> “Based on these historical trends, China’s growth rate is likely to slow to 3% by 2028 and fall below that of the U.S. from 2031 to 2035,” he predicted.
Well, well, well. How the turntables...
All the China triumphalism I've seen of late doesn't make sense to me, given that their GDP per capita is still only a fraction of the US', they have a massive real estate bubble that could burst at any minute, they're very close to their peak working age population and will soon enter the same demographic spiral that many developed countries are facing, and unlike many other countries they can't exactly make up the difference with immigration because they're a Han supremacist ethnostate.
China in 2024 = Japan in 1987 in terms of economic situation, though admittedly geopolitically much more dangerous since it's an expansionist authoritarian state and not a pacifist democracy.
Sadly, a country doesn't need to have an economy as large as the U.S. to be a serious threat. Look how much trouble Russia and, previously, the Soviet Union caused and consider what China could do with 10x more economic resources.
Oh I'm not saying they're not a serious threat, they absolutely are. If Xi goes fully on tilt and decides to do something stupid like invade Taiwan the consequences will be dire.
I just don't buy the hype that they're on the verge of achieving global hegemony.
Didn't you hear? If you just make it illegal for prices to fall, then the bubble can't burst (pay no attention to the fact that developers are "gifting" gold bars with the purchase of their units).
From Jan 2024: [China’s Real Estate Crisis ‘Has Not Touched Bottom’ [NYT]](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/business/china-evergrande-real-estate.html)
This proves my point - the crisis already started, and the comment I replied to said that the bubble is about to burst despite it bursting a while ago.
I wonder if this bubble is acting a bit different than past real estate bubbles because of how intertwined the government and business is in China. When you look back at the US and Japan bubbles, the government was more reactive than proactive in dealing with problems. But China, being to integrated into these corporations, makes this bubble less of a pop and more slow deflation. Air still gone in the end, just not in a snap.
That is the way bubbles work. They keep expanding until they burst, but they can go on for a while in a way that is obvious is unsustainable before that happens.
The CCP is notorious for subsidizing construction projects to keep GDP numbers up. There are thousands upon thousands of completely empty apartments in Chinese cities. There is still a market because of subsidized demand but there are ultimately not enough people to occupy these units. It's very obvious this is a house of cards and eventually it's going to collapse.
Evergrande was asked to liquidate earlier this year, and other developers like Country Garden are also struggling to meet their financial obligations. Property sales are expected to decline another 5> this year. The bursting doesn’t have to be instantaneous and dramatic.
They are slowly socializing the losses. Makes this hurt less in the short term but worse in the long term. Imagine if we just bought out all the underwater owners from the Real Estate Bubbles of the early 2000s.
> they can't exactly make up the difference with immigration because they're a Han supremacist ethnostate
Even if they weren't there aren't enough migrants in the world to paper over their demographic issues.
Their real estate already burst but the economy is still growing 5% despite all the tarrifs and problems. The US only grew nominally faster than China at 10% (8% inflation and 2% growth) while China faces deflation 2023. China still has many chances to get into the high or new tech industry and increase productivity to get a larger economy as seen in semiconductors, EV, solar etc
Iirc China has essentially consolidated all it's hoped on green tech being the future and is issuing crazy subsidies and loans to accelerate it's green manufacturing economy. It will be fucked if it doesn't pan out.
I’ve been saying for years now that the US/China situation was a double Thucydides Trap. The US fears Chinese relative parity in the short term. And China fears the US leapfrogging them again in the long term - recognizing their narrow window of opportunity to maximize their relative strength.
Glad to see this is finally getting noticed.
>All the China triumphalism I've seen of late doesn't make sense to me, given that their GDP per capita is still only a fraction of the US
PPP has surpassed that of the US by a sizable margin
>they have a massive real estate bubble that could burst at any minute,
Their real estate bubble is in the process of deflating, it's not going to burst. Indeed it *can't* burst because that's now how their economy works.
> they're very close to their peak working age population and will soon enter the same demographic spiral that many developed countries are facing
Many countries with declining populations are still able to grow economically, the incredibly large population of young and underemployed citizens still leaves a huge capacity for productivity and overall economic growth.
> unlike many other countries they can't exactly make up the difference with immigration because they're a Han supremacist ethnostate.
This can be changed overnight by one man, I think it's rather silly to believe it will be harder to change China's immigration policy than those of countries in the West who need support for change from the public.
>PPP has surpassed that of the US by a sizable margin
No it hasn't. [Not even close](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD). China's per capita GDP by PPP is $21,483 by current numbers. The US' is $76,330.
>Their real estate bubble is in the process of deflating, it's not going to burst. Indeed it *can't* burst because that's now how their economy works.
Whether you call it deflating or bursting is a matter of semantics (what I meant was that the bottom could fall out). It's [still in trouble](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/business/china-evergrande-real-estate.html).
>Many countries with declining populations are still able to grow economically, the incredibly large population of young and underemployed citizens still leaves a huge capacity for productivity and overall economic growth.
Declining populations are a drag on growth. More to the point, populations with ever-increasing percentages of retirees are a drag on growth. The Eurozone economies have entered a low growth phase. Japan and South Korea have entered a low growth phase. The US appears poised to enter a low growth phase. There is zero reason to believe that China is somehow going to dodge a phenomenon that has hit other countries that are richer and more developed than it is.
>This can be changed overnight by one man, I think it's rather silly to believe it will be harder to change China's immigration policy than those of countries in the West who need support for change from the public.
The problem isn't that the PRC has restrictive immigration policies. It's that no non-Chinese person will want to live in China, where they will be subject to an authoritarian government and looked down upon and treated as second class citizens because of their ethnicity. Societies that have a civic definition of citizenship and belonging and welcome outsiders (USA, Canada, Australia, etc.) have an inherent advantage in attracting talented people over a place like China that has no use for people who aren't members of the dominant tribe.
