Are We Ready for a Looming Decline in World Population? (msn.com) 390
"All over the world, countries are confronting population stagnation and a fertility bust, a dizzying reversal unmatched in recorded history..." reports the New York Times.
There's already been some surprising results: Maternity wards are already shutting down in Italy. Ghost cities are appearing in northeastern China. Universities in South Korea can't find enough students, and in Germany, hundreds of thousands of properties have been razed, with the land turned into parks. Like an avalanche, the demographic forces — pushing toward more deaths than births — seem to be expanding and accelerating. Though some countries continue to see their populations grow, especially in Africa, fertility rates are falling nearly everywhere else. Demographers now predict that by the latter half of the century or possibly earlier, the global population will enter a sustained decline for the first time.
A planet with fewer people could ease pressure on resources, slow the destructive impact of climate change and reduce household burdens for women. But the census announcements this month from China and the United States, which showed the slowest rates of population growth in decades for both countries, also point to hard-to-fathom adjustments. The strain of longer lives and low fertility, leading to fewer workers and more retirees, threatens to upend how societies are organized — around the notion that a surplus of young people will drive economies and help pay for the old. It may also require a reconceptualization of family and nation. Imagine entire regions where everyone is 70 or older. Imagine governments laying out huge bonuses for immigrants and mothers with lots of children. Imagine a gig economy filled with grandparents and Super Bowl ads promoting procreation.
"A paradigm shift is necessary," said Frank Swiaczny, a German demographer who was the chief of population trends and analysis for the United Nations until last year. "Countries need to learn to live with and adapt to decline...." The ramifications and responses have already begun to appear, especially in East Asia and Europe. From Hungary to China, from Sweden to Japan, governments are struggling to balance the demands of a swelling older cohort with the needs of young people whose most intimate decisions about childbearing are being shaped by factors both positive (more work opportunities for women) and negative (persistent gender inequality and high living costs)... As women have gained more access to education and contraception, and as the anxieties associated with having children continue to intensify, more parents are delaying pregnancy and fewer babies are being born. Even in countries long associated with rapid growth, such as India and Mexico, birthrates are falling toward, or are already below, the replacement rate of 2.1 children per family.
The change may take decades, but once it starts, decline (just like growth) spirals exponentially. With fewer births, fewer girls grow up to have children, and if they have smaller families than their parents did — which is happening in dozens of countries — the drop starts to look like a rock thrown off a cliff... Some countries, like the United States, Australia and Canada, where birthrates hover between 1.5 and 2, have blunted the impact with immigrants. But in Eastern Europe, migration out of the region has compounded depopulation, and in large parts of Asia, the "demographic time bomb" that first became a subject of debate a few decades ago has finally gone off...
According to projections by an international team of scientists published last year in The Lancet, 183 countries and territories — out of 195 — will have fertility rates below replacement level by 2100...
The article asks us to imagine a world where now-empty homes become "a common eyesore," noting that in regional towns in Korea, already "it's easy to find schools shut and abandoned, their playgrounds overgrown with weeds, because there are not enough children."
There's already been some surprising results: Maternity wards are already shutting down in Italy. Ghost cities are appearing in northeastern China. Universities in South Korea can't find enough students, and in Germany, hundreds of thousands of properties have been razed, with the land turned into parks. Like an avalanche, the demographic forces — pushing toward more deaths than births — seem to be expanding and accelerating. Though some countries continue to see their populations grow, especially in Africa, fertility rates are falling nearly everywhere else. Demographers now predict that by the latter half of the century or possibly earlier, the global population will enter a sustained decline for the first time.
A planet with fewer people could ease pressure on resources, slow the destructive impact of climate change and reduce household burdens for women. But the census announcements this month from China and the United States, which showed the slowest rates of population growth in decades for both countries, also point to hard-to-fathom adjustments. The strain of longer lives and low fertility, leading to fewer workers and more retirees, threatens to upend how societies are organized — around the notion that a surplus of young people will drive economies and help pay for the old. It may also require a reconceptualization of family and nation. Imagine entire regions where everyone is 70 or older. Imagine governments laying out huge bonuses for immigrants and mothers with lots of children. Imagine a gig economy filled with grandparents and Super Bowl ads promoting procreation.
