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400 million is hardly too many people. The United States has one of the lowest average population densities in the world. New York City, the most populated city in America, is only 19th in the world by population and 13th in density.
The problem America has is that the county is so big and cities are so far apart, it's expensive to connect them, and as a country that prides itself on low taxes connecting them takes some ingenuity. The problems have more to do with societal norms rather than simply population numbers.
..."400 million is hardly too many people"
Hey Mate ! Are you okay ?
Should I "take" your hand and walk you around some of the populated centers in the North East ? Have you visited the newly created Chinatowns there ? There are place here in Queens that have sidewalks bending from all the newly arrived "gifts" from Asia. Yeah, country is big but the people want to be where the Jobs and infrastructure is. ....please don't show me Asia as an example here, been there and lived on most continents. In fact, overcrowding here is comparable already to the worst of Asia and it keeps flooding due to friendly immigration laws.
The fundamental flaw with your statement is it doesn't take into account the amount of consumption of each American, compared to people in other parts of the World. For instance 1 billion Chinese, living in China is far less of an impact on our Earth's resources than say 400 Million Americans. We consumer far more per capita as a nation.
For instance 1 billion Chinese, living in China is far less of an impact on our Earth's resources than say 400 Million Americans. We consumer far more per capita as a nation.
Oh, you are so wrong !
I will take a day in American "hell" than a lifetime in Chinese "paradise". Mate, perhaps you are ignorant or just read to much anti-American internet. I have been in China few times, its a hell on Earth - take my word for it. Chinese and most of SE Asians are the most serious offenders of nature / Earth than any other nation put together. Pollution, waste of resources, disregard for sanitary conditions is a norm. Dumping of toxins into rivers is a norm. Poultry, meat, vegetable polluted and brought to market with no regard to human / animal life. As far as Chinese people are concerned, they are the most ostentatious, ignorant and ambitious human beings on the planet. If they acquire any wealth they are the first to indulge in all the trinkets, cars, foods that you can name. Basically, Americans created a paradise here when it comes to nature, parks, organic food, and pollution controls compared to them. No wonder, most Chinese will want to have a neat retirement in the States. Just take your head out of the sand and take a stroll in any major metropolitan center to see how many of them are taking advantage of the "bad" America.
Even more puzzling to me is why people continue to have babies even as they struggle to make ends meet and there are no jobs in sight. Not just the people that can't make ends meet but the comfortable people who think they'll just send their kids off to college and like magic, they'll land jobs.
Part of the problem is how some of these social programs such as Food Stamps and Welfare. are structured in such a way that provides incentives for recipients to have more kids. The more kids one has, the more subsidies they receive. A more effective approach would be to penalize these recipients for each additional kid they have above one.
For instance 1 billion Chinese, living in China is far less of an impact on our Earth's resources than say 400 Million Americans. We consumer far more per capita as a nation.
Oh, you are so wrong !
I will take a day in American "hell" than a lifetime in Chinese "paradise". Mate, perhaps you are ignorant or just read to much anti-American internet. I have been in China few times, its a hell on Earth - take my word for it. Chinese and most of SE Asians are the most serious offenders of nature / Earth than any other nation put together. Pollution, waste of resources, disregard for sanitary conditions is a norm. Dumping of toxins into rivers is a norm. Poultry, meat, vegetable polluted and brought to market with no regard to human / animal life. As far as Chinese people are concerned, they are the most ostentatious, ignorant and ambitious human beings on the planet. If they acquire any wealth they are the first to indulge in all the trinkets, cars, foods that you can name. Basically, Americans created a paradise here when it comes to nature, parks, organic food, and pollution controls compared to them. No wonder, most Chinese will want to have a neat retirement in the States. Just take your head out of the sand and take a stroll in any major metropolitan center to see how many of them are taking advantage of the "bad" America.
I have another aspect that can be viewed as being ironic given our country's history, but I'll wait to see if it will be mentioned.
Interesting that there hasn't been any mention of immigration going back to post Civil War times and looking at population issues that Europe(or parts of) are having or how that immigration impacted other groups in economic terms. This overpopulation topic in regards to the US could go way back, if you think about it.
Here is a theory and rationalization by English economist, Thomas Robert Malthus, on overpopulation. Population Growth: Malthus
One thing that struck me is this "Moral restraint, according to Malthus, was the only possible way to avoid the brutal forces of misery and vice." I agree that there must be a way to halt population growth and remove the population. People need to learn how to stop making more babies. As horrible as it may sound, I volunteer to never spread my seed because I believe I shouldn't even be born to irresponsible and impulsive parents. Parents who believe that if they want to start a family, they will, without much consideration with respect to their socio-economic conditions. My parents should have dealt with their own problems before starting a 4 children family, which is now very disorganized and unhealthy. The natural population check called diseases are being rendered useless by medical advances. As population increase, likelihood of fatal disease outbreak increases thus lowering the population until it stabilizes. On the other end, if the population is low, fatal diseases will not happen.
Wasn't this essentially discussed in a recent thread ?
I am firmly in the camp of population control and I don't have any moral answers on how to achieve it.
I have a relative by a first marriage that posted on FB that now that her and her childs father had married, they wanted another child. Get this, she had to save up for the $25 or $50 dollars that it took to have her IUD removed at the local health department. She and her friends got really indignant when some saner people took her to task and pointed out the stupidity of her thinking......she is now pregnant and will deliver the child courtesy of Medicaid, I guess.
Now, if 1.3 Billion Chinese can turn China into "Hell", Just imagine America with 1.3 Billion Americans. I rest my case.
Perhaps, it would be better for you to restructure your question and ask how much of polluting hydrocarbons and other polluting substances go into the atmosphere per capita in the US versus China.
Easy to play with statistics and come to comfortable conclusions. The "per/capita" is quite misleading. Overall, Chinese population are quite poor and with most population residing in isolated villages without electricity, gas or motor vehicles. However, the current dynamics and economic vectors are pointing to a terrific increase in wealth of its citizens and thus a cause of concern when Chinese will be able to afford things that average Americans takes for granted.
The statistics points only toward oil which is mostly used for powering vehicles and some power plants. It should be pointed-out that Chinese burn enormous quantities of dirty fossil fuels such as unrefined coal, wood and other materials that threatens that part of the world. .... we do not need to see what US would do if it had 1.3 Bl. people - its hypothetical. US has strict emission controls are not even being scratched at this moment by the Chinese. In fact, oil price is kept stable by Chinese govt. subsidies in order to fuel its growth and favor its advantage in producing short-lived, polluting junk that for most part will end-up clogging US dumps.
if we had some kind of population control mechanism - what would it be, and how would it be enforced?
For starters, we could take away the built in incentives that social programs like food stamps and public housing provide to have more kids. The more kids you have, the more food stamp money one gets and the lower the rent they pay. Another idea, however unpopular it may be is to eliminate the child tax credit or at least make it a flat credit regardless of the number of kids one has(ie. the family with one kid gets the same credit as the family with 4 kids).
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