U.S. Population Growth Has Been Driven Exclusively by Minorities
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
While they made enough money to pay for school by delivering pizza.
Warren Buffet made serious amount of cash as a high schooler delivering news papers.
I don't know how exactly to get there (I have a variety of ideas about things we should be doing differently as a society, but none that specifically address the level of short-term thinking we are plagued by), but we definitely need to do something about it.
As far as fixing our corporate culture, I think making judicious but expressive use of the corporate death penalty, combined with aggressive enforcement of antitrust laws, using a much broader metric of harm than has been used in the past few decades, would be a good start.
I also think that a true universal basic income—one that would allow someone with no other source of income to live safely, if not luxuriously, in most parts of the country—would slowly but surely start having huge effects on nearly every aspect of work, as removing the constant fear of homelessness and death from poverty made the "labour market" much more like a genuine free market. I can only begin to imagine the shifts in our society that that would result in, and it's really hard to say just what other measures would be rendered unnecessary by them.
It's amazing how it is basically impossible to influence birth rates, one way or the other, up or down. I am yet to find a convincing example of a concerted effort at increasing or suppressing birth rates by a centralised authority. Please share one if you know it, I find birth rates to be far more mysterious than any other commonly talked about "macro" rates, such as riskfree rates or various risk premiums.
China suppressed its birth rate with its one child policy.
http://m.statisticstimes.com/demographics/china-vs-india-pop...
You can see that China bends the curve compared to India.
What charts?
Fertility rate: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINCHN
Birth rate: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNCBRTINCHN
And it is not like the Chinese govt didn't try, they were serious about it. It's just that birth rates are mysterious. People will have kids when they want to, and will stop having kids when they want to, and they will listen to nobody. No authority.
Take this as anecdotal, of course.
National-level, f you worked for the government (military, healthcare, PCC) you weren't allowed to have more than one child without loosing your job (if you were grunt-level) or paying and having your career path stilled (if you were CO-level).
For other workers, it was more or less a "state-level" implementation with governors deciding how to enforce the rule. In most places, farmers had the right to have two children and could ask to have one more. City workers only one and had to pay different amount depending on the city and the governor for the second. Some governors were really, really hard on enforcement (forced abortion...) while other were more lax and made people pay acceptable amount for the second child.
Still, even without hard enforcement, the illegal child have no paper, cannot join legal school and isn't present on the family register (and can't work/live anywhere legally). This is one of the 3 internal problem the Chinese government will have with the generation.
For certain people (mostly ethnic minorities) there was a higher limit. In rural areas, the limit was usually more relaxed than urban areas.
Many women who got pregnant before they were allowed had to have abortions. Some women were forced to have IUDs, and some women were sterilized.
So, depending on who you were, where you were, and how old you were, the one child policy might have restricted you to one child, or it didn't.
China's birthrate did decline with the one child policy (1979). But it declined way more in the decade prior to the introduction of the one child policy.
"晚、稀、少" : “late marriage, longer spacing, and fewer children” was a little known policy introduced in 1970 that encouraged late marriage and fewer births, and which had way bigger effects than the compulsory one child policy.
In a deflationary economy, the value of money goes up, as time passes. This means that people with money have zero incentive to spend, or invest it.
Hypothetically, you could adopt an economic system that would not be affected by deflation, but until you do, it's best to avoid tangling with it.
Either way, both of these seem different from eliminating the incentive to loan or borrow. People know how to consider inflation-adjusted rates of return and invest accordingly. Soon these same lessons will be applied in negative interest rate scenarios, which I guess counts as deflation.
Seems to me the same is true for borrowers. Borrowing money to buy land/stocks/etc is still a smart move as long as they keep trending upwards faster than the loan rates. Of course this requires sufficiently low interest rates be available, which is where the reference "our system" comes in I suppose, with a federal reserve maintaining artificially-low rates to drive this wealth transfer from savings to borrowers.