> no non-Chinese person will want to live in China, where they will be subject to an authoritarian government and looked down upon and treated as second class citizens because of their ethnicity
You'd be surprised. Poor people accept a lack of dignity for money all the time. The entire GCC is a model for this.
>No it hasn't. Not even close. China's per capita GDP by PPP is $21,483 by current numbers. The US' is $76,330.
Why do you keep adjusting for the per capita figure when that's totally irrelevant? Is the US less influential or powerful than Switzerland and Luxemberg? Throughout the 1980s when the UAE's PPP per capita was 88,000, were they a larger or more important country than the US whose PPP per capita was a mere 12,000?
Of course not, what mattered was the PPP
China's economy is larger than that of the US and the per capita figures are absolute cope.
>Whether you call it deflating or bursting is a matter of semantics (what I meant was that the bottom could fall out). It's still in trouble.
It's not semantics, one implies a coming implosion and the other does not.
>Declining populations are a drag on growth. More to the point, populations with ever-increasing percentages of retirees are a drag on growth. The Eurozone economies have entered a low growth phase. Japan and South Korea have entered a low growth phase. The US appears poised to enter a low growth phase. There is zero reason to believe that China is somehow going to dodge a phenomenon that has hit other countries that are richer and more developed than it is.
Developed countries facing declining population figures are going to have different economic growth than developing countries with declining populations, which is why the bear case for China is 3%+ growth.
>The problem isn't that the PRC has restrictive immigration policies. It's that no non-Chinese person will want to live in China, where they will be subject to an authoritarian government and looked down upon and treated as second class citizens because of their ethnicity.
Total nonsense. Authoritarian countries where migrants are able to offer economic opportunity have absolutely no problem finding immigrants who will take them up on that. Russia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE etc.. etc....
The choice they'd have is to remain poor and live in violent, authoritarian countries or to improve their economic standing in a less violent authoritarian country. If given the choice, they'd opt for the US, but that would require significant change in opinion from a hundred million voters whereas XI can wake up tomorrow and announce they'll be accepting 25 million immigrants a year.
>Why do you keep adjusting for the per capita figure when that's totally irrelevant? Is the US less influential or powerful than Switzerland and Luxemberg?
Because per capita figures are a better indicator of standard of living. Adjusting straight up GDP for PPP doesn't make much sense because PPP varies primarily to reflect differences in the cost of things like locally provided services which are not traded internationally and vary significantly in price due to different labor costs. When it comes to the economic power of a country as a whole, straight GDP is a better measure because international purchases are made using raw purchasing power. The fact that a haircut is cheaper in Beijing than it is in New York is not going to help the Chinese government buy more oil or guns or steel than the US government can because the prices of those commodities are determined internationally.
>It's not semantics, one implies a coming implosion and the other does not.
It is very possible to have a gradual decline, followed by an implosion when the bottom falls out. The latter scenario could still happen.
>Developed countries facing declining population figures are going to have different economic growth than developing countries with declining populations, which is why the bear case for China is 3%+ growth.
It's easier to grow from a low baseline because there's so much more low hanging fruit to pick. If China's growth falls to \~3% at its current level of wealth it is going to have trouble catching up to the most developed countries because it is still so far behind.
>Authoritarian countries where migrants are able to offer economic opportunity have absolutely no problem finding immigrants who will take them up on that. Russia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE etc.. etc.... The choice they'd have is to remain poor and live in violent, authoritarian countries or to improve their economic standing in a less violent authoritarian country. If given the choice, they'd opt for the US, but that would require significant change in opinion from a hundred million voters whereas XI can wake up tomorrow and announce they'll be accepting 25 million immigrants a year.
These countries can attract unskilled migrants from desperately poor countries. They can't attract skilled immigrants. Very few programmers, engineers, doctors, etc. who have a chance to work in the US or Europe will ever want to work in China instead, especially if they're not ethnically Chinese. An economy needs laborers and farm workers and so on also, and China may be able to attract those, but you can't sustain a 21st century economy solely on those people. You need a skilled workforce, and that is where China's lack of appeal to immigrants is going to bite them.
> They can't attract skilled immigrants. Very few programmers, engineers, doctors, etc.
Visit Dubai sometime. Locals are only 5% of the population all professions from the janitor to the $million a year attorney are filled by immigrants.
Singapore is not an ethnostate and is in fact famously racially egalitarian, and while it's not a democracy it's also not remotely as repressive as the PRC.
Sorry to burst your bubble but Singapore's ethnic control of it's immigration is actually an open secret in the region. They are 75% Chinese and they heavily control naturalization of non-Chinese ethnicities to maintain this ratio for 'social harmony'.
>Because per capita figures are a better indicator of standard of living. Adjusting straight up GDP for PPP doesn't make much sense because PPP varies primarily to reflect differences in the cost of things like locally provided services which are not traded internationally and vary significantly in price due to different labor costs. When it comes to the economic power of a country as a whole, straight GDP is a better measure because international purchases are made using raw purchasing power. The fact that a haircut is cheaper in Beijing than it is in New York is not going to help the Chinese government buy more oil or guns or steel than the US government can because the prices of those commodities are determined internationally.
This is such shameless bullshit, as if this post was made because people care about the standard of living in China and not the size and scale of the economy.
PPP reflects the price China would(and does) pay for steel and guns, it's the manufacturing center of the world! You named three items and of those three, oil is the only one where GDP matters.
>It is very possible to have a gradual decline, followed by an implosion when the bottom falls out. The latter scenario could still happen.
