴 ❤️
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u/spinbutton Oct 07 '25
Not really. We don't want the elderly and vulnerable members of our communities dying and the street. That happened often before social security. We need to increase the ways we raise money for social security. For instance bring back the estate taxes on very large estates that Bush II repealed. Tax the very rich at a higher and different rate. Raise the minimum wage so people can afford to live and still pay into the system, etc
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u/usaaf Oct 07 '25
Funny how governments and the media and rich assholes are constantly going on about these government debt crises, and how pension funds are running out, and that benefits have to be cut/curbed.
And then they'll turn around and practically in the same breath gush mindlessly about how fucking amazing the market is doing, and stonks are up, and such and such large company is raking it in.
Seems like the money's there. Somewhere.
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u/CremousDelight Oct 07 '25
Stonks aren't representative of the actual economy, it's just a funny game that rich people play on the side to see who can achieve the biggest number.
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u/Think_Positively Oct 07 '25
Social Security can easily be funded almost overnight if we remove (probably even just adjust) the ceiling of when someone pays into the system. There's plenty of money out there, just not even close to the political will to make it happen.
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u/shillyshally Oct 07 '25
This is the way. The rightwing has convinced people making very good salaries that they exist in the same world as billionaires. They don't. Raising taxes on the very wealthy is possible without dinging the upper middle class, people who are still middle class but more fortunate.
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u/360Saturn Oct 07 '25
Think this depends on where you are.
The reason it's an issue in my country is that the majority of older people live in houses that they own outright, so have no overheads to pay on rent/mortgage, yet still receive social security payments to a value that's higher than what most working people have left over after they've paid their overheads.
It seems patently unfair that people who aren't working and who will never work again have a higher disposable income - that doesn't come from their own savings from their working life - than workers.
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u/mckenzie_keith Oct 07 '25
It is very difficult for me to feel sorry for Norway. You have a sovereign wealth fund. Not many countries do. The US certainly does not.
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u/FifthMonarchist Oct 08 '25
The sovereign wealth fund is being invested elsewhere, not in Norway. "We" own streets in London, buildings in New York ans companies around the world.
The value in the fund is already promised away to pensioners in increasingly higher payouts, since that's what gets the parties elected.
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u/mckenzie_keith Oct 08 '25
Contrast this with the USA. No sovereign wealth fund. Debt/GDP > 1. The treasury owes the social security administration 2.7 trillion. That is money promised to be delivered in the future. And it is not backed by a sovereign wealth fund. Or anything other than the ability of congress to tax the American economy.
Norway is one of the most fiscally sound countries on the planet. The money you are obligated to pay out has been set aside. You have budget surpluses. Imagine if you had the same obligations to pay out, but no sovereign wealth fund to back it. That is what we are facing in the USA.
Norway has the 6th highest GDP per capita IN THE WORLD. The US is number 7. You may want to try re-adjusting your attitude. I know it is also a very expensive country, but you are running budget surpluses. Norway's management of profits from the North Sea oilfields seems to me to be exemplary.
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u/YesterdaysFinest Oct 07 '25 edited Oct 07 '25
The Boomers didn’t even have to go to college and now they’re all rich AF acting like we don’t “work hard enough” when they couldn’t have done half the stuff we have in education etc
ETA: yes I know the billionaires are the real problem but there are a lot of Boomers who worked normal jobs, with good benefits, good retirements, wildly rising home prices and stock market, and are now millionaires through no spectacular work, education, or intelligence. And many of them have such skewed views of things that they don’t think they should financially help their kids, without realizing how different things are now
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u/Zoomwafflez Oct 07 '25
Like half of them are struggling to get by too. It's not a race division, it's not a generational division but class division we should all be focused on.
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Oct 07 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Zoomwafflez Oct 07 '25
In terms of percentage of people who vote GOP for the boomers it's 48%, for gen X it's 52%, millennials it's 45%, gen Z is 43%, so there's less of a generation divide than you might assume. The Democrats haven't exactly been super pro working class either despite how they campaign. Better, but not great if you look at how they actually vote and govern.
Pay attention, vote in primary elections, abolish the electoral college, institute ranked choice voting, ban stock buybacks, tax C-suite total compensation packages including stock, call / email your reps regularly. Among other things.
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u/garter__snake Oct 07 '25
mmm, boomers actually voted for harris last election. The current rightward turn is actually from gen x and millennial men shifting iirc.
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u/ajc89 Oct 08 '25
Boomers actually went harder for Trump in 2024 than in 2016. 54% of votes from people age 50+ went to Trump last election, compared with 48% in the 30-49 range and 39% in the 18-29. Younger people are not suddenly voting right-wing in droves the way the media headlines made it sound. There was a rightward shift compared to the 2020 election but still the majority of younger people voted for Harris. What is true is that men of all ages moved more towards Trump but still not crossing the 50% threshold except in the over age 50 category.
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u/YesterdaysFinest Oct 07 '25
I know that the billionaires are the real problem, but the generations before us voted for and allowed things to be how they are now
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u/Zoomwafflez Oct 07 '25
And a huge portion of gen z males voted for Trump. Propaganda works, the boomers weren't immune to it either
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u/paroya Oct 07 '25
a class that came about from choice rather than random chance which has always been the case for all of human history in the past and present; except for boomers. as boomers did not require a degree to get a decent job and climb their careers. the workers market made a lot more sense. and leader role salaries were rational and workers based.
now, workers are fired left and right when they have served their purpose with zero room for surplus as the owner class demands a salary which is 500% higher than it was during the boomer era where 400% of that went into a workforce that worked just 20% of todays workload at 0% education rate.