This is just the sideshow of wealth moving around, of course. I don't really buy that that if this game ended it means the death of the entire economy. It's just the part that can be subjected to manipulation. Obviously the point of earning money in the first place is to spend it, not just save or transfer it from one medium to another. Money is just an exchange itself. In deflation, things get cheaper and supply-and-demand curves says more people will buy things.
This is part of it. Deflation means my money is worth more tomorrow than today. If due to 10% return just by keeping my money under my mattress due to deflation, why would I ever risk loaning it out into an investment opportunity. Essentially the risk-free return is now 10%, so for any investment to be worth wild it must return even higher than that. That's hard to do. The higher the deflation, the higher the baseline return needed. As a result any business that might've returned 5% is now no longer a viable option. So it reduces overall investment because it raises the bar for success.
Similar is for purchases. Why buy something now, when I can wait 6 months and get it cheaper. As a result everyone stops spending, and everyone stops investing. Now that there is no spending, there is no money to pay salaries, so people have less money to go around and so again money becomes more valuable and you get a downward cycle.
Imagine I said, at midnight january 1st any money you have in cash or in a bank will be worth 50% less. You'd buy up anything you could or invest in anything you could to get rid of cash and put it in hard currency. Even if someone had a business that would lose 10% over the year, that'd still be better than losing 50%.
Deflation is the opposite. Any cash or bank accounts you have will double. You'd sell your items, but nobody would want to buy. They could buy two couches with that money the next year.
Overall if money always is slowly decreasing in value, people want to find uses for it either consumption or investment which move the economy. If it's increasing in value (ie deflation) they wan to do the opposite. Hoard it.
Some of your point sounds a bit like this (please correct me if I'm wrong): "Deflation is always bad because it could be hyperdeflation." Namely, if deflation is significant enough that it incentivizes me foregoing a purchase for a few months (and then another few months, etc) it's _significant_ deflation. But why not make the equivalent argument "inflation must be bad because we can imagine hyperinflation" as well?
But instead of hyperdeflation, if we had -0.1% risk-free interest rates, would people really forego all purchases? I don't see why. If I need a new toaster, or some clothes, or gas for my car, I would not delay the purchase for 6 months to save 0.05% on the purchase. This seems like a realistic number if the deflation is caused by a population contraction in a country with an advanced economy.
It seems real-world encounters with deflation (at least since the inception of central banking and planned expansions of money supplies) have come largely during periods of _sharp_ economic contraction. But is such a scenario really comparable to a slow decrease in population?
Moreover, if monetary policy can offset deflation, what creates the need for immigration to offset the deflation? Why isn't the monetary policy enough?
I'm not an expert at this, I'd suggest looking at it in this manner instead. You are correct that other than the psychological (which does matter), there is no magic barrier that once inflation crosses the zero point and becomes negative things will spiral out of control. Instead it is a sliding scale 10% inflation will produce less investment than 20%, and 5% will produce less than 10%, and 0% less than 5%, and -5% less than 0.
Deflation frequently comes sharply, but it also often immediately comes following a period of credit expansion. Pretty often you'll see a sudden contraction after a bubble. In my understanding, a modern view of a "stable" economy is one that is at least slowly growing. And so even one that is holding still is "shrinking". Some degree of this is psychological as well. Debt becomes harder to handle, some businesses go bust, so people become less willing to lend money again.
I do think that yes, in the most cases deflation can be handled via monetary policy. But by essentially borrowing from the future and increasing demand. But that means the way out is essentially putting free money in the hands of the people most likely to spend it. The poorest.
A lot of politicians are more comfortable with giving money to banks or businesses than to low income citizens. But they are the ones who will spend it directly to increase demand. So in essence, in my opinion, it really boils down to political will to spend your way out of a deflationary cycle. That said, economists aren't all in agreement about these types of things. Dig into it a bit more yourself and see what's written on it.
Why must I be so rational?
If deflation were 3% a year, nobody would invest into anything short of a golden goose. Why risk your money, when you can sit around, do nothing, and have it earn value for you, with zero risk?