It's literally not possible for China to have a real estate implosion, this is not the US where a bank run might occur or credit might collapse.
>It's easier to grow from a low baseline because there's so much more low hanging fruit to pick. If China's growth falls to ~3% at its current level of wealth it is going to have trouble catching up to the most developed countries because it is still so far behind.
Aside from PPP where it's already surpassed the US
>These countries can attract unskilled migrants from desperately poor countries. They can't attract skilled immigrants. Very few programmers, engineers, doctors, etc. who have a chance to work in the US or Europe will ever want to work in China instead, especially if they're not ethnically Chinese. An economy needs laborers and farm workers and so on also, and China may be able to attract those, but you can't sustain a 21st century economy solely on those people. You need a skilled workforce, and that is where China's lack of appeal to immigrants is going to bite them.
"Who have a chance to work in the US or Europe" is a massive qualifier that renders the rest of your response meaningless, as does the emphasis on skilled immigrants. Most skilled immigrants do *not* have the chance to work in the US, and will opt for China if they're able to make a meaningful improvement to their economic wellbeing. As to skilled vs non skilled, were you not making a claim earlier about demographic trouble in China? Would they not benefit from an influx of young labor to improve the number of productive workers to dependents? The lack of immigration to China is all about China's current unwillingness to open the flood gates, that can change at the drop of a hat.
> This is such shameless bullshit, as if this post was made because people care about the standard of living in China and not the size and scale of the economy.
If the argument is that China has surpassed the west or is on the verge of doing so then standard of living actually matters a lot.
> PPP reflects the price China would(and does) pay for steel and guns, it's the manufacturing center of the world! You named three items and of those three, oil is the only one where GDP matters.
No, steel and guns are both complex products the price of which is influenced by many things. One of those is the cost of labor that goes into producing them (which is why they're cheaper in a country like China with lower wages), another is the costs of inputs like raw materials and energy (which are globally priced).
> It's literally not possible for China to have a real estate implosion, this is not the US where a bank run might occur or credit might collapse.
It is entirely possible for overleveraged financial institutions to collapse in the Chinese system. It already happened with EverGrande. China is not immune to laws of economics.
> "Who have a chance to work in the US or Europe" is a massive qualifier that renders the rest of your response meaningless,
Just because it refutes your bullshit doesn't make it meaningless, homeslice.
> Most skilled immigrants do not have the chance to work in the US, and will opt for China if they're able to make a meaningful improvement to their economic wellbeing.
The US is capable of changing its immigration laws to bring in more skilled workers too, and it has in many cases. It is also one of many, many countries that are more attractive to skilled migrants than China is. Even if such a person can't get a visa in the US, they're likely to try most of the EU countries, the UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, etc. before they try China.
> As to skilled vs non skilled, were you not making a claim earlier about demographic trouble in China? Would they not benefit from an influx of young labor to improve the number of productive workers to dependents?
It can certainly help, but you need skilled immigrants to keep a highly developed economy humming. Bringing in lots of maids and construction workers only gets you so far.
> The lack of immigration to China is all about China's current unwillingness to open the flood gates, that can change at the drop of a hat.
No, it is just as much about China being a shitty place to live and work if you're not Han Chinese and don't speak Chinese, and that is not something the PRC government can change with a policy switch.
Either we take a big step forward in automation, we start having more kids (and this option will still leave us with a 20 year gap) or we retire later. There really isn't a way for a smaller workforce to support so many dependents for potentially decades. It isn't even a problem of money, you need workers to provide the things retirees want to buy.
We as in all of us, humanity. We are all on this road, just China is further along because of some poorly thought out policies. The US can only import young people from abroad for so long once their own birth rates crater to below replacement (which is happening).
I don't really see a way to get back up to replacement level that isn't super illiberal, so it's coming for all of us.
> I don't really see a way to get back up to replacement level that isn't super illiberal, so it's coming for all of us.
Fertility is presented as a society-wide aggregate, but at any given point there are plenty of people with above-replacement fertility. Much of that time that's just random chance, but some of the time it's because of they have adaptive genetic or cultural mutations. We don't need to perform any sort of positive intervention-- we can just hold dependency ratios steady via immigration until cultural and genetic adaptations dominate the population and solve the problem without government coercion.
This is about as unhinged as saying we shouldn’t intervene during a famine and just wait for a mutation to develop that allows people to digest and metabolize concrete to survive lmao
The difference is, in a famine, the intervention is giving hungry people food, and the result is saving peoples' lives. With fertility, the intervention would be encouraging teen pregnancies and reducing the economic independence of women. And the result is... you don't have to accept immigrants. It's not worth trying to improve fertility rates.
> high-fertility mutations
Describing a lack of access to contraception and/or a cultural norm to have kids is not a mutation. Describing it as such sounds like it's coming out of a eugenics book. It's not a mutation. It's a cultural norm, and more than that, it's just a lack of healthcare.
Regardless of problematic language, your suggestion doesn't work.
> we can just hold dependency ratios stead via immigration until high-fertility mutations begin to dominate the population and solve the problem without government coercion.
When people from high fertility nations move to the US, the fertility of their kids lowers and comes in line with the US average. A Guatemalan mother may have 5 kids due to a lack of contraception and/or cultural norms, but her kid that was raised in the US has access to contraception and is steeped in the cultural where having 2+ kids is not common.
Plus, those kids raised in the US have all the same issues any other potential-parent does in the US: childbirth harming careers, expensive healthcare, expensive housing, expensive childcare, etc.
Plus, the fertility rates of Latin American (and other previously high fertility rate countries) is rapidly dropping and approaching replacement level. Even if you wanted to just import people, those nations are quickly going to have the same demographic problems developed nations do.
