patrick.net

Interesting

Population of the world has increased from about 1.5 billion 100 years ago to over 7 billion now. So if we slow down that would be okay.

One problem though. All of our economic thinking and models are based on a rapidly growing population. We have no clue what works when populations are just steady, which we might presume will one day be the norm.

marcus says

We have no clue what works when populations are just steady, which we might presume will one day be the norm.

more people do not necessarily make more wealth accretion.

Though more people do mean more economically effective people, as long as the investment in human capital development scales up with population.

The dirty secret of this economy is that we all consume much less wealth than we all can produce.

Other than food & fuel, which obviously are not durable goods, wealth is really only consumed via wear & tear, destroyed in a casualty loss (accident/act of god).

But the economy becomes unbalanced when there are more takers than makers.

The Republican analysis is pretty one-sided, pointing at welfare cases as the unproductive parasites, when the reality is two-sided, there's also the top 10% who consume much more than they produce.

The top 10% take over 30% of the AGI, and much more of the wealth since they own 90% of everything.

This is their economy and we're just allowed to live in it.

Until the masses finally rise up & lop off their pretty little heads.

But as for population, growth is still baked into the cake. "Birth rate" is deceptive since there is a MASSIVE birthing-age population forming now, the baby boom echo.

which as you can see peaked in 1991, 21 years ago, and births rose from there, too, so there's gonna be a lot of new parents this decade and next!

No ghost towns here. Unlike Japan, which WILL be actually depopulating over this century. I still don't know what that means for them. I think it's good, though, overall.

I actually have a spreadsheet of US births that I refer to, to look at the future.

The number of age 26-35 people now is 36M, up ~10% from the demographic hole of 2006.

This will rise to ~40M by 2020 and stay at that level through 2033, and then keep rising unless the birth rate really falls off from now.

This doesn't count immigration, btw.

Lol, the men are not manning up.. I know so many men getting kicked out of their homes and denied access to their children, I seen no reason to man up either. Lots of my old girlfriends are now single mothers.

They'll need all those small apartments for all the single people.

It's also called female empowerment, or feminism.

Japan is leading the way in this regard, but so is the U.K., so is the U.S.

You'll find that where feminism is more rampant, the nation's debt is also quite the same.

everything says

You'll find that where feminism is more rampant, the nation's debt is also quite the same.

You're right - women should stay in bad relationships merely to maintain the "ideal" nuclear family. And they should stop attempting to be equal to men, because they're obviously not. A woman without a man is like a fish without a bycicle.

Don't worry about the birthrate; Hurricane Sandy knocked out power to the entire eastern US recently and in 9 months there will be a jump in the birth rate.

You're welcome.

APOCALYPSEFUCK is Shostakovich says

What is with these kids?

Maybe they use birth control, since that's way better than adding yet another mouth into an already overcrowded world.

Seems to me that we are already grossly overpopulated:

That's kind of the problem, women like bad boys, good looking bad boys, bad boys with hair, muscles, etc. -- until they don't. They change their mind allot, see. They also like the men with the money. Other countries laugh at our divorce rate.

elliemae says

everything says

You'll find that where feminism is more rampant, the nation's debt is also quite the same.

You're right - women should stay in bad relationships merely to maintain the "ideal" nuclear family. And they should stop attempting to be equal to men, because they're obviously not. A woman without a man is like a fish without a bycicle.

Don't worry about the birthrate; Hurricane Sandy knocked out power to the entire eastern US recently and in 9 months there will be a jump in the birth rate.

You're welcome.

“We’ve been assuming that when the baby-boomer population gets most expensive, that there are going to be immigrants and their children who are going to be paying into [programs for the elderly], but in the wake of what’s happened in the last five years, we have to reexamine those assumptions,” he said. “When you think of things like the solvency of Social Security, for example . . . relatively small increases in the dependency ratio can have a huge effect.”

The solution is stop running Social Security as a Ponzi scheme. You should get out of the system exactly what you put in, no more and no less. Any growth should be due only to the return on the investment earned.

