Fertility Politics
Too many! Too few!
I am old enough to remember (as are most of our regular readers) when there was significant concern (if not panic) about the global population. My sense is that this panic probably peaked in the late 1970s, but it did linger for a while. In terms of popular consciousness, Paul Ehrlich dropped his Population Bomb in 1968, and the 1970s were awash in its fallout. By the 1980s it was a kind of background radiation. Of course, other aspects of the environmental movement(s)* were also concerned about the increase in the human population.
I mean, really, the 1960s and 1970s were an era of catastrophization. Charleton Heston seemed to be popping out of every movie warning us of various dooms, whether it was the pitfalls of nuclear holocaust in Planet of the Apes or overpopulation in Soylent Green.** Even the Saturday morning cartoons gave us stuff like Ark II.
I mean, we were all clearly just doomed.***
A new doom appears to be upon us (according to some): too few babies.
Now, before I get into the more ideological (and partisan) aspects of this issue, let’s note some topics of overall relevance. I will also note that while this is not an area of expertise, it is a general topic that I have been aware of for some time. As a student, a key area of interest for me was political and economic development. This meant being well aware of the challenges of population in lower-income countries and the fact that as countries moved up the ladder, birthrates fell. Moreover, I know just enough about comparative social policy to be dangerous and so am well aware of the fact the modern welfare state is predicated, at least in part, on having enough workers earning and paying taxes to fund retirees. I can even throw in that as a (now former) administrator in higher education, I understand how demographic trends can matter in very practical ways.****
All of this is to say that I understand this is a real issue. Too many people is a problem and so are too few. Further, I will state that I do not know what the Goldilocks imperative is for population growth, and, as will be discussed below, there does not appear to be any clear policy guidance on the subject.
I will further state that the only efficacious policy that I am aware of that directly affects the population is immigration. If the United States needs more workers and tax-payers, the easiest solution is to make it easier for people time immigrate to the US. Because, as multiple studies have demonstrated, other policies simply have not had the desired effect of inducing more procreation. Don’t take my word for it, but rather I would point the reader to a recent interview with political scientist and demographer Jennifer D. Sciubba on The Ezra Klein Show.
One is, how do you get a population, if you’re a state, to have fertility rates that go back up above replacement level? Well, you can strip away individual rights. I am not advocating for this. But we have an example of that. Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania, he said, I want more Romanian babies specifically. And fertility rates were already low there.
So, what did he do? He kind of did the inverse of what China did during some of its population policies, like the one child policy, taking away contraception and making sure women couldn’t get access to legal abortion. And you did see births increase there. You also saw maternal mortality increase.
This was part of a larger discussion about using policy to increase the fertility rate. The bottom line is that apart from significantly authoritarian actions, there are no policy choices that have demonstrated the ability to increase fertility. It really would require Handmaid’s Tale-esque policy prescriptions to guarantee more babies.
I would note this from the interview as well.
If you just told me about a hypothetical country — you said country X — their total fertility rate is seven children per woman, and that’s the only thing you told me, I could paint a picture of that country for you. And I could tell you a lot of things about that country that were probably not great. I would say, probably women and girls are not being educated. Probably, there’s not great health care. Probably, there are no jobs. And probably, it has poor governance.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, if you told me that a country had a fertility rate hovering around one child per woman, to some degree, I think that also reflects that there are some things in that society that are broken, that people, women particularly, although I always do hate to put it on the shoulders of women, but in those low fertility societies, it seems to be the case that women are not willing to reproduce the current social structures. They are not working for them to a huge degree, to the point that they are willing to opt out of this idea of marriage and having children, and seek a different path for themselves.
These basic scenarios underscore the importance of the subject at hand.
There is a proximate cause to this discussion, i.e., various claims by J.D. Vance about “childless cat ladies” and that people with children should get more votes than those without. In a broader context, there is global (see, e.g., Victor Orbán in Hungary, among other places) where the notion of fertility has become a major ideological issue.
Two NYT columns this week were what sparked thoughts on this subject, one by Jessica Grosse (Stop Panicking About the Birthrate) and another by David French (Mockery Won’t Increase Fertility).
