Fertility Rates: Is Western society self sustaining?

[Arnfinn Madsen]

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6-7 years ago several sectors of society really stopped functioning due to lack of labor (I got mail just twice or so a week, sometimes garbage was not taken etc.), now we are managing to avoid it by being liberal towards the new EU-countries.

[/ QUOTE ] You could also solve this by rearranging the economy to reflect the current population.

It is faulty reasoning to presume that less people=a less good economy, because, amongst other things, while productivity is likely to be less than it otherwise would be overall, productivity per person won't, and that is what we really care about.

100/10=1000/100. A lower population=less producers but also less consumers; lower supply and lower demand.

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You are somehow correct, but the percent of immigrants that are working (mainly due to age profile) is higher than the percent of Norwegians working, thus we would have lower amount of production/inhabitant, thus lower average living standard. So we get used to a "manipulated" demographics that is better than our "real" one.

EDIT: I guess that this shows that we aren't really solving the "problem", since the immigrants grow old, and we thus will need a constant influx to keep our "false" demographic curve.