Read this article, made me think a bit. Seems human capital is a bubble that may burst on us as well. Thought i'd post it here for others. Very interesting topic & worth the read time IMO. The part about military man-power made me think of the recent announcement of allowing women on front lines...
This is why we need to reform immigration. People get worried about all those illegals but those are the people that help to keep our economy going including retirement plans. That is one reason I would support much more open borders.
So I guess the question that must be answered before this problem can be solved is why did this happen? What changed in the late 60s/early 70s that caused this?
This is a global trend across developed countries. Japan is probably the most extreme example but even in Western Europe, you're seeing negative population growth. It's nothing unique to America. When people get wealthier, they need fewer kids. Gone are the days when people were having 4 or 5 kids consistently. Where the US has succeeded is generating enough immigration to sustain population growth. This is also why we need to reform our immigration system to encourage more immigrants. As a matter of demographics, we're heavily reliant on immigration to counter our low birth rate.
"Among Hispanics, the total fertility rate is 2.4. For non-Hispanic whites and for non-Hispanic Asians, it is 1.8. Non-Hispanic blacks (2.1) have higher fertility than whites but lower fertility than Hispanics." http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/05/17/explaining-why-minority-births-now-outnumber-white-births/ The invention of birth control pills....
This is just my opinion... Prior to this era, a middle class families can afford that lifestyle with only one income. As it became harder, women had to join the workforce to help with the family's financial situation. Balancing your life between family and career would be a lot more difficult if you had more kids.
That sounds reasonable. So what's the downside to this again? Social Security will take a hit, but that's been inevitable for a long time. What else? More money will be spent towards health care? I just don't see that as a huge deal. I must be missing something. Very true. Sad and true. Spoiler Found something else that's interesting: Spoiler Read the underlined parts if the article is going to be TL;DR.
Gone are the agricultural days when 9 kids meant 9 laborers to tend your crops. You had a concrete return on your "investment". No demand for formal education means no worries about college tuition. These days, cost of living is so high that it's hard for a couple to have 2 kids. And you see no concrete return for having many kids. The only return is the subjective joy of raising a child.
Did you all see the part in the article about the 1000% rise in college education rates since the 1960's? Terrible. $1 trillion in student loans outstanding now. So much debt makes people weary of kids.
Same here. This is normal for folks who wants to justify their beliefs that they would provide data which seems to support their stands (regardless if it makes sense or not) . From what I can tell, the author (JONATHAN V. LAST) is against abortion.
There are many different reasons why having open borders is a complete terrible idea. There is a reason why its almost impossible for a person with no family in the US and unskilled to get a green card. They are a complete liability. This is the vast majority of illegals. With the decline in population, who is going to take care of all these poor people flooding over to the US? Poor people do not bring in that much revenue. The bigger issue is the economy. Our economy is predominately a service based economy. As our population shrinks, there will be less people to buy all those fancy toys, services and food.
That's a terrible graph on the bottom. Why show fertility rates from the 1800's on and then show a single straight line for replacement rate? Are we really supposed to believe that the replacement rate hasn't changed? I don't know what it was in 1820 but it sure as hell wasn't 2.1!
Read the 2.1 in the context of the article. Replacement rate in US since 1800 has been in steady decline with exception of boost after WW2. The premise is that so long as fertility rates are at least 2.1, population growth drives economic demands in way of goods & services. In 1820, looks like rates were 6 to 7. Of course people were also lucky to hit 45 & 50 yrs old back then.
Northside has already pointed out that illegal immigrants already pay a lot in taxes including SSI while not being able to draw from it. As far as unskilled labor keep in mind things like most agriculture work and much of construction is considered unskilled and without that labor source a lot of buildings wouldn't get built or produce picked. What you are still missing though is the main point of the article that a declining birth rate is causing a lot of problems. If we aren't having more kids you make up for that by having more people come into the country. Increased immigration though means that our population won't shrink. You seem to think that somehow immigrants aren't adding to the population when they are. By allowing them to come in and also to legalize them is what will keep our economy and retirement benefits going. The fact that we have more immigration, both legal and illegal, than countries like Japan is one reason we are avoiding some of the problems that Japan has.
