Rates are even lower in the country that produced Squid Game.
I mean yeah, the US war on korea was, in large part, to rebuild japan as a market after WW2 so it was aligned w the west. Both the war and Korea itself became the impetus for Japan's economic recovery. Their fate is tied together unless their people revolt against the imperialists.
It's going to be really funny if Korea ends up being reunified simply because the regime in the south falls as a result of a population collapse.
In the same way India will eventually become number 2 it feels inevitable given enough time the reunification of Korea. Being Samsung's labour pool and a US pitstop is only going to get you so far.
I bet when the AI bubble pops in the US that's going to drag occupied Korea down with it.
Do you reckon? Are they heavily invested in American AI or is it more like domino effect of collapsing stock market bubbles (or something else eg the US will milk SK for all its worth to prop up its own GDP)?
I expect more that it's the latter, similar to the economic shock DPRK suffered when USSR collapsed.
A result of capitalism, although low birth rates are not bad by itself
Whenever a journalist raises concern about the low birth rates I just imagine his capitalist boss being mad that they’re gonna lose out on potential profits
We all talk about the expense of kids, but the other thing that plays into this under capitalism is that having kids in the context of atomized capitalist society just sucks.
I love my kids more than anything and they are a tremendous source of joy. But they are WORK. And I don't mean like emotional work or whatever, they are that too, but honest-to-goodness labor. They need cooking, cleaning, looking after, education, and enrichment. And in misogynistic capitalist societies it is expected that most/all of this work falls on women. But of course capitalist predation has made it necessary for them to also work full time jobs to stay afloat. So having kids is like 2 full time jobs.
It's no wonder that with wide availability of birth control women are opting out of having children. It's a good thing people have the ability to choose.
If countries were serious about solving this population crisis, what they could start with is some fucking state run services to help carry this load. state run creches which are open late, cheap worker canteens with takeaway options, universal preschool, etc.
Of course these are fascists we are talking about so they would rather take away birth control and force everyone into parenthood.
So that’s why they want to force women out of the workforce wouldn’t the women just poison her husband
Edit I’ll also add even if capitalist societies do this women would still opt out of having kids to focus on their careers, earn a wage ant etc because the source of all of that labour falls on them not the man it’s a societal problem not an economic one also let’s take a moment to consider just how absurd the fascist position is a lot of women would up and leave if they attempted half these policies either moving to blue states or moving out the country all together
a lot of women would up and leave if they attempted half these policies either moving to blue states or moving out the country all together
Once abortion-banning and birth-control-banning become a dominant force, they'll be enforced federally and the whole "states rights" excuse will be abandoned. States rights is merely a shelter for weaker reactionary forces.