Grosse’s piece is a combo of anecdotes (old and new) plus references to Sciubba’s work and other empirical findings. It concludes with this:
Rather than generating a panic about birthrates, chiding parents for being honest about their struggles or criticizing those who opt not to have kids, it makes sense to plan for a future in which we continue, in our country, to be below replacement, while still pushing for pro-family policies like universal paid parental leave, because that’s the humane thing to do for parents and children. That’s much more difficult than complaining about childless cat ladies, but it’s smarter policy. It addresses the real way we live now rather than harking back to a version of the past that never really existed.
I think this is essentially correct.
Her PS to the piece is noteworthy because it shows some inherent contradictions in Vance’s (and his ilk’s) position and behavior.
P.S.: I should note that a child tax credit bill that passed with bipartisan support in the House was voted down in the Senate last week. “Republican senators worried that the bill’s expansion of the child tax credit veered into creating a new welfare program, stalling the legislation,” reports my newsroom colleague Andrew Duehren. Senator Vance, who has falsely claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris opposes the child tax credit, didn’t voteon the bill.
French declares himself a “natalist” but also notes the following:
I am, however, skeptical of natalism as a movement. At the political level, it strikes me as mostly futile. It has more promise as a cultural cause, but even then it is often scolding and even malicious. When JD Vance rants, for example, about “childless cat ladies,” he’s not engaged in a coherent cultural argument. He’s mocking those who live differently. When a prominent right-wing activist like Charlie Kirk says that “the childless are the ones that are destroying the country” and adds that “if you’re bad, you probably don’t have children,” he’s doing much the same thing.
And this captures, to me, the way in which a lot of ideologues on this subject come across: basically as trolls in all the negative senses of the word.
Also this:
During my years in fundamentalist Christianity, I also saw a sense of moral superiority develop around large families. Movements like Quiverfull would teach that large families were a sign of religious obedience, and even less extreme believers would often view the single life as somehow suspect — in spite of clear biblical endorsements of singleness.
And then there’s the darkness of natalism as a response to immigration, especially as a response to immigrants of color. The racist “great replacement theory” depends in part on the notion that immigrants are essentially replacing a population that can no longer renew itself. The response is to both shut the doors to newcomers and revitalize the native birthrate.
Like French, I have a backstory that includes many years in fundamentalist churches and I saw the same thing. If you don’t know what the Quiverfull movement is, go here.***** And, again, if you want more people (and not just more white people) I know where you can find them.
Ultimately on a public policy bases, I think Grosee is correct, and it echoes what Sciubba notes in her interview with Klein: society has to adapt to reality rather than trying to force reality to change since no policy options (that are acceptable, at least) exist.
On that point French underscores:
While it’s too much to say that public policy has no effect on the birthrate at all, it’s also the case that there is no clear example of any single policy or suite of policies that elevates the birthrate back to replacement level. When the combination of economic and political equality and access to birth control grants women more control over reproduction, they tend to have fewer children — regardless of their country or culture.
It really needs to be underscored that any policy that guarantees more births is one that controls women and their bodily autonomy (and I don’t just mean abortion).
French is absolutely right to note the following:
It’s also important to emphasize that there is nothing inherently wrong with either singleness or childlessness.
When I think about my immediate family (siblings and siblings-in-law) there is a range, and there is a range for a host of reasons. We range from families with three kids to two to one to none. I come from a family of four, and my wife is from a family of two. Life simply creates different pathways, options, and outcomes. And that is the hallmark of a free society. (My mind also turns to my great-grandparents’ generation and all the children who were conceived and the many who did not make it out of infancy–and it makes me think of my childless great aunt, who I believe lost several children, but who was one of the kindest people I have ever known).
Let me emphasize again: a free society. The notion that others can dictate these choices is about as authoritarian as it gets.
If people have cultural or religious reasons for wanting large families, they have that right. If a person or couple does not wish to have children, they have that right. And, of course, it is often more complicated than simply what a given person or couple wishes.
I also should note that I think this underscores that arguments that marriage is for procreation alone are simply wrong. This is something that was prominent in the anti-same-sex marriage movement and something that I have seen creeping into the discussion of heterosexual couples, along with the notion that there is something wrong with non-procreative sex.
I will go so far as to say that I agree with French on a pronatalist policy agenda:
I support an expanded child tax credit, paid family leave, free school lunches and Medicaid expansion because I believe that each of these policies will help parents and kids regardless of their impact on the birthrate, and if they do have some marginal impact on the number of births in America, then that’s a bonus.
