Overpopulation. Do you fear it?

Perhaps you're not worried because you may be dead before the shit hits the fan. Again, depending on how you look at it, it already has.

Economy? What about the environment?

 

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Whose to say that we will still even maintain our current economic system as the population starts to become older? It seems like as one system starts to become inefective a new more effective system will gradually take its place. :shrug:

 

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I won't be. I'm 34. It's not unimaginable that I will be alive in 2050 (75 years old). I am worried about a great deal of things, and I do think that the overall world population worries me, just not the population of the USA. At our current increase of concern over the environment, I see our nation becoming progressively greener, despite population growth. Some of this is thanks to the price of oil the other is thanks to people just worrying about it.

The population in Africa and Asia does, however, bother me. The USA could continue to grow to about 600 million before I'd panic. It's the huge increases in India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Bangladesh that concern me.

What about it? I was talking only about the US, not Asia, South America and Africa.

~String

 

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Of course. I am experiencing that first hand over here in Europe. It isn't a change for the better..

 

How so?

 

I was just giving an example to make a point.

Well, it's going to happen if nothing is done.
And the number you mentioned is a pretty conservative one.
1800-1850 Growth about 17 million
1850-1900 Growth about 53 million
1900-1950 Growth about 76 million
1950-2000 Growth about 131 million
2000-2050 Growth about.. you tell me. Looks like it's still accelerating.
I believe the projection is 438 million (2050).

I don't think you should be looking at countries. You should look at the whole world population.

Ok, but you think that the environment won't suffer under a population increase of 130 million people in the next 40 years?
And what about the 40 years after that?

 

Population ageing due to the baby boom back in the late 40's/early 50's.
That combined with the economic state we're in result in social plan cuts and reductions.
Hrm.. something's weird about the above sentence.. oh well lol

 

Exactly!

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I think we should all do our part to help reduce overpopulation....go out at kill a few people!

 

There is much, much, more to the problem of how to support an increasingly older population than just the ratio of the # of retired to # of workers in country. Let’s compare only two of these other factors for country "A" (America) vs. country "C" (China) when considering which will have the greater future problem due to changing demographics.

For example:

(1) How much A has Promised to its retired relative to what C has Promised to its retired.
I designate that as Pa/Pc and note it at least greater than 10.

(2) How rapidly the worker's Incomes in C are gaining in real purchasing power annually compared to the the workers in A. I will designate that as Ic/Ia and note that is also at least greater than 10. US workers have actually lost purchasing power for a decade, but lets hope it returns to a 1% annual gain soon and assume that it does. Chinese workers are rapidly gaining purchasing power by more than 10% annually (buying more cars than Americans now, etc.) I.e. Ic/Ia > 10 also.

Thus with just the increase in his salary (no reduction in his living standard) the typical Chinese worker can support more than 100 times better what the Chinese government has promised as benefits to the retired than the American worker can support what his government has promised. US workers are already complaining about how high Social Security taxes are - the Chinese worker does not pay any.

Furthermore, in China, the retired cannot vote themselves higher benefits in China. I.e. the active AARP voting block does not exist. China could even reduce the meager promises it has made, but organized AARP does vote. Any politician who even suggests the Social Security benefits be reduced will soon be a "one-term" Congress person.

Also note that the Yuan is rising in value and the Dollar is dropping, so it will be the Chinese retired who are drinking French wine and smoking expensive Cuban cigars, etc. while retired Joe American will be drinking home brew and rolling his own, if he can afford even that. Many older Americans are already facing hard choices (medicine or meat? Etc.)

SUMMARY: Paying what has been promised to the retired is at least 100 times less of a problem for the Chinese than for the American Government even if there may be eventually slightly more retired in the US / worker than in China.

Frankly, I expect the US will not be able to keep its Social Security / Medicare promises to the old for more than a decade and China easily will for several decades.
I never met an informed American under 35 who expects to even get his mandated SS tax money back (in purchasing power)! Have you?

 

According to one article we will need to produce 70% more food in the next 40 yrs.If we dont we will have mass starvation much worse than even now. Were doomed unless that Jesus fellow comes around.

http://tinyurl.com/ykr8h3s



PS-Just kidding on Jesus.Not my belief.

 

But what if you kill the person who would have otherwise lived on to invent a new way of producing inexpensive, non-polluting energy, thereby solving two thirds of our problems on this planet? No easy answers Mac.

 

You omitted the actual demographic factor, which is the ratio of the number of workers to the number of retirees. This is the factor that is going to bite China relative to the US. China is going to hit a hard corner in terms of worker/retiree ratio in about 6-7 years, due to the one-child policy.

Likewise, the ability to support a large number of retirees at a much lower standard of living is not particularly impressive in the first place.

