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So our entire world is a giant Ponzi scheme? The next time I hear someone say “ boy I love sitting in an hour of traffic” or “ I love looking out my bedroom window and right into my neighbors living room” or “ I wish the lines at Disneyland were even longer” will all be the first time I hear those things.
I don’t agree that we need an ever increasing population. It’s simply not sustainable.
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.
So what happens? the boogie man gets us?
So the economy tanks? Big deal. We will get through it. Better long term to have less people and get away from an economy that depends on Wyoming eventually having the population of 40 million people. I’m not advocating for greatly reducing our population but if we can hold steady to somewhere around where we are now that would be great.
At many companies that I worked for. There are 2 major groups, you have the gen X and older folks. This group owns houses and have children. The other group the millennials and younger, while many of these folks are hitting their mid 30s few have houses and even fewer have children. Only a few are married and most sees marriage as a detriment. I have a younger cousin who is 39 now and has been with his gf for over 10 years and act like couples but they aren't married. Another cousin is 42, she also has not married. They are the closest to getting married. But the younger relatives that are under 35, none of them are married and none have any children. So unless they start popping them, the family will have problems with the family tree and lines will be broken if some of the elder males do not conceive.
Immigration is cheaper. Raising children costs a lot of money - not just from parents but from society. Most human beings will not be a net economic contributor before the age of twenty, and those who go to college will take several years beyond that. But adult immigrants have already been raised.
Immigration is also significantly selective. Many immigrants are selected for their skills (education, experience, etc.). This does not happen with children, where you get the entire unskewed spectrum of human potential.
There is no rational downside to immigration in this regard (there are plenty of irrational ones, of course).
I think you're absolutely right. It's an important point to make -- we need immigrants. Not just ANY immigrants, but as the wealthiest nation in the world and arguably the most desirable, we have the opportunity to snatch skilled workers and people with high potential from other developing countries to make up for any "birth deficit" here. European countries also have that ability, of course, but we're all going to need that because no country including the U.S. is at replacement level anymore. Last I heard the U.S. was closest at 2.0 but replacement is 2.1, I could be wrong on my figures, but it doesn't much matter -- we're trending toward Europe levels. I think Japan was 1.4 or was that Italy? One of those countries is very low.
America was built on immigration and I think it's a great thing, to the extent that it's controlled we can remain a country of the best and the brightest. Except many of the morons unfortunately born here, who have citizenship regardless of their uselessness, but there's little we can do about that.
Rather than destroy our culture by having foreigners having more children, we should encourage and incentivize our own citizens to have more children.
How would we do that? PSA propaganda announcements that the government wants you to have more kids? I don't think we need to brainwash people like a reverse of China's one child policy.
Adults who chose not to have children have already made their decision. People already get big tax breaks from having kids. Should we give more handouts for more kids? Then when the economy goes south like now or 2008, more people on the welfare rolls.
Thanks I read it. So essentially the only issue that WSJ had was we need younger people with jobs so they can support all the retired people on social security. How about we raise the minimum age to 70 for SS and stop sending money to people who have say 100,000 or more a year in other pensions or other income? Then we can stop pretending that people are actually funding their retirement through social security, when its really a ponzi scheme where young people are paying for older peoples retirement.
And the talk has been automation will take away lots of low skilled and even higher skilled jobs. We probably will not have enough jobs for all the people wanting to work with the current amount of kids being born. Seems like a horrible idea to encourage bringing even more kids into the world.
At many companies that I worked for. There are 2 major groups, you have the gen X and older folks. This group owns houses and have children. The other group the millennials and younger, while many of these folks are hitting their mid 30s few have houses and even fewer have children.
The house in California I grew up in cost my parents about $30k in the early 70's. My dad made a middle class income at the time of about 20K a year. My mom did not work. The house payment was about $225 a month. My next door neighbor was a machinist and made similar money and was also middle class.
The house today is about $900,000. Average middle class and working class people are not buying these houses today. So of course the younger generation is having a harder time buying a house and settling down.
Sooo.... you actually believe that who occupies the White House has an impact on pregnancy in Sioux Falls SD, Meridian ID, Overland Park KS, Yonkers NY, Boca Raton FL, Chattanooga TN or Bangor, ME?
Seriously?
Or is your post just an attempt at eliciting a political argument on the web?
I believe it. When people are happy they make more babies, when things are constantly in turmoil because of created crises to distract from the last one and they don’t see things getting better, they don’t.
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