These are inducements and incentives that I think are worthwhile for society.
But if anyone wants to take the notion of limited government and individual freedom and liberty seriously, don’t try to tell people how many kids they should have.
Moreover, denigrating people, a la Vance, for their lack of children is pretty awful stuff.
Look, the fears of over-population in my youth were overblown, and likewise, as per Grosse, it is ridiculous to panic over falling fertility rates now. As with all things, we just need to adapt and, importantly, recognize the importance of individual rights on this subject.
There is a lot more to say on this subject, but this is already a ridiculously long post, so I will end here.
*There really isn’t a monolithic environmental movement, but rather a number of intertwined environmental and conservationist movements.
**I still can’t believe that there is a food product line called Soylent (which I noticed earlier today while checking out this week’s deals on my local grocery store’s app). But I will note that that movie inspired one of my favorite SNL skits of all time.
***On the over-population front I can think of the original Star Trek episode, “The Mark of Gideon” (the image above is from that episode) which is about over-population (although as a kid watching it in re-runs, I wondered why they couldn’t just colonize another planet). Other examples include the movie and TV series, Logan’s Run and Harry Harrison’s novel Make Room! Make Room! which was adapted into Soylent Green. I am sure that I am forgetting many, many examples. These are just ones off the top of my head.
****Something that is ultimately rather obvious, but is also kind of invisible unless you are paying attention, is that the entire model for higher education in the United States was largely built on the assumption of an ever-growing population. More schools, more programs, more buildings, and so forth, on the assumption that more kids are coming. But if population growth levels (or declines) then they should affect such plans (but many administrators just look for other ways to grow instead of assessing reality). It is a very different thing, for example, to be an administrator at a state flagship, where demand is high versus a regional school, or to be an administrator in Texas or North Carolina versus many New England states.
*****I had some friends who went to church with my wife and I over thirty years ago who had, at one time, subscribed to the Quiverfull movement, so I have been aware of it for some time. By the time we met, they were still very conservative Christians but had rejected the notion of having to procreate a quiver full of children.
Maybe so, but I appreciate and enjoy this one. Thanks!
*Speaking from a Luddite’s perspective, dysfunction knows no family size limits, and if nothing else, has taught me that I have no business bouncing this rock in my hand while looking for a target. Too many windows in Casa Luddite.
I’m beginning to think Walz is a political genius. He launched “weird”, which seems to be working well. And he has the perfect response to this RW natalism nonsense, “Mind your own business”.
If you don’t see women as people (with the same kind of individuality as you), there is no contradiction whatsoever.
“Don’t tread on me” never meant “Don’t tread on anyone.”
See also: “heartland,” “real Americans,” etc.
Human beings do not want to have children. This disdain for parenthood is overcome by having an extremely overwhelming libido that parenthetically provides us with many sources of comedic pratfalls and a powerful sense of submission to group dynamics. However, people don’t want to have kids; there is no coherent reason to have them in a developed economy. Government interference with tax breaks or propaganda is not very effective in overcoming this. Effective birth control and slight liberation from thought control by government or religion result in population shrinkage.
There are two (or more) colliding stories being told.
One is that the declining birthrates will result in a dearth of workers to support the elderly.
Another is that AI and technology will make many workers redundant resulting in a surplus of workers.
Another is that we are overcrowded and can’t accept any low wage immigrants.
Yet another is that we desperately need more low wage workers to care for the elderly.
I suspect that most of the stories are reverse engineered, that is, people decide what they like or don’t like (say, immigrants or women using birth control) then work their way back into a panic over a proxy issue.
Returns on labour. The panickers arguments around economic production are to me fairly nonsense, backwards looking. With accelerating ‘AI’ enhancement of production – whether industrial or service – so long as economical energy can be generated, it is rather foreseeable that the same and even increasing economic production can be generated by less and less humans. As Korea and Japan are demonstrating labour substitution/enhancement is more and more feasible.
Of course the real drivers are essentially a tribal fear reaction, not really deeply rational.
Natalism on economic grounds excepting the legitimate issues of supporting transitional period of the demographic pyramid is largely nonsense.
@Chip Daniels: The stories chosen are without doubt reverse engineered frequently, there are of course real roots.
