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The global population pyramid

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Re: The global population pyramid

#41

Post by wtdata »

Mirioron wrote: post #32
lotsofpulp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But on the other hand, modern society is unable to produce enough kids This is a contentious claim, as there are different measures of “enough kids”. Some examples I can think of are: Enough kids to support the economic 2% growth assumptions? Enough kids to reduce natural resource consumption to prolong the number of years the Earth is habitable? Enough kids to prevent another country or group of countries from walk…

The big problem we have is social programs. They redistribute wealth from young people right now to old people right now, but they are sold to young people as though they are investing into their future. As the ratio of young people to old people shrinks our social programs end up in more and more trouble. The fiscal gap is a problem in most developed countries.

Well, the issue is not taking from young to old, but taking from workers to non workers. The solution is not so complicated and impossible has some people try to put it, you just have to increase the retirement age accordingly.

If you live moderately healthy to 95, than it should be perfectly acceptable for you to work until you are 75.

Re: The global population pyramid

#42

Post by wtdata »

stkdump wrote: post #34
bhouston wrote: post #25

My concern is that population will shrink after 2100 globally but it will already be shrinking in the rich countries long before that. And all indicators right now is that shrinkage will speed up. There is something wrong with rich modern secular society here or anywhere (it happens to all societies right now whether they are European, Japanese, Chinese, etc) in that it currently leads to sub replacement reproduction…

Who is to say that a smaller world pop is necessarily a bad thing? Many of the ecological problems we face today would be smaller at least. And who is to say that the current trend of shrinking pop in the long term stays the same. Maybe, once we solved the biggest problems we face today and possibly expand beyond earth, people will have more kids again. I can tell you that the families around me who are well off alre…

It's not, it's a good thing (if done naturally by reducing the replacement numbers). But there will be an adaption period and we need to know how to adjust to it.

Re: The global population pyramid

#43

Post by logicchains »

Mirioron wrote: post #32
lotsofpulp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But on the other hand, modern society is unable to produce enough kids This is a contentious claim, as there are different measures of “enough kids”. Some examples I can think of are: Enough kids to support the economic 2% growth assumptions? Enough kids to reduce natural resource consumption to prolong the number of years the Earth is habitable? Enough kids to prevent another country or group of countries from walk…

The big problem we have is social programs. They redistribute wealth from young people right now to old people right now, but they are sold to young people as though they are investing into their future. As the ratio of young people to old people shrinks our social programs end up in more and more trouble. The fiscal gap is a problem in most developed countries.

This program is solvable, with something like Australia's mandatory superannuation or Singapore's Central Provident Fund, where people are forced to save a certain percentage of their income for retirement (and the money is actually saved, they're not just given IOUs for money that will be taken from future young people).

Re: The global population pyramid

#44

Post by patentatt »

koonsolo wrote: post #27
bhouston wrote: post #25

My concern is that population will shrink after 2100 globally but it will already be shrinking in the rich countries long before that. And all indicators right now is that shrinkage will speed up. There is something wrong with rich modern secular society here or anywhere (it happens to all societies right now whether they are European, Japanese, Chinese, etc) in that it currently leads to sub replacement reproduction…

I'm going to give my not so popular answer for this. Western society is moving away from traditional families. When I ask my son what he wants to become when he's older, he says he wants to be a police officer. When I ask my 2 girls, they both want to become a mom. My social engineered response to this was "maybe you should become a school teacher, that way you can work with kids and be home when your kids are home".…

I don’t think we need to devalue women (again) to support “traditional” families (again). I got two weeks parental leave when my child was born. Civilized nations provide 6 months or more for both mother and father. My wife could take a couple years off of work, but then her career would be set back to square one. I elected to seriously downshift my own career just so I could see my kids on a daily basis. By that I mean not work so long that I literally don’t see my children M-F. Work culture is what is destroying families, not women’s rights. I remember sitting in the office of my boss once, she was sobbing over a mountain of paperwork to do, her kid had been injured at school and sent to the ER (ankle sprain or something). She couldn’t leave. She could, but then some “important” papers in some “important” case wouldn’t be filed on time. The whole squeezing of the middle (and upper-middle) class over the last 50 years is what’s making it really hard to have kids. And as more and more colleagues opt to be child-free, the 24/7 100% dedication to work becomes normalized and makes it even harder for working parents. I think the way forward is serious social investment in supporting families and enabling parents, both men and women, to have careers and aspirations but also be parents.

Re: The global population pyramid

#45

Post by throw0101a »

There's a good presentation by Hans Rosling about why population will peak at 11B (stick with until 26m):

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E&t=19m12s

Further on he explains why we may not have to worry about resource use given growing prosperity:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E&t=35m36s

Re: The global population pyramid

#46

Post by trabant00 »

threeseed wrote: post #38
koonsolo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to give my not so popular answer for this. Western society is moving away from traditional families. When I ask my son what he wants to become when he's older, he says he wants to be a police officer. When I ask my 2 girls, they both want to become a mom. My social engineered response to this was "maybe you should become a school teacher, that way you can work with kids and be home when your kids are home".…

Words fail me reading comments like this. To say that "women" should be "women" and not do "men" things is an attitude that belongs in the dark ages. It's sexist. It's degrading. It treats women like mindless children who can't make their own choices about what work they want to do. Nobody is forcing women to go into STEM. We are encouraging them because unfortunately they have to deal with toxic attitudes all the ti…

We should support any woman that wants to work in STEM. We should NOT encourage anybody to work in STEM. Women are more likely to want to work with people, not sit in a chair looking at a screen, droning for the corporation 8 hours per day.

