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Why Economic Growth Will Fall

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Re: Why Economic Growth Will Fall

#91

Post by paganel »

davidiach wrote: post #89
paganel wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What happened? As long as we pretend these things are too expensive to invest in, then we're sure to enter a long slow decline. I'll go on the Marxist side of things and say that "quantitative differences have turned out into qualitative ones". What I want to say is that scale matters. Regarding investment in higher-education, it was relatively ok and feasible to give Government subsidies for all the students atten…

You do realize that crop yields have grown exponentially as well? And I hope you also realize that "natural resources" is not an intrinsic property that some things have, it's just a way of describing things around us and for which we figured out use cases. It's like when someone says that a certain phenomenon is mysterious. That's not a description of the phenomenon itself, it just describes the state of knowledge o…

> You do realize that crop yields have grown exponentially as well?

I do realize that, yes, only that nowadays people are not content with only eating bread and making it to the next day (which, I agree, we have enough resources for) but they instead want to have a "Western"-style of life, meaning middle or higher education, a car, some electronics (phones, TVs), air-conditioning etc. I'd say our planet doesn't have enough resources to provide a Western-style of life for 7 billion people, feel free to prove me wrong on that.

I'll also say that the recent immigration-related issues are resource-related, meaning the poorer parts of the world (places like Pakistan or sub-Saharan Africa) don't have enough resources to provide a Western-style of living for people from there. I remember reading an interview with a 16-year old from Gabon (I think), who was waiting at the Italian-Swiss border hoping to make his way to Germany, and the reason he gave for making it all the way there from his home country was that he wanted to attend University in Europe, he didn't mention not having enough bread to eat at home.

Re: Why Economic Growth Will Fall

#92

Post by collyw »

cheriot wrote: post #57
collyw wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people under 40 can't afford a house in many western countries. Compared to 20 years ago, most people could (at least in the two countries I am familiar with - the UK or Spain). The very rich seem to be doing OK though.

The more, more, more does seem to wind up with fewer people. I'm skeptical of the unaffordable housing arguments, though. People only talk about a handful of cities. At least in the US, there's plenty of cheap places to live. They just aren't trendy.

Those happen to be the cities where the jobs are. Sure there are cheap places in the UK, but not much chance of a decent tech job in those places.

Re: Why Economic Growth Will Fall

#93

Post by ArkyBeagle »

paganel wrote: post #32
skywhopper wrote: post #24

I agree that it's impossible for the rates of economic growth and lifestyle improvements we saw since the late 1800s to continue indefinitely, but the key to growth is investment. And from the late-1800s till the mid-1900s, there were huge government investments made in building new and innovative infrastructure in the US--railroads, the phone network, state universities and K-12 public education, electricity generat…

> What happened? As long as we pretend these things are too expensive to invest in, then we're sure to enter a long slow decline. I'll go on the Marxist side of things and say that "quantitative differences have turned out into qualitative ones". What I want to say is that scale matters. Regarding investment in higher-education, it was relatively ok and feasible to give Government subsidies for all the students atten…

Not only were only 1-2% of high school grads going to college, but the proportion finishing high school was lower as well. And all this was okay by the lights of the time.

Malthus got a "bad reputation" because Malthus made a prediction of a continued state of affairs that was very wrong. The prediction itself became dangerous. Color (organic) chemistry met agricultural production, engines replaced muscle and what happened was quite the opposite of Malthus' prediction. You can see the effects of this in the 1920s during the famine in Soviet climes.

Re: Why Economic Growth Will Fall

#94

Post by dforrestwilson »

skywhopper wrote: post #24

I agree that it's impossible for the rates of economic growth and lifestyle improvements we saw since the late 1800s to continue indefinitely, but the key to growth is investment. And from the late-1800s till the mid-1900s, there were huge government investments made in building new and innovative infrastructure in the US--railroads, the phone network, state universities and K-12 public education, electricity generat…

Railroads were privately funded for the most part, same story with phone networks, same story with electricity. Universities and public education are debatable as to whether they actually fuel growth.

Re: Why Economic Growth Will Fall

#95

Post by coldtea »

paganel wrote: post #32
skywhopper wrote: post #24

I agree that it's impossible for the rates of economic growth and lifestyle improvements we saw since the late 1800s to continue indefinitely, but the key to growth is investment. And from the late-1800s till the mid-1900s, there were huge government investments made in building new and innovative infrastructure in the US--railroads, the phone network, state universities and K-12 public education, electricity generat…

> What happened? As long as we pretend these things are too expensive to invest in, then we're sure to enter a long slow decline. I'll go on the Marxist side of things and say that "quantitative differences have turned out into qualitative ones". What I want to say is that scale matters. Regarding investment in higher-education, it was relatively ok and feasible to give Government subsidies for all the students atten…

>Regarding investment in higher-education, it was relatively ok and feasible to give Government subsidies for all the students attending university when only 1%-2% of the students finishing high-school were going to university (I think that happened up until the mid-50s, but maybe I'm wrong), but once you've got 30-50% of the students finishing high-school going to university then the money just isn't there anymore.