Holding factors equal, a demographic transition with declining working age population ratio to retired / elderly is indeed a real economic problem. That of course is projecting no changes – whic his a reasonable baseline warning that adaptations will be needed (as like significan immigration and/or labour saving substitutions with automation, without potential automation and labour subustitution one might well want to panic but since this is clearly becoming more and more feasible…).
@Slugger: Rather evidently it is not only the MAGAistos who engage in massive projection of own-perspective on wider humanity.
Food production increased tremendously, even faster than the population. A lot of that is fertilizers and high yield variations of crops. It is an utterly amazing accomplishment.
Let’s hope climate change doesn’t upend that achievement.
(Also, I love 1970s political message sci-fi, and would never think that a post that dwells on that a lot is too long)
@Lounsbury:
Pretty much what I was going to write. Overpopulation has known perils. Declining population’s problems are mostly speculative.
It’s a bit ridiculous to worry simultaneously about too few workers and AI/robots takin’ our jobs. Especially so when in this country we have a vast pool of labor we can call on whenever we like, then, once we have enough, turn against and demonize them and stick their kids in cages. Great system. It’s likely true that we’ll see declining consumption and we won’t be able to grow GDP just by adding bodies, but I don’t see this causing a decline in living standards.
In terms of the environment it would have been great if this all started decades ago.
The real problem is an upside-down taxpayer vs. pensioner pyramid. But that seems like a one-generation problem, not a permanent crisis. We just need Boomers to die. (Wait, that’s me!)
I’m getting my very first SS check today. Why? I don’t need the money and I’m still working. Some poor bastard is driving an Uber or wiping butts in a care home to support me? I get the political imperative, but it makes no logical sense.
Of course that’s us, the developed, Democratic, regulated-capitalist world. Might be more of an issue for relatively poor countries experiencing the same problem. Russia comes to mind.
Have we considered just banning cats? Then those childless cat ladies will have no choice but to have children if they want to love something.
We may also have to ban small dogs. Only Rottweilers, German Shepard and other manly macho dogs allowed.
@Michael Reynolds:
Because you’ve contributed to the system for much of your life, and have earned it. Means testing is generally just a technique to kill a program by setting the limit lower and lower and making it “just for poor people” since Americans hate poor people.
As Jesus said “the poor will always be with us” and we don’t want to prove Him wrong by getting people out of poverty.
Also, given that you’re still working, you’re still contributing to the system. I wonder if you will put in more than you get out this year.
@Michael Reynolds: the age pyramid problem perhaps is more than one generation as a transition problem perhaps from an economic transition view, but it’s certainly not end of society level problem.
For a non industrialised economy it may be more of a real issue but even for middle income countries I rather suspect it is much more manageable than presented, particularly when one looks at levels of “youth” (under 40) structural unemployment. It will drive wages but automation that’s AI supported seems to me to be well within even middle income grasp.
@Gustopher:
This drives me crazy! OASI is spelled out: Old Age Survivors INSURANCE.
It’s Insurance, Insurance, Insurance.
Not a savings account, not a piggy bank, not a personal trust fund.
You qualify by paying paying the premiums, and by surviving.
You “earn” benefits by paying the premiums and the payout (benefits) are commensurate with the premiums.
Well, the child-tax credit, paid parental leave, etc. have the same problem as other aspects of the social welfare state have with lower birth rates, namely, fewer workers paying into the system. But even that is unlikely to move the needle.
In the US, the decline in births has been among mothers 15-19 by 72% from 1972-2022 (a good thing, at least outside Iraq) and among mothers 20-24 by 49%. Births went up by 7% to mothers 25-29 and doubled for mothers 30-40. I’ve seen researchers comment that the number of births per mother has been stable but the decline comes from fewer women having children overall. And yes, a lot of these childless women didn’t plan on being childless but rather ran out of time.
The only real way to increase births is to figure out some way for women 20-24 to have children without completely destroying their career path. Right now, you graduate college, you get a job or your degree becomes worthless after a few years. Then you work the job into your 30s to establish yourself. Jump off that hamster wheel and you may find it hard to get a “good” job later after the kids are in school. And no, some government subsidy isn’t going to solve this. It is a societal problem that for most a break in their resume is a lifetime hit on employment and earnings, male or female. A more small business/entrepreneurial society would help since meeting the HR spreadsheet checkoffs would be less vital. But our school system is design to beat individualism out of the students to prepare them for the factories (now closed) or the corporate cube farms.