"A paradigm shift is necessary," said Frank Swiaczny, a German demographer who was the chief of population trends and analysis for the United Nations until last year. "Countries need to learn to live with and adapt to decline...." The ramifications and responses have already begun to appear, especially in East Asia and Europe. From Hungary to China, from Sweden to Japan, governments are struggling to balance the demands of a swelling older cohort with the needs of young people whose most intimate decisions about childbearing are being shaped by factors both positive (more work opportunities for women) and negative (persistent gender inequality and high living costs)... As women have gained more access to education and contraception, and as the anxieties associated with having children continue to intensify, more parents are delaying pregnancy and fewer babies are being born. Even in countries long associated with rapid growth, such as India and Mexico, birthrates are falling toward, or are already below, the replacement rate of 2.1 children per family.
The change may take decades, but once it starts, decline (just like growth) spirals exponentially. With fewer births, fewer girls grow up to have children, and if they have smaller families than their parents did — which is happening in dozens of countries — the drop starts to look like a rock thrown off a cliff... Some countries, like the United States, Australia and Canada, where birthrates hover between 1.5 and 2, have blunted the impact with immigrants. But in Eastern Europe, migration out of the region has compounded depopulation, and in large parts of Asia, the "demographic time bomb" that first became a subject of debate a few decades ago has finally gone off...
According to projections by an international team of scientists published last year in The Lancet, 183 countries and territories — out of 195 — will have fertility rates below replacement level by 2100...
The article asks us to imagine a world where now-empty homes become "a common eyesore," noting that in regional towns in Korea, already "it's easy to find schools shut and abandoned, their playgrounds overgrown with weeds, because there are not enough children."
...or not (Score:4, Insightful)
As I read it, all the declining numbers assume that certain conditions are satisfied - contraceptives and education.
Given an unfortunate resurgance of religion and other extremisms, that is far from certain. And the "slow adoption" curve sees the global population at 14 billion or so in 2100.
Yeah, sorry. Not buying it. It's a prediction on a model with underlying assumptions that in themselves are wishful thinking.
Re:...or not (Score:5, Interesting)
Not a good way to deal with a subject - make a few assumptions without inspecting any evidence - then assume you know can pronounce on it with authority.
Amazingly, the decline in fertility rate is world wide now (except for one region, I'll address that in a bit) with countries of every description - rich, poor, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, non-religious, traditional - have not only had declining fertility rates for many years now, but have almost crossed over into being below replacement rate. This is not dependent on any assumption about contraceptives, or education, or wealth - it is a fact that is in truth hard to adequately explain since it occurred where it was not expected, and where those assumed factors actually made it seem unlikely.
The one area where this has not happened is Africa which still faces population explosion. It is hard to project when this will change since we do not really understand why it happened in South and Central America and throughout Eurasia. But the universality of this pattern, and the fact that Africa has consistently lagged in all measures of societal and economic development, gives reason to assume that it will spread to Africa too eventually.
And the "slow adoption" curve sees the global population at 14 billion or so in 2100.
You are either cherry picking an extreme upper end estimate from somewhere, or are just making stuff up. The central estimates I see are all in the range of 10.9-11.8 billion, about a 50% increase from the current 7.8 billion. And in 2100 the growth rate will be about zero, it is roughly the inflection point for population decline for the entire world. In other words another doubling of world population will never happen. Long before that large regions will have had declining populations for generations.
Re:...or not (Score:5, Informative)
Worth mentioning that the Romans started to also see a population decline when their wealth increased to a certain point.
Re:...or not (Score:5, Insightful)
>This is not dependent on any assumption about contraceptives, or education, or wealth - it is a fact that is in truth hard to adequately explain since it occurred where it was not expected, and where those assumed factors actually made it seem unlikely.
Oh? I believe Hans Rosling showed a consistent trend across cultures, and over a century, that fertility rates correlate very closely witha combination of health care adequate to ensure children reach adulthood, and education on family planning (just the idea that it's possible to choose how many children you have, using any of a wide range of methods, not just contraceptives). I think it's safe to say that the latter is now present anywhere that has internet access, and is thus influenced by Western norms.
So, are we seeing declines in fertility rates in places where children are still likely to die before reaching adulthood?
Contraceptive access certainly helps accelerate that process, often reducing population growth to near-zero in a single generation, but thanks to global environmental saturation with pseudo-estrogens from plastics and birth control, we're really delivering free low-grade contraceptives everywhere, which probably helps things along.
Re:...or not (Score:4)
It is not determined by specific education interventions, but does track declining childhood mortality rates. The problem with using this as the explanation by correlation is that they are both universal secular trends headed in the same direction so of course they will show a correlation whether they are related or not, and there isn't a specific survival rate that causes this to happen. But they are surely causally related.