The "toxic environment" is just what the field is. Dehumanizing by definition. It's got nothing to do with patriarchy or whatever else trending buzzword corporations push promoting more people take a career path working for them.

> To say that "women" should be "women" and not do "men" things is an attitude that belongs in the dark ages

We need more women on construction sites, mines, fighting on the front line, fighting men in MMA, etc. If you say no you are soooo dark ages. /s

Re: The global population pyramid

#47

Post by phkahler »

Mirioron wrote: post #32
lotsofpulp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But on the other hand, modern society is unable to produce enough kids This is a contentious claim, as there are different measures of “enough kids”. Some examples I can think of are: Enough kids to support the economic 2% growth assumptions? Enough kids to reduce natural resource consumption to prolong the number of years the Earth is habitable? Enough kids to prevent another country or group of countries from walk…

The big problem we have is social programs. They redistribute wealth from young people right now to old people right now, but they are sold to young people as though they are investing into their future. As the ratio of young people to old people shrinks our social programs end up in more and more trouble. The fiscal gap is a problem in most developed countries.

>> They redistribute wealth from young people right now to old people right now, but they are sold to young people as though they are investing into their future.

I want to say that's fiction in the US but it's worse than fiction. The social security system pays out about what a person puts in over their lifetime. It is not the young paying the old as you say. But that's not the whole story. The "fund" has been robbed by congress by "investing" the money in government bonds. In other words, other parts of the government "borrowed" the money and spent it. So it isn't spent on old retired people, it's spent on society at large. We're at a tipping point where the net flow of money into the fund should reverse - more paying out than going in - which means those bonds will have to be repaid without taking out new ones. Congress has gotten so used to treating it as a general revenue source that they act like SS is going to be insolvent, when the reality is they can't figure out how to pay it back - it's the government that's really on the edge here.

Politicians have tried to paint this many ways to avoid the truth. One even asked the federal reserve to verify that they don't really need to pay off those bonds and the response way basically "um yes you do".

Re: The global population pyramid

#48

Post by dondon1 »

rayiner wrote: post #33
lotsofpulp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But on the other hand, modern society is unable to produce enough kids This is a contentious claim, as there are different measures of “enough kids”. Some examples I can think of are: Enough kids to support the economic 2% growth assumptions? Enough kids to reduce natural resource consumption to prolong the number of years the Earth is habitable? Enough kids to prevent another country or group of countries from walk…

> This is a contentious claim, as there are different measures of “enough kids”. I don’t agree with the comment you’re replying to, but I should add that while there are different measures, the range is extremely narrow. Most western countries are at fertility levels where without immigration they will cease to exist entirely in relatively short order.

>Most western countries are at fertility levels where without immigration they will cease to exist entirely in relatively short order.

Its the opposite, most countries will cease to exist if they keep immigration at the current rates.

Japan will still exist in 200 Years, maybe with only 50% of the population buy the culture and language will exist.

You cant say the Same for UK of Germany.

Re: The global population pyramid

#49

Post by microtherion »

rayiner wrote: post #33
lotsofpulp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But on the other hand, modern society is unable to produce enough kids This is a contentious claim, as there are different measures of “enough kids”. Some examples I can think of are: Enough kids to support the economic 2% growth assumptions? Enough kids to reduce natural resource consumption to prolong the number of years the Earth is habitable? Enough kids to prevent another country or group of countries from walk…

> This is a contentious claim, as there are different measures of “enough kids”. I don’t agree with the comment you’re replying to, but I should add that while there are different measures, the range is extremely narrow. Most western countries are at fertility levels where without immigration they will cease to exist entirely in relatively short order.

... for values of "cease to exist entirely" measured in "populated by millions of people, but considerably fewer millions than before" and values of "relatively short order" measured in centuries.

Re: The global population pyramid

#50

Post by iguy »

patentatt wrote: post #44
koonsolo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to give my not so popular answer for this. Western society is moving away from traditional families. When I ask my son what he wants to become when he's older, he says he wants to be a police officer. When I ask my 2 girls, they both want to become a mom. My social engineered response to this was "maybe you should become a school teacher, that way you can work with kids and be home when your kids are home".…

I don’t think we need to devalue women (again) to support “traditional” families (again). I got two weeks parental leave when my child was born. Civilized nations provide 6 months or more for both mother and father. My wife could take a couple years off of work, but then her career would be set back to square one. I elected to seriously downshift my own career just so I could see my kids on a daily basis. By that I m…

I'd be curious to hear more precisely what you'd propose here.

My impression that, unfortunately, many such attempts to (essentially) make life better for working mothers appear to have pushed us away from families-with-kids, and towards ever more singletons (including single mothers). They tend, I think, to move us from a system in which the family is the economic unit, to one in which its personal compromises are not necessary.

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