Of course, we know how to increase the birth rates, a world war. The preceding global depression needs more research. The fertility rate in the US decline from 1800 (7) to two in 1940. Then we had the Baby Boom rise to 3.5 in 1960. In 1975, the rate was again below 2, drifted above 2 from 1990-2010 then dropped below again 2020. Births went up in all the areas actively involved in the war, less in neutral areas. So we can’t say the Baby Boom was just because the the rapid income growth for the bottom 90% of workers from 1950-1972. Though that would impact the hope for the future, birth rates in England went up in the early, labor-intensive Industrial period of the early 19th century.
But ultimately, things will change when someone gets the Nobel in Economics for figuring out how economics works in a declining population. Since Adam Smith it’s been all about build more, sell more, cheaper but that requires more consumers. China may be the pilot project as they are heavily dependent on local consumer spending but their demographics are far worse than they advertise.
On the upside for those with socialist tendencies, post-capitalism may be a lot like pre-capitalism. A lot what people have made money doing in the Industrial period may return to being hobbies.
@Bobert:
The system was sold as a “trust fund” but had been raided before even the first check was sent out
I became familiar with Quiverfull late in it’s progression. By that time, it had primarily evolved into a political tactic with the pipe dream of a society of evangelicals who would rule because of being a significant majority, simply outnumbering the “heathen.”
My reaction was “yeah, that’ll work fer shur.” Everyone knows that God’s grandchildren are far and away more faithful than their parents. [eye roll]
An interesting theory on the impact of the lower birth rates is the “Post-heroic wars”, i.e., with fewer spare sons the mothers have little tolerance for their loss these days.
@JKB: Forgot the link
Who will win a post-heroic war?
By Edward Luttwak
Speaking as a childless cat-lady myself(I’ll borrow one from my neighbor) there are three reasons I never had children:
1) nobody to raise them with
2) the “upper age” for women’s fertility jumped from something in the future to something in the past. Very weird feeling, like a portal had just passed through me. Thought about it, and said to myself “huh. I guess being a mom isn’t something that I will be doing.”
3) crappy genetics on both sides of the family. By the time I realized that it was quite likely that the problems on both sides were more likely environmental, it was too late.
@JKB:
At last!!! I’ve been waiting for a quote from von Mises for weeks. Welcome back!
@JKB:
Interestingly enough, when I went to the archives for LIFE magazine for the year/month you referenced, I could not find the article you quoted. Maybe I missed it – could you please provide a link for this Luddite?
@JKB:
Source? Cite? C’mon, JKB, we know you can do better than this.
* to the commentariat — yes, I know, but I’m enjoying myself too much to stop now.
@JKB:
I hate to break it to you, and von Mises, but that still applies to the overwhelming majority of aspiring authors. The only estimate I could find is that 1-2% of submissions get published. Most authors have working spouses, or have jobs in academia, or inherited wealth.
The acceptance rate at UC Berkeley is 11%, the number is 6.3% for John Hopkins Medical, while 9.5% of applicants get into Harvard Law.
And getting published does not mean you make a living at it. PW:
@Michael Reynolds:
Ooooh, oooooh, oooooh, so about the same rate as “professional” photographers? Cool, I’m so in!
A 100 Quatloo bonus to Steven for including that cool photo.
@Michael Reynolds:
I remember an inteview with Larry Niven – argualbly the best sci-fi writer of the 70s – where he said if not for a trust fund he almost certainly would have given up on writing before he got published.
@JKB:
I think that’s particularly dated nonsense. We have fewer wars because they don’t make economic sense. Just ask your boy Vlad. And joining the military when there are better-paying jobs, also doesn’t make much sense. Add in the fact that modern militaries can’t just sweep up the uneducated hoi polloi but have become highly professional outfits. IOW, an abundance of males has fuck-all to do with war in the modern world. ‘Heroic’ wars were fought for profit or for the egos of rulers, by draftees and the poor needing a job, any job.
Then there’s the epidemic of bone spurs. That great crippler of entitled cowards.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
I think in the age of the selfie we’re doing a bit better than photographers. Sadly.
@Slugger:
I would disagree with this statement–pretty stridently, in fact.
(But yes, libido does help propagate the species).
