Elon Musk cannot get a specific drawback out of his head.
He runs a number of corporations — two of which, Tesla (TSLA) – Get Tesla Inc Report and SpaceX, are leaders of their respective fields of electrical automobiles and house tech.
Musk is additional occupied together with his hectic $44 billion acquisition of microblogging website Twitter (TWTR) – Get Twitter, Inc. Report.
And he (and traders) are contending with the greater than 40% drop in Tesla’s shares since January. As of May 24 that is knocked greater than $77.6 billion off his private fortune, in accordance with Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Still and all, the person finds time to fret about different points.
For just a few weeks now the tech tycoon has been sounding the alarm concerning the continued decline of populations in rich nations because of collapsing beginning charges.
“At risk of stating the obvious, unless something changes to cause the birth rate to exceed the death rate, Japan will eventually cease to exist,” Musk posted on Twitter on May 7 TheRoad reported on the time. “This would be a great loss for the world.”
The headquarters nation of Sony (SNE) – Get Sony Corp. Report and Toyota (TM) – Get Toyota Motor Corp. Report not too long ago mentioned that the inhabitants in 2021 declined by 644,000 from a 12 months earlier to 125.5 million folks. And 2021 marked the eleventh consecutive 12 months of decline.
Musk Fears Extinction of Italy’s Population
Since then, Musk hasn’t stopped posting messages that increase alarms about declining inhabitants and that commemorate kids. This drawback has turn out to be a private concern. During Twitter exchanges on May 24, the daddy of seven drew consideration to Italy, South Korea and Hong Kong.
Italy’s inhabitants is ageing, in accordance with official knowledge, and Musk fears that the nation might die out.
“Italy. Despite we have a good welfare birthrate is failing 🥲,” posted cybersecurity researcher Andrea Stroppa, with a demographic-trend chart displaying the beginning charge falling in Italy from 1946 to 2019.
“Italy will have no people if these trends continue,” the mogul responded.
The variety of births in Italy fell in 2020 to its lowest degree for the reason that nation’s unification in 1861, in accordance with Istat, the Italian National Institute of Statistics. This was the the twelfth consecutive 12 months of decline.
It stood at 404,892, or 15,192 fewer births than in 2019. The variety of deaths rose to 746,146 in 2020 and the inhabitants decreased to 59.3 million inhabitants.
The decline continued in 2021, in accordance with accessible knowledge from January to September, with 12,500 fewer births over the interval than within the first 9 months of 2020. The common variety of kids per girl residing in Italy was 1.24 in 2020, one of many lowest fertility charges on this planet.
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The covid-19 pandemic largely explains the drop.
Besides Italy, Musk estimates that the populations of South Korea and Hong Kong are declining at worrying charges.
“South Korea and Hong Kong are experiencing the fastest population collapse,” the Tesla CEO wrote.
He added that with World Bank knowledge displaying the nations with the bottom beginning charges, “2.1 kids per woman is replacement rate.”
Do Rich People Have Fewer Kids?
The billionaire appears decided to make use of his platform — he is at the moment probably the most influential CEO on this planet, has almost 95 million Twitter followers and is wooed by politicians — to shine the highlight on this situation and push for a broader world response.
In addition to sounding the alarm, Musk additionally appears to need to buck the standard knowledge that it is the price of residing that daunts some folks from having kids.
“Contrary to what many think, the richer someone is, the fewer kids they have,” the serial entrepreneur argued. “I am a rare exception. Most people I know have zero or one kid.”
When Billy Markus, the co-founder of the meme coin dogecoin, noticed that “honestly the major reason for that is people can’t afford to have kids 🤷♂️,” Musk objected.
“Then why is it that the richer someone is, the fewer kids they have?” he responded.
Musk additionally appears unconvinced by the effectiveness of the assorted insurance policies put in place to attempt to halt inhabitants decline.
“okay so whyd you come out against Build Back Better which had universal pre-k, childcare investments, child tax credit, paid family leave, etc?” a Twitter person requested the tech tycoon.
“None of those programs prove to raise fertility levels,” one other person answered. “Most European and East Asian countries have all those policies and they have fewer children than we do.”
An opinion shared by Musk: “Exactly!” he mentioned.
For him, to resolve the collapse of the inhabitants, which he describes as “the biggest threat to civilization,” we should begin by celebrating kids.
“We just need to celebrate having kids,” he mentioned.
Source: www.thestreet.com