Why should we encourage people to have children?
Why don't we just let the population decrease
If Taiwan's population is going to decrease
The current population of 23.2 million would have to decrease by 2 million for an effect to be felt
That won't happen for 40 years
Is the population increasing or decreasing at present?
It's currently increasing
It's simple, it's increasing if there are more births than deaths
There are 20,000 more births than deaths a year
But in 5 or 6 years births and deaths will be equal
Then deaths will overtake births and population will start to decline
However we encourage people to have children
This is still an inevitability
It's not like if we encourage people to have children the population will continue to rise, it's impossible
In encouraging people to have children we're trying to alleviate the speed of the problem
Taiwan's problem is not the trend itself but rather the speed of the trend
We just need to slow the pace of population aging, delay it by 1, 2 or 3 years
This is its most important function
Slowing, even slightly the pace of problematic trends
Allows us time to take action against it
The moral values instilled by the family unit
Is something uniquely human
Humanity has two unique features, in my mind
They can comprehend time and their lives are based around the family unit
This is essential, otherwise
In the future, after the population has changed
If you lack this basic unit...
Do you think that government can replace every social structure of humanity?
People often bring up Northern European countries as an example
Do you really think their system is better?
What do you think the next step is for them?
They're in real difficulties now and don't know what to do about it
They've gone as far as they can go
Their tax rates can be above 50 or 60%
You can do nothing but support your country
as you rely on it for everything from when you're born until you die
So where do they go from there?
Their policies...
If the population structure could stop as it is
perhaps their policies would be able to sustain them
But the structure can't possibly stop as it is
It will keep on changing
So you have to understand that
You can't think with only the present in mind
Perhaps their policy suits their current population structure
This image looks good in comparison to other countries
but it doesn't mean that it will be good forever
They can't go on that way
Will they raise tax to 100%,
It is not possible
They've reached an extreme
but their population is changing, is it not?
So what will they do after their population structure shifts
There is nothing they can do
It the end of an era in history
It looks like they are well-off now
but we can't let our thinking be confined to the present
I'm not sure if you understand what I'm saying
At the moment I'll admit they look better off
They pay between 42 and 62% tax
We're currently at a rate of 12%
If we raised it to 30% we could do the same things that they do
but it's not possible, people wouldn't agree to it
Each society has different lessons to learn
They're not social welfare states because of their current population structure
but rather they set out with it in mind as a permanent structure
When my generation was born
A mother... I mean a woman,
not necessarily a mother
She would have maybe 6 or 7 children
She would be uneducated and unemployed
Resources were very limited
but they didn't just have one child
however, we all made it through
At that time, the generation before mine
thought of children as a sign of hope
They were, of course, also a burden
but the hope they gave was greater than their burden
so they would try to bring them up well
Isn't that right?
It's not a problem of proportion
but rather a conceptual problem
Nowadays, we are not talking about having 6 or 7 children
but rather 1 or 2
If the burden of bringing up a child is quite a large one
you might think that a child brings less hope than the burden it entails
then you might be put off
So it is a economic problem
As well as a problem of how you interpret economics
Subtitled by Conor Stuart