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World Population Growth

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Re: World Population Growth

#51

Post by sampo »

Lazare wrote: post #11
CalRobert wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate? I'm pretty in favour of open borders as an immigrant myself but that statement could do with some supporting evidence.

It's not so much a question of evidence as basic math. Imagine a society with 100 people. A working adult can create 50 widgets per year, and there's 15 kids and 5 retirees. The economy produce 80 * 50 = 4000 widgets per year, which gives a per capita income of 40 widgets. You can have whatever tax, welfare, or income redistribution policies you like, but there's only 4000 widgets to go around. Great. Now let's say 5…

> The most critical metric is the ratio of current workers to retirees

America has been quite successful with immigrants getting jobs. But in Europe some countries have for a while got a kind of immigration situation where unemployment among the migrants stays so high that they are actually worsening the ratio of workers to total population.

Re: World Population Growth

#52

Post by MollyR »

sumedh wrote: post #25
newscracker wrote: post #21

If you ever want to feel really old, go to Population.io [1], enter your date of birth and country (fake it a bit if you wish), and look at how many people in the world are currently younger than you. This is both fascinating and shocking even if you enter the information for any smaller children you know (from the last decade or so). [1]: http://population.io

You are expected to live 40.1 years as a citizen of India Well that is depressing.

This is an anecdote. I have coworker friend who is from india, and he told me most of the men in his family die from heart attacks from age 40-50.

I thought it was weird as heck, but when I researched it showed they had 4x for heart issues against the general population in america.

https://stanfordhealthcare.org/stanford-health-now/2015/sout...

Re: World Population Growth

#53

Post by WildUtah »

qwrusz wrote: post #46
Frogolocalypse wrote: post #3

All I can say is, if you want to maintain that standard of living in western democracies, you'd better get used to immigration.

Just curious if anyone has recent examples where a region's standard of living has shifted to trend downward for any reason?

Yes.

1. Corruption in Zimbabwe. Commercial farmers have been abandoning productive land and the country is getting poorer.

2. Communism in Cuba, Venezuela, SE Asia, and other regions over the past fifty years has ruined developing economies and made them worse. Most of those governments have fallen and things are improving again, but communism certainly has the power to ruin a country.

I'm sure there are others. Technological progress has give us a strong underlying upward trend around the world lately but sufficiently bad government can occasionally reverse the benefits of progress temporarily.

Re: World Population Growth

#54

Post by antisthenes »

Lazare wrote: post #11
CalRobert wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate? I'm pretty in favour of open borders as an immigrant myself but that statement could do with some supporting evidence.

It's not so much a question of evidence as basic math. Imagine a society with 100 people. A working adult can create 50 widgets per year, and there's 15 kids and 5 retirees. The economy produce 80 * 50 = 4000 widgets per year, which gives a per capita income of 40 widgets. You can have whatever tax, welfare, or income redistribution policies you like, but there's only 4000 widgets to go around. Great. Now let's say 5…

While I see the point you're trying to make, your math assumes widgets last exactly 1 year, which is generally not the case with most goods, except those produced for immediate consumption and maintenance e.g. food, gasoline, hygiene and health products.

Also, the basic math can be so vastly different in reality, that there will be huge leeway in terms of how many people can retire.

Re: World Population Growth

#55

Post by qwrusz »

WildUtah wrote: post #53
qwrusz wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious if anyone has recent examples where a region's standard of living has shifted to trend downward for any reason?

Yes. 1. Corruption in Zimbabwe. Commercial farmers have been abandoning productive land and the country is getting poorer. 2. Communism in Cuba, Venezuela, SE Asia, and other regions over the past fifty years has ruined developing economies and made them worse. Most of those governments have fallen and things are improving again, but communism certainly has the power to ruin a country. I'm sure there are others. Tech…

Thanks, these are good examples. It's amazing how long some of these corrupt governments have stayed in power. Will be interesting to see what happens if/when there's a change in governance.

Re: World Population Growth

#56

Post by davidiach »

weatherlight wrote: post #41
WildUtah wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peak population isn't coming in the next few centuries. The 2008 UN data these charts are based on had mistaken data on African growth. African fertility is much higher than expected then and continues not to fall. The later 2100s in these charts now look to add several more billion and growing, almost all in Africa. Or from Africa; migration from poorer and overcrowded countries means Europe will probably be majorit…

I really don't think earth is going to be able to support 9 billion people without some sort of dramatic paradigm shift in the way, as a species, we consume things

9 billion is 1.6 billion more people than we have today. What dramatic paradigm shift do we need for the earth to be able to support such a modest increase?

Re: World Population Growth

#57

Post by AlaskaCasey »

qwrusz wrote: post #55
WildUtah wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. 1. Corruption in Zimbabwe. Commercial farmers have been abandoning productive land and the country is getting poorer. 2. Communism in Cuba, Venezuela, SE Asia, and other regions over the past fifty years has ruined developing economies and made them worse. Most of those governments have fallen and things are improving again, but communism certainly has the power to ruin a country. I'm sure there are others. Tech…

Thanks, these are good examples. It's amazing how long some of these corrupt governments have stayed in power. Will be interesting to see what happens if/when there's a change in governance.

It's easy to stay in power when you have complete control over the news and propaganda machines. Using Venezuela as an example, the country is one of the richest in the world in natural resources, but 1% of the population controls 99% of the wealth.

Re: World Population Growth

#58

Post by csomar »

newscracker wrote: post #21

If you ever want to feel really old, go to Population.io [1], enter your date of birth and country (fake it a bit if you wish), and look at how many people in the world are currently younger than you. This is both fascinating and shocking even if you enter the information for any smaller children you know (from the last decade or so). [1]: http://population.io

Wow, pretty interesting. I compared to the US and it turned out that I'm expected to live 0.2 year longer than if I was from the US. I'm from a third-world (Tunisia if you are curious), so that was totally unexpected. The Life expectancy here is pretty high comparing to other developing countries.

Re: World Population Growth

#59

Post by triplesec »

MollyR wrote: post #52
sumedh wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are expected to live 40.1 years as a citizen of India Well that is depressing.

This is an anecdote. I have coworker friend who is from india, and he told me most of the men in his family die from heart attacks from age 40-50. I thought it was weird as heck, but when I researched it showed they had 4x for heart issues against the general population in america. https://stanfordhealthcare.org/stanford-health-now/2015/sout...

Any idea of why this might be?

Re: World Population Growth

#60

Post by MollyR »

triplesec wrote: post #59
MollyR wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an anecdote. I have coworker friend who is from india, and he told me most of the men in his family die from heart attacks from age 40-50. I thought it was weird as heck, but when I researched it showed they had 4x for heart issues against the general population in america. https://stanfordhealthcare.org/stanford-health-now/2015/sout...

Any idea of why this might be?

My initial guess was diet and/or exercise, but I was thinking it could be some genetic factor as well.

I really wish we had more genomic data from across the world.

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