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I agree that a decreasing populations has its benefits, from many different perspectives.
From an employment standpoint, employers and bully bosses...
More housing choices will also be a plus.
And, finally, the environment can hopefully do some recovering and healing.
And, yes, it wouldn't surprise me, in some of these low fertility countries,
to go on some demolition sprees and turn some of this land back to nature!
Consider these points when you see bond issues for even more new road construction...
or news articles lauding even more new home construction as any sort of benefit.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RepeatingMyself
It could be fairly argued that most of the home and road construction and other RE development
and all the service jobs that have existed over the last 30 years fit into this category... that they only
exist because we produced another 60 million people who needed bedrooms and schoolrooms and waitrons for their Outback Steakhouse dinners... all at the time when the actual jobs, the real jobs that create real things were either being automated or shipped overseas.
One more time: the problem is NOT that we don't have enough jobs for everyone...
the problem is having far too many people for the jobs that actually need doing.
The problem (so far) is that the better educated in the US have already reduced birthrates. The remaining growth is almost entirely from the lowest quintile with the east capacity to do for those kids on their own
The US birthrate over the past couple years has actually been below replacement-level and below several European countries, around the 1.93 mark if each year's birth numbers were extrapolated out into the future. These things take several years to establish themselves as longer-term trendlines, though. So, much remains to be seen in that regard.
But the push for population growth is based on certain assumptions about what that population will actually be doing. The idea is that we need a certain number of workers per retiree in order to finance the existing retirement system, and that without population growth, we risk ending up with an unstable ratio in which we don't have enough workers.
But the labor force has been contracting even as the population has been rising, which means we have a disconnect between population growth and employment growth.
That's even worse than having population contraction plus employment growth, because it means we have to pay for a growing class of working-age unemployed as well our retirees.
In a system where the link between population rise and labor force participant increase has been severed, population rise tends to hurt more than it helps.
I believe I read the birth rate in the U.S. has dropped to its lowest level since the Depression, and yet, they keep on building and building more and more housing.
Well, fine! The day will come one can have 2 houses for the price of one?
France is the one country in Europe that's been increasing its fertility rate, thanks to all the expensive benefits to having extra children, like tax breaks and free day care and free train passes.
Offer a mother in the U.S. free day care, a few free air passes, and the babies will come?
While it is true that aging populations create imbalances which are problematic, in the long run it's a fortunate development that populations are shrinking. The world is already a grossly over-populated place. Climate change will probably make it harder to feed all the billions we already have. The larger the world population, the more pressure is on the environment, and I say that not as some tree-hugger but because it's the environment which sustains us. Over-fishing of the world's oceans is already a problem. Desertification is a problem.
Immigration is not a sine qua non for solving the problems of countries with low fertility rates. If there is not enough labor, more people will work over-time. If there are not enough young working people to pay the pensions of the elderly (through taxation), then there will be belt-tightening all around, which is already starting to happen in the U.S.
I see falling birth rates as one of the few positives in the current state of humanity.
Its nt so much the opualtion but where the opoualtion is increasign verus decreasing that spells problems. Like always those antions and poor popualtions withion nations are the ones thatare increaing fast.Even China which with india makes up 1/4 of earth opualtion has aging problems.China and japan being 1st and seocnd larest ownwrs of US debt makes for a real problem has they drawndown this debt to finance their aging opualtions needs.
I've read that Japan's population has leveled out or is even decreasing. Why would that be?
They would be the only Asian nation with a decreasing population.
Japanese people tend to have one child only (if any child, of course) and many young people there are not setting up families at all. This means each Japanese generation is half smaller than the previous one. Until now this decrease was compensated by increasing lifetime and immigration, though people of the post-war baby boom start to die and no new children are there.
The same thing will happen to China soon, as they have that one-child policy. Chinese population is aging really quickly. I think that's the opportunity for the US to became world's only superpower again - Americans are having babies, so population is growing.
Americans are having babies, so population is growing.
America's birth rate is below the replacement level at the moment. Our population growth is due to immigration, which combines with births to overtake the death rate. The American birth rate alone, if it continues at the level of the past few years, would lead to population contraction.
I agree that a decreasing populations has its benefits, from many different perspectives.
From an employment standpoint, employers and bully bosses are going to have to eventually abandon their thinking that there's a thick stack of applications sitting around for every job available, which they use to intimidate their employees. It won't go as far as the Black Plague that swept Europe centuries ago, where 1/3rd of the population perished, and for one generation there were no lower classes. Imagine how humbled the employers were back then!
More housing choices will also be a plus. Those crammed into one bedroom apartments can then move into larger quarters, for the same price, and with the extra space it may even tempt some to have another child.
And, finally, the environment can hopefully do some recovering and healing.
And, yes, it wouldn't surprise me, in some of these low fertility countries, to go on some demoliton sprees and turn some of this land back to nature!
Even with declinig poplation new computers and robot replacing workers that are costing more andmore will not mean a shortage i production. japan for insatnce has factories automated almost toally that run 24 hours a day with not even having to providfe lighting enrgy use now. The need i human s will be more and more service and hgih techn ol;ogy going forward not less. humans are less and less needed i numbers to produce products and service afterwards is where human gains are plus design but een that takes less humans.
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