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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]

#181

Post by WalterBright »

worik wrote: post #170
WalterBright wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fact, not a theory. The wealth in the economy did not exist 100 years ago. Therefore it must have been created. And where did Musk's money come from? Who did he transfer it from?

> And where did Musk's money come from? No body (?) is contending that in a free market wealth is not created. The contention is that when wealth is created it tends to head to other wealth. When a bank lends capital and has a choice of lending to, say, Elon Musk or me, I think the bank will make that rational choice and lend to Elon. Thus once you have some wealth attracting more wealth is less difficult than from b…

Ah, the boots theory.

A Ferrari costs far, far more to maintain than a Ford, and doesn't last as long. I drove my used Ford Bronco II for 32 years before giving it to a scrap yard. Best bang for the buck car ever.

Expensive shirts wear out just as fast as cheap shirts. They just look nicer (and are often less comfortable).

P.S. I still regularly wear the combat boots my dad bought me 50 years ago. The boot black on them has long since disappeared, but they still keep my feet dry and warm.

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

#182

Post by rayiner »

jhp123 wrote: post #90
rayiner wrote: post #33

The point on p. 39 about immigration is important for everyone to understand: > Most immigrants worsen the fiscal position of the government. According to an Economist article addressing data collected by Denmark, each non-western immigrants produce a negative financial benefit over their lifetimes, and immigrants from the Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan, are a net cost on the government at every age: https://inq…

Progressive taxation will generally mean that anyone under the median income has a negative net impact on the government's finances. All this study is doing is reflecting the obvious fact that immigrants are by and large working class.

Yes, but the economic rationale of immigration is to have younger workers who can pay into the system to buffer the growing older population. That can’t happen if the immigrants never pay in more than they take out at any point in their life.

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

#183

Post by lurk2 »

Analemma_ wrote: post #62
rayiner wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but shouldn’t the burden be on the people advocating mass immigration to prove it helps?

No, because freedom of movement and commerce (specifically, selling one's labor) are human rights. No right is absolute, but the burden of proof is on the person claiming the consequences of exercising these rights are severe enough that they need to be abrogated.

> the burden of proof is on the person claiming the consequences of exercising these rights are severe enough that they need to be abrogated.

Every country on earth claims this.

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

#184

Post by nradov »

pmarreck wrote: post #178

Maybe expecting every single person to work and no one to homestead and care for the kids, within a system that explicitly does not support families, was a mistake. (Please note that I did not gender the roles. My best friend is a stay-at-home dad and he is amazing. They can afford to do this, though, because his wife's compensation is extremely high.)

Expectations are part of it, but regardless of compensation or lack thereof it turns out that a lot of adults simply prefer to work outside the home instead of caring for children. Child rearing is essential, and rewarding in many ways. But it's also exhausting, repetitive, and frustrating. It's not surprising that given the choice many adults would rather spend time around other adults instead of children. In the past most societies kind of "solved" this inherent problem by artificially restricting women's but obviously that's not acceptable or even feasible now.

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

#185

Post by oh_my_goodness »

WalterBright wrote: post #175
worik wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And where did Musk's money come from? No body (?) is contending that in a free market wealth is not created. The contention is that when wealth is created it tends to head to other wealth. When a bank lends capital and has a choice of lending to, say, Elon Musk or me, I think the bank will make that rational choice and lend to Elon. Thus once you have some wealth attracting more wealth is less difficult than from b…

Lending money is not transferring wealth, nor is it creating wealth. It nets out to zero. This is clear when one does accounting. Accounting is based on the idea that (Equity = Assets - Liabilities). When one takes out a loan, the assets go up by the amount of the loan, and the liabilities also go up by the amount of the loan. The Equity stays the same. That this balances out is literally called "balancing the books"…

This part is true, and the folks who equate new borrowings with income are liable to do some real damage if anybody ever listens to them.

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

#186

Post by [deleted] »

pmarreck wrote: post #178

Maybe expecting every single person to work and no one to homestead and care for the kids, within a system that explicitly does not support families, was a mistake. (Please note that I did not gender the roles. My best friend is a stay-at-home dad and he is amazing. They can afford to do this, though, because his wife's compensation is extremely high.)

[deleted]

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

#187

Post by jay_kyburz »

WalterBright wrote: post #164
jay_kyburz wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some wealth is created. People build new things and sell them. Video Games or Programming Languages for example. Some wealth is just transferred, like rent or interest. It would be nice if everybody had somewhere to live for free, unfortunately, most people have to pay rent or interest on a mortgage to those that came before them.

> Some wealth is just transferred, like rent or interest. Both of those are an exchange, not a transfer. Taxation is a transfer.

They may be an exchange, but they are not "creation".

We are arguing whether wealth flows to people who already have it, rather people who "create it". My augment is both.

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

#188

Post by api »

xp84 wrote: post #120
chrisco255 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fertility rate is falling everywhere, even countries that have extensive childcare and maternity/paternity leave. Sweden grants 68 weeks of shared parental leave and their TFR is at 1.45. There is nothing authentic about porn, what a strange comment. Sure, it hacks the reward system of the brain in the same way that a slot machine does, but this does absolutely nothing to promote families.

> Sweden grants 68 weeks of shared parental leave and their TFR is at 1.45. I speculate that a different thing is happening in Europe. Every time I hear European takes on issues, it feels like Europe is post-religion, post-values, post-meaning. Everything is relative; pleasure is the only personal goal, and not harming others is the only external goal. Why even have kids? Why get married? It's a lot of work, plus the…

Why is fertility so low in Iran then? Or very Catholic Poland? It does not seem to correlate strongly with religion or belief systems.

The strongest correlation I see is urbanization. People in cities don’t have kids as much.

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

#189

Post by WalterBright »

oh_my_goodness wrote: post #180
WalterBright wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bernie Madoff defrauded people by selling them fake investments. Note that I remarked that free markets did not include fraud.

Excluding fraud, theft, and so forth, just by definition, means we're talking about a utopia. It's not a system, it's some beautiful subset of what's really going on. The subset would have to be carefully selected, using information we don't actually have until (maybe) much later. Maybe never. This 'free market' is a bit like clean matter-antimatter power stations. They sound like a great idea. We could build them if…

I never claimed free markets were utopian. The purpose of government in a free market economy is to provide justice for acts of force or fraud, and provide enforcement of contracts.

There is no such thing as a perfect free market. However, history shows that the closer we are to them, the more prosperous the country is.

BTW, when the Soviet Union was formed, the communists did away with the police because there would no longer be a need for them. Oops.

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

#190

Post by cardamomo »

stego-tech wrote: post #86

Funny, I just wrapped a blog post about this: https://green.spacedino.net/i-dont-worry-about-population-de... Good presentation by the author that reaffirms my own opinions about the topic, specifically that while it sucks and cripples the social welfare programs our (deceased) elders built on the theory of continued population and productivity growth, it's also an issue we can fix with coordination between powers an…

I think your thinking also aligns with the ideas outlined in The Future is Degrowth (https://www.versobooks.com/products/2620-the-future-is-degro...). I found it to be a very approachable book, if you haven't read it yet.
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