My point was that the OP's assuming some specific and (he presumed) non-universal factors being "required" for fertility decline, thus making it speculative, was an uninformed guess about the situation.
As I said, the improving societal development in Africa will likely cause the trend to spread there. Child mortality dropped by half there over the last 20 years but fertility decline has not set in yet, and we don't know how to predict exactly when it will. So you aren't contradicting a single thing I said.
Re:...or not (Score:5, Informative)
The one area where this has not happened is Africa which still faces population explosion.
It's happened in Africa too. For example, here is the World Bank's data on birth rates in Sub-Saharan Africa [worldbank.org]. It peaked at about 6.8 births per woman in the 1970s. Since then it has steadily declined. It is now down to 4.6 and shows no sign of slowing down. That's still well above replacement. But the global trend of decreasing birth rates applies to Africa just as much as anywhere else.
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The thing to understand about population growth in Africa is that Africa's population is very young and will have a very low death rate as living standards improve and life expectancy increases. Even with a low birth rate like in countries with shrinking populations, Africa would still see continued population growth for decades. But as it is, the birth rate is also higher. If anyone stupidly worries about population decline, it is strictly going to be a regional development. Africa's young population and h
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If we applies current technology efficiently the Earth could comfortably support around 10 trillion people without environmental or industrially-unsustainable issues.
Um, we don't have nearly enough food or water for that many people especially with existing technology. Are you using nuclear power desalinization to get the water? Also, where is all this land coming from? Are you reclaiming deserts somehow or what. Most land isn't suitable for growing crops. I feel like your 10T number is from the back of an envelope.
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There are places that are depopulating, in many countries. Vermont is paying people to move there, for instance. There are news reports of houses for sale for basically nothing. The question is how is government going to provide services with no tax base. In the US we tax the urban areas, like through telephone added taxes, but I donâ
Trust Lord Krishna (Score:5, Funny)
He has promised, To protect the Good, and to eradicate the Evil, and to reestablish the Righteous religion I will reappear age after age [holy-bhagavad-gita.org].
So he is due any time now ... May be this time He, in His infinite Wisdom, chose the cornona virus. One of his favorite weapons is the Discus that sort of looks like the cross section of the corona virus.
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Isn't there supposed to be a [/sarcasm] at the end of your morsel of wisdom?
And, in true /. pedantry, "cornona" virus might be something, but it's not the "corona" virus...
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I can't decide whether to mod you +1 Funny for lampooning stupidity, or -1 Moron for believing in it.
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Re:...or not (Score:5, Informative)
It's already happened. Look at countries like Bangladesh. Rate went from around 9 (!) to near stable state now, and still falling.
The chances of that being undone seem remote, because it also came with a huge improvement in quality of life that people won't give up, and won't forget. Religion isn't enough to overcome that, at least not in a scale that matters and not permanently.
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It really depends on how much migration is permitted from Africa and some parts of Latin America and the Middle East.
Outside of those places, it's not a prediction.
So, immigration is set to be a massively contentious global issue in the coming decades - even more so than now.
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The data says otherwise [slashdot.org]: world population growth is slowing down, even in India.
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And your next point is? "Ya gotta make babies to upset the ruling class!"? What a cliffhanger.
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> Each person becomes ultra-specialized at a single task
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein
Why is it "looming"? (Score:2, Interesting)
The definitions of "looming" are
appear as a shadowy form, especially one that is large or threatening.
-or-
(of an event regarded as ominous or threatening) seem about to happen
What is threatening about having fewer people on a finite planet? Having 8 billion people is an anomaly, a result of cheap energy and technology. Take away the cheap energy, the whole thing collapses.
It will take as long to wind down as it took to wind up.
And so what? Does anyone think our species is eternal?
Let me guess, everyone is p
Re:Why is it "looming"? (Score:5, Informative)
Long term it's not a big deal to have fewer people. On the scale of a human lifespan or two, it's a pretty big deal, because it shifts the population pretty heavily to older, so you've got much fewer people to actually work relative to how many people need work done. That might cause quite a lot of suffering and potentially rapid collapse, although we might get lucky and outpace people leaving the workforce with automation.
That's pretty much what's looming: starving in your 70s because there's nobody able-bodied enough left to farm. Depends on the exact population curves, of course.
