It appears that the last ten years have taken their toll on young Finns because our Big Brother called “Statistics Finland” has revealed that we are not having enough babies. The result is that Big Brother thinks that the population of the country will fall over the next 50 years.
If this actually happens then there will be “too many” pensioners in the country, and “not enough” workers.
Naturally, this piece of statistical news causes Finnish politicians, economists, engineers and bankers to think about how they can get the young ones into the conjugal beds and breed more efficiently.
More seriously though many start to say that the financial costs of too many pensioners and too few workers means that there is not enough taxpayers to pay for welfare as we know it!
This last point then encourages the right to privatise more basic services, to increase taxes and pension payments, and shout from the rooftops that we need more austerity and smaller government.
All of the above-mentioned reactions have been heard the last ten years and is probably the reason for this fall in the fertility rate which stands at 1.49 causing a nasty fall in the population.
Across the Baltic Sea, our neighbours in Sweden have always been more optimistic, a little happier and slightly more wealthy. This is reflected in their latest report on population for the period 2018–2070 expects an increase of 2.7 million for a total of 12.8 million in 2070.
Forecasting population trends is tricky and especially difficult now we have so much uncertainty about climate change and immigration movements. We also need to consider how robotics and automation will replace simple manual tasks – and finally Finns will probably surprise everybody by suddenly increase reproduction rates… and actually what is really wrong with a falling population?
In any event, we need to vote for better politicians, to get more women in senior positions, to take bigger steps to improve our air and reduce bad emissions.
Sitting on our bums and claiming that we do not have to act is about as foolish as voting for the likes of Trump.