@Flat Earth Luddite: Sadly my retirement-era fantasy jobs are writing and photography!
@anjin-san: Thanks! Once that episode came to mind it so did that image.
@Gustopher: I thought about the green revolution in food production when I was writing, but just didn’t work it in. But I will say that that is a great example of the complexity of these kinds of discussions.
@Chip Daniels: Indeed! Just on the immigration front alone we are told that immigrants take away American jobs by the same people who fret that we aren’t having enough babies.
Three things:
1) the planet has a limited carrying capacity. Therefore, the human population can’t increase without limits.
2) absent from most discussion about policies to increase fertility are wages. Tax credits, parental leave, and day care are good, but unless one working person alone can provide for a large family (say 6-7 people including parents), it will remain hard and expensive to raise more than a couple of children. But, of course, the free market is sacrosanct when it comes to shareholder value, and living wages are anathema to that.
3) I’ve been trying to find a quote regarding fertility, but have been unable to locate it*. More or less it goes like: Sir, you brag about something in which a brute is your equal, and a jackass your infinite superior.
*I know where I read it. Isaac Asimov’s Treasury of Humor. Unfortunately, I lost that book long ago. The quote might have referred to promiscuity rather than fertility, but I think it applies to both.
@Kathy: One objection in regard to Thing #1: While the statement is certainly logical; so far, it has been shown to be hypothetical rather than immanent. Even cities with extreme levels of population density are not, on average (and with allowances for economic distortions among population cohorts), dystopic hell holes–at least to the present. I believe Malthus will eventually be borne out on this point, but I’ve not seen it yet.
I looked quickly for the Asimov quip you referenced and failed, but I can tell you the book itself is available at archive.org.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Since Niven’s come up, his work largely about overpopulation is his collaboration with Purnelle, The Mote in God’s Eye.
Spoiler alert: the Moties never go extinct, but their civilization collapses over and over.
We’re not near the carrying capacity limits, thank Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolution. But if the planet held 2 billion people, or 4 billion, we’d find things like climate change and pollution to be less pressing and more manageable.
I think the Malthusian argument is that population grows faster than the food supply, or eventually outstrips the food available. We’re not there yet, and may never get there. Just the same, there are limits. Chances are human population will top out at a bit under ten billion, and then decrease to some lower permanent number (which will fluctuate yearly).
@JKB:
Ok, but no one wants to do that.
I think this is the second time I’ve seen you bring this up, and it’s a good obsessive focus. I recommend it.
I think the easy availability of birth control may have been a major factor. What percentage of first children was planned in 1972 vs. now?
(And what percentage of women were working at careers that far back? Most women who worked just had jobs rather than careers — no potential for advancement, so if you’re staying at the bottom, there’s less opportunity cost in taking time off.)
Societal changes haven’t been accommodated equitably by the labor marketplace.
I can think of only one policy that is helping address this, and only in a roundabout way — requiring companies to publish the salary range for any position. It ties the salary to the job offered rather the applicant’s past. There are a couple of states that require this, although it sometimes leads to giant published ranges to comply without complying.
@JKB:
Commonly misunderstood. The distinction here is that the trust fund is not owned by the individual.
The “trust fund” is owned by the federal government, and the federal government is required to put those funds to good and proper use.
Those who have been trying to privatize SS spin these myths, to undermine the program.
Do you think that your life or auto insurer just puts your premium dollars in a lunch pail and buries it in a backyard?
@JKB: Gosh, JKB, given how concerned you are about other people having children, one might think you’d actually try to produce an heir or two. But according to you, you have chosen to remain single and let the white race go to hell.
Seems to me that before you start ordering women to have babies you might want to step up to the plate yourself.
@JKB: “An interesting theory on the impact of the lower birth rates is the “Post-heroic wars”, i.e., with fewer spare sons the mothers have little tolerance for their loss these days.”
And somehow you think this is a bad thing.
@Steven L. Taylor: “Sadly my retirement-era fantasy jobs are writing and photography!”
That’s what the pension is for!
@wr: I almost said something to that effect!
@Bobert: Indeed.
What critics fail to understand is that as long as the US government is viable, we are going to get our benefits. And if the US government actually collapses all the private assets are likely to be become worthless.