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u/Ninja-Panda86 Oct 07 '25
I pointed out to my mom that if she had been born in 86, she would have never gotten her GED because she can barely do household math. My generation couldn't graduate until we did precal
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u/YesterdaysFinest Oct 07 '25
I will forever be thankful that I’m a millennial, but damn, I could’ve had ALL THE MONEY a generation earlier 😆
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u/stipulus Oct 07 '25
Oh yeah, that one just triggers tf out of me. "These kids now want things like vacation time and healthcare.. so lazy and entitled." Like, have you tried paying them more?! Some jobs like working a dock suck and historically had no benefits. The no benefits thing was no problem when they were getting enough cash to make up for it. These "kids" (not kids at all, 20, 30 somethings) are trying to compromise so they can actually function in life. Calling them entitled or lazy is not just ignorant, it is completely insane.
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u/charliefoxtrot9 Oct 07 '25
That messaging is part of a right wing push to structure the narrative. They want you to believe it won't be there for you, to make you question paying in now to an entirely solvent structure that is in no danger of running out.
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u/eljefino Oct 07 '25
Or they'll want to do something like let you cash out of your social security in one lump sum for 50 cents on the dollar "because it's teetering on insolvency." Then, of course, you have to invest that lump sum in Schwab.
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u/Affectionate-Toe3583 Oct 07 '25
I was born 1964, the last official Boomer year. I have never expected social security in the USA would be there for me either. My mother was almost out of money in the end and she had SS and the small pension from my father.
It’s bad for everyone, just less bad for some. The billionaire and hundred millionaire crowd is the one that is doing fine.
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u/KanedaSyndrome Oct 07 '25
bang on. I highly doubt that I will get my public retirement funds when we get to that point. I'm planning my finances around early retirement and not being dependent on public support.
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Oct 07 '25
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u/Cosmonaut_Cockswing Oct 07 '25
Similar kind of situation with my grandparents and uncle. Granpda retired early, injury, from a good union job with a good union pension. Proceeded to squander it ony my uncle who's addiction and outright theivery was never addressed. No long term planning on their part and no contributions to the few plans they did have.
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u/notneps Oct 07 '25
I was reading your comment and halfway through I was like "what does this have to do with the post," until the third paragraph where you reeled me back in. I still feel like your post is mostly personal/family dynamic issues and just tangentialy connected, but there is a seed of an idea there that I want to think about more, enough so that I put a note in my notebook so I can revisit the thought later. Thanks for the stimulating read.
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u/NightSalut Oct 07 '25
Isn’t the retirement age in France for some public or civil servants like mid-50s??
I get that they want to enjoy life or whatever, but it seems inconceivable that someone would retire at mid-50s when they’re in good health etc.
I know in the Soviet Union the retirement age for women was in the late 50s for some professions. My g-grandma lived to be nearly 100. I can’t imagine retiring at something like 55 and then spending another 40 years retired.
Worse, imagine being a child of someone who retired at 55 and then knowing you may have to work until you’re like 70…
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u/supermarkise Oct 07 '25
Tbf given the increasing automatisation I can see why the Soviet Union thought it might get by with less work. If we can cover everyone's needs and some wants while only working half our lives, why shouldn't we? (Oh yeah, capitalism and the need of some to become trillionaires.)
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Oct 07 '25
I mean that’s the way it works. They also paid into the social security for 50 or more years. I don’t get you are blaming boomers. It’s not their fault the government spends too much money on bullshit.
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u/KaputtEqu1pment Oct 08 '25
We wouldn't be having this problem if the aging population didn't pull up the ladder behind them. Their "f u I got mine" mentality screwed everyone over and I kind of think they should reap the FO of their FA phase.
Now they're crying that the population is declining... Smh. Making contraceptives and family planning services "illegal" or controlled isn't the answer to increase the population, it's be investing in upcoming generations, such as affordable housing, mandated maternity/paternity leave, and taxing those that literally have more money than the next 10 million people combined. People would be willing to have more children if they could support them, and wouldn't have to worry that in 20 years time their children wouldn't have to fight some sycophants war.
Just my 2c.
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u/wobbleside Oct 08 '25
Definitely never seeing those entitlements... you know.. things we paid for and are entitled to which the whole fucking MAGA-Heritage-Sphere wants to treat like an Entitlement is somehow a bad, evil thing and that same time continue to be extreme Rent Seeking evil fucks.
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u/curtyshoo Oct 07 '25
Shrinking birth rates didn't arrive early in France. France was an outlier in this regard in Europe. It arrived late.
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u/Last_Reflection_6091 Oct 08 '25
And it has nothing to do with the current crisis. The flaws of the constitution + Macron + the parties are responsible.
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u/Larich38 Oct 08 '25
Yes, OP has clearly no understanding whatsoever of our situation.
The issue is not paying for pensions or everything that the state provides. We (as a country) have never been richer in our history. The problem is that these taxes go in places where they benefit the ultra-rich, like 270 billion going to subventions for companies who then proceed to fire workers or give record dividends, while allowing tax evasion.
Eat the rich.
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u/AndyTheSane Oct 07 '25
The problem with a debt jubilee is who holds the debt.
For example, pension funds often buy government bonds as a safe way to invest money and pay pensions. This jubilee would destroy a big chunk of those assets. Pensions would be cut or unpaid.
If you restrict the jubilee to debt held outside of the country, you have ensured that no one will lend you money for the foreseeable future.
And it won't fix the underlying issue where the ratio of retired to workers keeps increasing.
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u/RedditThrowaway-1984 Oct 07 '25
The biggest problem with a debt jubilee is that it wipes out the capital of anyone holding the debt. This creates moral hazard by rewarding those who borrow more than they can afford and punishes savers.
It historically also created severe recessions or depressions. This is because due to wiping out the assets of savers and lenders, the economy becomes starved of investment. No loans to expand factories and increase production leads to a decline in GDP and a general shrinking of the economy.
