this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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A Boring Dystopia
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The era of a strong economy was brought on by factors from WW2 and the weakening was brought on by 2-3x growth in world population.
More people fitting into the same cities means less space and more demand.
More people means more workers for jobs that pay even less because the competition is fiercer than ever.
More people means more percentage of resources going to surviving and less on luxuries.
We can give a small % of global population luxury. US QOL isn't sustainable on a global scale with the resources available in the world.
In my opinion, the whole population growth excuse is always an excuse and leads to dangerous results. The growth in population in Western countries has completely decimated since WW2. At this moment, only Africa is thought to have a positive growth number in the coming years. The population has grown, but the needs of almost the entire world have drastically increased. Leading to enormous growth in wealth and also productivity. That productivity has not been translated into less work, and the population increase has not translated into less work. Both of those things have translated into more wealth and more wealth inequality. Blaming the housing crisis/ financial crisis on too many people will only lead to racism, while the system keeps sucking everyone dry and making very few rich. There is plenty to go around, and the population growth is a story of the last century. We will reach our cap this century with all its effects to it.
This is wildly incorrect. Where the heck did you get this data from??
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Total_Fertility_Rate_for_6_Regions_and_the_World,_1950-2100,_UN2022.svg#mw-jump-to-license
By the end of the century only Africa will have a fertility rate higher than 2. All the other continents have a lower rate than 2, meaning a decline in population.
Fertility rate is just one piece of the equation.
Infant mortality rate is off the charts in Africa compared to the majority of the world.
Average life expectancy is also much lower in most African nations compared to the places with low total fertility rate.
There's a lot more nuance than even just these two other pieces. Generalizing at a continent level is really poor. A typical metropolitan couple/family is going to have less kids than a rural family in the US where cost of living is lower and pressures from religion and family are higher.
When your neighbors, friends and family are holding off from kids to pursue higher socioeconomic standards there's pressure to live up to them or surpass them. When your neighbors, family and friends are having kids left and right you feel pressured to join them too. Just food for thought.
I hope no one takes this the wrong way, because I fully support equality for all races and sexes, but there's also double the workforce now. Women entering the workforce and eventually gaining near, or sometimes even superior footing, means that there are twice as many people competing for the same jobs. A larger candidate pool means companies can pay less and it's harder to get a job for the individual.
All true, but neither of these parent posts address the fact these efficiencies we’re not passed onto the worker but hoarded at the top
If pay would of stayed near the slope of productivity gains in the US none of this would be a problem.
Every average worker from french fry cook to teacher to nurse to engineer should be paid double what they are if everything stayed in line. Or you at least increase the top tax rate to redistribute the money back to normal folks.
But the US has done none of these which leads us on the path to the most common reason nations fall. Excessive amounts of inequality….
I hope it was made clear that I wasn't advocating for either of those options.
This has absolutely nothing to do with women or demography! We didn't need pills to invent riches inequalities or slavery, which is basically what liberalism reinvented with money rather than blood.
There is absolutely nothing interesting in your ideas here but the worst conservative propaganda!
Anytime someone claims to know why the economy behaves the way it does I am immediately skeptical. Unless the reason is to create inequality we should be able to use that information to establish a better syatem.
I'm having trouble understanding what you're trying to say. You think we have a lower standard of living today than in the past?
50 years ago what was so great that we have lost? 25 years?
From where i've sitting my QOL is only higher than when I was a kid growing up without hot water or air conditioning. Poorest family in a middle class town. That's just anecdotal but most seem to take for granted the things everyone has today. Magical handheld computers didn't exist when I was a kid and now almost everyone has one in the US.
The only thing out of reach is home ownership. Landlords are the new slaveowners. Not that you can really compare slavery to modern day working class jobs.
It's not the same people that were poor before that are poor now. A lot of immigrant makes for the poors of today, and their situation is certainly not better than 50 years ago.
Many things are to consider: it's far harder to find a job now, and it's far, far more expensive to have a home.
But indeed we got stuff that didn't existed before. Phone, Internet, etc. But these things are comparatively very cheap. And you actually need them to have a normal life today. They are more like new expenses than luxury. You also need a car today, something you didn't 50 years ago.
Basically, inflation rised faster than income, new expenses were created. I'm pretty sure we have less public services now than 50 years ago too.
The new expenses would be a benefit to societies if the rich didn't take all the benefit for themselves. All progress has been stolen by the rich.
My wife grew up in a 3rd world country so I know a bit about how things have changed in the past 30-40 years or so even abroad. QOL has risen around the world. Immigrants from poorer countries will ALWAYS be last place when coming here and competing to climb the ladder if they come with few skills - but they'll also be better off than the overwhelming majority of people in their former country.
I disagree that it's harder to find a job. It's harder to find a job that pays well that isn't blue collar without a college degree and fluency in English. In Massachusetts it's trivial to find a job for $15/hr (minimum wage). You can't afford an apartment on your own though... you're going to be renting a room at best and hopefully if you're lucky living with family who already have a home.
If you start off as a blue collar apprentice doing carpentry, hvac, plumbing - you name it, you're going to start off above minimum wage, you're going to get regular raises and each certification you pass will greatly increase your income, and it'll all be paid for by the employer. Blue collar jobs in construction will always be in demand and are always hiring. Amazon may lay off tens of thousands of highly compensated employees but aint nobody laying off a plumber. If you've ever looked at getting work done on a family home you'd know there's a lengthy waiting period.
Basic cell phones are fairly cheap. Internet is fairly cheap for low income households.
If you think we had things better 50 years ago i'd try watching a documentary about life in the 60s or 70s. We take a LOT for granted today. Life is practically nothing like it was back then. MRIs didn't even exist until 1977. CT Scans weren't invented until literally 50 years ago. This is just two examples of medical technology but the list goes on and on. The cost of everything is much higher but the quality and safety standards today are higher than ever in most industries. Labor cost here is also higher than ever.
Higher housing costs are almost entirely a function of higher incomes and higher demand. US population has grown from ~212 million to ~331 million.
When I was a kid you were still paying per minute for phone calls. Air conditioners were still a luxury (I never had one growing up.)
In my extended family i've seen two people who are immigrants pass a programming boot camp and get jobs in this economy (past 12 months.) Zero connections, references etc... they applied and got jobs. What's stopping someone from learning how to program? or if ADHD- learning how to do blue collar work as an apprentice?
Population means more labor and more consumption as well. For all of human history before thr industrial age, labor shortages were dire.
The problems that come with overpopulation are pollution and shortages of specific resources. No this is about unchecked capitalism focusing all the resources to a tiny elite class. Even more concentrated than the wealth in France, 1789.
So what you're saying is fifty percent of all life