Re:Why is it "looming"? (Score:5, Insightful)
> starving in your 70s because there's nobody able-bodied enough left to farm.
This doesn't matter once the farming robots take over. Robotic farm tractors already exist.
Even South Korea, with the lowest fertility rates, still has 1 child per woman. You need around 2% of people currently as farmers, so 50% children in the next generation is more than enough even without robots.
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In the countries with declining birth rates, most people work in service industries. Food and other basic necessities are provided by a steadily shrinking part of the population due to mechanization and automation. If anybody is going to starve in these countries, it's a resource allocation problem, not a lack of resources or productivity.
Re: Why is it "looming"? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are plenty of 70-year-olds able to drive a tractor.
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But how many want to spend their day doing so?
Re:Why is it "looming"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fortunately, aside from niche "boutique" products, farming is already almost entirely automated. At least in the "developed" world. We've gone from something like 80+% of the population being involved in farming a few centuries ago, to less than 1% today. If people starve, it's not going to be because of a lack of workforce to keep the farms running.
And the COVID lockdowns have gone a long way toward proving that we don't actually need nearly as large a labor force as we have to keep necessary goods and services flowing.
What we lack is a modern economic model that doesn't revolve around perpetual exponential growth. In the last few centuries we've become acclimated to a "grow or die" model of business, and our entire financial sector depends on the idea that, with sufficient diversification, any investment can reliably experience consistent exponential growth (e.g. a 3% increase year after year, indefinitely)
Re:Why is it "looming"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Having 8 billion people is an anomaly, a result of cheap energy and technology.
An interesting point about this is that the existence of 75% of the people on Earth is due to one single industrial process - the Haber Process for nitrogen fixation.
Without synthetic nitrogen the world population would hit a hard ceiling around 1930 at 2 billion people because natural nitrogen fixation is too slow to support more than that. Nitrogen fertilizer made the green revolution possible, and the increase in food and population to current levels. Organic farming is, by the way, dependent on synthetic nitrogen fed to livestock to produce manure.
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I'm amazed at your understatement at leaving out the consequence of this point. We can't sustain this population without fossil fuels but fossil fuel pollution is already killing us. Solar, wind, and nuclear, even if their problems were solved, may not be able to replace this key role of fossil fuels, even if they solve other problems, which they might not, like transportation and sequestering carbon. Even if they can do all that, there's no sign they can in time before our population overshoot results in c
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I think more likely that having 8 billion people is the result of many hundreds of thousands of generations of people breeding faster than they were dying off.
The so-called correlation you claim to have observed about the availability of inexpensive energy correlating to the growth rate of the population is tenuous, and doesn't really hold up against the evidence that the fastest growing countries tend to be *LESS* industrial
Just like after the plague (Score:5, Insightful)
After the multitude of people who died during the years of the plague in Europe, wages rose, rent, and housing, became cheaper, and lives, to an extent, became better.
With a declining birth rate across the world, the same will be seen except automation will take over larger portions of business where feasible. Since people will be making more money, the taxes brought in will help sustain government services for the elderly and others.
And this doesn't take into consideration far less pollution which means cleaner air and water.
A declining population is the best thing to happen on this planet since humans started settling into communities.
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The thing is, with the modern world all things now are based on expected growth.
The increased automation of work is going to put a squeeze on the status quo no matter what. You don't need population growth to perform work that's already being handled by machines.
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You do need consumers, the more the better.
Will we be able to? (Score:2, Insightful)
The article asks us to imagine a world where now-empty homes become "a common eyesore,"
HMOs aside, I think we'll manage.
If the alternative is ever-more non-sustainable consumption then it can only be a good thing.
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Wow, Fox really has got you scared about immigrants, hasn't it?
If you're going to believe people spewing nonsense, why not find nonsense that will make you happy instead of scared?
Looming ... (Score:2)
I await a looming Lottery winning windfall.
Can't wait (Score:5, Insightful)
Life was good with 4 billion people on this planet (Score:5, Insightful)
We'll be fine. It is not a crisis. It is a return to a less overpopulated planet. Before a global decline, we'll see an increase for quite some time anyway, so if you like it crowded, you'll get your wish too.
Once again, they forgot about lifespan extensions! (Score:2)
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Do tell. What is this breakthrough, that is just around the corner? One one may posit unknown breakthroughs in fields that get them regularly - like battery performance - but not in a field that has never ever had one, not even once. The maximum length of human life has not increased at all in human history thus far. The oldest known old people today are not significantly older than the oldest known old people from centuries ago, though there are more of them (but still very few).