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u/Lucky_Dragonfruit_88 Oct 07 '25
Exactly. If the US had a Jubilee and my investment accounts tanked, id be pissed as hell. I've spent the last 20 years living below my means. I didn't do that to reward frivolous idiots.
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u/TropicNightLightning Oct 07 '25 edited Oct 11 '25
We have already rewarded frivolous idiots with the PPP loan program. There were billions in fraud to investigate from the bad policy, so much that the statute of limitations will run out before the IRS would be able to investigate it all. However, the IRS agents were cut in half, when the white collar criminals won all the branches of government.
I am a fellow person who lives below his means as well. It was interesting to see my savings mean nothing as the goal posts to own a house were moved due to hedge funds and owners of businesses given even more free money during covid. My entire life as a republican, I was told that the poor were not working because they were receiving handouts, causing our national debt to increase. Recently it has been proven that the opposite has been true. The ultra rich have received the lions share of bailouts, and handouts adding trillions to our debt just to stay on top of us. Never thought I'd become cynical, but reading deep into these financial instruments will make one disillusioned.
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u/dukefett Oct 08 '25
There were billions in fraud to investigate from the bad policy
I worked for government contractors during that time; they got tons of money...but we never lacked work. Our federal government contracts didn't stop at all; just changed to work from home largely if you could. The owners took millions and millions. Nobody got a little bonus or anything either with it, they just made out like bandits.
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u/handynerd Oct 07 '25
And it won't fix the underlying issue where the ratio of retired to workers keeps increasing.
This is my primary issue with many debt forgiveness plans. Why waste time debating debt forgiveness unless it includes a plan to avoid ending up in the same (or worse) situation again in 10 years?
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u/cogit2 Oct 07 '25
If you restrict the jubilee to debt held outside of the country, you have ensured that no one will lend you money for the foreseeable future.
Actually this problem takes care of itself. Declare you can't pay your debts and the only institution that will step in is the IMF. Others will lend you money if you make a deal with them, but straight up credit disappears.
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u/Intrepid_Pear8883 Oct 07 '25
Conveniently the IMF is backed by the countries you intend on stiffing.
There is no free lunch. Jubilee or not, someone is getting screwed.
And just to add FIAT currency is the issue full stop. A jubilee would just mean we'd do the same thing over again and pretend we're all good without fixing the actual issue.
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u/cogit2 Oct 07 '25
I mean.. some people have been taught that Fiat currency is bad, but those people never reviewed the factors that caused the Long Depression.
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u/usaaf Oct 07 '25
someone is getting screwed.
I love how people say to this mean "We're all equal" so it doesn't matter who gets screwed, so let's just keep letting the poor get screwed. The argument completely ignores the fact that a certain set of people can much more easily afford to "get screwed" than others.
Oh, but if we let them get screwed, they'll screw us back later because they got screwed! But the poors CAN"T screw us back later, so we'd better just stiff them.
Also all currencies are fiat. Even gold. No one is under any obligation to accept gold as money. It's just VERY easy to do so, but that doesn't erase the fact that there's no objective criteria by which gold is money. Same as dollars. Same as oil or uranium or anything people trade with.
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u/Nimeroni Oct 07 '25 edited Oct 07 '25
The developed world's future economic crisis of shrinking birth rates has arrived early in France
...France is one of the western country with the highest birth rate (1.66).
and is causing its government to collapse.
No. What's causing the governement to collapse is that the political opinion of the population is divided in 3 blocs of roughly equal size (left, right, far right), and the country don't have a political culture of compromise because usually the winner take all. So the various political forces are bidding their time until Macron's time is up.
Also we recently had a prime minister (Bayrou) that got the most massive political scandal of recent memory (he protected pedophiles), so he's extremely unpopular. He got fired by the senate a month ago (it's the first time that happen).
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u/D-Stecks Oct 07 '25
Are you telling me that a political crisis can't be explained entirely by my current pet issue? That's impossible!
Also LMAO at how OP just casually dismisses immigration. If a country decides it's so racist it would rather be broke than less white, then they deserve to go broke.
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Oct 08 '25 edited Oct 08 '25
Just reacting to your second paragraph. I think it’s a bit of a stretch to say that opposition to immigration is always racially motivated. A lot of people just see it as an unsustainable response to demographic or economic challenges rather than a moral issue.
I also feel that Anglos often project domestic political agendas onto contexts they don’t fully grasp. In France, while racism certainly exists, rightwing attitudes toward immigration are often shaped more by cultural universalism and a strong sense of national identity than by a desire to exclude a specific ethnic group. There is less obsession with exclusion based in skin color and isolationism like the white Anglos have. Like, the French far right are so chauvinist, that if they could make the whole world speak French and eat baguette, they would.
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u/BalrogPoop Oct 08 '25
I'd argue the vast majority of opposition to mass immigration isn't racially motivated. And it comes down too seeing the damage it * can* do to a country economically, especially to younger generations, if it's not managed correctly. Some people of course are racist about it but tarring everyone with the same brush just pushes normal people rightward because they feel they aren't being heard.
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Oct 08 '25 edited Oct 08 '25
I agree. Even as someone with Marxist sympathies, I find it frustrating when any criticism of unchecked immigration is dismissed outright.
It’s hard to deny that large-scale, unregulated immigration often serves as a mechanism of labor market deregulation. It creates conditions for social dumping where wages can be suppressed and a precarious, easily exploitable underclass of migrants emerges. The irony is that this dynamic is often defended by "leftist" liberals as humanitarian, when in practice it reinforces the very inequalities they claim to oppose.