To require ever increasing future generations to pay for existing members is the very definition of Ponzi scheme.

John Bailo says

U.S. birth rate plummets to its lowest level since 1920

Best news I've heard in a long time. Fewer people competing for what jobs remain. Few people competing for housing. Instead of living in microapartments, we can now have real houses and enough space to fart without blowing someone over.

Bellingham Bill says

I actually have a spreadsheet of US births that I refer to, to look at the future.

The number of age 26-35 people now is 36M, up ~10% from the demographic hole of 2006.

This will rise to ~40M by 2020 and stay at that level through 2033, and then keep rising unless the birth rate really falls off from now.

This doesn't count immigration, btw.

Doesn't count emmigration either.

everything says

Lol, the men are not manning up.. I know so many men getting kicked out of their homes and denied access to their children, I seen no reason to man up either. Lots of my old girlfriends are now single mothers.

elliemae says

women should stay in bad relationships merely to maintain the "ideal" nuclear

Women shouldn't reproduce with men who are abusive or rotten. That kind of behavior is hereditary.

However, I don't think that "men are bad" can explain that 38% of mothers are single. 38% of men are not that bad. And men today are not way the hell worse than men of a 100 or a 1000 years ago. If anything, modern men are way the hell better.

So there has to be some other reasons why a large percentage of mothers are single. And it's not teen pregnancy as those rates have gone done with the availability of contraception and abortion. The average age of a woman having her first child has increased dramatically.

The typical single mother is a thirty-something who chooses to have a baby before her biological clock runs out and her only choices are wait and hope to marry, have a child first and then continue looking for a husband, or just go it alone. Instinct persuades most women to have a child even without a committed mate.

In other words, it's not abuse that has caused the rise of single motherhood. It's the shift from long-term relationships to short-term ones. For various reasons including birth control, changing social attitudes, and the paradox of choice, we have become a society in which relationships are short-term and disposable.

Whether or not this is a good thing is a matter of opinion. That it has happened is a matter of fact. And quite frankly, it doesn't matter if it's good or bad, because it's irreversible at this point. Best that we just acknowledge the new reality and deal with it.

Dan8267 says

To require ever increasing future generations to pay for existing members is the very definition of Ponzi scheme.

Where do you think "Any growth should be due only to the return on the investment earned." comes from?

It's all the same.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=djd

shows we've had tremendous "growth" in the economy -- that's per-worker real GDP.

Social security has zero problems going forward.

Its political problem is getting the top 10% of the country to pay off (over the next ~20 years) SSA'a $2.6T in treasuries SSA has been given in return for all the FICA overcontributions, 1989-2009.

$2.6T over 20 years is a $130B/yr tax hit! We need the return of the Clinton tax rates on the top 10% to cover JUST that, let alone the additional taxation we need to reduce the $1T primary deficit.

The bottom line here is that this nation needs a 30-40% tax to GDP burden, not the 26% we're enjoying now.

We just can't soak the rich, it's true that if we taxed them at twice the burdens they pay now, we'd only get $800B more, leaving $500B or more still of deficit, plus all the rising costs of the baby boomers hitting retirement, which is only going to peak in 2022 and remain high for a very long time after.

Bellingham Bill says

Where do you think "Any growth should be due only to the return on the investment earned." comes from?

As opposed to getting more out of the system by taking it from someone else. Zero sum games are bad.

This is the middle class silently voicing their protest against high tax rate.

I am doing my part.

It's because people are finally figuring out how annoying kids are.

I still fail to see any benefit of having kids.

Would you start a family while the Titanic was sinking into icy, cold waters?

zzyzzx says

Would you start a family while the Titanic was sinking into icy, cold waters?

I would try to make babies like crazy, to the tunes of the band that played on, if I was not on one of those lifeboats. LOL!

zzyzzx says

It's because people are finally figuring out how annoying kids are.

Nah that is just modern day kids. Where they do nothing till at least 18 or beyond and you spend your time shuttling them from activity to activity.

Back then you had kids, they worked/helped with the family and were productive members of society from a very young age and when you got old, you could live with them.