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The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

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Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#171

Post by neutronicus »

izzydata wrote: post #106
jandrewrogers wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The growing population of economically non-productive people requires a growing population of economically productive people to support them. At some point, you could take 100% of the output of the productive people and it would still not be enough to support retirees et al. At the limit, not growing the productive population puts younger generations in a position of existing solely for the purpose of serving the non…

But infinite population growth is unsustainable so it had to come to an equilibrium eventually. Maybe we overshot the maximum comfortable population by a bit and we are going to rebound for awhile. Also an economy that requires an infinitely growing population feels like a pyramid scheme which is also an unsustainable system.

> But infinite population growth is unsustainable so it had to come to an equilibrium eventually.

Or not. It could be oscillatory and humanity could cyclically reverse-decimate itself while the descendants of the survivors get to enjoy millennia of the fun part of the pyramid scheme.

The big losers are whoever is part of the "perish in a holocaust" generations, and probably the first couple bootstrapper generations afterwards.

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#172

Post by bombcar »

compounding_it wrote: post #135

My darwinian theory: About 11 years ago I went on a bus in Rochester, NY. It was bizarre to me that every person in the bus (about 12-15 people aged between 18-25 maybe) were buried in their phones. No one was talking to each other, not looking outside, nothing. I had the latest iPhone but since America was new for me I mostly spent time looking at the world around me and talking to people. I felt sad that the social…

Real people are annoying, hard to deal with, unpredictable, dirty, smelly, all sorts of issues.

The imaginary people inside your magic box are perfect, on demand, and don't complain or otherwise bother you when you put them away.

What porn is to love, social media is to, well, darn near everything else. Once we perfect donuts over TCP/IP we'll all be perfectly round and content and never need to interact with anyone else.

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#173

Post by daymanstep »

pjc50 wrote: post #80
myrmidon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the "cost of living" explanation for low birthrates is just wrong, and not even plausible (anecdote: my grandmother had 17 siblings, and they could not even afford proper sunday shoes for all of them, much less current living standards). I think the biggest impact is from kids being obsolete/net negative as both workforce (when young) and retirement scheme (when the parents are old). But there is no reverting…

Animals have "r/k selection": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory ; some have huge numbers of offspring (e.g. spiders, most fish), some carefully nurture a single egg per year. Humans are already at the smaller number of offspring compared to the rest of the animal kingdom, but what I think is happening is that social pressure has simply pushed the tradeoff hard into "quality". That is, the message is…

> "unless you can give your children a perfect life, you shouldn't bother".

Except in real life, income is negatively correlated with fertility. Meaning, those most able to give their kids the "perfect life" are the least likely to have kids, while those least able to give their kids the "perfect life" are the most likely to have kids.

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#174

Post by bluGill »

someperson wrote: post #42
gadders wrote: post #6

Sounds hellish. "His administration is focused on delivering on his promise to reduce the immigrant population and argues, despite the protestations of economists, that doing so will mean greater opportunities and wages for native-born workers and will reduce the cost of everything from housing to health care by reducing demand. “There is no shortage of American minds and hands to grow our labor force, and President…

I wish there were more reasoned debate and distinguishing between legal immigration including tech workers (H-1B visas) versus illegal immigration for eg food truck workers, DoorDash scooter drivers. Also the lack of knowledge about the existence of the fantastic and generous H-2A visa for farm workers is maddening.

Nobody cares.

Why a debate - we are not allowing enough immigrants, VISA class is just hiding that fact.

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#175

Post by bradlys »

rjbwork wrote: post #143
ryandrake wrote: post #102

If the US wants to increase its population, maybe it should stop sending masked agents out to kick in doors, directly reducing the population.

The US doesn't want indiscriminate population growth. It wants white people that were born here to reproduce more.

I think capitalists just want cheap labor. The US itself doesn’t have a unified position on population. Plenty of people want a population decrease because they feel everything is overcrowded.

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#176

Post by scottious »

jdlyga wrote: post #68

Once you have a kid, it's obvious why even besides the costs involved. There's not much sense of community, particularly in the white middle class. People are very individualistic and distrusting of others. There's a good reason for some of this, but to have a community you need to be a community member. And that means letting people in, trusting others and being trustworthy, and being out for the group instead of ju…

Every morning I get to my son's school about 10 minutes before the doors open. We arrive by bike and we sit ALONE on the benches near the front door.

Meanwhile, the curb is full of extra large SUVs idling with kids just waiting inside the cars. The long line of SUVs extends all through the neighborhood. My son and I are alone because people just won't leave their cars until the doors open. A vast majority of the kids live within one mile of the school.

It's just one small anecdote, but I feel like it illustrates an attitude I've seen.

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#178

Post by rectang »

gadders wrote: post #151
throwawayohio wrote: post #85

Living in a city that this administration has constantly been attacking forced me and my wife, as well as many of our neighbors, to put off our family growth plans. Not only did many of my neighbors lose their jobs, but others are simply fearful of living their lives. We're fine financially, have housing, etc, but at this point why would we go through the stress of raising a child when a masked federal agent might ju…

[flagged]

You think only non-citizens are under assault? Are you familiar with “Kavanaugh Stops”?

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#179

Post by alt227 »

jdlyga wrote: post #68

Once you have a kid, it's obvious why even besides the costs involved. There's not much sense of community, particularly in the white middle class. People are very individualistic and distrusting of others. There's a good reason for some of this, but to have a community you need to be a community member. And that means letting people in, trusting others and being trustworthy, and being out for the group instead of ju…

You have hit the nail on the head completely.

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#180

Post by epistasis »

gadders wrote: post #151
throwawayohio wrote: post #85

Living in a city that this administration has constantly been attacking forced me and my wife, as well as many of our neighbors, to put off our family growth plans. Not only did many of my neighbors lose their jobs, but others are simply fearful of living their lives. We're fine financially, have housing, etc, but at this point why would we go through the stress of raising a child when a masked federal agent might ju…

[flagged]

ICE threatens everyone, regardless of citizenship. They daily detain citizens without even bothering to ask "papers please". They menace and threaten and intimidate people just out and about in the neighborhood.

The ICE raids have little to do with immigration, they are a secret police force meant to cause terror in communities with their lawless violence. It is a politically driven attack on a state that had the audacity not to vote for Trump, nothing more.

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