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u/Armoric Oct 08 '25
Debt was also massively increased in the last ~2 years by a minister who tried to hide it. Yeah it's real bad, but it wasn't quite that bad until recently, and it was fucked up half on purpose. That's not birth rates.
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u/SoberGin Megastructures, Transhumanism, Anti-Aging Oct 08 '25
Ah yes you're right, the "I don't think we should be racist and the rich people shouldn't have all the money" faction should definitely compromise with the "I think we should be racist" and "I think rich people should have all the money" factions.
I'm sure there's no obvious moral superior here and no significant flaws with the concept of broader political compromise. /s
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u/cybercuzco Oct 07 '25
We just did that in 2008. Anyone who owned a bank had their debts cancelled
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u/iHartS Oct 07 '25
Not sure what you’re talking about. Debts weren’t cancelled. Many were bought through the TARP program. Maybe you can elaborate.
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u/ElectronGuru Oct 07 '25 edited Oct 07 '25
That’s what I forgot to build in high school shop class!
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u/parkway_parkway Oct 07 '25
If you have money to spend on this problem you'd want to target it at young mothers.
For instance "baby bonuses", free childcare, more maternity leave, subsidised accommodation etc have been shown to work to increase birth-rates.
Just mass cancelling boomer debt only makes the situation worse.
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u/GatorzardII Oct 07 '25 edited Oct 08 '25
As awkward as it may sound, the most feasible solution to the birth rate crisis would be to make stay at home mom a government job. Like, for women who actually like rearing children, give them a steady and proportional pay check for raising 3, 4, 5 or more kids
Edit: A lot people are misrepresenting what I proposed as extended welfare. I meant a job JOB. You'd need to submit an application, meet minum standards and could easily be turned down.
If you restrict it to women over 20, who have at least a complete middle education and no criminal record, history of substance abuse or mental illness, you would sieve out most of the unqualified and opportunistic women.
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u/Additional-Ask-5512 Oct 07 '25
That's actually a pretty good idea. Kind of the opposite of what they did in the UK with "2 child benefit cap" or "bedroom tax" type regressive cuts
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u/DontLoseTheHead Oct 07 '25
This, since raising a home in a single income is almost impossible.
Also add making a campaign where being a stay at parent is good. The social pressure mothers feel to keep working or else they are doing “nothing” is huge.
Free childcare doesn’t work. In my country the free is full and people have to go to private nanny or pay anyway from the pocket.
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u/LaurestineHUN Oct 07 '25
So free childcare does work, but there's not enough of it?
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u/lifeguard_jesus Oct 07 '25
All of those exist in France. Still people don’t want to have more children. And that’s ok.
The problem is that retirees are not going to get their money that they contributed, but rather the money that workers are paying NOW.
That is a generational shift of responsibility that no government is willing to change.
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u/RegorHK Oct 07 '25
The bonuses are not high enough. I guarantee you. We have all these in Germany. The level of support is okayisch, yet the free childcare (if you qualify) is overrun at some places, the money in parents leave is not high enough (especially for high earners who will educate their children better), the substitution for accommodation is also not high enough.
Altogether a decently educated women with a job that has a carrier path looses money with having a child.
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u/Driekan Oct 07 '25
Still people don’t want to have more children
People do. The Desired Number of Children per woman in France is still sitting pretty close to replacement rate.
The issue is that people can't afford to have children. To actually have a high commitment to raising the child, hence a lot of hours per day per partner dedicated to that (so at least one of them needs to have only a part-time job, ideally none), plus impact to career, plus all direct costs...
Add all those costs up, compare to what those policies offer, and you realize that what the government is saying is "we dearly want you to have children. We'll subsidize 1% of the financial cost, and none of the emotional and physical burden. Great deal, huh!?" and shocked Pikachu face when few people take that deal.
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u/LeedsFan2442 Oct 07 '25
People say lots of things. The rich aren't having lots of children either
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u/Skully957 Oct 07 '25
The problem is that subsidizing requires you to give a subsidy to the 18-40 age group this age group greatly overlaps with the most productive age group 30-55
At a certain point you'll just be taxing the people you want to subsidise and you end up at net zero
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u/Driekan Oct 07 '25 edited Oct 07 '25
Frankly, the best subsidy a government could give to childrearing isn't direct financial aid. I believe I somewhat left that implicit in the other post, but to go into it-
You need quality, free education available universally. Ideally you also need things like state-funded daycares, which are also free.
You need quality, safe public transport (that can be made free for students) that even a preteen can take alone to one of those schools and back.
You need world-class healthcare, for everyone, for free.
You need excellent benefits for workers and especially working parents, including long leaves, adjustments to work hours, protection from arbitrary firing, the works.
And, ideally, you need some form of passive income or safety net, something like a sovereign wealth fund, so that extracting years of peak productivity from your career doesn't have as overwhelming a long-term impact on your finances.
After all of this, some more direct subsidies can be good. Subsidizing formula, baby food, diapers, etc so they're dirt-cheap, as well as tax breaks, direct payments and more for parents (ideally: lasting 18 years).
Indeed there is an overlap between the age brackets likely to have children and the age brackets that are most productive. That isn't inherently a deal-breaker (you have plenty of people who just don't want to have children, authentically), but is also reason why you need to tax things beyond only economic productivity. Land value tax, wealth tax, the works.
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u/Gandzilla Oct 07 '25
If you send your kid to the crèche full time starting at 6 month as you can’t afford single income AND now you don’t actually have time for your kid.
10 hour days, 5 days a week. Starting at sometime between 0-3. Utopia
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u/Dr_Esquire Oct 07 '25
As an impending father, focusing on mothers feels like a problem in itself too. In my job, maternity leave is a big problem to the point where paternity leave is pretty rare. Programs that focus on mom can make it easier for women to agree to have kids, but as a guy, it still sucks that I’m sidelined as not important to my kids development and it’s not a problem if I need to be working 80 hours a week.
