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Comment by oneoff786 | Hacker News Reader

The US is not constrained by labor supply in the slightest. The basket weaving comment is inaccurate, irrelevant, and mostly just jaded cynicism. Gen Z is not focused on tech jobs either to any sort of meaningful extent that we can’t build up manufacturing.

If the US needs to make up a shortfall, it will simply open up immigration more.

Good manufacturing jobs tend to be pretty good.

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> will simply open up immigration more

It’s not so simple when the labor crunch is being felt in vast regions of the globe and many (most?) developing nations are aging faster than the US and are older on average or will be over the next 10 - 20 years.

When your per capita GDP is 2-4x higher than surrounding nations you're looking to draw from it absolutely is.

If the relatively young population segments we’d need to draw from are in rapid decline, as they are across the western hemisphere then it doesn’t matter how much cash we have if there’s no one left to emigrate here.

You get it. There will be a serious labor crunch over the next few years as boomers continue to retire and immigrations fails to make up the numbers. Maybe massive re-training programs to get aging millennials into in-demand fields? Zeihan essentially says that while the US will still be in the best position it will still be painful and to just accept the pain until Gen Alpha comes online in 20-30 years. I don't buy this part of his thesis. Will millennials produce the number of kids needed to offset their losses?

> Will millennials produce the number of kids needed to offset their losses?

Yeah, this seems very doubtful. High housing cost + large student loan debt has delayed family formation which means fewer kids.

That’s not the case though. There will absolutely be enough people to import a full labor force for the US for a very long time.

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