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We know exactly the maximum number of people who can enter the workforce 21 years from now: they have already been born.
Absent net immigration, in 21 years, there will not be enough live human beings inside the USA in the workforce to do the work.
the work that needs to be done will be a lot different in 21 years than it is now so this isn't true.
addtionally if there are less people that means less work that needs doing.
Um, yeah, well.. I think the last two months have demonstrated that what happens in other countries can quickly overwhelm, kill and crush what is happening in our country. If you are in doubt, ask health care workers, the 30 million people looking for unemployment benefits and the families of 100,000 USA covid-19 fatalities.
I don't disagree with anything you say above, of course, but my comment was in response to your observation that:
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I think collectively we just know, perhaps subconsciously even, that the majority of us (or our kids), will live with a lower standard of living than what we have now or what our parents and grandparents had.
Perhaps we are thinking about different time horizons. Certainly, for the next several years, our standard of living as measured by GNP, by GNP per capita, by GNP per capita PPP, and by other measures, will be lower than it would have been absent the pandemic -- but not lower compared to the standard of living our parents or grandparents had. My personal guess is by 2027, we'll be firmly back in very strong economy. The wildcard of course is paying for the $ Trillions Congress has allocated and how that occurs. I don't think anyone has a handle on that yet - and you might be right that the economic actions taken by our government in light of the pandemic may push our future standard of living down below that of our parents. I find some solace knowing the future hasn't been written yet, and forecasting it accurately is quite difficult.
I don't know your age bracket - but if you're as old as I am (early 60s) you might remember many learned scholars proclaiming that the standard of living of the late 1960s was as good as it was going to get - ever. Remember 1968's "The Population Bomb" by acclaimed Stanford Biologist Paul Ehrlich? Ehrlich famously stated in his book that"in the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon today." Ehrlich was Professor of Population Studies of the Department of Biology at Stanford, and president of Stanford's Center for Conservation Biology.
Here's an image of a newspaper clipping from 1967 - take a look:
I know, I know; it is easy to find predictions from 50, 40, 30... even 20 years ago that now look silly.
That point of the above forecasts that turned out to be, ahem, inaccurate is it is exceedingly difficult to forecast the future with accuracy.
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Originally Posted by flyingsaucermom
Quality of life won't necessarily show up in "economic data". But I encourage you to read RJ312's response to understand what young, fertile people are up against when they think about finding a mate and reproducing.
I have. Are you a millennial? Can you elaborate on the issue of finding a mate & reproducing? I'm in my 60s and very far removed from the issue. I would have thought that with modern technology & dating apps, some barriers would be removed. Can you educate me?
We don't need any more damn people in this country or the world. What we need is not more people or immigration, what we need is to abolish this deranged economic model of infinite GDP growth and infinite debt expansion
Why not just 1 billion population in the US?
1 billion people consuming an extravagant Western lifestyle?
Already way too many humans. At 7 billion and growing every day, I think we've sufficiently complied with "go forth and multiply and take dominion over the earth". Time to have fewer people. Economic systems will just have to adapt.
The global economic system requires more people in order to keep it going.
How that is any different from a glorified ponzi scheme I sure would like to know...
As a Millennial this doesn't surprise me in the least. I'm in my early 30's and most people I know are only just starting to get married ... assuming they are even able to find someone that wants to get married. Kids? Yeah, no. I only have one friend in my social circle with more than two kids. A few with two, a few with one, and a whole bunch with none. Having a child is expensive, having two or more kids is more expensive ... and it's even more expensive in a high COL place like Long Island. It costs an average of $233,000 to raise a child from birth to 17 and that doesn't factor in the cost of college tuition (which many parents pay at least part of nowadays) or the reality that kids these days tend to live at home well into their 20s and beyond. As I've said previously on this forum, I am open to marriage but I'm not too keen on kids.
That said, maybe this declining birth rate is a good thing, the reality is that we are headed towards a post-jobs world. Less mouths to feed and less jobs to provide are both good things in the world to come.
Yep. With automation a threat to jobs worldwide, this is why we do not need more people.
As it is, we already can't provide a sufficient living to the vast majority of the world's people NOW!
What good does it do to have a good economy when you are destroying the planet? You cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet. One issue that I agree with the global elites is that there are way too many people. I disagree with their evil ideas to fix it, but their overall premise is correct. United States birthrates falling is a good thing!
QFT +10000.
We are already wiping out the rainforests and wildlife all over the world currently.
Last edited by Lycanmaster; 05-20-2020 at 05:31 PM..
The economic consequence 21 years from now in 2041 will be severe. Every credible econometric model of the US economy shows population growth as a principle driver of future economic growth.
In many senses, this decline is associated with the incredibly strong economy we've enjoyed over the past several years - economic opportunity for women has resulted in their personal decisions to work and defer/decline to procreated.
More and more, it is clear the USA needs a policy of encouraging immigration of fertile women who are of childbearing age.
The last thing this is is very troubling, as the last thing we need is an ever increasing population.
The global economic system requires more people in order to keep it going.
How that is any different from a glorified ponzi scheme I sure would like to know...
I think you're expressing this wrong. The system loses people at a steady rate and needs replacement of some minimum amount to keep going. That doesn't necessarily translate to "needs an increasing amount of people to run," which is the essential model of a ponzi scheme.
We need to set our sights on global population decrease, but any plan with less than a 100-year timeline is wishful thinking (or wishing for a massive depopulation event). There are those (some here on C-D) who rail for population decrease as the solution to everything... which, in the long view, it is. But in the view of current lifespans, it's a goal that brings benefits, not a solution to today's problems.
1 billion people consuming an extravagant Western lifestyle?
Clean air/water is so overrated anyway
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Originally Posted by Lycanmaster
The global economic system requires more people in order to keep it going.
How that is any different from a glorified ponzi scheme I sure would like to know...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lycanmaster
Yep. With automation a threat to jobs worldwide, this is why we do not need more people.
As it is, we already can't provide a sufficient living to the vast majority of the world's people NOW!
You make some great points! Contrary to what most people believe, the world's population is going to not only stop growing, but start declining. The glorified ponzi sceme of the "everything bubble" includes population. It has to as it is unsustainable.
The real ratio that matters here is across the child-rearing ages (including social acceptance) of perhaps 18-45. I can't find a convenient summary and I'll be arsed if I'll sit here and do a bunch of calculations, but yes, males have a predominance across that range.
I'll sit back down now.
Table B01001
I added up ages 18-44:
Male: 59,371,721
Female: 58,127,756
M/F = 1.021
(M-F)/M = 0.0210
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