Reply #367: Why population growth drives unemployment in the US

[jdglsm]

You seem to believe economists when they say that the economy needs to add 150,000 new jobs a month just to maintain unemployment at the same level. Actually, that does sound like a fair estimate since the 238,000 new residents I mention include children, and they enter the labor force only after a considerable time lag. But in the long run, it is the 238,000 figure that will impact resources. For example, children add to K12 education costs, which are driving many states bankrupt. (The 238,000 figures is something you can work out yourself directly from census data.)

You say with no justification that reducing population growth to zero would threaten social security. However, states such as California are cutting back on education because they have run out of money. Better to have a stable but well-educated population than a population that is not trained to compete in the global economy.

You talk about US achieving a zero percent natural increase as though that were a bad thing. Let me remind you that Germany also has a close to zero population growth rate and its doing much better than its more fertile neighbors like Ireland, Spain and Portugal.

You mention a soft landing as the US finally achieves a stable population several decades in the future. But I see people in their 50's who had great jobs and are now dumpster diving, Americans who take only half the recommended dose of needed medications because it is all they can afford. The landing is already here and it is definitely not soft.

Finally, you say population increase is not the sole or even primary culprit in declining living standards and then mention the population growth and rapid urbanization with attendant huge increases in exploitable labor in India, China, Mexico, etc. Is that not the population growth of which I speak?

It is definitely not politically correct to state, but population growth does INDEED make the progressive agenda quite simply unattainable. Redistribution makes absolutely no sense if you
don't achieve zero population growth first, because in case you hadn't noticed, we live on a finite planet, and everywhere you look, resources such as food and oil are becoming scarce. So redistribution without policies to control population growth, like cutting illegal immigration to zero and encouraging small families, just increases the number of poor in a Malthusian spiral that ends in the kinds of collapse seen in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Republicans at least have a consistent world view, although it is indeed one that I find repugnant.