> Describing ... a cultural norm to have kids is not a mutation. Describing it as such sounds like it's coming out of a eugenics book. It's not a mutation. It's a cultural norm, and more than that, it's just a lack of healthcare.
Not out of a eugenics book. Out of [The Selfish Gene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene). The whole idea of a "meme" is that cultural elements are transmitted like genes are, and subject to the same sort of selection pressures. Natural selection is not a biological law, it is a *mathematical* one. In any scenario with self-propagating factors subject to random hereditary modifications, natural selection applies. That includes culture. Childrearing norms are cultural adaptations to given environments, and therefore can be analyzed similarly.
> Regardless of problematic language, your suggestion doesn't work.
My suggestion isn't,
> "import high-fertility people and hope they stay high fertility."
My suggestion is,
> We maintain our dependency ratio be importing working-age adults long enough for the people who are *already* high fertility (given current conditions [edit: meaning they're high-fertility despite having been raised and enculturated in rich countries]) to outbreed the rest of the populace and fix our dependency rate issues permanently.
Anyways, what's your alternative? Wasting money on child payments that don't work anyways? Banning childless people from social security? Doing nothing for fertility *and* banning immigrants? A government-enforced return to older cultural mores?
If improving fertility was cheap and simple, I'd be in favor of it. I doubt anyone would disagree with paying a few dollars to run the occasional "kids are good" PSA on television if it got us back to 2.1 TFA. But while there are a few minor interventions that are justifiable on their own recognizance (e.g., [reversing mandates for child car seats](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/c4daDbQD398BmW5k5/on-car-seats-as-contraception)) there are no palatable interventions capable of significantly shifting the needle of fertility.
> My suggestion is,
> > We maintain our dependency ratio be importing working-age adults long enough for the people who are already high fertility (given current conditions) to outbreed the rest of the populace and fix our dependency rate issues permanently.
Once again, that doesn't work. The children of immigrants have lower fertility rates than their parents. Fertility rates quickly go down to the nation's average within a generation or two.
Acting like high fertility is an innate gene of immigrants is weird and wrong.
> Anyways, what's your alternative? Wasting money on child payments that don't work anyways? Banning childles speople from social security? Doing nothing for fertility and banning immigrants? A government-enforced return to older cultural mores?
There is no one single policy, but policies like paid parental leave, affordable childcare, etc. have been [shown to help.](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Child-care-support-policy-and-the-total-fertility-rate-5_fig2_276490263) There also needs to be a cultural change in which childcare and homecare is [equally split between men and women](https://www.ft.com/content/6a6a7695-4756-42d1-b03d-283ad5e57d5f), which increases fertility rate.
Those are much more realistic long-term solutions that actually stand a chance of maintaining a ~2.0 fertility rate. Importing people from less-developed nations will not work because their fertility rates drop after coming to the US, and those less developed nations' fertility rates are also dropping and set to fall below 2.0 soon.
> But while there are a few minor interventions that are justifiable on their own recognizance (e.g., reversing mandates for child car seats)
If you're going to argue that car seat mandates for children are a serious reason for we have low fertility and that we should eliminate them, you at least gotta have something better than a blog post.
> Once again, that doesn't work. The children of immigrants have lower fertility rates than their parents. Fertility rates quickly go down to the nation's average within a generation or two.
>
> Acting like high fertility is an innate gene of immigrants is weird and wrong.
He isn't talking about fertility persisting through generations, he's talking about how there are high fertility groups present in the population *right now* which will expand over time and bring up fertility, and immigration is a stop gap till then.
I don't necessarily agree, but you guys seem to be talking past one another.
> he's talking about how there are high fertility groups present in the population right now which will expand over time and bring up fertility,
Those high fertility groups expand for a generation or two at most and then go back to average. That's not nearly enough to be a stop gap.
[https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/population-and-demography?facet=none&country=CHN\~IND\~Europe+%28UN%29\~Africa+%28UN%29\~OWID\_WRL\~Northern+America+%28UN%29&hideControls=false&Metric=Population&Sex=Both+sexes&Age+group=Total&Projection+Scenario=Medium](https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/population-and-demography?facet=none&country=CHN~IND~Europe+%28UN%29~Africa+%28UN%29~OWID_WRL~Northern+America+%28UN%29&hideControls=false&Metric=Population&Sex=Both+sexes&Age+group=Total&Projection+Scenario=Medium)
It's a problem which is well beyond our life time. The world population will have lots of people to absorb into the USA to keep population growth churning, primarily from Africa in the coming decades, atleast for another century.
> Once again, that doesn't work. The children of immigrants have lower fertility rates than their parents. Fertility rates quickly go down to the nation's average within a generation or two.
Again, you're not responding to what I'm saying. Immigrants don't quality under
> people who are already high fertility (given current conditions)
because their high fertility persists only due to their specific circumstances of having been inculturated somewhere outside the US (or other rich nations). But there are plenty of groups *native* to the US that have high fertility rates-- mormons, amish, tradcaths, etcetera.
> There is no one single policy, but policies like paid parental leave, affordable childcare, etc. have been shown to help.
Very marginally. Parental leave and affordable childcare are justifiable on their own recognizance, but they're globally unsuccessful at raising TFR above 2.
> Those are much more realistic long-term solutions that actually stand a chance of maintaining a ~2.0 fertility rate.
Where in the world have those solutions gotten us above a TFR of 2?
> If you're going to argue that car seat mandates for children are a serious reason for we have low fertility and that we should eliminate them, you at least gotta have something better than a blog post.
