37 ms·

Two kids is excessive? By what measure? Human populations need a birth rate of 2.1 to even stay at the same level.

by pradn 10y ago

mac01021 10y ago
At the moment, though, we are probably better off shrinking our numbers.
- rayiner 10y ago
  Not in the US. We're facing a huge impending labor shortage. (And immigration just externalizes the problem of accommodating raising children from US policy to India or China policy.)
  - philipkglass 10y ago
    We're facing a huge impending labor shortage. The trend in US wages/employment for youths doesn't seem to signal that. The trend in wages/employment for youths in nations with even lower fertility rates (Spain, Italy, Portugal...) doesn't seem to signal that. Even Japan, where absolute population decline is already underway, has good-but-not-amazing trends in wages and unemployment for youths. Where's the race to bid up the prices for young workers, and buy all their labor that's for sale, if an aging work force really is leading to crisis-level worker shortages? If the market expects a huge impending shortage of (e.g.) coking coal, you don't see the same lackluster demand for the output that's currently available. Maybe you meant that the shortage isn't coming in the next couple of months or years, but in a generation or so, so the market reaction isn't there yet. The view that I subscribe to, which seems common here on HN, is that technological change is going to significantly reduce the market demand for human labor in a generation or so. I expect that automation will generally deflate the market price of human labor faster than an aging work force can inflate it. Social Security solvency currently depends on lots of middle class workers earning wages, because its funding is structured that way. But that's a policy choice that is more easily reversed than fertility rates or technical progress in automation. If the problem is more about paying for retirees than lacking warm bodies to do work, higher fertility just makes government funding problems more severe: you end up with more people who need non-market support mechanisms if the market demand for additional human labor isn't there.
  - closeparen 10y ago
    Doesn't that mean, huge impending rise in real wages? Because if so, sign me up!
    - tptacek 10y ago
      Does it? Your real wage is your wage adjusted for purchasing power. A labor shortage drives up the cost of production and of services, which increases prices for everything, and also makes it uneconomical for people to hire others for services (like taking care of elderly parents), then the math teachers and so on in that fashion until everyone is eaten.
      - closeparen 10y ago
        That was slightly tounge-in-cheek :). I suppose it would be bad for most people. Personally, I spend: - 15% on "luxury" goods and services such as travel, coffee shops, restaurants, event tickets, and my car, all of which I can do without at slight to moderate annoyance. - 5% on necessary goods and services such as groceries, household supplies, and transit across the Bay. - 80% on rent, including parking. The cost of production isn't entirely absent from my true expenses; I do need groceries, and some tiny proportion of my rent pays for the actual materials, construction, and maintenance on the structure and associated infrastructure. But my dirt parking space next to BART certainly didn't need producing (the most produced thing in that lot is the fee collection machine), and I spend as much on that as I do on food. So, I would not mind even a massive increase in the cost of goods and services, if it came with more money overall (which I can also use for space) and/or a decrease in the cost of space (i.e. fewer people contending for it). OTOH, all Bay Area tech jobs ultimately rely on consumer spending, so if there is not enough of that going around, probably no paycheck.

Two kids is excessive? By what measure? Human populations need a birth rate of 2.1 to even stay at the same level.

by pradn 10y ago

Two kids is excessive? By what measure? Human populations need a birth rate of 2.1 to even stay at the same level.

mac01021 10y ago

At the moment, though, we are probably better off shrinking our numbers.

rayiner 10y ago
Not in the US. We're facing a huge impending labor shortage. (And immigration just externalizes the problem of accommodating raising children from US policy to India or China policy.)
- philipkglass 10y ago
  We're facing a huge impending labor shortage. The trend in US wages/employment for youths doesn't seem to signal that. The trend in wages/employment for youths in nations with even lower fertility rates (Spain, Italy, Portugal...) doesn't seem to signal that. Even Japan, where absolute population decline is already underway, has good-but-not-amazing trends in wages and unemployment for youths. Where's the race to bid up the prices for young workers, and buy all their labor that's for sale, if an aging work force really is leading to crisis-level worker shortages? If the market expects a huge impending shortage of (e.g.) coking coal, you don't see the same lackluster demand for the output that's currently available. Maybe you meant that the shortage isn't coming in the next couple of months or years, but in a generation or so, so the market reaction isn't there yet. The view that I subscribe to, which seems common here on HN, is that technological change is going to significantly reduce the market demand for human labor in a generation or so. I expect that automation will generally deflate the market price of human labor faster than an aging work force can inflate it. Social Security solvency currently depends on lots of middle class workers earning wages, because its funding is structured that way. But that's a policy choice that is more easily reversed than fertility rates or technical progress in automation. If the problem is more about paying for retirees than lacking warm bodies to do work, higher fertility just makes government funding problems more severe: you end up with more people who need non-market support mechanisms if the market demand for additional human labor isn't there.
- closeparen 10y ago
  Doesn't that mean, huge impending rise in real wages? Because if so, sign me up!
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Does it? Your real wage is your wage adjusted for purchasing power. A labor shortage drives up the cost of production and of services, which increases prices for everything, and also makes it uneconomical for people to hire others for services (like taking care of elderly parents), then the math teachers and so on in that fashion until everyone is eaten.
    - closeparen 10y ago
      That was slightly tounge-in-cheek :). I suppose it would be bad for most people. Personally, I spend: - 15% on "luxury" goods and services such as travel, coffee shops, restaurants, event tickets, and my car, all of which I can do without at slight to moderate annoyance. - 5% on necessary goods and services such as groceries, household supplies, and transit across the Bay. - 80% on rent, including parking. The cost of production isn't entirely absent from my true expenses; I do need groceries, and some tiny proportion of my rent pays for the actual materials, construction, and maintenance on the structure and associated infrastructure. But my dirt parking space next to BART certainly didn't need producing (the most produced thing in that lot is the fee collection machine), and I spend as much on that as I do on food. So, I would not mind even a massive increase in the cost of goods and services, if it came with more money overall (which I can also use for space) and/or a decrease in the cost of space (i.e. fewer people contending for it). OTOH, all Bay Area tech jobs ultimately rely on consumer spending, so if there is not enough of that going around, probably no paycheck.