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The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

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Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#11

Post by rayiner »

Arainach wrote: post #7

The complaining about fertility rates, mostly done by the chunk of the population hoarding more and more of the wealth, will continue until people's ability to afford rent and children improves.

Rent is the bigger issue than affordability per se. My wife pointed out the other day that we had our second and third kids shortly after we stopped living in apartments and bought a house. We didn't plan to have a significant age gap between our first (who we had in law school) and our other kids, and we earned a lot of money the whole time, it just happened that way. She's convinced that having the extra space subconsciously encouraged us to have more kids.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#12

Post by toomuchtodo »

api wrote: post #9
Arainach wrote: post #7

The complaining about fertility rates, mostly done by the chunk of the population hoarding more and more of the wealth, will continue until people's ability to afford rent and children improves.

The thing that collapses in a negative population growth environment is passive earnings from interest and asset appreciation, retirement, and to some extent social welfare states. The whole idea of things like social security is predicated on a growing population paying for the elderly. It's also very, very bearish for things like real estate long term. We are probably still in a real estate bubble. I suppose I've n…

Social security is solvent for at least the next 75 years if the US removes the payroll cap on contributions from wage income. We choose not to. The economic resources exist for these social programs, it will just diminish profits (the horror /s). It's a policy choice.

Every year total fertility rate remains lower than replacement rate further locks in the fertility curve, but there is no political will or desire to implement the fixes required. So, we keep kicking the can until we cannot anymore. It's unfortunate. Demographic destiny comes regardless, as each year total fertility rate continues to fall.

https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-does-the-us-spend-on-...

https://www.pgpf.org/article/social-security-reform-options-...

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#13

Post by api »

UncleMeat wrote: post #10
profstasiak wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how is Paul Ehrlich linked to the original post? what is he wrong about?

Paul Ehrlich was the most visible figure in the midcentury fear of overpopulation. He claimed that by now we'd have seen starvation so profound around the world (100,000,000s dead of starvation) that large portions of the third world would collapse completely and that the only mechanism to prevent this starvation was extreme population control measures placed by the west on the rest of the world (including things lik…

Unfortunately a lot of people are now saying we need extreme curtailing of rights -- largely womens' rights -- because of underpopulation. The answer to every panic is always curtailing of rights. Scary thing may happen therefore we need big alpha ape to fix it for us by bashing people on head with big rock. Grunt, grunt.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#14

Post by vonneumannstan »

Arainach wrote: post #7

The complaining about fertility rates, mostly done by the chunk of the population hoarding more and more of the wealth, will continue until people's ability to afford rent and children improves.

This totally ignores the fact that the decline in fertility is measurable across the globe in the poorest and wealthiest nations in the world. It's clearly not a simple matter of affordability...

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#15

Post by jmclnx »

This is all well and good, but population dropping will only impact our civilization a little. I think this is an issue only because the "very rich" may actually see their standard of living fall. For the poor, it will have no real impact.

Plus it is probably a good thing population will start dropping.

The much larger worry should be Climate Change, a dropping population can only help Climate Change in the long run. But right now, due to how we all live, we are heading into a whole lot of hurt due to Climate Change. Far more "hurt" than the population falling.

Also, worried about population dropping ? Wait to see how fast it drops when Countries start massive wars due to dwindling resources.

EDIT: want an example of the Impact of population dripping ? Look at Europe during the Plague in the 1300s(?). What happened was the rich had a hard time finding labor, so they had to start paying people a lot more for their work. To me, that is the big fear, the rich may have to start paying more.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#16

Post by UncleMeat »

api wrote: post #13
UncleMeat wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paul Ehrlich was the most visible figure in the midcentury fear of overpopulation. He claimed that by now we'd have seen starvation so profound around the world (100,000,000s dead of starvation) that large portions of the third world would collapse completely and that the only mechanism to prevent this starvation was extreme population control measures placed by the west on the rest of the world (including things lik…

Unfortunately a lot of people are now saying we need extreme curtailing of rights -- largely womens' rights -- because of underpopulation. The answer to every panic is always curtailing of rights. Scary thing may happen therefore we need big alpha ape to fix it for us by bashing people on head with big rock. Grunt, grunt.

Right this is what I am saying. And I think that we should be outrageously skeptical of such people and oppose them with fervor. In the 70s people were saying that we needed to commit brutal oppression against a large portion of the world based on geography in order to prevent future catastrophe. These people were wrong in every possible dimension and has we listened to them we would have committed a world-historic evil.

Similarly, we are starting to see people say that we need to commit brutal oppression against a large portion of the world (this time based on gender) in order to prevent future catastrophe. I suspect that these people will be wrong in every possible dimension and that if we listen to them that we will be committing a world-historic evil.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#17

Post by vixen99 »

Arainach wrote: post #7

The complaining about fertility rates, mostly done by the chunk of the population hoarding more and more of the wealth, will continue until people's ability to afford rent and children improves.

'hoarding more and more of the wealth'. Sounds very much like you believe in the pie fallacy. A zero sum game? Maybe that's not what you meant though.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#18

Post by cyberax »

Arainach wrote: post #7

The complaining about fertility rates, mostly done by the chunk of the population hoarding more and more of the wealth, will continue until people's ability to afford rent and children improves.

The drop in fertility rate is directly liked to migration into dense cities. They are just not a good place to have children.

The US resisted the fertility drop for much longer, because of higher suburban population.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#19

Post by rayiner »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #12
api wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that collapses in a negative population growth environment is passive earnings from interest and asset appreciation, retirement, and to some extent social welfare states. The whole idea of things like social security is predicated on a growing population paying for the elderly. It's also very, very bearish for things like real estate long term. We are probably still in a real estate bubble. I suppose I've n…

Social security is solvent for at least the next 75 years if the US removes the payroll cap on contributions from wage income. We choose not to. The economic resources exist for these social programs, it will just diminish profits (the horror /s). It's a policy choice. Every year total fertility rate remains lower than replacement rate further locks in the fertility curve, but there is no political will or desire to…

By 2075, Medicare and Social Security will reach a over 14% of GDP combined, up from around 8% today. To pay that, we'll have to raise taxes by $1.75 trillion using today's GDP figures. That will require just about doubling payroll taxes from the present level.

That's probably an underestimate. As population shrinks, GDP will shrink as well, unless we have large gains in productivity, which have stalled. It's not clear to me that the projections about SS/Medicare as a percentage of GDP account for the effect of GDP shrinking due to population decline. CBO assumes a stable population through 2060, using quite arbitrary assumptions about immigration: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60875.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#20

Post by nobodywillobsrv »

Arainach wrote: post #7

The complaining about fertility rates, mostly done by the chunk of the population hoarding more and more of the wealth, will continue until people's ability to afford rent and children improves.

While I generally agree with this and am angry at "the elites" who seem to both want increased fertility but also don't really target it in their companies ... I think the bigger unspoken issue is really the TFR skew. Global fertility can go down for a while and it isn't disastrous. TFR skew results in large problems if the least progressive and poorest groups systematically have much higher TFR over extended periods.

None of the solutions I can think of are very appealing or even tolerable. It really feels like it's a matter of carrying on and having hope. But perhaps we could start by merely describing the data and the situation.

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