Population Puppets

There's an interesting phenomenon happening globally, the birthrate is falling dramatically in industrialized countries. This is creating havoc because all economic systems, like here in the USA, depend on younger people to bear the economic brunt of the effects of an aging populace. Social Security and Medicare programs all work by putting pressure on the young to support the old and infirm. 

And now all of these childless cat ladies are throwing a real wrench in the system.

Countries are dealing with the problem in different ways. I had to laugh recently when Russia told its citizens that they needed to make more babies. The country recorded its lowest birth rate in the past 25 years for the first six months of 2024, according to official data published this September.

When the workers asked when all this shtupping was to take place, already feeling beleaguered by long workdays, they were told to go home and screw on their lunch breaks.

The birth rate "is now at a terribly low level—1.4 [births per woman]," Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in July, according to AFP. "This is comparable to European countries, Japan and so on. But this is disastrous for the future of the nation."

Putin has previously stated the importance of boosting the nation's birth rate and population, saying that "the preservation of the Russian people is our highest national priority."

Health Minister Yevgeny Shestopalov said Russians should "engage in procreation on breaks" during a recent appearance on Russian national television, according to The Mirror.

He told an interviewer that there was no reason why Russians shouldn't attempt to conceive during the work day.

"Being very busy at work is not a valid reason, but a lame excuse," he said. "You can engage in procreation during breaks, because life flies by too quickly."

Asked when people who work 12 to 14-hour days would have time to procreate, Shestopalov replied: "During break times."

China is in a similar crisis. They have had shrinking birthrate numbers for three years in a row. The country that once instituted a one child policy is now encouraging people to have three. The numbers haven't been so bad since Mao engaged in his reign of terror against his own citizenry.

The total number of people in China dropped by 2.75 million – or 0.2% – to 1.409 billion in 2023, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday. The drop surpassed that recorded in 2022, of about 850,000 – the first time the recorded population had declined since the mass deaths of the Mao-era famines.

In 2023, total deaths rose 6.6% to 11.1 million, with the death rate reaching the highest level since the chaos of the cultural revolution in 1974. At the same time, new births fell 5.7% to 9.02 million. The birthrate was the lowest ever recorded at 6.39 births per 1,000 people, down from a rate of 6.77 births in 2022.

China has for years been battling trends that have led to an ageing population, which were driven by past policies of population control –including the one-child policy – and a growing reluctance among young adults to have children. In 2023 it was overtaken by India as the world’s most populous nation, according to UN estimates.

Chinese officials fear the impact that this “demographic timebomb” could have on the economy, with the rising costs of aged care and financial support in danger of not being met by a shrinking population of working taxpayers. The state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences has predicted the pension system in its current form will run out of money by 2035. By then the number of people in China above 60 years old – the national retirement age – will have increased from about 280 million to 400 million.

Japan is also struggling with an aging population problem. It has the highest percentage of people over the age of 65 in the world. But in an artistic sense at least, one town, Ichinono, has come up with the most elegant solution to not having people around - make puppets to take their place.

Read this article, very cool.

With most of the population gone, residents of one village in Japan have come up with a novel plan to make it less lonely — replacing people with puppets.

Fewer than 60 people live in Ichinono, and most of them are past retirement age as younger people have moved away for jobs or education.

So, using old clothes, fabrics and mannequins, residents have stitched together their own population of puppets to keep them company.

Some of puppets ride swings, others push firewood carts, smiling eerily at visitors.

“We’re probably outnumbered by puppets,” Hisayo Yamazaki, an 88-year-old widow, told the Agence France-Presse news agency.

Incredible photos by the AFP/Getty's Philip Fong.

I know many people who have led full and remarkable lives and chose not to procreate. My wife and I made that decision as well and I am glad that we did, my cancer causing such turmoil and uncertainty in my life and not wanting to put children through that.

With all the trauma, environmental degradation and existential angst present in our world, I understand why many people no longer want to leap into parenthood, biological clocks and species survival notwithstanding.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the U.S. is also at a historic low fertility speaking. And what is the only thing keeping the population number steady?

Immigration.

Egads, can this be true? The conservative bogeyman might be our only salvation? Say it ain't so, Joe. Of course, we don't want any of those poisonous, inferior genes from third world countries, however nordic models and psychotic capitalists from South Africa are acceptable.

And there is another factor at work or at play here. Go to any jobsite, at least in my corner of the United States and see who is working construction?

Latinos.

Not white kids, they don't get their hands dirty anymore and they don't like to show up for work. Manual labor is beneath them. I worked construction from a laborer and electrician to superintendent and project manager before I had my own company, I did every shit job imaginable.

But kids for some reason would rather live their parents until they are forty these days and not sully themselves with hard or dirty work.

So when the new Trump regime gets rolling and starts with the mass deportations they may want to ask themselves how they are planning to pick the fields and build the houses, cook the food and get their geriatric asses wiped.

Because there may not be anybody left to do it.