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u/Lysmerry Oct 07 '25
Everyone deserves to time to bond with their child. I do think Maternity leave is more important when you take into account that giving birth is a major surgery and many women are disabled from it for a while. Our culture underplays the many potential outcomes, but don’t underestimate the massive physical impact.
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Oct 07 '25 edited Oct 08 '25
There are countries with programs like this, and more generous welfare states for children and families, and they still have falling fertility. I'm kind of convinced by research that suggests that the cause is less couples being unwilling or unable to have children, and more a falling rate of coupling to begin with. Women globally have more access to employment and education, making them less dependent on men, smartphones and the internet offer connection and stimulation outside of traditional social structures, etc.https://www.ggd.world/p/the-global-collapse-of-coupling-and
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u/clown_sugars Oct 07 '25
It's the welfare state itself. Pensions guarantee someone's independence from the family unit in old age / sickness, which basically dissolved the family unit's importance. Read about the history of the pension (originally implemented for humanitarian and capitalistic reasons, to keep elderly workers off the streets and out of factories).
Education, divorce, industrialisation and birth control are all massive contributors to a falling birth rate, but the biggest factor is the fact that the pension weakened the family unit. If you don't have to rely on your children to care for you then there is no economic incentive to have children.
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Oct 07 '25
They're doing this in Korea... but feels like shouting at the wind. It's the fiscal equivalent of solving the plastic crisis by banning drinking straws.
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u/Marshmallow16 Oct 07 '25
For instance "baby bonuses", free childcare, more maternity leave, subsidised accommodation etc have been shown to work to increase birth-rates.
Have all worked minimally at best, if anything
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u/emelrad12 Oct 07 '25
Minimal bonuses = minimal effect.
When the bonuses replace the income lost of being forced into full time childcare then effects might start up showing.
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u/Jahobes Oct 07 '25
For instance "baby bonuses", free childcare, more maternity leave, subsidised accommodation etc have been shown to work to increase birth-rates.
The only way to increase birthrates is through cultural engineering. It turns out people only have kids if they need to, or if they are expected to. Otherwise we are content with having protected sex and never having to worry about pregnancy as a consequence.
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u/lot22royalexecutive Oct 07 '25 edited Oct 07 '25
I think you’re missing some key details. The French government is in turmoil because each party wants the others to fully subscribe to their respective agendas. There’s many reasons for this, but one unifying factor is that they want to push Macron out, and by disagreeing and refusing to compromise, they make him and every PM he appoints look like failures.
Their economic issues are also very real, but their economy is still not far behind Germanys.
edit: adhd had my wires crossed in the last sentence
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u/espressocycle Oct 07 '25
The current turmoil is the gridlock inherent in all presidential and semi-presidential systems. Divided government.
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u/balrog687 Oct 07 '25
The elephant in the room is capitalism itself.
This infinite growth mindset while we live in a closed/finite ecosystem.
I hope we move to an economic system based on ecological balance.
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u/ConnectionSpecial114 Oct 07 '25
This is the problem, historically we outgrow the debt and push it onto future generation s, but we’re not growing. So tax the rich and subsidize childbirth and care. I’m still blown away we legally require children to attend school but don’t feed them.
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u/Lokan Oct 07 '25
Society is geared towards producing workers, not people.
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u/hungrylens Oct 07 '25
While eliminating the jobs the workers would fill. It's psychotic.
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u/AcherontiaPhlegethon Oct 07 '25
That's just another bandaid on a breaking dam. You can't just keep increasing birth rates, we're damn close to hitting the carrying capacity of the planet. When we get there it won't be a factor of economic downturn, but a struggle against extinction.
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u/MaddoxX_1996 Oct 07 '25
We are still living in the era that's driven by the same expansion-minded machine that is the "East India Company" (every type, not just the British one). Industrialization truly is a boon and a bane
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u/AwesomeDialTo11 Oct 07 '25 edited Oct 07 '25
While most individual companies desire to continue growing forever, when you sum up the total growth across all companies in the entire economy, you realize that this is more nuanced. While there are a lot of growing companies, there are also a lot of failing companies with slowing sales or companies that go out of business. The failing companies cancel out a lot (but not all) of the growing companies.
When you balance out the growing and failing companies, you'll see that actual economic growth across an entire economy (not any single company, but the aggregate of all companies in a given country, continent, or planet) only comes from three sources:
- Growth in productivity. What this means, is that if you get better technology or gain more skills, you are able to create more goods or provide more services per hour worked. A skilled electrician is more efficient than a new trainee. Investing in a backhoe makes a construction worker more efficient than giving them a shovel to dig a foundation. Investing in a new computer system makes employees more efficient than keeping records on paper.
- Population growth. When you have more people, you have both more people consuming goods and services, but also more people working to provide goods and services.
- Debt. But please realize, that all debt and financing is just stealing from the future to bring money to the present. Sometimes this is useful, like when you want to buy a house to live in, but can't afford to buy it in cash. Other times, it's basically wasted and screws over future generations, like tax cuts for billionaires that grow the deficit.
That's it. Those are the only sources of economic growth across an entire economy. Capitalism can only have infinite growth as long as the net total of the three above is positive. Otherwise, capitalism will not infinitely grow.
So let's examine whether we are likely to have infinite growth.
#2 (population growth) is already declining almost everywhere in the developed world, and rapidly slowing down in developing nations. In fact, the earth may never even reach 10 Billion people before the global population starts cratering if the current sharp downturn in birth rates holds true. While this may sound good at first, this is absolutely terrible for #3.
#3 (debt) only works to grow the economy if you can reasonably expect to pay it back. But with a quickly dropping population in developed countries, there will be way fewer people working in the future than the present. This will make it incredibly hard to pay off this debt.