What has happened is a comp
Re: Once again, they forgot about lifespan extensi (Score:4, Funny)
More positives than negatives (Score:2, Insightful)
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People talk about like it is some design flaw with particular programs, but the fact is a lower percentage of workers in the population presents a challenge no matter how matter it is managed.
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Is it just me? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or are we getting mixed messages here?
"The world population is expanding! We're doomed!"
"The worlld population is declining! We're doomed!"
Re: Is it just me? (Score:3)
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Climate change denialists love to harp on and increasing population because it's an excuse for them to do nothing. Why bother reduce your carbon footprint, the REAL problem is OTHER people having too many kids? They have been responsible by not reproducing!
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Only if you cannot distinguish concerns from half a century ago with the present. The decline in fertility rates has been in progress for decades, and in the last 20 years it became clear that the world would reach a ceiling by the end of the current century.
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I can see the difference in the concerns. My question is why fifty years ago a trend was seen as a sure path to destruction, and now the exact opposite trend is also being touted as our doom.
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The balance is shifting too (Score:5, Insightful)
The nations that have higher quality of life, stabler governments, more equitable law enforcement and fairly impartial judiciary, good health care etc are the ones that face plummeting birth rates.
The people under authoritarian theocracies, unstable governments, uncontrollable crime, are the ones with population growth, that triggers population explosion.
Building walls will not stop illegal immigration. The people coming over have nothing to lose. They either die a miserable death in some South American hellhole, or die trying to get into USA. What would you choose, were you in their shoes?
Nation building will stop illegal immigration. USA had/has countrywide quotas for legal immigration, and visas allocated to developed countries go unused. My own personal story is an anecdote, but it is exactly what would happen if USA did nation building instead of wall building. Back when I came over in the early 1990s, top graduates from India saw USA as the top place to go to. H1B visa is so coveted, it garnered so much of respect, admiration, even jealousy back home. As the economy of India improved, top grads prefer to stay home. Now a days India exports second or third class engineers to IT companies, Top ones have better jobs and higher quality of living in India. A couple with two IT salaries in India will typically have two cars, a driver, a cook, one sometimes two maids. They take vacations abroad, and have tons and tons of leisure time. USA is not attractive to them anymore.
If USA helped the unstable banana Republics of South America to handle their crime, to enforce some basic security for life and some basic prospects for life home, they wont risk their lives trying to come to America.
It is not the duty of America to build other nations. But it is in its best interests to improve quality of life everywhere, to improve worker safety everywhere, to improve pollution laws and enforcement everywhere. Viruses and pollution do not respect national borders.
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The people coming over have nothing to lose. They either die a miserable death in some South American hellhole, or die trying to get into USA.
Wow, it's not that bad in Central America. People go north for economic opportunity.
So? (Score:3)
The only life form on this planet of which there is no shortage is human beings. Getting population growth under control is a good thing.
Book: Empty Planet (Score:5, Informative)
There is a book on this very topic called Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Planet Decline [penguinrandomhouse.com], by Darrel Bricker and John Ibbitson. One is a journalist, the other is a political scientist.
What they found is very interesting. Even India's birth rate is slowing down.
See the reviews and interviews at: TVO [youtube.com], Wired [wired.com], and CBC [www.cbc.ca].
Oh, and the topic of declining birth rates worldwide has been covered on Slashdot back in Feb [slashdot.org] and June [slashdot.org] 2019.
Not in decline, just slowing growth (Score:2)
This infographic will reveal all (Score:2)
This reveals one of the larger contributors to people not having kids: https://imgur.com/JBEIzCY [imgur.com]
The article asks us to imagine a world where... (Score:3)
... now-empty homes become "a common eyesore." Uh, huh. Not like today, where millions are on the streets while perfectly usable homes sit empty and unaffordable.
I don't see the problem (Score:3)
Re: Handmaids tale was a portend... (Score:5, Interesting)
You conflated two very different things (Score:4, Insightful)
You seem to be saying we don't have an economy based on growth *because you don't want us to*.
It's as if you're unaware that reality exists, entirely apart from your desires. You are not in fact God. Your wish doesn't define reality, my friend.
In reality, the fact is the human population has been booming for as long as there have been humans. Our economy and societies ARE based on this reality. Those facts are not conditioned on "if klipclop doesn't mind".
