Immigration Will Not Solve Demographic Decline

 

I am just putting this post here as a place marker for a longer post on this issue. Something people have become convinced of is that immigration is necessary to arrest falling birth rates. But this is an argument made without knowledge by some and by others in power to deliberately deceive.

Constant immigration allows the government to point to the broad economic picture and note that the economy is growing. They can point to a growing tax base. They can even use it to inflate house prices, which the government has no intention of letting go down to recorrect in line with incomes. The argument goes that if we do not increase the population, Australia suffers.

But why? Have you ever stopped to think about this?

Australia has a massive population in historical terms, nearly 27 million people. This is larger than most empires in history. It has an advanced population, an educated population, almost unlimited resources, and once had a powerful industrial sector. What would happen if the population was left to go without immigration, and birth rates continued at their rate of about 1.5 babies per woman?

Well, over time our population would age and then begin to decline. This sounds scary right? Well, what would also happen is that the assets of the aged would begin to hit the markets as they retired, or moved into retirement homes, or passed away, at larger numbers. This would flood the market with homes, cars, caravans, mobile homes, holiday homes and more. Driving asset prices down. 

At the same times workers would become more valuable, both skilled and unskilled, as we faced labour shortages. This would mean businesses would have to work harder to attract workers. No longer could they just bring in foreign workers who are just happy to get out of some other poorer country. Employers would need to actually need to increase both wages and benefits of working for their company, business or industry to compete with more attractive markets. This would create more bargaining power for workers.  

Skills shortages could be dealt with by adapting and changing training methods. For instance, a shortage of teachers or nurses could be addressed by making the barrier to becoming a teacher or nurse less onerous. The same could be done for other professions as well. Instead of simply allowing inefficiencies in the economic system to go unaddressed both governments and the private sector would need to think more creatively to solve such issues.

This does not mean there are no challenges with a declining population. But bringing in more people just means you bring in a host of other social and demographic issues that create problems that you need to find a way to solve. So, both systems have their downsides, but one helps you maintain your society and create more opportunities for the young, the other undermines it. 

As the costs of assets goes down and what people can earn goes up they will be more likely to have larger families. Women will be more likely to stay home while having kids. Men will be able to better provide.

I need to do some more work to convince people on this issue though. So, I will do some more articles on this in the coming weeks. For now, I would just encourage you whenever you hear a politician say that our declining population is an issue, ask them why were we so much better off in 1980 when the population was 14.8 million, which is nearly half of what it is today? The answer is simple, because a smaller population is not really an existential problem, it is simply being made to sound like one by people who want to replace you.