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Old 02-15-2013, 04:12 PM
 
20,629 posts, read 19,292,640 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jimhcom View Post
If you would like a definition of idiot, it is someone who asks if thirst is a demand for water.
Oh so then tell me how simple it is in an economic model which includes buying power. For example a slave is paid with subsistence and creates a surplus. Suppose the slave "demands" bottled water. Suppose even after he has it there is still a physical surplus.

Is that demand?

Lets see who the idiot really is. Lets see who thought out their demand model.
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Old 02-15-2013, 05:39 PM
 
Location: San Diego California
6,795 posts, read 7,274,103 times
Reputation: 5194
Quote:
Originally Posted by gwynedd1 View Post
Oh so then tell me how simple it is in an economic model which includes buying power. For example a slave is paid with subsistence and creates a surplus. Suppose the slave "demands" bottled water. Suppose even after he has it there is still a physical surplus.

Is that demand?

Lets see who the idiot really is. Lets see who thought out their demand model.
Suppose the slave demands you grab your ankles? Would you be smiling as he has his way with you?
Now there's a "demand Model".
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Old 02-15-2013, 06:04 PM
 
20,629 posts, read 19,292,640 times
Reputation: 8229
Quote:
Originally Posted by jimhcom View Post
Suppose the slave demands you grab your ankles? Would you be smiling as he has his way with you?
Now there's a "demand Model".

I suppose you can't supply answer, nor can you supply real wit.
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Old 02-15-2013, 07:44 PM
 
621 posts, read 656,691 times
Reputation: 265
Quote:
Originally Posted by MrRational View Post
Relative to the work output? To demand?
Yes. There is no doubt we had more workers available than production needed.
Before the great depression there weren't to many workers. After the great depression there weren't too many workers. So during the great depression the problem was not the number of workers the problem was lack of demand for production.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MrRational View Post

You're moving the goal posts again.
---
See above


Quote:
Originally Posted by MrRational View Post

It took the US sixty years (including the depression and WW2) for more than a 100%
increase in our population: 123 Million to 226 Million (1920 - 1980).
But it took the US only forty years (another 40%) to increase to 309 Million (1970- 2010).

That's too many too fast... especially at a time when our industrial capacity...
and particularly our need for low/no skilled labor was dropping precipitously.
Adding insult to injury... the greatest population increases came from the least able.

The US at up to 200 or 225 Million will work fine.
The sooner we can get back to that the better.
100%/60= 1.667% a year.


40%/40= 1% a year.


Someone has difficulty with simple math. The rate of growth in % was slower when you were saying to many to fast.


What are you personally prepared to do about your perception that the US is overpopulated? Reduce the overpopulation by eliminating yourself from the gene pool?


Demand for labor Vs. reducing the population. Mr. Rational, unless you are willing to reduce the overpopulation by leaving your self or ending your life then your argument is not very rational. On the other had increasing the demand for labor is far less disruptive to the status quo.
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Old 02-15-2013, 08:01 PM
 
Location: The Triad
34,090 posts, read 82,726,620 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pie_row View Post
What are you personally prepared to do about your perception that the US is overpopulated?
Is that what the discussion is supposed to be about?
OK I'll bite. I'll keep holding up the mirror to what our reality is.

Pick your poison:
increasing demand for labor or reducing the population.

The last thing we need to do is re-establish those low/no skill labor jobs.
In twenty years we'll be looking for more people again.
And it's better to keep the people doing those jobs employed... elsewhere.

But we also don't need more high(e)r skilled labor.
eg: I'd much prefer a US with one lawyer per 1000 vs one per 265.

In any case, the population largely IS reducing... just not fast enough.
The time to have been more aggressive about it was 40 years ago with ZPG.

We're paying for that now... being like a snake that ate a dog.
That big post boom 2nd population wave is working it's way through the digestive tract.

