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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]

#191

Post by WalterBright »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #187
WalterBright wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

An artist creates wealth by painting a beautiful painting. Then he exchanges that wealth for money.

At no point was wealth "transferred" to the artist.

McDonald's creates wealth by designing and building a system to deliver hamburgers. McDonald's then exchanges that wealth for cash from its customers.

BTW, who gives money to people who already have it? Not me. I doubt you do, either. I don't know anybody who does. The transactions are always exchanges - you are getting something in return.

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

#192

Post by quasse »

rayiner wrote: post #182
jhp123 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Yes, but the economic rationale of immigration is to have younger workers who can pay into the system to buffer the growing older population

Is it though? Not passing judgement either way, but the most common economic rationale for immigration generally seems to be that it's a source of cheap labor.

> That can’t happen if the immigrants never pay in more than they take out at any point in their life.

If the surplus economic value created by immigrants who are employed is generally not returned to them in the form of high wages, then yeah, they're not going to be paying it to the government as taxes.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that a lot of people in this thread seem to be conflating per-person net economic benefit and net tax payments. The first can be significantly positive while the second is negative.

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

#193

Post by Arainach »

WalterBright wrote: post #142
Arainach wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pie has nothing to do with it. The tide is rising and most ships are sinking. Productivity in the last 40 years has skyrocketed. The gains have overwhelmingly gone to a tiny minority while everyone else has seen rent, food, education, and more go up dramatically faster than wages. This has accelerated in the last 15 years and has destroyed any faith in the social contract.

Have you noticed the massive growth in government? You're paying for it, one way or another. Inflation is caused by the government via deficit spending. It's another tax on you.

Inflation isn't the problem. Corporate consolidation, collusion, price fixing, and market capture are the problems.

In nearly every field where there used to be 10-20 competitors there are 2-4 and they're not doing much "competing" any more. They're using consultants and third parties to share data and fix prices, they're buying up the entire supply and dividing areas so they have monopolies.

Note how during the COVID "inflation" corporate profits soared faster than inflation.

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

#194

Post by allpratik »

TrackerFF wrote: post #38

Ironic as it may sound, coming from a childfree millennial, I'm kind of puzzled how the system will survive. Both my grandparents died in their 90s, and spent over 30 years are retirees - mainly living off their state pension. As people become older, they'll either have to work longer, or the system will come crashing down. Especially with lower fertility rates. My generation should be birthing kids as the previous o…

Hopefully the deflation scenario due to technology will help with this shift gracefully. Else, it will be extremely difficult.

But if we had deflation in the economy, how will the investment scenario will Peter out is anyone’s guess.

I wonder The people who invented this financial growth will, why they didn’t thought about this in the long term? I guess, I have asked a question which has quite a generic answer already…

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

#195

Post by rayiner »

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…

Humans all across the developed world work 40% fewer hours than in 1900: https://ourworldindata.org/working-more-than-ever. Yet, in the U.S., TFR has consistently been dropping since 1800: https://ourworldindata.org/working-more-than-ever.

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

#196

Post by rayiner »

angmarsbane wrote: post #91
rayiner wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 subc…

I've been encouraging my cousin who desperately wants children to have them in her two bedroom apartment but she feels that she needs to have a house first and she and her husband can't afford one. They're in their late 30s. My partner and I are mid-30s planning to have young children in our 2 bedroom apartment, we'd prefer a 3 bedroom but they DO NOT EXIST in our Los Angeles neighborhood. More space means untenable…

For what it's worth, we had our first child when we lived in a studio in our late 20s. One kid is really easy space-wise. The only reason we even got a 2BR before buying our house is that we got an au pair.

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

#197

Post by jay_kyburz »

WalterBright wrote: post #191
jay_kyburz wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

An artist creates wealth by painting a beautiful painting. Then he exchanges that wealth for money. At no point was wealth "transferred" to the artist. McDonald's creates wealth by designing and building a system to deliver hamburgers. McDonald's then exchanges that wealth for cash from its customers. BTW, who gives money to people who already have it? Not me. I doubt you do, either. I don't know anybody who does. Th…

I think perhaps you are discussing too many threads simultaneously. I'm fully onboard with Maccas and Artists creating something thus creating wealth.

Also, yes, transaction are exchanges. Nobody is arguing that. You pay rent and in exchange you may use the land (productively or not)

My argument is that people are forced to pay rent to people who didn't create anything, but because they hold a piece of paper that says they own it.

The argument is, did the person who owns the land "create" anything. My argument is no.

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

#198

Post by ch4s3 »

baron816 wrote: post #71
ch4s3 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mid-century Baby Boom came after WWII, and probably had very little to do with technology. The upswing started some time in late 1944 to mid 1945 as combat was winding down in Europe and a lot of young men were returning home. Otherwise fertility has been declining steadily since 1800 in western countries.

See https://www.derekthompson.org/p/what-caused-the-baby-boom-wh...

I don’t agree with Thompson, his start date is the place where fertility hit a local minimum, not the year where the rate really took off which was 1946. A lot of the technological innovations actually predated his arguable start date by 5-10 years and several happened well into the boom.

I think his explanation fits the thesis of his recent book, which I actually like, but it seem a bit off here.

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

#199

Post by ch4s3 »

Analemma_ wrote: post #64
ch4s3 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mid-century Baby Boom came after WWII, and probably had very little to do with technology. The upswing started some time in late 1944 to mid 1945 as combat was winding down in Europe and a lot of young men were returning home. Otherwise fertility has been declining steadily since 1800 in western countries.

No, this is exactly the opposite of true: you need to do more reading about the baby boom. It happened across many countries, including ones which had little involvement in WWII, and in almost all cases it began in the 1930s, even with the Great Depression underway. It got supercharged by the end of the war because that's when the economic doldrums finally ended, but upward trend in fertility predated even the beginn…

The technological explanation wouldn’t really account for any increase in places where 1930s and 40s technology hadn’t been deployed. I’d need a little more than hand waving to evaluate or engage with your argument.

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

#200

Post by anonym29 »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #151
stego-tech wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, I'm also a single gay man and think similarly at times about the path not taken, and why I chose not to adopt as I had originally planned in my 20s. It sucks, but I'm content with being the cool Uncle to my niblings and providing external support to my siblings as needed. Society needs more than just parents in order for children to thrive, and I believe queer folk are ideally suited to fill in a…

Disclaimer: my thought process tends to be somewhat autistic, I don’t mean any offense. As a non gay man I am just curious to hear your perspective. From a strictly biological perspective, I think it could be argued that gay “sex” isn’t actually sex. Like, what makes it sex? Is it sex for pleasure? Or is it something adjacent to sex? That has some commonalities with sex, but isn’t actually sex. Like there is a part o…

Not the person you're asking, but I'm of the impression that colloquially, the verb "sex" includes more than strictly the traditional historical definition. I'll refrain from getting into specific details here, but I think the answer to this question is that many people use words in a manner that diverges from literal definitions.

There's a concept in linguistics that language is constantly evolving. As someone on the spectrum myself, with a tendency towards systemizing the world around me, I understand how frustrating this can feel. A particularly excruciating example is the transition of the intended meaning of "literally" to increasingly mean "figuratively", particularly in social contexts. Makes me want to tear the skin off my face, lol.

While this isn't strictly relegated to social concepts, I understand how frustrating it can be to struggle to navigate this phenomenon in social contexts and be misinterpreted as a bad faith actor.

At the end of the day, I try to deal with it by accepting that not everyone else experiences the world the way I do, and that it's as unfair for me to expect everyone else to modify the way they perceive, process, and utilize information (including language) to accommodate my idiosyncrasies.

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