An empty neonatal room in an obstetrics and gynecology hospital in central Seoul. /News 1
The total fertility rate, which must be 2.1 to maintain the population, has fallen to 0.72. It is said that next year it will fall below 0.7. The country is in danger of extinction.
It is unfortunate that the general election promises the government and opposition parties to announce that they are giving priority to the establishment of a Ministry for Population at the level of Deputy Prime Minister (the opposition party calls the Ministry for Population Crisis Response ). I know that the attribution reports that are made when ideas are poor are the creation of a dedicated organization and improvement, but it is a vain idea that should not be made by anyone who knows how great the loss of power through attrition is is inevitable when creating a new government organization is. Doesn’t it make sense that it is difficult for a new organization to demonstrate strong leadership in a short period of time? The Committee on Low Birth and Aging, established as early as 2005, has as its chairman the President and the Vice President, who is the de facto head, at the ministerial level, so it cannot be higher than that, but it has failed to prevent this disaster. The Ministry of Health and Welfare, which is in charge of the ministry, has two really unmanageable tasks: pension reform and medical reform, so my nose is one meter high.
Giving a strong and independent financial authority to the organization responsible for low birth rate issues is also an unrealistic idea that fails to understand the essence of financial functions such as budgeting and taxation. It is necessary to estimate the total amount of resources a country can use in a year, decide how many of these should be used by the government through fiscal spending and tax cuts, and how many should be left to the private sector, and where and how much to spend more. The function of finance cannot be divided because we must decide at the same time how much less to spend.
Furthermore, solving the problem of low birth rates requires comprehensive measures that include jobs, housing, education, child care and even stabilization of the cost of living. The Ministry of Strategy and Finance, which oversees policy measures, must immediately identify resources that can be mobilized to solve the problem of the low birth rate and take this into account when preparing next year’s budget. It is difficult to know what benefits can be achieved by dividing this financial resource into numerous projects of various ministries, and instead of making it troublesome to apply for each and receive it, it should be simplified to “support 100 million won per newborn”. ” Currently, only 25 trillion won is needed based on 250,000 newborns! It will be difficult to donate a lump sum, and you will have to figure out a way to pay the costs of childbirth and childcare in a timely manner. Assuming it is spread over 10 years, the year next the amount will be 2.5 trillion won.It may be better to offer 200 million won in 20 years.
The opposition party came up with a plan that seemed good enough: grant loans of 100 million won each to newlyweds with a maturity of 10 years, interest exemption in case of first child, and write-off of 50% or 100% of the principal in case of marriage. they had their second or third child. This method of providing adequate support only after birth does not seem to be a good method, considering the experiences of parents with multiple children who say that once they have had and raised their first child, they can easily decide to have a second or third child.
The plan to secure financial resources is simple. All we need to do is collect all the existing budget for birth control measures, find everything that can be reduced in the labor costs of public employees and in the welfare budget for the elderly, which have increased exorbitantly in recent years , and transfer all projects that can be implemented by attracting private investment into the private sector. Moonlight high-speed rail, GTX extension and new construction, undergrounding of urban railways, all that can be done by attracting private investment, and the existing investment budget can be diverted as much as possible to the low-rate budget birth rate. What more urgent investment could there be than restoring birth rates?
Even if the birth rate is prevented from falling and rising again, the population will continue to decline until it exceeds 2.1, and the economy will inevitably contract due to lack of labor and domestic demand. The Immigration Office must “immediately” focus on actively replenishing the population and attracting highly skilled workers with (domestic) families. This is also not a task that the Immigration Office can handle alone. A representative example of how the influx of immigrants supports the country’s economy is the United States, where the best universities in the world encourage talented people from all over the world to come to study in the United States, and the good working environment and entrepreneurial makes it possible for those people to stay and live in the United States will. Can the Immigration Office really do this?
Even in the case of simple jobs, families must be brought to live there and, ultimately, naturalization must be possible. If you come alone and stay for a limited period of time, you will not be able to secure skilled labor and will be forced to remit all the money you earn back to your home country, which will cause a decline in domestic demand. These measures to secure foreign labor are not tasks that the Immigration Office can handle alone. This is only possible if all ministries work together and implement it according to the planning of the Ministry of Strategy and Finance, and the President must take the lead.
#朝鮮칼럼 #free #create #population #report