The libertarian POV seems to ignore that if the US government has collapsed to the point that it cannot SS, the DJIA will almost certainly have collapsed as well along with the banking system and other financial institutions. The billionaires may have offshore assets and wealth but the rest of us will be screwed.
There is a profound lack of acknowledgement as to how much all the ways most of access wealth are tied to the ongoing functioning of the US government and the modern state system as a general matter.
@wr: it has been suggested that one of the unspoken reasons behind the Crusades was to get unwanted young men away from roaming around Europe and out to somewhere else.
@Steven L. Taylor: as I’ve pointed out before, the problem with Libertarians is that they continually think of property rights as something like the Law of Gravity, whereare in fact property rights are something defined and maintained by the government. No government/weak gov’t? No property rights.
@Grumpy realist: 100%
Well no, I don’t actually. But the Project 2025 people do. They’re convinced so-called “climate change” is nothing but a ruse to stop people having children. Their training video lady sees right through us:
@Steven L. Taylor:
It’s possible a complete collapse of the US would render offshore assets far less valuable as well. How much of the US debt is held by people and institutions outside the US? All those trillions of dollars would vanish like morning dew.
I love children. I love being around children. I volunteered to help teach a kids martial arts class for 20 years and loved every minute.
I only had two of my own because holy crap that’s a lot of work.
Of course I wonder, does Charlie Kirk then repudiate the idea that I’m one of the “bad guys”. I’m thinking no. I’m just a gender traitor, or something.
@Kathy:
More specifically, when food is abundant population increases exponentially. Food production does not, and therefore starvation is inevitable. Malthus got the math right, but did not anticipate the thus-far sufficient sequence of technology improvements in food production. (Or the self-limiting nature of birth rates in affluent societies…)
FYI, I saw the image in the preview, but in the article I only see “Stop! This image was hotlinked”
@Steven L. Taylor: I have on more than one occasion suggested to gold bugs and other financial catastrophists that if the collapse they predict actually happened, the new standard of wealth could well be ability to protect 20 acres and a bag of seed potatoes.
@Grumpy realist: Even in (especially in??) nations with strong government, eminent domain make ownership of property more of perpetual leasehold than actual ownership. The fact that the government pays you a “fair market value” for what it has seized is no guarantee that what you were paid will replace your loss.
@Ken_L: And the answer becomes forcing different types of control over the same (or different for that matter) groups of people? Interesting.
@JKB: Nice post! I sometimes have trouble following your posts, but this was clear and informative. Thanks!
@Gustopher:
“Paul Ehrlich dropped his Population Bomb in 1968, and the 1970s were awash in its fallout. By the 1980s it was a kind of background radiation.
Food production increased tremendously, even faster than the population. A lot of that is fertilizers and high yield variations of crops. It is an utterly amazing accomplishment.
Let’s hope climate change doesn’t upend that achievement.”
Well, between 1974 and 2024 the world population increased 103% and CO2 emissions increased 120%, so it doesn’t look great right now on the climate change front…..
@JKB: I rarely agree with you, but this is a very solid post. Thank you.
The workplace probably needs to be forced to give an advantage to women who re-enter the workforce if we are going to be a country that is focused on increasing birth rates.
I would also suggest that if you want higher birth rates, and a more entrepreneurial society, one of the most impactful things you can do in the U.S. is establish 100% universal healthcare.
Healthcare is the biggest reason I stayed in the corporate world rather than building out my own business back in my 30s, and I think that’s true for a lot of people.
Further, people will hesitate to have children if they fear expenses like healthcare. Imagine living paycheck-to-paycheck and having a child with any sort of ongoing health issue. Many families can’t afford to take that risk.
Liberals don’t just support issues like equal opportunity, or universal health care, because we want something for nothing. We see the downstream effects of such policies and want good things for our country.
@Tony W:
REALLY?
Are you paying attention?
@Bobert: You cut off the key part of my sentence – and I don’t understand what point you are trying to make here.
To reiterate: Liberal policy, generally, is very concerned with understanding and driving beneficial downstream effects. We are, again generally, less worried about this quarter’s revenue, and more focused on the long term.
A proper opposition party would force us to pay more attention to this quarter’s revenue and cause us to prioritize our wish-list. But sadly the conservatives have gone completely off the rails.
@Kathy: Indeed. I am just saying that, at least in theory, the mega-rich might have some alternatives. But this would be a meager few compared to the rest of us.