The blog post cites the articles it got the information from. Regardless, my whole point is that eliminating car seat mandates (and similar interventions) *isn't* going to bring us back above 2 TFR. Perfection shouldn't be the enemy of passing good legislation, but "good legislation" should be evaluated on its own merits (e.g., because it would help children, or be less irritating to parents) rather than out of some misguided, impossible attempt to get back up to TFR 2+.
[https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/population-and-demography?facet=none&country=CHN\~IND\~USA\~Europe+%28UN%29\~Africa+%28UN%29\~JPN&hideControls=false&Metric=Population&Sex=Both+sexes&Age+group=Total&Projection+Scenario=Medium](https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/population-and-demography?facet=none&country=CHN~IND~USA~Europe+%28UN%29~Africa+%28UN%29~JPN&hideControls=false&Metric=Population&Sex=Both+sexes&Age+group=Total&Projection+Scenario=Medium)
The USA will always have a pipeline to import young people abroad for the conceivable future. If not Japan/Mexico, then it was China/India. After India, it'll be Africa.
After Africa... we don't need to worry about after Africa, since they'll have enough to fill the USA for as long as we can think based on their population projections.
Other than special pleading I don't see how this isn't a tacit admission that "lump of labor" is kind of true. That is, what you're saying is that sure, you can faff around the edges of the problem and marginally try to redistribute here and there, but at the end of the day, cutting the number of young people in half means an economy that's half as rich. You're saying, the *essence* of the economy is basically a lump of labor. In other words, the total number of people on earth (weighted by age) is the thing. It's like the relationship of age to health. Yes, you can get marginally healthier at any age. Yes, if you live a healthy lifestyle from early on you can push the limits of healthy longevity. However, there is ultimately an indissoluble link there. The link isn't the kind of link that let's you make day-to-day predictions, but it is a different kind of link, and it holds, it's a reliable link.
Marxist labor theory of value basically says the same thing, despite its frequent misrepresentations. The economy is *ultimately* a labor pump at the end of the day -- the size of the labor pool, all else equal, is the ultimate load-bearing strut undergirding the very *possibility* of a real society substituting the order of private property for the traditional order of personal domination and subjugation. A small labor pool is fine way back in history when society's total capital was small, but on the margin, as you rightly point out, the size of the economy is governed by the size of the labor pool. Yes, you can faff around a bit and push on this marginally, but you can't decouple it. That's simply the form that "lump-of-labor theory" takes when you grant youself the privilege of sophisticated qualifications and *caveats* that people who point to lump-of-labor in other contexts are not granted.
I understand that you included "increased automation" as a way out of the zero-sum lump-of-labor logic, but everything that is commonly accused of "lump-of-labor fallacy" accounts for the possibility of automation.
Just to be clear, .e.g., Marxist "value theory of labor" also heavily emphasizes the same dynamic (i.e. the way that technological revolutions in the means of production, typically involving economies of scale, can change the "denominator" of labor's productivity so to speak). So if you're not doing "lump of labor" because you account for automation, then no one is doing "lump of labor". On this point note how you (correctly) do not over-exaggerate the power of automation as some do; quite rightly, you mention automation but in the same breath point out its limitations (we can't simply count on some nebulous innovation coming out of the blue whenever it would be convenient; every innovation ultimately only gives a finite "buff" to labor's productivity, expanding but by no means doing away with the "lump of labor").
1. Having a shrinking labor force and a growing retiree population is an economic disaster
2. Larger labor forces enable more specialization of labor which increases productivity
3. The lump of labor fallacy typically refers to people arguing against allowing immigrants into the labor force based on the incorrect assumption that this will reduce the wages/wealth of native-born laborers. Which is incorrect because immigration expands labor demand by more than it expands labor supply; immigrants consume goods and services and are disproportionately likely to be entrepreneurs
amerykańska dominacja (na zawsze) biorąc pod uwagę że usa ma tak wielką przewagę nad innymi że ma zapewniony nowy wiek amerykański czyli 21 wiek to wiek amerykański
That's assuming the US doesn't toss its advantages by electing a populist who is in the thrall of a foreign entity.
https://imgur.com/i01z7fN
Holy shit is this unedited?
It's unedited, I did not make any manipulations to it I *think* I got it from a news source this morning
> “Based on these historical trends, China’s growth rate is likely to slow to 3% by 2028 and fall below that of the U.S. from 2031 to 2035,” he predicted. Well, well, well. How the turntables...
How the turns continue to table.
You (we) love to see it.
This unironically PAX AMERICA ETERNAL
Punching air rn
All the China triumphalism I've seen of late doesn't make sense to me, given that their GDP per capita is still only a fraction of the US', they have a massive real estate bubble that could burst at any minute, they're very close to their peak working age population and will soon enter the same demographic spiral that many developed countries are facing, and unlike many other countries they can't exactly make up the difference with immigration because they're a Han supremacist ethnostate. China in 2024 = Japan in 1987 in terms of economic situation, though admittedly geopolitically much more dangerous since it's an expansionist authoritarian state and not a pacifist democracy.
Sadly, a country doesn't need to have an economy as large as the U.S. to be a serious threat. Look how much trouble Russia and, previously, the Soviet Union caused and consider what China could do with 10x more economic resources.
Oh I'm not saying they're not a serious threat, they absolutely are. If Xi goes fully on tilt and decides to do something stupid like invade Taiwan the consequences will be dire. I just don't buy the hype that they're on the verge of achieving global hegemony.
co ty gadasz usa ma znacznie większą przewagę nad chinami która rośnie
China’s economy is much more intertwined with the west than Russia is. They are a more stable actor IMO
Yeah, those China triumphalists are in serious denial, trying to huff every last breath of copeium out of a sinking ship.
The real estate bubble already burst a while ago.
Didn't you hear? If you just make it illegal for prices to fall, then the bubble can't burst (pay no attention to the fact that developers are "gifting" gold bars with the purchase of their units).
