Posted on 07/17/2011 7:42:56 PM PDT by Palter
No man is an island, especially in the markets. Our consumption basket includes the efforts of hundreds of millions of people around the world, and our right to consume depends on our ability to sell to hundreds of millions of people around the world. During the present century the number of adults in affluent and productive countries will shrink by about a third. All of us will be poorer.
There will be a third fewer people earnings profits for businesses, paying taxes to governments, buying homes or cars, or taking vacations. Starting around 2015 the adult population will start to decline at about 2% a year. Productivity in the industrial nations (output per worker) has grown at slightly more than 2% since 2000, according to The Conference Board, [1] so a 2% decline in working-age population suggests that output will remain more or less flat indefinitely in the developed countries.
(Excerpt) Read more at atimes.com ...
Correction: killed off.
It won't be too long before India overtakes China given their current fertility rates.
Technology kills some jobs but provides many more. Milton Friedman was visiting some third world country once and he asked his guide why men were trying to build roads using shovels. His guide replied that if they were to use equipment, there would be fewer jobs for laborers. Friedman’s response was, “Then why not have them use spoons?”
Progress and technology are not the enemy. It frees people to do more constructive things with the time that the techology has saved them. The real destroyer of jobs and wealth is, as always, government.
I hear what you’re saying and am sympathetic to your argument, but it reminds me of someone analyzing a bumble bee and concluding that it can’t fly. Well, somehow it does fly. Likewise mechanization has been increasing for the last 200 years and yet we’re not living like serfs. In fact the quality of life for the average Joe has been improving and will probably continue to improve. The trend line is up. If mechanization led to serfdom then we would be closer to serfdom now than we were before mechanization. But we’re not, so there’s obviously something going on — something big — that your analysis doesn’t take into account. There’s some subtle but pivotal misconception buried in there somewhere. I’m not sure what it is exactly (I wish I did) but it’s there.
Empires rise, and empires fall. Its been this way since the beginning of recorded history. The only question is where are we currently at in that timeline.
O.K.-Give or take 10-12 million illegals.
Such as? Keep in mind that technology has automated many of those very things that were freed up originally, and the nature of the technology means those jobs can be done anywhere in the world with the required technical infrastructure....a lot has changed in just the last 10 years. Not to mention that the vast majority of workers are ill-equipped to keep up with the changes.
it,s already happening now...we are technically advancing ourselves out of jobs now...materials, electronics, production equipment....
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“Brother, Can You Spare a Dime,” lyrics by Yip Harburg, music by Jay Gorney (1931)
They used to tell me I was building a dream, and so I followed the mob,
When there was earth to plow, or guns to bear, I was always there right on the job.
They used to tell me I was building a dream, with peace and glory ahead,
Why should I be standing in line, just waiting for bread?
Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad; now it’s done. Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower, up to the sun, brick, and rivet, and lime;
Once I built a tower, now it’s done. Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once in khaki suits, gee we looked swell,
Full of that Yankee Doodly Dum,
Half a million boots went slogging through Hell,
And I was the kid with the drum!
Say, don’t you remember, they called me Al; it was Al all the time.
Why don’t you remember, I’m your pal? Buddy, can you spare a dime?
Once in khaki suits, gee we looked swell,
Full of that Yankee Doodly Dum,
Half a million boots went slogging through Hell,
And I was the kid with the drum!
Say, don’t you remember, they called me Al; it was Al all the time.
Say, don’t you remember, I’m your pal? Buddy, can you spare a dime?
“Technology kills some jobs but provides many more.”
That’s OK so long as our population remains technologically adept. But US companies have been sending their manufacturing and engineering operations overseas. And at the expense of math and science, our schools are teaching kids that there is more than one way to be a boy. Instead of spoons we’ll be digging ditches with tweezers.
so, are you suggesting that abortion is a good thing?
Americans have been consuming more than we produce for about the last forty years. Foreigners have many more claims on the production of relatively fewer, and in many ways relatively less productive, Americans, who will have fewer resources to with which to “honor” the claims of retiring Americans and provide for the their families.
Government profligacy is certainly in part to blame, but so is an enormous and ineffective “educational” bureaucracy, which devours ever more resources and produces fewer and shoddier outputs.
You righteously condemn consumerism and then report spending $700 on a banjo???!!!
Banjo picker, pluck thyself!
AV
“That means by 2065 there will not any adults left at all!”
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There are no adults in the democrat party now!
“I don’t like work, and work don’t like me, and that is the reason I am so hungry.”
http://www.maniacworld.com/Hallelujah-Im-a-Bum.html
You can only live on credit for so long. Then the bills need repaid.
Not sure why you think I was suggesting that...
apologies if I miscontrued, but your post said “ while turd world hellholes continue breeding like flies.”..
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