No: low birth rate combined with asinine immigration policy is Japan. Japan will be fine if it fixes its immigration laws.

Northern Europe is looking pretty good as compared to “work till you fucking croak” America. If anything, they’re less austere than the US. Better spending on public transport, social welfare, health care, scientific research, things that actually matter. Not as authoritarian in practice as the US.

As far as experiencing innovation and rising standard of living in my lifetime, I’m fine with things as they are. Things like getting off oil as an energy source are more engineering and legal problems than technological ones.

Most of the changes in this country since the 90s have been neutral or negative(*), so I have no faith about future change being positive. And I don’t embrace the singularity.

(*)- there’s a slight trend towards liberalization now, in the sense of same-sex marriage, drug law reform, etc, but it remains to be seen whether this will continue or peter out.