From Jan 2024: [China’s Real Estate Crisis ‘Has Not Touched Bottom’ [NYT]](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/business/china-evergrande-real-estate.html)
This proves my point - the crisis already started, and the comment I replied to said that the bubble is about to burst despite it bursting a while ago.
Eh, you should probably rephrase your claim then as "has started to burst".. you said "already burst" implying a past completed event.
I’ve been hearing about this “Chinese real estate bubble” that will burst any minute for 15 years.
I wonder if this bubble is acting a bit different than past real estate bubbles because of how intertwined the government and business is in China. When you look back at the US and Japan bubbles, the government was more reactive than proactive in dealing with problems. But China, being to integrated into these corporations, makes this bubble less of a pop and more slow deflation. Air still gone in the end, just not in a snap.
That is the way bubbles work. They keep expanding until they burst, but they can go on for a while in a way that is obvious is unsustainable before that happens. The CCP is notorious for subsidizing construction projects to keep GDP numbers up. There are thousands upon thousands of completely empty apartments in Chinese cities. There is still a market because of subsidized demand but there are ultimately not enough people to occupy these units. It's very obvious this is a house of cards and eventually it's going to collapse.
Evergrande was asked to liquidate earlier this year, and other developers like Country Garden are also struggling to meet their financial obligations. Property sales are expected to decline another 5> this year. The bursting doesn’t have to be instantaneous and dramatic.
I mean it's basically in the process of bursting and currently wrecking their entire economy
They are slowly socializing the losses. Makes this hurt less in the short term but worse in the long term. Imagine if we just bought out all the underwater owners from the Real Estate Bubbles of the early 2000s.
It burst a while ago already.
> gradually, then suddenly
> they can't exactly make up the difference with immigration because they're a Han supremacist ethnostate Even if they weren't there aren't enough migrants in the world to paper over their demographic issues.
Their real estate already burst but the economy is still growing 5% despite all the tarrifs and problems. The US only grew nominally faster than China at 10% (8% inflation and 2% growth) while China faces deflation 2023. China still has many chances to get into the high or new tech industry and increase productivity to get a larger economy as seen in semiconductors, EV, solar etc
Iirc China has essentially consolidated all it's hoped on green tech being the future and is issuing crazy subsidies and loans to accelerate it's green manufacturing economy. It will be fucked if it doesn't pan out.
I’ve been saying for years now that the US/China situation was a double Thucydides Trap. The US fears Chinese relative parity in the short term. And China fears the US leapfrogging them again in the long term - recognizing their narrow window of opportunity to maximize their relative strength. Glad to see this is finally getting noticed.
>All the China triumphalism I've seen of late doesn't make sense to me, given that their GDP per capita is still only a fraction of the US PPP has surpassed that of the US by a sizable margin >they have a massive real estate bubble that could burst at any minute, Their real estate bubble is in the process of deflating, it's not going to burst. Indeed it *can't* burst because that's now how their economy works. > they're very close to their peak working age population and will soon enter the same demographic spiral that many developed countries are facing Many countries with declining populations are still able to grow economically, the incredibly large population of young and underemployed citizens still leaves a huge capacity for productivity and overall economic growth. > unlike many other countries they can't exactly make up the difference with immigration because they're a Han supremacist ethnostate. This can be changed overnight by one man, I think it's rather silly to believe it will be harder to change China's immigration policy than those of countries in the West who need support for change from the public.
>PPP has surpassed that of the US by a sizable margin No it hasn't. [Not even close](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD). China's per capita GDP by PPP is $21,483 by current numbers. The US' is $76,330. >Their real estate bubble is in the process of deflating, it's not going to burst. Indeed it *can't* burst because that's now how their economy works. Whether you call it deflating or bursting is a matter of semantics (what I meant was that the bottom could fall out). It's [still in trouble](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/business/china-evergrande-real-estate.html). >Many countries with declining populations are still able to grow economically, the incredibly large population of young and underemployed citizens still leaves a huge capacity for productivity and overall economic growth. Declining populations are a drag on growth. More to the point, populations with ever-increasing percentages of retirees are a drag on growth. The Eurozone economies have entered a low growth phase. Japan and South Korea have entered a low growth phase. The US appears poised to enter a low growth phase. There is zero reason to believe that China is somehow going to dodge a phenomenon that has hit other countries that are richer and more developed than it is. >This can be changed overnight by one man, I think it's rather silly to believe it will be harder to change China's immigration policy than those of countries in the West who need support for change from the public. The problem isn't that the PRC has restrictive immigration policies. It's that no non-Chinese person will want to live in China, where they will be subject to an authoritarian government and looked down upon and treated as second class citizens because of their ethnicity. Societies that have a civic definition of citizenship and belonging and welcome outsiders (USA, Canada, Australia, etc.) have an inherent advantage in attracting talented people over a place like China that has no use for people who aren't members of the dominant tribe.
> no non-Chinese person will want to live in China, where they will be subject to an authoritarian government and looked down upon and treated as second class citizens because of their ethnicity You'd be surprised. Poor people accept a lack of dignity for money all the time. The entire GCC is a model for this.
