Birth rate scares are such a meme
>oh shit these overpopulated islands will decline in population in a century

>decline means extinction

>>525809301
>Chinese island of Taiwan now has the lowest fertility rate in the world,
Because of muh CCP, communism and one child policy amiright MIGA transvestites?

>>525809483
No, because Taiwan's economy is so heavily stratified that no one can afford to have children.

A typical pay rate is around $600/month for a new grad. Even new grad electrical engineers only make about $1000/month. It doesn't get a lot better as you get experience.

I worked in Taiwan for a decade at an upscale consumer electronics corporation. I remember one of my coworkers there quitting to start her own umbrella store -- there are umbrella shops all over the fucking place -- because she could make more money selling umbrellas than what she was making in her international sales position. Another guy, an actual electrical engineer, who incidentally came up with the company's best-selling product, quit to go work at his family's boba tea stand because he could make more there than working for the company. This is common -- people can make more running their own scooter repair shop than working in pretty much any company.

(My own job paid reasonably well because I am a U.S. citizen and have a professional license from the U.S. and the company had to have someone on staff who had that license. Still paid only half of what I could make in the U.S., but tax rates are so much lower that I was able to save far more.)

>>525809344
>>525809392
Seriously
>Industrial revolution
>Population explodes
>Post-industrial revolution
>Population declines and stabilises
Why is this being fear-mongered or, more importantly, bought-into like it's even a real issue? The only ones going extinct are the excess genetic dead-ends who fail to breed, and the multitudes abstaining from procreation out of choice are stupid or suicidal and should be culled anyway.
Without immigration, a county's population will never completely die out from fertility rates, there will always be individuals who successfully breed. Population dips will promote increased and peaks will precipitate declines.

>>525809301
BTW, China's own statistics are fake; they probably have a lower fertility rate than Taiwan's, especially nowadays after they aborted 10% of their female babies for decades resulting in no wives for little Zhangs.

>>525812473
because industrial revolution brought a massive surplus of food
a pre-industrial revolution farmer could feed about 2 people, a modern farmer can feed almost 200
to justify working for half of your awake time for basic necessities, the population HAS to match production to create artificial scarcity

>>525809344
>overpopulated islands
they are far from overpopulated. taipei has some old dilapidated neighbours which would seem to be slightly overcrowded but the island is empty.
they stack new apartment blocks high and keep the main parts of the city full because land is expensive as people hold on to it for wealth speculation.

>>525813317
>land is expensive as people hold on to it for wealth speculation.
Condos are ridiculously expensive too. The one I rented would have cost at least $650,000 to buy. I rented it for $670/month.

Current rent-vs-buy ratio in the U.S. is around 200, in Taipei it was nearly 1000.

Not only that, there was a building that got put up a few years before I left. I think there were around 60 units in it. Only six were occupied when I left, this was 3+ years after they'd completed the building. The other ~56 units were just purchased to hold onto and sit there as "investments". I don't know why anyone considers condos an investment there since there aren't going to be any people available to live in them.

>>525811172
>>525814049
Just to tie both of these together, one guy I worked with had to support himself, his wife, and his parents on just his own salary. The parents were old and sick and didn't have any real savings. I think they at least owned their own condominium unit (an old dilapidated run-down concrete box), because if they didn't they'd have all starved to death. All four of them lived in that one little shitbox condo.

So it's not really a surprise that the younger couple couldn't afford to have any children. I hope the parents died before the wife aged out of being able to, but I doubt that happened.

>>525809301
There are nigger immigrants to compensate that problem

Oh, and one final issue is that Taiwan has a continuous stream of "food safety incidents", meaning "scumbag gangsters who substitute industrial chemicals for food ingredients, thus poisoning the entire fucking population." The DEHP scandal was probably the worst of them, and not only did the guy who made millions giving cancer to his countrymen get off with a $1000 fine (the maximum allowed under law), he just went right back to continuing to sell DEHP as "palm oil". Meanwhile, his county's government forced the lab that caught the scam to shut down, because the lab "didn't have the right paperwork to operate a lab". Or in other words, the KMT county commissioners were all getting kickbags from the triad-tied scumbag who had made millions off poisoning people. DEHP causes birth defects, in particular reproductive organ defects.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_safety_incidents_in_Taiwan

Other similar scams include selling unrefined cottonseed oil, which causes sterility in males, as cooking oil.

So, this sort of shit contributes to Taiwan's low birth rate. Unsurprisingly, Taiwan also has shitloads of highly experienced fertility clinics -- but they are expensive, and ordinary people have a hard time affording them. (Yes, Taiwan has "free healthcare", but good luck getting those cunts to do anything useful. General consensus among expats is "WTF, do these quacks even go through a medical school??!?!?!")

>>525815169
Hey there Taiwanren, how are your kidneys feeling today?

>>525809301
many such cases

>>525809301
>the Taiwanese
A what now??

>>525809301
It seems high technology causes low birthrate. That's why first world nations are going extinct