Indeed, the total collapse of the US in such a way that would forestall SS payments would be a truly global catastrophe.
@DrDaveT:
Weird. Is anyone else seeing that?
It makes no sense since I uploaded the image like I always do. But since there has been so much updating of late I wonder if there is a glitch.
@just nutha:
I used to point out to students that gold, even though it has some inherent uses, is valuable largely because we all collectively say it is.
@Grumpy realist: No, that is a misunderstanding / mirsframing in modern terms. Historiography has focused not on ‘young men’ as such – the medaieval period didn’t really have labour surpluses – but rather the effect of the “2nd, 3rd” sons of the nobles from a specific effect not of population but of inheritance law under notably Frankish law. Getting rid of excess young men in that specific class rather than a general issue. Related idea, but not the same population and socio-economics and very significant difference in meaning, less of population pressure as such rather more about political and resource pressure (land inheritance modes).
@DrDaveT: The birth rates is also almost certainly a technological effect – birth rate decelleration now shows up across the board, down to even lower-middle income countries – becoming visible in most economies that have generally exited subsistance production.
@Steven L. Taylor: American Libertarians are frankly best understood as inverted Bolsheviks, they certainly are not actual liberals in the classic sense.
@JKB:
This is wrong and economically innumerate.
First, in terms of fact: Japan and S. Korea are already showing economies with flat and declining population – Japan since 2008 while South Korea has started that journey (but will be faster due to it’s rock bottom birth rate). Now of course neither of those countries feature currently in ideological political discourses unlike China, so are invisible to you it seem.
Second, in terms of economics – population growth is not a fundamental consideration for economic analysis – it can be for micro-economic considerations for consumer focused economics, but “selling more stuff to the consumers” is quite an American overweight distortion from American peculiar framing.
Third, what really is in account is not the number of consumers – in the end-consumer side of an economy – but rather the per capita income to such a population. Large populations with low per capita income and above all disposable income are hardly strong economic growth drivers for a market economy.
Rather affluence and disposable income are stronger drivers – increased per-capita income – one can note the difference in looking at Japanese Gross GDP and then Per Capita GDP since 2008 (on a Purchasing Power Parity basis, one must always use parity adjusted). Japanese gross GDP has been on a sideways walk since 2008 but on a Per Capita Basis (PPP) it continues to climb.
And violà the lesson of why equally in modern industrial age, major war has become nonsense: rising efficiency of production, producing more with the same or less inputs (labour, other inputs), all from technology – which was and is the exit from the Malthusian trap.
There’s no “Nobel prize” for the Japanese situation, it’s really not particularly difficult story. Declining population from movement from the old pre-industrial age pyramid to what may become more an “age-column” rather than pyramid, so long as managed for the transitional support to the larger ‘legacy’ (to use the obnoxious American term) elderly population -is entirely manageable so long as higher effficiency per unit of production (labour, other inputs) is achieved. And that is more than evidently in general possible with the current major constrain – energy (which has absolutely fuck-all to do with population in terms of enablement and all about technological progress). More efficiency = higher per capita income = higher disposable income = continued economic comfort. Broadening that to new populations, we have plenty of billions of possible consumers, there’s no Nobel prize in this, it’s basic.
What is the problem is the lower middle income countries and ensuring their continued economic growth so that they can support this – OECD High Income countries only real challenge is climate change and its cost – thus non-carbon emitting energy production needs to be the focus, solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear and eventually inchallah fusion.
Energy cost, energy cost and removing net carbon emission from production is the sole major challenge, however it is a huge one as the infrastructure for the electrification of modern economies is a huge investment that unfortunatley the Green Left completely misunderstands, being engineering and economics illiterate (although the US climate change denying Right are utter morons on this however barring Trumpist return, seemt to me to be losing ground). Massive grid infra upgrades, technological upgrades for production… this is what discussion should be on, not bloody populations which with modern technology are not real drivers any more.
“Heroic” wars were nothing more than resource capture of one scaled-up chimp band (relabelled kingdom or state but nothing more than primate band resource capture) against another, with a slathering of intellectual make-up for the suped-up chimps that are humans to fool themselves about their real raw nature.
I belive it was named after the Harrison book mentioned in the footnotes rather than the movie. It was not human meat product in the book.