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U.S. population growth is slowing down. Here's why that's a bad thing
- dominotw 5y 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.
- jollybean 5y agoWe 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'.
- minikites 5y 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.
- dominotw 5y agoOver 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.
- minikites 5y ago>Over 10% of US population is estimated to be undocumented. Not even close, it's closer to 3-4%: https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/immigration-statistics/Pop_Estimate/UnauthImmigrant/unauthorized_immigrant_population_estimates_2015_-_2018.pdf https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/immigra... https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/how-many-undocumented-immigrants-are-in-the-united-states-and-who-are-they/ https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/how-many-und... https://www.fairus.org/issue/illegal-immigration/2020-how-many-illegal-aliens-us https://www.fairus.org/issue/illegal-immigration/2020-how-ma... https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/interactives/u-s-unauthorized-immigrants-by-state/ https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/interactives/u-s-unauth... I have a hunch that any source putting it at >10% is attempting to stoke the same nativist sentiment and rhetoric I mentioned in my parent comment.
- jollybean 5y agoI guess 3.5% is not 'close' to 10% but it's still a very material number, and 'very unhealthy' in terms of managing civil and social infrastructure. 'Undocumented' is just an upside down way of saying 'dirty cheap labour with no rights' which is possibly the greatest guarantee of inequality etc.. They need to be on the books one way or another the issue has to be sorted out.
- ed25519FUUU 5y agoCensus counts everyone, included non citizens, regardless of citizenship. That’s why there was controversy adding a “are you a US citizen?” to the questionnaire.
- dominotw 5y ago> Census counts everyone Census doesn't count. People count themselves in census.
- ed25519FUUU 5y agoCan you help me understand your distinction?
- JPKab 5y agoCheap 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.
- minikites 5y agoIf we legitimized the immigration status of those people, why wouldn't they join the very same unions and keep wages high for everyone? The villains here are the capital class and their interest in keeping the rest of us in conflict with each other, not struggling immigrants.
- dominotw 5y ago> If we legitimized the immigration status of those people, why wouldn't they join the very same unions and keep wages high for everyone? Because of this per the unions https://twitter.com/unitehere/status/1383450861595074563 https://twitter.com/unitehere/status/1383450861595074563 Labor unions have long lobbied against legal visas for immigrants. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/biden-agencies-pact-boosts-seasonal-visas-in-blow-to-unions https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/biden-agenc... They lobbied obama admin to cut these visas ( and others) by half from bush era high. "displaces U.S. workers while suppressing industry-wide wages. " > The villains here are the capital class You seem to have it all mixed up. 'Capital class' lobbied hard and reversed Trumps visa bans and are major lobbiest for legal h2 visas.
- minikites 5y agoI'm not talking about visas, just make them citizens with the same rights as the rest of us. Then they can join those unions on an equal footing.
- jollybean 5y 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.
- JPKab 5y agoI 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 5y 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.
- anm89 5y agoSure Japan has not collapsed, the US wouldnt either however, A) Japan's pension, ss, medical liabilities per person are much smaller than what the US has created. B) I wouldnt call the Japanese economy a success story over the last 20 years. They are just sliding by
- coward76 5y agoTelling people not to have children and then importing people has always been the agenda.
- tonis2 5y agoPyramid schemes always need new blood or they will collapse.
- HDMI_Cable 5y agoAlmost 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 5y agoI think he means national pension schemes such as Social Security or CPP. Longer lifespans and shrinking populations are both very detrimental to their returns.
- anoncake 5y agoNo matter how you organize it, pensioners use what is produced by the working population. PAYGO systems just make that explicit.
- WarOnPrivacy 5y agoPensioners once produced what the pensioners of their generation consumed. It's the same logic I offer to retirees+parents, who grump over having to support a school system.
- anoncake 5y agoUnfortunately, having so many retirees that pensions are a problem means there are too many retirees for your suggestion to be politically feasible.
- HDMI_Cable 5y agoThat is a major problem in most developed societies. But if you were FDR, Truman, RB Bennett, or any other leader, then you probably couldn't have predicted demographic collapses 100 years in the future.
- minikites 5y agoThe 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.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ed25519FUUU 5y agoYou’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 5y agoThis 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.
- ed25519FUUU 5y agoCan 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 5y agoPopulation 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 5y agoAnd that’s exactly why a large portion of businesses and the political machine are 100% OK with mass illegal immigration.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ed25519FUUU 5y agoNot 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.
- foobiter 5y agoProviding childcare and healthcare like many other countries do could certainly help.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoThese 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 5y agoExactly 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.
- WarOnPrivacy 5y agoFather 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 5y agoAmerica Magazine is run by Jesuit priests, among the most left-leaning of Catholic organizations, they're editorially both pro-labor and pro-child support.
- jl2718 5y agoAhh... 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.
- dopidopHN 5y agoI like the Jesuits mark on history. It's one of the few religious group I kind of look up to. To a extend. They produced some pretty solid scientist like Teillard de chardin or Angelo Secchi. But that's just a side note. -- If I'm correct your statement is that paying for pro-labor or pro-child support policies is paying for self-destruction. Could you elaborate?
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoTL;DR our economic system has assumptions of continued population growth baked in all over the place.
- jl2718 5y agoPropaganda. 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.
- WarOnPrivacy 5y 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.
- anm89 5y agoThat'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.