The quandary... is in getting through the next 20 years or so.
Well, getting through without a revolution that is.
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Old 02-15-2013, 08:28 PM
 
20,629 posts, read 19,292,640 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MrRational View Post
Is that what the discussion is supposed to be about?
OK I'll bite. I'll keep holding up the mirror to what our reality is.

Pick your poison:
increasing demand for labor or reducing the population.

Reducing population reduces the "demand". Not sure why people think that all people are not consumers and that all an immigrant can do is take a job while magically not consuming, but there it is.


Quote:
The last thing we need to do is re-establish those low/no skill labor jobs.
In twenty years we'll be looking for more people again.
And it's better to keep the people doing those jobs employed... elsewhere.
Agree with that.

Quote:
But we also don't need more high(e)r skilled labor.
eg: I'd much prefer a US with one lawyer per 1000 vs one per 265.
An even better goal.

Quote:
In any case, the population largely IS reducing... just not fast enough.
The time to have been more aggressive about it was 40 years ago with ZPG.
Its reducing plenty fast in Europe, Japan, Russia, North America(yes even Mexico), Australia etc. Tell it to Asia.

Quote:
We're paying for that now... being like a snake that ate a dog.
That big post boom 2nd population wave is working it's way through the digestive tract.
We are not paying for it because of "population" . We are paying for creating a rentier society as if we would somehow not ruin ourselves by becoming the British Empire by doing the exactly the same thing.

Quote:
The quandary... is in getting through the next 20 years or so.
Well, getting through without a revolution that is.
Getting through financial crooks on Wall Street....
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Old 02-15-2013, 08:34 PM
 
Location: The Triad
34,090 posts, read 82,726,620 times
Reputation: 43659
Quote:
Originally Posted by gwynedd1 View Post
Its reducing plenty fast in Europe, Japan, Russia, North America (yes even Mexico), Australia etc.
Tell it to Asia.
I'm really not addressing the rest of the world in any of my comments. Just the US.

Quote:
We are not paying for it because of "population" . We are paying for creating a rentier society..
Not really sure what you're talking about here, but...
if it's about the social/economic nature of the people who are continuing to reproduce
at the higher levels... then yeah, that absolutely needs to be remedied. Post haste.

video about birth rate trends (raw numbers are still the issue)
http://www.upworthy.com/a-3-minute-t...im-not-kidding
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Old 02-15-2013, 08:40 PM
 
134 posts, read 195,316 times
Reputation: 127
I think that rather than all of our problems being caused by overpopulation, as some posters are suggesting, the majority of our economic problems are caused by economic liberalization. I don't have an opinion on the general, centuries-long and worldwide progress of economic liberalization, but I think that many of our current problems are really just frictional issues as we have moved from local economies in feudal states and unorganized political entities to global markets in modern nation-states.

A huge number of issues that have been talked about here are caused much less by overpopulation of the planet as a whole but instead by globalization. The United States has had its manufacturing base decimated by the outsourcing of much manufacturing to the Third World based on the relative wage advantage that those countries had. Luckily, some businesses have moved beyond such one-dimensional CBA and are beginning to bring manufacturing out of relatively inefficient locations.

The next issue that causes problems that might be confused for overpopulation is the rampant inequality present in some societies. It's easy to say "goodness, we must have too many people on earth" when we see grinding poverty, but the real issue is that all over the globe, capital-intensive industries and an unending drive to make the largest profit possible has created a class of people that were unable to afford their own level of education for their children, who were then less able to be productive members of the economy and were unable to afford their parents' level for their children. This is known to some people as "the cycle of poverty".

In order to counteract these forces, there are certain regulations that must be imposed on any society or economy in order to act in a responsible manner. It's important to protect children from working at a young age so that they have time to get an education and it's important that there is a floor on how low wages can go, so that everyone can afford to live in a dignified manner.

