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The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

bloomberg.com

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

#21

Post by daymanstep »

jeffbee wrote: post #12
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…

“There is no shortage of American minds and hands to grow our labor force" - amazing that you can get people to believe that. There is a massive shortage of labor and the labor force participation rate is already dangerously high.

There is no labor shortage. Look at layoffs and job openings - lowest since 2020.

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

#22

Post by postflopclarity »

sandworm101 wrote: post #9

Good. As the working population stagnates perhaps employers will attach some value to workers. Of course, without an underclass of immigrant labor, prices will rise and the US will have to import more food. And temporary heathcare workers can be brought in to help the aging population. It's good that America's cordial relationships with key trading partners will facilitate the free movement of goods and labor ... #1…

facilitating the free movement of labor across borders by... abducting and abusing all the laborers coming across our borders? very curious

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

#25

Post by actionfromafar »

myrmidon wrote: post #8
GiorgioG wrote: post #2

Maybe if young folks could afford housing they'd have kids...there's a thought.

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…

Contraceptives will be harder to get. Project 2025 is also about stopping the "senseless use of birth control pills".

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

#27

Post by myrmidon »

dv_dt wrote: post #7
plaguna wrote: post #3

Maybe they should have a look to what other countries are doing. [0] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/27/spain-decree-r...

The interesting thing is this is Spain's second wave of doing this, and the economic studies on the first wave of it showed visibly positive results. Spain's economy moved in growth, and with a size larger than many other European nations in similar background conditions of flat to negative population growth, but tighter immigration allowances.

I have no doubt that this has positive effects on the national economy as a whole (you get workers, on demand, without really paying for raising, educating, training them), but it is not really sustainable because population growth is low/negative pretty much everywhere, and it also leads to significant pushback from cultural friction and local workers (that dislike competition).

You could argue that the whole rise of somwhat radical rightwing parties all over Europe is mainly the result of policies like this during the last half century...

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

#28

Post by mothballed »

queuebert wrote: post #16

Why do we obsess over growing everything all the time?

The Social Security system relies on creating a debt of unborn children to older people based on those older people having already paid now dead people, so keeping it solvent requires more meat for the tax machine.

A pyramid inversion means the old keep voting for OPM from the young, using their numbers to crush them, meanwhile there are fewer and fewer young to actually pay it. Eventually creating instability, couple this with entitlement "I paid that dead guy, so that kid owes me!" (of course, abstracted, as "the government owes me" to hide the kinetics) and you are in a bad spot.

---------- edit: reply to below since I am throttled -----

yes under any system youth are needed. But SS creates a tragedy of the commons. Because retired get benefit obligation of children whether they have/adopt/foster the children or not. In most other systems, the link is more direct, so there is greater incentive to have or adopt child and provide investment in the child, as their success is directly linked to yours. In SS system you can reneg on most of the responsibility of creating the engines of the next generation but still simply scalp that investment off someone else, and indeed still get roughly the same share without making the investment. Obviously there is great moral hazard to simply scalp the benefit of children without having to make the investment yourself, and SS is all to happy to provide that.

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