When researching degrowth, I find that nobody ever advocates for or predicts actual degrowth. They end up discussing no-growth, which of course is impossible to keep at precisely not going up or down. So sometimes instead of degrowth they advocate for very low growth, below 1%.
But actual economic degrowth is too hard to discuss seriously. Being unprecedented, nobody really understands what will happen.
So this article, which I hoped would discuss how capitalism collapses via population decline, doesn’t. Its boldest prediction is, of course:
Some analyses are showing a grim picture of Korea that the persistent trend of low birth rate and population aging will result in its annual economic growth rate of less than 1 percent after 2050. It is a warning that the country might fall into a swamp of long-term low growth if it fails to overcome the labor shortage caused by population decline through capital investment or technological innovation.
Lee Jong-hwa, professor of economics at Korea University
It also avoids discussing that fewer people means a smaller domestic market, and of course most Korean businesses are not international.