1) What is it that these childless people are counting on to care for them in their old age? It is the govt, and indirectly, the taxpayers. What if the govt goes bankrupt? What if there are no longer enough taxpayers to finance them in anything like the style to which they've become accustomed? In reality, these people are each making a calculation that they can squander their lives on themselves and materialistic pursuits, and that they can throw the responisibilities of caring for them in their old age off onto society and onto those people (whom they probably view as "suckers") who take the time and effort in their lives to raise children.
2) Notice how these discussions are always draped in the ideology of liberalism. As if everything would be fine in a world without children if we could only find some other way to finance our welfare state.
3) I'm afraid that it will take a severe economic crisis (which many of these old, childless people probably will not survive.....life is tough on the street at 80 with no kids and no socialism) accompanied by a resurrection of traditional western values to turn this thing around. Western people are too steeped in this culture of narcissism and materialism to be extracted in any other way but by cold, ugly reality. Excepting this, we will be displaced by other cultures who harbor values more conducive to survival and procreation.
4) I was at a Christmas party yesterday with 6 other couples aged 35-45....all highly educated professionals. Other than my two kids, one couple had one child and the other 4 couples had none. Twelve adults and only three kids....not a good sign for the future.
Demography is history. At last year's Eastern Oklahoma Catholic Homeschool Association Valentine's Day party, I counted 74 children ... but they weren't holding still, so I probably missed some. Sometimes I miscount my own kids ...
As if everything would be fine in a world without children if we could only find some other way to finance our welfare state.
Europe thinks they've found it ... import a few million Moslems a year. Is there a mathematically gifted FReeper running a pool on how long it takes before all the governments of Europe are Moslem?
People just don't understand what they're missing. Parents deprive themselves of babies, and then complain that they don't find any fulfillment in their families. (IMO, babies are the reward for moms; Cub Scouts are the reward for dads!) They deprive their children of siblings, and then insist that the children need government-supported "socialization."
If people don't give love, they're not going to receive any ... unless we get the Revival first, or a full-scale jihad (alternate plots in my future-history novel ...) the Social Security Revolution is going to hit a lot of baby boomers right where they live.
Germany was turned around by military defeat in 1945.