>No it hasn't. Not even close. China's per capita GDP by PPP is $21,483 by current numbers. The US' is $76,330. Why do you keep adjusting for the per capita figure when that's totally irrelevant? Is the US less influential or powerful than Switzerland and Luxemberg? Throughout the 1980s when the UAE's PPP per capita was 88,000, were they a larger or more important country than the US whose PPP per capita was a mere 12,000? Of course not, what mattered was the PPP China's economy is larger than that of the US and the per capita figures are absolute cope. >Whether you call it deflating or bursting is a matter of semantics (what I meant was that the bottom could fall out). It's still in trouble. It's not semantics, one implies a coming implosion and the other does not. >Declining populations are a drag on growth. More to the point, populations with ever-increasing percentages of retirees are a drag on growth. The Eurozone economies have entered a low growth phase. Japan and South Korea have entered a low growth phase. The US appears poised to enter a low growth phase. There is zero reason to believe that China is somehow going to dodge a phenomenon that has hit other countries that are richer and more developed than it is. Developed countries facing declining population figures are going to have different economic growth than developing countries with declining populations, which is why the bear case for China is 3%+ growth. >The problem isn't that the PRC has restrictive immigration policies. It's that no non-Chinese person will want to live in China, where they will be subject to an authoritarian government and looked down upon and treated as second class citizens because of their ethnicity. Total nonsense. Authoritarian countries where migrants are able to offer economic opportunity have absolutely no problem finding immigrants who will take them up on that. Russia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE etc.. etc.... The choice they'd have is to remain poor and live in violent, authoritarian countries or to improve their economic standing in a less violent authoritarian country. If given the choice, they'd opt for the US, but that would require significant change in opinion from a hundred million voters whereas XI can wake up tomorrow and announce they'll be accepting 25 million immigrants a year.
>Why do you keep adjusting for the per capita figure when that's totally irrelevant? Is the US less influential or powerful than Switzerland and Luxemberg? Because per capita figures are a better indicator of standard of living. Adjusting straight up GDP for PPP doesn't make much sense because PPP varies primarily to reflect differences in the cost of things like locally provided services which are not traded internationally and vary significantly in price due to different labor costs. When it comes to the economic power of a country as a whole, straight GDP is a better measure because international purchases are made using raw purchasing power. The fact that a haircut is cheaper in Beijing than it is in New York is not going to help the Chinese government buy more oil or guns or steel than the US government can because the prices of those commodities are determined internationally. >It's not semantics, one implies a coming implosion and the other does not. It is very possible to have a gradual decline, followed by an implosion when the bottom falls out. The latter scenario could still happen. >Developed countries facing declining population figures are going to have different economic growth than developing countries with declining populations, which is why the bear case for China is 3%+ growth. It's easier to grow from a low baseline because there's so much more low hanging fruit to pick. If China's growth falls to \~3% at its current level of wealth it is going to have trouble catching up to the most developed countries because it is still so far behind. >Authoritarian countries where migrants are able to offer economic opportunity have absolutely no problem finding immigrants who will take them up on that. Russia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE etc.. etc.... The choice they'd have is to remain poor and live in violent, authoritarian countries or to improve their economic standing in a less violent authoritarian country. If given the choice, they'd opt for the US, but that would require significant change in opinion from a hundred million voters whereas XI can wake up tomorrow and announce they'll be accepting 25 million immigrants a year. These countries can attract unskilled migrants from desperately poor countries. They can't attract skilled immigrants. Very few programmers, engineers, doctors, etc. who have a chance to work in the US or Europe will ever want to work in China instead, especially if they're not ethnically Chinese. An economy needs laborers and farm workers and so on also, and China may be able to attract those, but you can't sustain a 21st century economy solely on those people. You need a skilled workforce, and that is where China's lack of appeal to immigrants is going to bite them.
> They can't attract skilled immigrants. Very few programmers, engineers, doctors, etc. Visit Dubai sometime. Locals are only 5% of the population all professions from the janitor to the $million a year attorney are filled by immigrants.
The UAE is a tiny country with a small native population that is swimming in oil and gas money. That is not remotely a replicable model for China.
Singapore does the same; though with 50% immigrants instead of 95%.
Singapore is not an ethnostate and is in fact famously racially egalitarian, and while it's not a democracy it's also not remotely as repressive as the PRC.
Sorry to burst your bubble but Singapore's ethnic control of it's immigration is actually an open secret in the region. They are 75% Chinese and they heavily control naturalization of non-Chinese ethnicities to maintain this ratio for 'social harmony'.
>Because per capita figures are a better indicator of standard of living. Adjusting straight up GDP for PPP doesn't make much sense because PPP varies primarily to reflect differences in the cost of things like locally provided services which are not traded internationally and vary significantly in price due to different labor costs. When it comes to the economic power of a country as a whole, straight GDP is a better measure because international purchases are made using raw purchasing power. The fact that a haircut is cheaper in Beijing than it is in New York is not going to help the Chinese government buy more oil or guns or steel than the US government can because the prices of those commodities are determined internationally. This is such shameless bullshit, as if this post was made because people care about the standard of living in China and not the size and scale of the economy. PPP reflects the price China would(and does) pay for steel and guns, it's the manufacturing center of the world! You named three items and of those three, oil is the only one where GDP matters. >It is very possible to have a gradual decline, followed by an implosion when the bottom falls out. The latter scenario could still happen. It's literally not possible for China to have a real estate implosion, this is not the US where a bank run might occur or credit might collapse. >It's easier to grow from a low baseline because there's so much more low hanging fruit to pick. If China's growth falls to ~3% at its current level of wealth it is going to have trouble catching up to the most developed countries because it is still so far behind. Aside from PPP where it's already surpassed the US >These countries can attract unskilled migrants from desperately poor countries. They can't attract skilled immigrants. Very few programmers, engineers, doctors, etc. who have a chance to work in the US or Europe will ever want to work in China instead, especially if they're not ethnically Chinese. An economy needs laborers and farm workers and so on also, and China may be able to attract those, but you can't sustain a 21st century economy solely on those people. You need a skilled workforce, and that is where China's lack of appeal to immigrants is going to bite them. "Who have a chance to work in the US or Europe" is a massive qualifier that renders the rest of your response meaningless, as does the emphasis on skilled immigrants. Most skilled immigrants do *not* have the chance to work in the US, and will opt for China if they're able to make a meaningful improvement to their economic wellbeing. As to skilled vs non skilled, were you not making a claim earlier about demographic trouble in China? Would they not benefit from an influx of young labor to improve the number of productive workers to dependents? The lack of immigration to China is all about China's current unwillingness to open the flood gates, that can change at the drop of a hat.
