a shrinking population is a disaster overall. productivity goes down, more elderly, social services strained, smaller taxable cohorts. the needs will still be there, the money and the people to solve them won’t.
In real life we've seen when such a city loses people or revenue, the trauma of the pullback is devastating and the bloat and corruption do not simply go away. Detroit, 1970s NYC after the suburban flight, and the people clinging to shrinking regions of Japan come to mind.
As our countries have a population pullback wealth will shrink, corners will be cut, innovation will slow, and likely more coal than ever will be burned.
Climate change, war, pollution. An endless list of problems due to humanity's greed. There is no changing the trajectory at this point. Human's are in denial about our future but we've already laid our beds.
No opinion one way or the other with regards to kids/no kids. Just thought I'd point it out :)
It seems we're trending (hopefully) to a more sustainable future. Consumerism as we know if today may not exist in the near future. If the only thing we care about is producing Food, Housing and Art/Culture; we will have plenty of people.
Everyone has a vested interest in growth. Unfortunately, many wealthy people have short-term (single lifetime) interests in the reverse.
When retirement is tied up in stocks for the majority of Americans, everyone is an investor.