Take for example the US. The US has promised to $87 TRILLION in social security and Medicare benefits to older people without having the money to do so. That $87 trillion in "unfunded liabilities" can only be paid by younger, working people. We currently have about 70 million such workers who earn enough that they pay more than $0 in income tax.
$87 trillion to be paid. 70 million people who have to pay it.
I bet you can do the math to see how much each working tax payer will have to pay.
More SS panic (Score:5, Insightful)
I bet you can do the math to see how much each working tax payer will have to pay.
Assuming, of course, that the SS trustees have 0% or less than 0% predictive capacity and make no adjustments to the program whatever.
On current data we see that SS can be funded for the next 75 years with a less-than 3% increase in the tax today. However that is not the only option. There is utterly no reason that younger workers need be the only revenue source. A staggering amount wealth has collected in our top corporations and they could more than afford to pay a share. We would have to get by the screams of "socialism" and "wealth distribution" from people who never seem to mind that wealth is being redistributed upwards, but there is no sound economic reason for not doing it.
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A staggering amount wealth has collected in our top corporations and they could more than afford to pay a share.
It hasn't "collected" any more than the value of the property you're living in has "collected" as it increased. The vast majority of that money doesn't actually exist. And I'm not talking about dollars in the federal reserve that aren't actual cash, I mean it's just not even fucking there. Pick any wealthy company you want, then go look up the P/E ratio on its shares. If the number there is anything higher than 1, then that means some of its "wealth" technically isn't even really on paper, it's just what a
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That's pretty cool. At my local QT store, Ms. Gates buys Pall Malls and Mickeys Big Mouths.
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Problem for you is, you're likely one of those masses. So inevitable.
Re: Ponzi schemes and not ponzi schemes (Score:2, Informative)
The fact that social security and Medicare revenues come from payroll taxes levies on people approximately aged 18 to 65 and the outlays are payed to cover a basic income and any medical bills for people aged 65 to whenever is a libertarian talking point?
And the observation that in the 1930s when social security got started and the 1960s when Medicare got started the former group out numbered the latter by almost 5 to 1 whereas now it's 2 to 1 and getting closer to parity as people live longer on one end an
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Arithmetic is a bitch.
Yes, especially the arithmetic you left out.
Social Security taxes have a cap. Back when the program started, Social Security taxes covered the vast majority of income in the US. That has been whittling down as more income inequality results in more income above that cap, and more wealth inequality means more non-payroll income. We're now at the point where income inequality is large enough that less than 50% of income is covered by Social Security taxes. Remove the cap, and suddenly a whole lot of the p
Re: Ponzi schemes and not ponzi schemes (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it is, because it blames Social Security on something, that has nothing to do with Social Security.
Social security works under the assumption that the population is going to continue to grow and that some people won't live into retirement and/or will die early in retirement. Yet the reality we're facing is that people are living longer, and the population isn't growing as fast as it used to. That isn't libertarian ideology; nobody decided to make it that way, it's just a fact.
If you do it via 401k or any other investment scheme, you need enough companies able to pay less to enough workers and suppliers than they make revenue on the products, so they can pay their shareholders.
As long as you have an economy, you'll always have business. As long as you have business, you always have somebody paying out less than what they bring in. That, as far as we can tell, is sustainable indefinitely.
Or we could always just do what we did prior to about 100 years ago or so: You just work til you die. With very few exceptions, even the rich and powerful did that. Being able to retire and not have to work is actually a luxury. If you have any ambitions of retirement at all, you're actually wealthy, whether that wealth is acquired on your own or somebody (or some society) just gave it to you.
Every pension scheme is a wealth redistribution scheme, even the "save money and invest it wisely" one.
You could always buy precious metals if you don't believe in investing, that way you aren't getting screwed by inflation.
But that's a red herring because investing isn't redistribution, redistribution is taking away the equity somebody already has and distributing it to others. By having to explain the distinction to you I take it you don't know anything about accounting, so here's a crash course:
Suppose for example that you buy a house, and 20 years later you sell that house for 10 times what you paid for it. What was redistributed? Nothing was, rather your equity grew. Redistribution occurs when the government takes a tax off of those gains and gives that money to somebody else. Likewise when you buy shares in a company, and suppose that company grows in value by generating more profits; the share price is likely to increase because somebody else values that company, and thus its shares, higher than they were before. If you sell those shares when you retire, the company hasn't paid any money to you unless it has paid any dividends to you.
