it's a product of modeling that only cares about growth.

it's buying a bunch of shit you can't afford and then saying the problem is you're not making enough money.

we were always going to come due on our excesses/inefficiencies regardless...we're actually in better shape if the population levels off now than if we wait until we get to carrying capacity/disaster and have a population crash, because we'll have less debt to pay off.

and, furthermore, negative population growth isn't a thing globally or even regionally. the eu isn't forecasted to reach peak population for another generation, and is *never* projected to be less than what it is right now. if we distributed resources and skills-training better and cut out the racism, there wouldn't even be the bogeyman of underpopulation.