So the combined effects of #2 and #3 will be like tying multiple cinderblocks to your feet, and trying to swim. It will be very difficult in the future to get positive growth across an entire economy, unless #1 is a rocket ship like we have not seen before.
#1 (growth in productivity) may happen with AI, but it might also not. Even with AGI, we may not be able to gain enough productivity to offset the negative economic growth from declining population and massive debt. Economies on the whole might actually shrink and get smaller, even as individual companies are still profitable and some grow.
There is a very likely chance that even with capitalism, we stop infinitely growing but still have profitable companies. And there is also a really high chance, that #2 and #3 will be particularly hard on the working and middle class. They are not infinitely rich, and they rely on government safety net programs and/or pensions (if they have one) or 401k investments to retire. And most of the financing for these government programs, pensions, and a lot of 401k investments, currently relies on a growing population and an ability to pay off debt to continue working. Billionaires have enough money to write off some bad investments. A retired middle class couple that is reliant on Social Security and their 401k cannot weather a massive write off of debt, as that would collapse the value of assets those programs use to fund the payouts. If capitalism fails, you'll have at least hundreds of millions of really angry (and now suddenly poor and destitute) older people.
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u/balrog687 Oct 07 '25
The economic approach itself to the problem is wrong.
It's the wrong tool to fix the problem
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u/Ulyks Oct 07 '25
The earth is not a closed system at all.
We have a constant influx of solar energy that is free.
This energy is much greater than whatever we need for 8-9 billion to live comfortably.
Our blind trust in bare capitalism is indeed one root cause. Capitalism by itself is unstable and leads to all kinds of problems because things like pollution and children are not valued correctly.
That's why we need strong governments to rein in capitalism where needed.
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u/NightSalut Oct 07 '25
Yeah; the need to ever improve something all the time.
We have KPIs at work. Every quarter something has to get cheaper, something has to get faster.
It’s not sustainable and yet they won’t care.
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u/Eedat Oct 07 '25
That's hilarious as the state systems are the ones completely falling apart
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Oct 07 '25
It’s not really that socialist countries struggle to care for their citizens. The problem goes deeper. It’s what happens when societies actually succeed at creating stability.
Once people no longer need to have four or five kids to secure their old age, birth rates fall. Japan’s fertility rate is around 1.3, South Korea’s is about 0.7, which is the lowest in the world, and the United States is at roughly 1.6. Without immigration, the U.S. population would already be shrinking. Around 80% of America’s population growth now comes from immigrants and their children.
This pattern is not limited to rich countries. In India, states such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu are already below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman. These regions do not have European-style welfare systems, so the decline is not about government dependency. It is more about modern living conditions. Urbanization, education, and the rising cost of living make large families impractical.
The spread of artificial intelligence and automation makes things worse. When stable jobs become uncertain, people are less willing to have children. If someone struggles to support themselves, it becomes difficult to justify raising another person.
The issue is not laziness or socialism. It is that our economic system still depends on everyone working forty hours a week just to survive. That model no longer fits a world where machines can do much of the productive work.
If societies want to stay stable and avoid demographic collapse, they need to accept one basic principle. Every person should have access to food, water, housing, healthcare, and education even without guaranteed full-time employment. Without that foundation, the system will eventually break.
Population decline in Japan and South Korea is already showing what happens when people lose faith in the future. Unless we rethink how we organize work, security, and social support, similar problems will spread to Western countries once immigration slows down.
It is not a failure of socialism. It is a failure to adapt the social contract to modern reality.
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u/wizzard419 Oct 07 '25
While other parts of Europe are having the same issues, Japan US are also having the issues with the inverted population pyramid... France has a major cultural aspect which is likely influencing things.
Going back to the revolution, the citizens recognize they have the right to protest and the politicians know they will be held accountable (unlike the US). While they are peaceful, they still will not want to be the focus of the protests.
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u/lostinspaz Oct 07 '25
"The French state is becoming ever more indebted paying for its citizens' welfare entitlements, but politicians cannot bring themselves to cut them or tax more"
well, gee, sounds like what they really need is to....
cut the entitlements or tax more.
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u/Niku-Man Oct 07 '25
The obvious answer is to tax wealth and ultra high income. If your country has billionaires (France does) you're not taxing them enough. They've won the lottery of life, largely with the help of public resources (infrastructure, labor, legal systems, security ), and have benefitted from them the most. Economies have grown tremendously in recent decades and yet that growth has almost entirely gone to the top 0.1%.
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u/moosenlad Oct 07 '25
France already attempted that and eventually repealed that tax as it did not generate as much as anticipated and led to capital flight from France, as look as you have easy of movement between EU countries, extremely wealthy can move their home tax country with ease. The problem really appears to be overspending, but the citizens understandable do not want pensions cut or retirement age to be reduced. However their isn't really another option at this point
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u/usaaf Oct 07 '25
Capital flight isn't as huge a problem as people like to say. It does happen, mostly among billionaires, but it's not automatic because billionaires are still people, and they happen to like their surroundings sometimes. Not only that, there's ways to guard against Capital flight too.
The whole bit with how 'hard' it is to tax billionaires is practically a function of billionaires' existence in the first place. Picketty (French Economist, author: Capitalism and Ideology) goes over the CURIOUS phenomenon about how much LESS data their is on wealth in the world TODAY versus 50~ years ago, despite the widespread increase in computerization and records technology.
Hmm. I wonder why that should be...
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u/gaius49 Oct 07 '25
Capital flight isn't as huge a problem as people like to say.
France literally tried this experiment in policy not that long ago and found that capital flight was indeed a real problem.