But before you argue that dividends are redistribution, they're very much not. Going back to the house example, suppose 10 years into it, it was worth 5 times more than you bought it for, but you decide you want to cash in on some of that equity by selling half of your ownership to a would-be roommate. The money you gain from the sale of half of the equity would be a dividend. Because you sold half of the equity 10 years in, you now only get half of the total value of the house when you sell at the 20 year mark. That is exactly what a dividend does when it comes to stocks - when a company pays out dividends, it lowers the company's equity, thus the shares would be worth less later on than they would be if they hadn't issued any dividends at all.
Now before, like a good communist, you argue "but wait, that money was stolen from the workers and redistributed!" no, it wasn't. The workers agreed to perform a service for a given amount, and they were paid exactly that agreed amount. Anything the company earns (or even loses) in that transaction never did belong to the worker, and if it never belonged to them, it can't have been taken to be redistributed.
But again, if that doesn't sit well with your ideology, you can always buy precious metals instead, which tend to appreciate in value (or to be more precise, aren't subject to inflation.)
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Yes, large numbers are large. The fact that large numbers are indeed large doesn't actually say anything about whether or not a program is a good idea.
I bet there's things you spend 20% of your income on. Do you consider those impossible to pay for?
Re: Ponzi schemes and not ponzi schemes (Score:5, Informative)
because we can just collapse most social programs into it
This _never_ happens. One of the difficulties is in discarding bureaucracies, which struggle valiantly to grow even if the original social or legal need for them is long gone.
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This _never_ happens.
That's amazing! I'm really looking forward to getting my free 160 acres of land.
https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/homestead-act
Re: Ponzi schemes and not ponzi schemes (Score:3, Interesting)
Ubi has also never happened. Believe it or not, things can happen that never happened before. Example: moon landing.
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Oh you mean the departments never get shut down, not that the benefits never go away.
Well here's an example of when some bureaucracies were discarded. After the 1st Iraq war, all of the various GIS and mapping departments of each branch of the armed services were shut down and their duties were given to what is now the NGA.
Re: Ponzi schemes and not ponzi schemes (Score:5, Insightful)
> Universal Basic Income is Universal Theft. If fully enforced, it cannot work because it destroys incentive.
No it doesn't destroy incentive, the more you work the more you keep... the incentive remains.
That's why I prefer a UBI to means tested welfare, because means tested welfare actually destroys incentive. You don't get it if you don't work, so why work?
You get a UBI regardless, so the incentive to work remains because everyone wants more, and a UBI ensures that you get more by working and saving.
> No honest person willingly accepts significant unneeded charity
LOL, the wealthiest will take anything they can get in terms of government handouts, grants and releifs.
> and it doesn't even really qualify as charity when donations are made at gunpoint.
A UBI is not charity, it is social security.
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I'm always amazed by this: "Medicare has the lowest administrative costs of any medical insurance organization in this country."
Re: Ponzi schemes and not ponzi schemes (Score:5, Insightful)
a physician working in the UK makes about 40% less than a physician working in the US.
Yep. And in return, they do things like not go a half mill in debt to pay for their degrees.
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There is a gap between US and UK wages in almost all professions:
https://www.emolument.com/care... [emolument.com]
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He's right and Social Security has nothing to do with it. That is exactly how our economy works. It's bad on purpose to make us poor. The population decline is what the billionaires want, and they don't care how that's going to cause us to suffer on the way to the grave, because they reckon that the planet belongs to them.
Re:Handmaids tale was a portend... (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you and irlanthos (1040152) related? Someone's been watching too much TV in their parents' basement.
Re:Immigration? (Score:4, Insightful)
All you anti-immigration folks want to reconsider your position?
Lets look at examples.
Lets see Japan declining population and near zero immigration policies, quality of life exceptional
California high immigration as a population booster, people that actually were born there fleeing, quality of life awful.
Hmmmm somehow I doubt you have thought about this.
Re:Immigration? (Score:4, Informative)
Japan is in big trouble. Not enough people to care for the elderly, not enough young people to keep entire towns viable. The government has adopted a policy of increasing skilled immigration.
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Japan is reaching the point where by 2050 a third of the population will be retired. It's already over a quarter. Add in children and you can see that the burden on those of working age is immense.
Re:Immigration? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with California is that NIMBYs prevent nearly any new housing from being built. This drives up the price of housing, which forces some people to move out of state, and forces other people to become homeless (decreasing quality of life for everyone else).