In fact, if we were looking at a long-term deflation of 3%/year, I'd stop working, sell all of my investments, stick my money in a mattress, and retire tomorrow.
You tell me whether or not that is healthy for the economy.
having said that, i don’t see why this has to be tied with population growth. we already have way too many people in this planet - lets focus on increasing quality of life, not number of people
People invest because the return is higher than the return on deflation. For example, if cash is worth 1% more next year, you can invest in the S&P 500 and make more money than holding cash. If cash is worth 10% less next year but the S&P 500 crashes, you'd make more money (have more purchasing power) with cash. It has nothing to do with whether money is more or less valuable, it has everything to do with comparative investments.
Right now banks lend businesses money because the business is projected to be able to make payments at an interest rate higher than the federal funds rate. People have to buy food. People will buy the new iPhone. People pay rent. People like to travel. All of those things happen no matter what the value of money is doing, so there will always be economic incentive to start businesses that can be profitable.
My point is that it's not so one dimensional. Deflation doesn't have to be bad. You can create value without reducing the value of everything else.
This would attack investing at both ends. Currently, the spread between inflation eating your money, and the SP earning you money is 7%. That compensates for a lot of risk. Drop that down a few percentage points (by making cash attractive), and a few more percentage points (it's harder for firms to earn profits in a deflationary environment) while keeping the risk the same, and the SP becomes a worse and worse investment.
Deflation means USD value goes up. It doesn't mean USD value goes up 5%. A "deflationary world" could have 0.5% deflation. Or 0.00001% deflation. Again, it is incredibly narrow to view economics in this way. You lose 50% of the possible worlds you could inhabit and the economic systems and incentives you could have.
Loose monetary policy can't be maintained forever (You get stagflation, which is even worse - just ask Japan), year-over-year productivity growth can't be maintained forever, and the subject this thread is discussing is 'what happens to the economy when population growth goes negative?'
So yes, a deflation of 0.5% wouldn't be devastating. A deflation of 3% would be a stop-the-presses-the-world-is-going-to-hell-we-need-a-new-economic-system event.
The problem is that you can't loose-monetary-policy your way out of deflation, because one of the factors contributing to a loose monetary policy is how willing banks are to lend money to people. In a world where the money base is shrinking year-over-year, in aggregate, lending money to people is a terrible idea, because there won't be enough money in circulation next year to make interest payments. This leads to a reduction in lending, a reduced appetite for risk in lenders, and a reduction in the amount of money created by fractional reserve banking, which further pushes you into deflationary territory.
It's a vicious cycle that you can't escape.
You need money to expire (or, more specifically, lose nominal value faster than deflation reduces nominal prices) if not spent, then people have an incentive to spend their money as they receive it even though nominal prices are decreasing, because you can't hoard surplus to immediate need money for future purchases at lower prices.
Yes, obviously you can avoid deflation by creating enough money that you instead have inflation, but I'm talking about having a monetary system that avoids some of the negative incentives of deflation even when it occurs.
Eventually the entire world will run out of immigrants.
Unless some unanticipated sea change in human behavior occurs, the entire world will be faced with deflation for the foreseeable future.
If you only take natality prospect, yes. However we're on our way to hit +3° average around 2080. The average temperature difference between the last ice age and our age is ~5° for comparison. The agricultural change this 3° will have unforseen effects (well, not really unforseen, look what happened circa 2010 in Egypt and Tunisia), without taking into account the groenland melting (this is unavoidable anyway) and the wetbulb temperature being reached more than 100 day a year in eastern India/Bangladesh (and Florida won't be any better, if i remember correctly it will be ~80day/year for most of southern Florida). This will probably regulate the population a bit faster than predicted.
Except for food, housing, healthcare, entertainment, and well, pretty much everything people spend money on. You can't be alive or enjoy that life without these things. People wouldn't refuse to spend their money and starve to death because then they wouldn't be around to use it.