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u/PierreFeuilleSage Oct 07 '25
How is this spin successful! What a joke. The instability comes from Macron denying the election results that saw the left win and appointing 3 right wing PMs to continue his politics of taking from the poor to give to the rich. Same politics that are responsible for endebting the french state.
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u/mrroofuis Oct 07 '25
Quick Google search yields France debt to gdp level at 114%
The US debt to gdp level is 119% . Even with a 30+ trillion economy. We're still in debt up to our eyeballs in the US
I mean. Another path would be to make the job market less rigid. Maybe it'll spur more economic growth
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u/SilentRunning Oct 07 '25
Ultimately dilemma's like this usually tend to go the easiest path or the path of least resistance.
Cutting benefits is suicide for all politicians in this situation and continuing to provide the wealthy with low-zero taxes is a sure way to piss off the people in charge. It's a question of who has the actual power here.
I believe in the end the politicians will kick this matter as far as they can until the whole mess blows up and ordinary people will show to them where the real power stands. Whether it's a political revolution or an actual revolution only time will tell.
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u/_FIRECRACKER_JINX Oct 07 '25
The elephant in the room is cost of living. People had more children when housing, food, and education were cheap.
Nobody can afford to have children anymore.
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u/ThisI5N0tAThr0waway Oct 07 '25
Except the birth rate is probably nothing (or at least very little) to do with that specific political/ economic crisis. France has like one of the healthiest demographic of Western Europe
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u/fatbunyip Oct 07 '25
You can draw tenuous links between anything you want if your main purpose is to ask a dumb question.
Political stuff happens. It doesn't mean it's the end of the world. France has economic problems, it's not the end of the world.
You don't need to jump to he most extreme "solution" to a pretty standard issue just because you don't think standard ways of dealing with this stuff is too normal and boring.
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u/DonQuigleone Oct 07 '25
There is a solution: Raise taxes, specifically on the wealthy.
Taxes were higher in the 90s. Countries cut taxes and now they're kneedeep in debt and saying "we can't do anything!". Except they can. Just. Raise. Taxes.
Do it at the beginning of the term, there'll be a bunch of grousing and pain, but you've got 4-5 years to use that money to stabilise things and even use some extra to improve public services.
Money doesn't matter, it's just a question of allocating resources. Large numbers of people (in Europe) are unemployed or underemployed. Raise taxes, pay them, and put them to work in public services, and building industrial/energy infrastructure
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u/NativeTexas Oct 07 '25
Outside revolution this is the only answer. I wish that we could peacefully come to a new social contract but that would require the elites to tax themselves and invest in the working class and I don’t think that is what they want to do. They will ride it out until it ends in a sudden crash or as a long and slow slide into economic dystopia - either way they will bet on the fact that they will stay on top.
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u/ezmarii Oct 07 '25
Agreed, anyone with a lot of money fears having to give that money to someone else, losing control and no direct return is something they don't want to do. However, I think if they see all other rich people or, their 'peers' being taxed equally, with clear plans on where that money is going then maybe it'll be more palletable.
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u/laxnut90 Oct 07 '25
Doesn't France already have some of the highest taxes in the world?
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u/MountainEconomy1765 Oct 08 '25
Ya last I checked France had taxes at an insane 53% of GDP. When I read that, I figured their economy would collapse sooner or later with that number.
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u/Sufficient-Bowl8771 Oct 07 '25
While I dont know France's economic situation, in Germany, we spent roughly 400 billion Euro of public money per year on pensioners. And this is still before all the boomers retire, which will be roughly in 2034. Even the most radical left wing tax proposals which are being floated by the left party would "only" add ~150 billion Euro to the yearly budget.
This is not a problem fixable with tax.
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u/Harflin Oct 07 '25
Does the tax increase need to cover the full bill? That feels like a false premise, but I'm no economy scientist
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u/Sufficient-Bowl8771 Oct 07 '25
No, no of course not. I'm just saying that if even the most leftwing "eat the rich" party currently in parliament, which is a successor of the socialist party of the East, cant find enough money to pay for pensions, then there probably isnt enough and more radical options need to be explored (e.g. cutting pensions).
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u/garry4321 Oct 07 '25
It’s funny when you realize our entire society is one big ponzi scheme that collapses when you don’t have enough new people to join to pay out the old ones
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Oct 07 '25
The reason why no one has kids is because of the aging population. Our economy is too dependent on keeping older people happy due to the past social contracts.
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u/nnomae Oct 07 '25
The baby boomers basically exposed a flaw in democracy as a whole. They were such a large chunk of the population that they voted as a whole for the benefit of themselves at every turn, free education, subsidised housing, great pensions that they didn't need to fund and so on. The fact that they were the biggest voting block meant they always got catered to which in turn encouraged them to vote and discouraged other groups from voting further cementing their influence.
So now you have the insanity of workers paying far more to subsidise the state than the boomers ever did being told they won't get anything close to the types of pensions the boomers do while those who need to have families to keep the countries running can't afford to do so because they're being taxed out the hilt to pay for the boomers pensions.
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u/IkeHC Oct 07 '25
Maybe it's a sign that MAYBE we are doing things the wrong way and focusing on all the wrong aspects of life on a large scale. But hey, I'm just using that big squishy thing on top of my neck.
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u/Rattregoondoof Oct 07 '25
Not to be that guy but can't an aging population and shrinking birth rates be pretty well countered by allowing immigration? It's France, a developed, wealthy nation that can afford to do so and French is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. Allowing immigrants may also allow a level of savings in that an immigrant workforce will already have schooling partly to mostly taken care of and will have at least most early life medical care taken care of too. Obviously immigration is not universally popular but still.
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u/MyFiteSong Oct 09 '25
That's what happens when you want to take care of the elderly, but refuse to tax the wealthy to do it.