Tokyo, in contrast, builds five times as much housing per capita as San Francisco [vox.com], which means there is plenty of supply and housing is cheap and many of California's social problems are avoided.
Thank you. (Score:2)
Fertility rates don't drop world-wide for no reason. There are certainly common root causes.
You hit one on the head. Various economic and cultural forces combine to make the cost of breeding too damn high, and so people just don't.
The one that really gets me is the high risk and cost of divorce. How one goes about marriage can reduce the risk of divorce a bit, but despite the self-congratulatory statements that long-time married people like to make, the greater part of relationship permanence seems to be
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Pro-open borders people think ideologically then fill in with any handy newsbites. They are best ignored but if necessary defeated by ballots or bullets.
They should know that low birth rates also fix the shitholes their adored flee desperately. Immigration should be a deliberate brain drain because ONLY intelligent, motivated humans with technical skills have economic value which is the only human value (we're a tool-using species, that is all).
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Immigration is not a solution for this problem or for the problem of the low income countries.It's a lot cheaper to actually fix the countries they are than immigrating everyone going thru poverty.
Is anyone anti-immigration? (Score:4, Informative)
All you anti-immigration folks want to reconsider your position?
Is anyone anti-immigration?
All of the political outrage over the last 5 years has been over illegal entry. Accent on "illegal".
There are a lot of well thought out reasons for tightening the border: drug smuggling, human trafficking, pathogens (such as Covid, tuberculosis, and measles), general humanitarian (women raped, unwilling children taken) and so on. Smuggled drugs alone accounts for some 30,000 deaths in the US each year (fentanyl OD), so preventing the influx seems like it would be a good idea... no? And the border wall was hugely successful, in that it decreased illegal entry by over 90% and freed up enforcement police for other uses.
The US allows roughly 1.1 million legal immigrants plus or minus each year (varies by about 10% depending on year).
That 1.1 million is a huge amount, and there's no real political push against it.
Can you point to anyone with political traction that is actually *anti* immigration?
Re:Is anyone anti-immigration? (Score:4, Informative)
All you anti-immigration folks want to reconsider your position?
Is anyone anti-immigration?
All of the political outrage over the last 5 years has been over illegal entry. Accent on "illegal".
Only if the Men In Black visited you and did a brain wipe.
The Trumpists wanted to limit all forms of immigration without exception [nytimes.com] and even their destructive hissy-fit about refugees coming to the border was to obscure the fact that they were trying to prevent an entirely legal process where refugees can appear at border crossings and request asylum, which the U.S. legally required to consider. By illegally blocking refugees from presenting their request at the border they manufactured the crisis of attempts to cross near the designated crossings.
Re: excellent! (Score:2)
Ok. Can you start with yourself? You should start with sterilization, but better yet, just eliminate yourself, since you're such a parasite.
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All he has to do is not have kids. How hard is that?
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I can feel you're afraid, and empathize with your great sadness.
Since I'm a member of the Illuminati (I even have the bumper sticker), I just spoke with the Bilderburgs, Mr. Soros, and Mr. Buffett, and they guaranteed your safety in that upcoming exercise. (They were concerned tho, how the info leaked out. I'm sure they'll deal with that appropriately. Someone will get sudden brain cancer and "... die horribly, in searing pain!")
Of course, if your comment was really intended as sarcasm, I retract the above
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to the required 500 million but there was a moving up of everything to cope with the climate crisis.
You are vastly over-estimating the current and predicted effects of the climate crisis.
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We should also add that the math in the earlier post is off. He said:
Kill rates in the 70% or 80% will get the population under control real quick
But that won't reduce the population by anywhere near his desired goal of 2 orders of magnitude.
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Kidding aside, if you think deeply about it, there are a crap-ton of people who do nothing to improve life in general yet still expect to get paid and get a raise every year.
Covid-19 lockdowns pretty much proved that many people aren't employed in essential jobs. Most work just exists to feed the economic machine.
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I think nuking all the cities with a population over 1 million would be a good start...Economically I think the working class will still get boned like always
They definitely will be if your plan happens. Can't get much worse than that.
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I have yet to see a farming town that manufactures its own tractors and fertilizer, nor buys and consumes its own grain.
Self supporting rural communities only existed when subsistence living was the norm. Farming in the midwest was made possible by railways that connected them with cities to buy their produce, and send them the goods they needed to farm and live.
It might do you good to learn a little bit about how economies work.
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