If I have enough cash, sitting on it will make it appreciate more than paying a year's worth of rent.
Food is a small fraction of a household's expenses, as is healthcare, in every single country that is not the United States.
If you're buying houses solely as an investment then you get situations like Vancouver. How is that a good thing?
I don't know if this will be successful long term, but they're definitely trying and it seems to be working.
Previously the minorities actually had exemptions. Not to condone any other behavior of the CCP but this news is being misrepresented a lot in headlines.
The big exception to this is China's one child policy. That had an ultimately minor effect as birth rates were already dropping and stayed low when the policy was lifted.
One of the most infamous pro-natalist examples was Romania under Ceausescu. https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ceausescus-forgotten-children-clos...
Another oppressive pro-natalist policy was pursued by the Islamic government of Iran in the 1980s. It ended in tears though as Iranian women did not see the sense in birthing children to be cannon fodder in the Iran-Iraq war. What followed was the steepest drop in birthrates ever recorded. So the government did influence the birthrate, but not in the intended direction.
France and Hungary have had limited success with more humane pro-natalist policies.
However, there is a proven and highly effective way for governments to reduce birthrates. Educate women. That is actually the main driver of falling birthrates worldwide.
What are you talking about? Look at the differences in those countries/cultures and you'll find it. It's just that it's verboten for us in this contemporary Western culture.
But perhaps the artificial womb will change things.
An article I read said many French jews immigrated to Israel (due to rather recent French anti-semitism sentiment) but immigrated back to Europe once economic advancement for them wasn't attained.
Looks like Israeli society has had kind of an open door policy to Europeans who are able to attain employment (i assume in the tech scene there).
I would assume secular Jews top out at 2-3 kids, religious Jews top out at like 10 kids
More hopefully, people will simply not care and diversity will be celebrated, not denigrated as we've awoken to since George Floyd.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage_in_the_Un...
Hispanics are predominantly White by the standards by which race has any meaning at all (though also several other races are represented), Hispanic is an ethnic rather than racial category.
> Hispanic data is not well represented in my quick googling.
It's not going to show up in data on race because it's not a race.
> More hopefully, people will simply not care and diversity will be celebrated, not denigrated as we've awoken to since George Floyd.
The people marching in parades with Confederate flags haven't awoken to anything. And each of America's periodic awakening on this issue has been accompanied by exactly that kind of reaction and a hardening of White supremacist ideology. It may be a shrinking minority each time, but it's also increasingly committed, or at least renewing it's commitment each time.
This is absolute bullshit. There was rampant and socially acceptable prejudice against Southern and Eastern Europeans as well as the Irish, North Africans, Levantines and Central Asians. They were however all legally white. There was no attempt to stop their immigration as such as there was with Japanese, Chinese, Indians and other Asians. They were not classified as legally distinct like Black or Indians (Native Americans).
Racism was completely compatible with considering the othered group white. Italians, Irish, Swedes, Germans, Poles, every non-Anglo white ethnic group suffered discrimination but the idea they weren’t considered white is ahistorical trash.
Fiorello LaGuardia was elected Mayor of NYC in 1933. Francis Spinola was the first Italian Congressman to serve a full term in 1887. Anthony Ghio was Mayor of Texarkana in 1880. Andrew Longino was the first Italian Governor, Mississippi 1900.
American racial politics was always about black and white with other differences paling into insignificance. Ethnic and religious prejudice there was aplenty but at no point in American history were Europeans considered non-white.
> However, "color challenges were never sustained or systematic" when it came to Italians,[85]:28 who were "largely accepted as white by the widest variety of people and institutions" throughout the U.S.[85]:6 Even in the South, such as Louisiana, any attempts to disenfranchise them "failed miserably".[85]:28
Why is this the first bullet point? Why a focus on White people? Why do you care HN?
The only other place I see stuff like this is when it’s used as an alt-right talking point, or by white-supremacist mass-shooters who write about ‘The Great Replacement’ [1]
[1] https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/white-supremacist-...