The main reason I feel that overpopulation is not in fact present is that we use almost all of our resources inefficiently. We prefer fossil fuels to any other form of energy, and when fossil fuels begin to run low, we're concerned that rather than there being a fundamental issue with using fossil fuels, there are too many people on the planet. We have abundant cropland, but the majority of that land is being used inefficiently as a result of lacking infrastructure, education, or market forces. We have abundant water, but many of us choose to live in places where our water resources are scant and thus tax the water resources of other places where those resources are better suited. There is certainly enough economic activity to provide everyone on earth with a job, but yet capital is increasingly concentrated away from those who create economic activity, consumers and producers, and towards a small number who largely take that capital out of the economy without putting into the economy an equal or greater amount in return.

There is a relatively simple remedy to an aging workforce, and that is immigration. There are countries on earth with demographics shaped like a mayan pyramid and others shaped like an upended dirigible. anyone can see that it is only logical, not political or irrational, to say that the answer to a demographic crisis is to allow young families to move from countries with poorly developed infrastructure to countries with adequate infrastructure.

Overall, I don't see overpopulation as anything close to being a single issue, but rather that there are a couple dozen issues that can be and should be dealt with as our world population increases. We need to invest in maintaining our water resources, developing our long-term, sustainable energy resources, bringing globalized economic liberty in line with globalized civil liberties, such as democracy and freedom of movement, investing in education and development for those in poverty, and developing a built environment that can equitably support future population increases.

Addendum:
First, 40% over forty years is not as simple as 40%/40=1%, it is in fact the fortieth root of 1.4, subtracting one and multiplying by 100, which comes out to about a 0.85% growth rate per year, whereas 100% over sixty years is about 1.16%. I have no issue with the point, just a correction on the math.

Second, every additional citizen is a consumer, with or without a job, as gwynedd1 noted. Even with capital intensive industries, people are still employed based on the amount that that is needed to be produced, just frequently in smaller numbers than labor intensive industries. The boom in employment in technological industries goes to show that even with declines in employment in traditional industries such as manufacturing and agriculture, innovation creates jobs.

Thirdly, there seems to be a lot of concern over birthrates among uneducated versus educated people. I'd like to direct them to this article.

Let's Not Panic Over Women With More Education Having Fewer Kids
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Old 02-15-2013, 08:48 PM
 
Location: The Triad
34,090 posts, read 82,726,620 times
Reputation: 43659
Quote:
Originally Posted by Asderfut View Post
I think that rather than all of our problems being caused by overpopulation, as some posters are suggesting, the majority of our economic problems are caused by economic liberalization.
The idea of "overpopulation" is the short hand term. Not the end of the discussion.

Though resources are absolutely a part of it... the far larger issue is that the lack of meaningful
work (challenging AND rewarding) for the (30-40%?) portion of the population at the lower end...
puts too large a social support burden on the rest of us to do so much for so many.

Quote:
The United States has had its manufacturing base decimated by the outsourcing of much manufacturing to the Third World based on the relative wage advantage that those countries had.
That's what it looks like. But it's so ONLY because at the same time that these low/no skill jobs were being provided to "3rd world nations" for good and valid reasons by the way... we continued to produce new waves of our own low/no skilled people for whom there were no jobs anymore.

We did this to ourselves.

---
You have a LOT of other good and interesting points here that I just deleted through.
Maybe another time.
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Old 02-15-2013, 09:22 PM
 
20,629 posts, read 19,292,640 times
Reputation: 8229
Quote:
Originally Posted by MrRational View Post
I'm really not addressing the rest of the world in any of my comments. Just the US.

Not really sure what you're talking about here, but...
if it's about the social/economic nature of the people who are continuing to reproduce
at the higher levels... then yeah, that absolutely needs to be remedied. Post haste.

video about birth rate trends (raw numbers are still the issue)
A 3-Minute, Totally Fascinating Video About Birth Rates. I
So infant mortality is going down which is supposed to prove we are all going to die?

Last edited by gwynedd1; 02-15-2013 at 09:37 PM..
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