They don't call them "Social Security," but the workers are still paying taxes to cover retirement benefits.

And to the extent that Chinese workers will be required to pay less taxes, that doesn't add up to more money in their pocket. It just means they have to support their aging relatives directly out of their paychecks, instead of through the government (just like Americans used to do before Social Security).

No, the Yuan has been effectively re-pegged to the dollar since the global recession broke out. The last thing China wants right now is for exports to get hit even harder than they have already.

And the Chinese government not having promised to support the incoming generations of retirees at any decent standard of living is at least 100 times more of a problem for the Chinese nation than is America's issues with funding its obligations.

How easy each country is going to find it to meet its obligations is only the salient question when comparing countries that actually have comparable obligations. That China can easily pay for its meager promises misses the point: those retirees are still going to need support, and if it's not provided by the government, then it will be expressed as social strain, workforce immobility, reduced savings, etc.

Nobody disagrees that it's more expensive to fund retirees at first-world living standards than at third-world living standards. But that doesn't mean the latter is preferable, overall.

 

That would be the worst possible thing to do. Desperately poor people will destroy anything in their quest for bare subsistence. Worrying about endangered species, or the long term global consequences to short term resource extraction, are luxuries of the well fed. If my children were starving, and the only way I could feed them was by poaching Elephants to sell the ivory, I would too.

Giving assistance of the appropriate sort can stave off deforestation, poaching, and many, many other environmental problems. Many women would no doubt appreciate health clinics that provided sex education and birth control. Wealthier people seem to automatically choose smaller families than the desperately poor, one reason being that they don't have to rely on a large number of children to act as a form of social security.

 

Does China have even a rudimentary government-run national retirement program? I was under the impression that China did not provide that. Chinese, being. . . well, Chinese, the expectation is that children to care for their elderly parents.

~String

 

I agree. But regionally, the population of the USA draws off N. American agricultural/ecological resources. I'm not saying that 400-600 million people in the states would be good for the environment, I'm just saying that it would be a fraction of the ecological dammage done in Asia and Africa by those increasing populations.

Though, I will grant you, it's best to look at the issue a bit more globally.

I'm not sure the US population will be increasing much beyond the year 2050. That's total speculation, but I've seen projections that the population would begin to drop somewhere towards the end of the century.

~String

 

My understanding is that they do, although it is relatively new. They have something called the National Council for Social Security Fund, although I'm given to believe this also covers things like general welfare assitance, retraining, etc.

It used to be that everyone got a pension via their job, which was at a state-owned enterprize (called the Iron Rice Bowl), but that system has fallen apart.

It's definitely the case that they do not provide sufficient retirement benefits to sustain the elderly without some other assistance (presumably from children).

But either way, you're left with the same problem of an exploding ratio of retirees to workers.

 

Agreed. Which is why, for now, I'm not panicking about the population growth of the USA. I'm trying to be rational about this, but I think it will give the USA a HUGE edge in economics in the near future when Europe, Japan and China begin to suffer from an inverted population.

Note: I recently read that China just instituted universal health care. Odd. I thought they were. . . you know. . . communist and all.

~String

 

Nation's Experts Give Up

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29351

 

I think we should fear, or at least stay conscious about population. Over or under issues depend on circumstances. We tend to calculate the increase rate of population due to its recent accelaration, and we find a natural inclanation towards over-population. Yet we forget the fact that we are not so natural anymore: What made us to multiply the world population was not something natural. Technologic achievements, urbanization, better life conditions, and rich expectations from life made our population from 1 billion to 7 billion in 100 years time. That's not natural. If it is not, the opposite way is also possible: A sudden change in human cultural reproduction strategies and we could all end up half of this population in next half a century. So instead of 30 Billion of human beings we can easily see 3 Billion in 2060. Nonetheless, if we listen to the futurists, nobody can actually make a correct guess about this date, since the rapid acceleration in technological achievements would turn impossible into possible; or at least human beings can even slow down birth rate all over the world with a new cultural thinking in one generation as we can observe this trend among todays' developed countries. Under-population would be the biggest problem: So population should basically match the conditions (in human society/economy as well as in natural environment), otherwise it will always going to be a dangerous issue. A fine balance...

On the one hand, yes, we are 7 billions now, and it is a massive number when we consider human populations throughout history. It simply has never been like this before. On the other hand we have been evolving through historic socialisation steps, from clan to village, village to town and then cities, city states, later on kingdoms and finally nations. Each step increased the number of people in active cooperation. Now, for the first time in our history, we are able to imagine the whole humanity, entire population of our species, and the well being of this planet as life's harbour in the wilderness of space. This is a great test, but at least we have a great population...