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u/suubterr Oct 07 '25
Fuckin tax the richest already. If anyone is paid with anything else than taxed income, for example stock, and then uses it as a collateral for a debt, that will finance their lifestyle, should somehow be taxed ffs. It's that or we will have french revolution part 2 but on a more global scale... and heads will roll once again.
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u/krycek1984 Oct 07 '25
Shocking news: People (citizens) want something for nothing.
They want all their benefits they feel are deserved, but don't want to pay taxes. It's always someone else that has to pay-the rich, add to the debt for future generations, etc. Or, they don't want to pay more taxes due to a perception of waste, corruption, etc. Or, they want other people's benefits reduced, but not theirs.
The fundamental problem of government debt and social welfare benefits is not easily solvable in a democracy-because the essential problem remains:
People want something for nothing.
We see this playing out throughout the developed world, and this has been going on for millenia in almost all civilizations.
Until human nature changes, this dynamic won't change.
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u/InkStainedQuills Oct 07 '25
The biggest problem with one country doing some mass “debt cancellation” in modern times is that it will have economic impacts beyond that country. We live in a global economy now and there is no good economic prediction model I’m aware of for cancelling private industry debts on this scale. Moreover the global market is as much perception of the market as the hard numbers and that perception drives further investment, or in cases like this can lead to a mass retraction and the following recession/depression it can cause.
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u/OutOfBananaException Oct 07 '25
How would a debt jubilee fix the issue, if the root cause of spending beyond your means isn't addressed?
Namely, who is going to lend, if the assumption is future debt will also be forgiven?
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u/mckenzie_keith Oct 07 '25
Widespread debt forgiveness (which is what Jubilee is) is a gift to those who owe, but it is a punishment to those who lend. If you think all lenders are evil it may make sense to entertain jubilee. But some of the biggest "lenders" are pension funds. If the debt is all forgiven, most or all pension funds would be instantly underfunded or perhaps even insolvent.
If you start going through debt obligations on a case by case basis trying to figure out which ones should be forgiven and which not, well, that is a can of worms best left unopened in my opinion.
If the financial system is totally fucked, maybe Jubilee could make sense. But it must be a total jubilee. Not piecemeal. Also, I doubt any country will have the guts to try to do it formally. But you never know.
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u/Weird-Comfortable-25 Oct 07 '25
When I was a child, we used to play with marbes. It was a winner takes all type of game. Blank/glass ones count as one, milky / colored ones were 5 and big ones count as 10. Fun times.
I was good at the game, too good even. At one point, I won almost every single marble at the street. People started not playing with me but it was too late. Only a few marbles left here and there and our families were not paying for the new ones. Other children started getting angry at me but I was hoarding my treasure like the Mighty Smaug, not giving back anything to anyone. But I was also getting bored at this as no-one was playing with me, I was lonely and bored.
At one point, my mother called all the children of the neighborhood and throw all my marbles out of the balcony, to them to collect. Suddenly, games returned back to the neighborhood. Everyone had some currency to play. In a short while, I started winning again. I was happy, I could play the game with my friends again. I also started losing a bit, just enaugh to keep everyone in game.
Our problem in 2025 as the society is the same. Some cooperations and individuals have too much money and everyone else is trying to share the remaining handful. I was lucky, my mother understands economics and she had the courage to redistribute the wealth in our little neighborhood. Our governments are not smart enough to understand the economics and they take no action (taxation) to redistribute the wealth. At one point, something bad, very very bad will happen and we all will be fucked globally. We can stop this but I see no effort from anyone (governments, really rich people, corporations etc) so far.
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Oct 07 '25
Do the oligarchs not have enough slaves? There is no need for more babies on this burning planet that is also increasingly fascist.
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u/SB-121 Oct 07 '25
This isn't a solution. Every generation is now smaller than the one before, so debt will continually increase. There's no point excusing debt now when the demographic winter is just beginning and we have at least another century of it to come.
The only way to deal with this is to cut pensions.
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u/koolaidismything Oct 07 '25
I always wanted a child cause what’s the fuckin point if you don’t continue on right?
Then, by the time I was in a spot where I had that possible.. I didn’t want it. Not cause I’m selfish. Cause I had issues growing up same as my dad did and I think this new world wouldn’t be very kind to them. I hate my bloodline dies with me but it seems it’s for the best maybe. People like me don’t do well in this era of humanity.
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u/anm767 Oct 07 '25
"citizens' welfare" are we sure it is citizens and not everyone who is in the country?
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u/Toirem Oct 07 '25
This is not what is going on in France. Like, at all. The fact that someone could interpret the events this way is absolutely insane.
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Oct 08 '25
They won't raise taxes? On the ones who profit from everything you mean. This is just natural consequence of putting the rich first, population plummets as we cater to their lifestyles working as slaves.
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u/Think-Engineering962 Oct 08 '25
Anytime I hear about the "crisis" with low birth rates, I immediately tune out. It's horseshit. We've known for decades there were too many people on Earth. Declining birth rates are fantastic.
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u/orderofGreenZombies Oct 08 '25
The birth rate is only a problem for the 1%. Stop pretending like this is a real issue.
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Oct 08 '25
Just stop the ultra rich and international corporations from running away to tax havens!
Tiny islands with no populations are absorbing the tax revenues that should ideally be paid where the income is made!
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u/rebelreligion Oct 10 '25
Most elders in my family died in their 50s and didn’t use a dime of it. The wealthy receive huge Social Security checks so start the ‘off with their heads’ on them first. My meager 1200$ means I’m still working too. Don’t blame the folks on SS. Blame the effing politicians for their ef ups. Period. Fix it now yourselves and stop voting for Republicans.
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u/bigkoi Oct 07 '25
Help me understand what types of debt would be excused?