Well, other countries like Germany etc can do it just fine, so...

Re: Why Economic Growth Will Fall

#96

Post by randomdata »

collyw wrote: post #71
d4nt wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that the amount of time people work stays broadly constant, but automation changes what is considered "work". To a farm labourer from 500 years ago, sitting on factory production line attaching two parts together doesn't feel much like work. To a production line worker from 100 years ago, sitting at a computer typing emails to people and going to meetings doesn't feel much like work. To us today, sitti…

By that reasoning Steven Hawking is hardly doing anything, as he barely moves. Work doesn't need to mean physical labor.

Isn't that his point? 500 years ago, nobody would be willing to hire Steven Hawking. Period. He simply isn't capable of doing anything resembling what they would have considered work, even with the use of the modern tools he uses to interact with the world. Today, however, he is able to be a completely productive member of society because the work we need to do is completely different – and the work we need to do 500 years from now will unlikely resemble much of what we do today.

Re: Why Economic Growth Will Fall

#97

Post by pm90 »

danbruc wrote: post #82
ThePhysicist wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also think that we underestimate the amount of unused resources that we haven't tapped into yet (e.g. planets in our solar systems) and the resources that we might not even know about yet (e.g. new forms of matter or "new" laws of physics). Also, it seems likely that paradigm-shifting technological breakthroughs will continue pushing the boundaries of our growth further out. An interesting read in that respect is "…

Starting with 7.4 billion people in 2016 and a population growth rate of 1 % per year we will reach the carrying capacity of Earth in less than 1400 years - the body heat alone will raise the surface temperature above the boiling point of water. Once we reach the carrying capacity of Earth - no matter when that is - and decide to move into space we have 2685 more years until we run out of places to live in the Milky…

It is very unlikely the population of earth will continue to grow at 1%. In the best scenario, we will have worldwide development followed by a fall in fertility that it inevitably brings. In the more morbid ones, climate change, wars etc. will result in a large amount of the population getting destroyed.

Re: Why Economic Growth Will Fall

#98

Post by hx87 »

paganel wrote: post #91
davidiach wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize that crop yields have grown exponentially as well? And I hope you also realize that "natural resources" is not an intrinsic property that some things have, it's just a way of describing things around us and for which we figured out use cases. It's like when someone says that a certain phenomenon is mysterious. That's not a description of the phenomenon itself, it just describes the state of knowledge o…

> You do realize that crop yields have grown exponentially as well? I do realize that, yes, only that nowadays people are not content with only eating bread and making it to the next day (which, I agree, we have enough resources for) but they instead want to have a "Western"-style of life, meaning middle or higher education, a car, some electronics (phones, TVs), air-conditioning etc. I'd say our planet doesn't have…

> air conditioning

It's just a pet peeve of mine, but why is so much blame placed on air conditioning, when heating uses an order of magnitude more energy?

Re: Why Economic Growth Will Fall

#99

Post by hx87 »

GFischer wrote: post #76
jerf wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"if psych/soc pressures don't stabilize the population by themselves." Since at the moment, the evidence strongly suggests that they are, "population control" measures sound even more evil to me than they did before. The problem is that when you go to concretize the abstract question, you end up with the question " Who gets the power to decide who lives and dies?" (or reproduces) and one need not study history for ve…

Well, China did have such a policy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy

It has been of questionable utility since the decline in fertility began before the policy was implemented. In fact, the policy was conceived to counteract Mao's pro-natalist policy where a large(r) population was supposed to be a hedge against nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

Re: Why Economic Growth Will Fall

#100

Post by hx87 »

bluetomcat wrote: post #55
yummyfajitas wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to wikipedia, more people than ever before are getting educated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Educational_Attainment_in... Spending on infrastructure is going up. https://www.economy.com/dismal/analysis/free/254109 The issue is not lack of investment, it's out of control costs.

Getting educated in what? Corporate law, advertising and marketing, journalism, HR, French literature... If most of these jobs are replaced by proper blue-collar occupations, we would see far more tangible results – most importantly, cheaper construction and housing.

It's difficult to make construction in the USA cheaper without greater acceptance of prefabrication and panelization in the residential sector and lowering of permitting costs.
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