U.S. population growth is slowing down. Here's why that's a bad thing

https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2020/01/24/us-population-growth-slowing-down-heres-why-thats-bad-thing

by mikesabbagh • 5 years ago

20 50 5 years ago

dominotw5• 5 years ago

Unfortunately, a sustained population loss would be incompatible with economic growth. Fewer people would mean a decline in business activity, imminent labor shortages and a worsening age imbalance that would leave more senior citizens without enough caregivers.

Same old reasoning that we've heard a million different times.

Can't we simply increase immigration when needed. Japan is a bad example because they are a xenophobic population that doesn't accept immigration. Tired of this this bullshit take every single time.

jollybean3• 5 years ago

We live in a different world than 1800-2000 when migration, births, and fossil fuels were the powertrain of growth. The math has changed.

Edit: I don't know what the answer is, other than to say 'it's probably not what it was before'.

minikites5• 5 years ago

Can't we simply increase immigration when needed.

Not when you have a major political party doubling down on nativist sentiment and rhetoric. Remember "migrant caravans"? Or midwestern conservative politicians stoking fears of MS-13? Or "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us."

Immigration is scary to many people in the USA and one party deliberately stokes that fear.

dominotw5• 5 years ago

Over 10% of US population is estimated to be undocumented. I don't believe these census numbers are accurate at all, we are doing fine in terms of importing young population.

JPKab3• 5 years ago

Cheap labor lowers wages and undermines unions ability to negotiate. In the long term the additional demand generated by immigrants balances out and things are fine. In the short term many forms of labor are devalued and people who are already live here fine at their wages are undercut.

The idea that anti-immigrant sentiment is purely driven by racism isn't accurate.

As is typical on internet forums nuance is always lost when it comes to these kinds of issues.

My wife and her family are immigrants FYI so when I say these things I'm not some bigot. I'm just a guy that used to work in the construction industry and saw the impact on wages for lower skilled professions.

jollybean3• 5 years ago

"Unfortunately, a sustained population loss would be incompatible with economic growth."

This is a pretty hefty dose of globalist neoliberalism right there.

I think we may want to put question marks around 'rapidly declining population' as 'a problem to consider' (In Japan it's decline in birth, Hungary it's emigration) with existential considerations and consequences.

But the 'warm bodies is growth' mentality which is actually part and parcel of the industrial revolution ... needs to be rethought.

US, Canada, Australia, and Brazil etc. need to think about this a little more.

JPKab3• 5 years ago

I don't disagree with you at all but unfortunately without population growth the social safety net in most industrialized countries would completely collapse.

Imagine what it would look like for a politician to try to tell the American public that social security needs to be radically reformed and restructured.

tonyedgecombe• 5 years ago

I don't disagree with you at all but unfortunately without population growth the social safety net in most industrialized countries would completely collapse.

It hasn't in Japan.

coward76• 5 years ago

Telling people not to have children and then importing people has always been the agenda.

tonis2• 5 years ago

Pyramid schemes always need new blood or they will collapse.

HDMI_Cable2• 5 years ago

Almost no economy is a pyramid scheme. American, European, and Asian economies have been functioning for hundreds of years. Populations only started growing in the late 1700s, even though they (in Europe and Asia) had already had an established economy.

HappySweeney• 5 years ago

I think he means national pension schemes such as Social Security or CPP. Longer lifespans and shrinking populations are both very detrimental to their returns.

dang• 5 years ago

"Please don't post shallow dismissals. A good critical comment teaches us something."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

minikites5• 5 years ago

The US government could do a lot more to assist with childcare (grants, subsidizing daycare, etc) but it would involve taking money from rich people in the form of taxes, so it's unlikely to happen.

ed25519FUUU5• 5 years ago

You’re being downvoted but it’s true. And this sentiment is something shared by both the national populist and socialist, so you’d think there would be more support for it.

thorsrud• 5 years ago

This sounds like an argument from the same voters who are losing their jobs to automation. They just don't have the experience or education to comprehend how various forms of automation generate far greater productivity gains than more warm bodies.

ed25519FUUU5• 5 years ago

Can you point me to the people who are actively losing their jobs to automation? I hear about this theoretical “crisis” only on hacker news, and not anywhere in the real world.

kory• 5 years ago

Population decline isn’t all bad. A labor shortage would finally cause wages to move upwards, no? One of the big reasons folks in the 1950s could be paid well for lowish skilled jobs was the small labor pool employees were willing to pick from.

AuryGlenz• 5 years ago

And that’s exactly why a large portion of businesses and the political machine are 100% OK with mass illegal immigration.

ed25519FUUU5• 5 years ago

Not when there’s an excess of “under the table labor” which doesn’t pay federal or state taxes, making them comparably much cheaper to employ.

toomuchtodo3• 5 years ago

These arguments are always hogwash, crying about the economy while not providing any labor regulation or economic support to people who have children (paid time off, subsidized child care, etc). They should be ignored.

The lower the total fertility rate, the better for planetary resource consumption and contention issues.

fallingfrog• 5 years ago

Exactly this. The hand wringing over something whose cause is so obvious is just very frustrating. Does the author have any idea how much child care costs per week? This is what you get when all social costs are forced onto the young, poor and overworked.

WarOnPrivacy3• 5 years ago

Father of 5 (grown) here: My spouse was disabled. That meant in good (healthwise) years, I had some locked in childcare.

Even with that ~advantage, most years were spent in a constant cycle of barely keeping the utilities on and housing paid - or not.

currymj• 5 years ago

America Magazine is run by Jesuit priests, among the most left-leaning of Catholic organizations, they're editorially both pro-labor and pro-child support.

jl27183• 5 years ago

Ahh... using God’s name to guilt people into paying for their own self-destruction. Nothing new. The Bible says a lot about this type of people.

toomuchtodo3• 5 years ago

As Catholics, they’re also pro-natalist, and are always going to support people having more children over less or no children, even if it’s not in the best interests of those having said children.

randomopining2• 5 years ago

Problem is that we're still in a zero-sum game that the CCP wants to play.

toomuchtodo3• 5 years ago

"The data released on Monday, from the Chinese ministry of public security, showed the number of new birth registrations in 2020 was 10.035 million, compared with 11.8 million in 2019. The 2019 figure marked the lowest point since the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949."

"Zhang Lijia, a writer, journalist and social commentator, said there was a change in attitude and many women – especially urban-living and highly educated – no longer regarded marriage and parenthood as “necessary passages in life or the essential ingredients of a happy life”."

“In another word, it is about choice. Better education, higher income and more career options grant these women the freedom to choose a lifestyle they desire. They are assertive enough to resist the pressure from their parents to produce children. And the society is more tolerant than before.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/10/china-birthrat...

throwaway0a5e• 5 years ago

TL;DR our economic system has assumptions of continued population growth baked in all over the place.

jl27183• 5 years ago

Propaganda. Psychological warfare. Look at the rest of the anonymous articles by “the editors”. You should know exactly what they’ll suggest to ‘fix’ the problem.

WarOnPrivacy3• 5 years ago

"Fewer people would ... leave more senior citizens without enough caregivers."

I think we should first try making Senior Caregiving a competitive field, by paying a living wage. I realize that might make shareholders and healthcare lobbyists grumpy - but as a nation, I think we could weather that storm.

anm892• 5 years ago

That's a funny way of saying "we have designed our country like a pyramid scheme where paying the bills requires an ever broadening population base to cover the last generations debts.

U.S. population growth is slowing down. Here's why that's a bad thing

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