Looking back now, I can't help but wonder if it didn't drive a few of my classmates to some of the more reactionary and racist politics on the right.
At least with the religious, you can be saved by Jesus or whatever, but for this group, you are always guilty, by virtue of your skin color.
Hispanic people, meanwhile, are quite conservative on criminal justice issues. They are consistently more conservative than white people when it comes to ending things like mandatory minimums for drug crimes. Again, this is remarkable considering the age distributions. It’s very interesting to look at polls of Hispanic people’s’ opinions with respect to policing and the George Floyd protests: https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/7msyzunum9/tabs_HP_Police_Reform...
8% of both Hispanic and white people say the system needs “no improvements” compared to 3% of black people. Just 21 and 22% of Hispanic people and white people, respectively, say the police system is “not sound” and “needs significant changes” versus 45% of black people. On nearly every policing issue, Hispanic people are a bit more liberal than white people, but I’m not even sure that difference would remain if accounting for age differences.
On the economic front, asians and Hispanics are close to white people in capitalism versus socialism, with just about a third of each group supporting socialism: https://www.cato.org/blog/59-americans-have-favorable-views-.... Again, an interesting result given that support for socialism goes down significantly with age, and both Hispanics and Asians are significantly younger than whites.
Right now, a lot of conservative people of color are forced into a coalition with increasingly radical white progressives due to real and perceived Republican racism. When that pressure disappears, I think you’ll see a reshuffling of the coalitions. I can already see the seeds of this happening. My parents are Bangladeshi immigrants. They’ve voted Democrat in every selection since they became naturalized citizens. They voted for Hilary Clinton not because she was the lesser of two evils, but because they liked her. They’re the people who overturned the Sanders/Warren applecart when they got around to tuning into the Democratic primary. My mom explained to me today what she thinks makes America great. “You can drive to an intersection at 1 am and if there is a red light, people will stop. Even if the streets are totally empty, people will stop and wait for the green light.” She is worried about the protests and said “if we aren’t going to have law and order in America why shouldn’t I go back to Bangladesh?”
My dad is the more progressive of the two. He’s a Clinton Democrat who likes that Bill cherry picked the best parts of the Republican agenda. He is alarmed at the Warren/Sanders wing and was very nervous when everyone thought Biden was done. His take on the idea that billionaires shouldn’t exist: “that’s stupid.” He’s upset that people are lobbying to change the name of the high school I went to (Thomas Jefferson in Virginia). But he is convinced that the Clinton/Biden/Obama camp will hold, and says “America is an established country, you won’t see radical change.”
A lot of what you have to say about politics is well-taken. From everything I understand, you're right: people of color are indeed more conservative than Very Online White People. But then it seems like you go a little off the rails: the (relative) conservatism of Hispanic and black voters is reflected in the Democratic party. If there's a shuffling of the party, it's going to be angry DSA people to a long trip to the political wilderness of the Green Party.
As you observe, the 2020 Primary is an example of this phenomenon. Progressives try to explain it away by saying suggesting “people of color really agree with Warren, they’re just more concerned about electability.” But my guess is that for the most part they, like my parents, actually like Biden. And that should give anyone who believes in “demographic destiny” pause.
Poor people have more reasons to band together, pool their money to afford nicer things. And they've more reproductive pressure because of this reasons, so they are bound to grow population wise. This is seen nearly everywhere even in places where there are no good social weflare programs like India.
It's a curse that comes with freedom, individualism and prosperity - you've end up with no reasons to reproduce or find it very difficult to associate with someone because it seems so limiting.
I've heard of having children described as a 'profitable' venture.
Most people I know would love to have kids but they don't want to have them with a wrong person.
And what is considered "wrong" have changed over time.
Many people want to have kids on their own terms, not the terms of their partner. They want to have zero compromise in personal freedom - so they don't takers for that offer resulting in them not having any kids.
Basically, I was questioning how people banding together 'to get nicer things', would result in people having more children. Having children is generally not a profitable venture..