Japan and Korea are both further along the path, and moving more quickly. But yes, much of the EU is still on the same path, and the time to effectively mitigate the issue will come and go before most people notice. This is a problem that always has consequences out many decades from current actions, a timeline just too far along for our hunter-gatherer brains to care much about. It will take much longer to be in a real bind, but by the time it happens it is far too late to right the ship.

Far from comprehensive, but a good primer.

The problem is similar to climate change. The effects of today will ripple several decades into the future, and people everywhere are more short-sighted than they would like to think, you and me included. Our brains are built for hunter gatherer lifestyles, sensing urgency in actions that will come back to us in 40-50 years just isn’t how we are programmed. Germany is already entering the danger zone, the effects won’t be stark for another 30 years or so perhaps, but if we delay much then there will be nothing to do to counterbalance it effectively. Demographic collapse is an issue that is way past mitigating by the time it becomes an acute problem. An ounce of prevention is not a pound or even a ton of cure, it’s the only cure. And when it starts to hit noticeably, that means you are just going over the side of the waterfall and it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. Korea is just starting to tip over the edge of the waterfall, in 5-10 years it is going to get much worse.

The takeaway from the meme isn’t that we are overreacting to their situation, it’s that we are underreacting everywhere else. The real insidious issue is that in most nations having this problem, society largely panders to its politically active and (comparitively) wealthy elder base, and the best way to boost the birth rate is to shift support from them towards the young, which is politically problematic. So we are stuck in a situation where those with power have to act against their interest, in order to avoid problems that will happen far later than our brains are hardwired to care about. In short, the prognosis is very bad. Imho, the only chance most western nations have is watching things get very ugly for the elderly in Asia, and using that to scare their constituents enough to convince them that short term sacrifice is needed to avoid similar conditions for themselves. But I’d say it’s a long shot.

Yeah, everyone was paying to back out of their contracts as soon as the prices went through the roof. The customers will do the same when they come back down if they are stuck in these contracts.