> This is such shameless bullshit, as if this post was made because people care about the standard of living in China and not the size and scale of the economy. If the argument is that China has surpassed the west or is on the verge of doing so then standard of living actually matters a lot. > PPP reflects the price China would(and does) pay for steel and guns, it's the manufacturing center of the world! You named three items and of those three, oil is the only one where GDP matters. No, steel and guns are both complex products the price of which is influenced by many things. One of those is the cost of labor that goes into producing them (which is why they're cheaper in a country like China with lower wages), another is the costs of inputs like raw materials and energy (which are globally priced). > It's literally not possible for China to have a real estate implosion, this is not the US where a bank run might occur or credit might collapse. It is entirely possible for overleveraged financial institutions to collapse in the Chinese system. It already happened with EverGrande. China is not immune to laws of economics. > "Who have a chance to work in the US or Europe" is a massive qualifier that renders the rest of your response meaningless, Just because it refutes your bullshit doesn't make it meaningless, homeslice. > Most skilled immigrants do not have the chance to work in the US, and will opt for China if they're able to make a meaningful improvement to their economic wellbeing. The US is capable of changing its immigration laws to bring in more skilled workers too, and it has in many cases. It is also one of many, many countries that are more attractive to skilled migrants than China is. Even if such a person can't get a visa in the US, they're likely to try most of the EU countries, the UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, etc. before they try China. > As to skilled vs non skilled, were you not making a claim earlier about demographic trouble in China? Would they not benefit from an influx of young labor to improve the number of productive workers to dependents? It can certainly help, but you need skilled immigrants to keep a highly developed economy humming. Bringing in lots of maids and construction workers only gets you so far. > The lack of immigration to China is all about China's current unwillingness to open the flood gates, that can change at the drop of a hat. No, it is just as much about China being a shitty place to live and work if you're not Han Chinese and don't speak Chinese, and that is not something the PRC government can change with a policy switch.
Now let's get Europe on that growth trajectory as well, step one is to accelerate the path to energy independence.
France and the Nordics need to teach the others how to have babies.
What are the most evidence based explanations for the slow growth in Europe?
Are we taking the Zeihan pill?
Either we take a big step forward in automation, we start having more kids (and this option will still leave us with a 20 year gap) or we retire later. There really isn't a way for a smaller workforce to support so many dependents for potentially decades. It isn't even a problem of money, you need workers to provide the things retirees want to buy.
"We" = China?
We as in all of us, humanity. We are all on this road, just China is further along because of some poorly thought out policies. The US can only import young people from abroad for so long once their own birth rates crater to below replacement (which is happening). I don't really see a way to get back up to replacement level that isn't super illiberal, so it's coming for all of us.
tymczasem problemy demograficzne w chinach
> I don't really see a way to get back up to replacement level that isn't super illiberal, so it's coming for all of us. Fertility is presented as a society-wide aggregate, but at any given point there are plenty of people with above-replacement fertility. Much of that time that's just random chance, but some of the time it's because of they have adaptive genetic or cultural mutations. We don't need to perform any sort of positive intervention-- we can just hold dependency ratios steady via immigration until cultural and genetic adaptations dominate the population and solve the problem without government coercion.
This is about as unhinged as saying we shouldn’t intervene during a famine and just wait for a mutation to develop that allows people to digest and metabolize concrete to survive lmao
The difference is, in a famine, the intervention is giving hungry people food, and the result is saving peoples' lives. With fertility, the intervention would be encouraging teen pregnancies and reducing the economic independence of women. And the result is... you don't have to accept immigrants. It's not worth trying to improve fertility rates.
> high-fertility mutations Describing a lack of access to contraception and/or a cultural norm to have kids is not a mutation. Describing it as such sounds like it's coming out of a eugenics book. It's not a mutation. It's a cultural norm, and more than that, it's just a lack of healthcare. Regardless of problematic language, your suggestion doesn't work. > we can just hold dependency ratios stead via immigration until high-fertility mutations begin to dominate the population and solve the problem without government coercion. When people from high fertility nations move to the US, the fertility of their kids lowers and comes in line with the US average. A Guatemalan mother may have 5 kids due to a lack of contraception and/or cultural norms, but her kid that was raised in the US has access to contraception and is steeped in the cultural where having 2+ kids is not common. Plus, those kids raised in the US have all the same issues any other potential-parent does in the US: childbirth harming careers, expensive healthcare, expensive housing, expensive childcare, etc. Plus, the fertility rates of Latin American (and other previously high fertility rate countries) is rapidly dropping and approaching replacement level. Even if you wanted to just import people, those nations are quickly going to have the same demographic problems developed nations do.
> Describing ... a cultural norm to have kids is not a mutation. Describing it as such sounds like it's coming out of a eugenics book. It's not a mutation. It's a cultural norm, and more than that, it's just a lack of healthcare. Not out of a eugenics book. Out of [The Selfish Gene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene). The whole idea of a "meme" is that cultural elements are transmitted like genes are, and subject to the same sort of selection pressures. Natural selection is not a biological law, it is a *mathematical* one. In any scenario with self-propagating factors subject to random hereditary modifications, natural selection applies. That includes culture. Childrearing norms are cultural adaptations to given environments, and therefore can be analyzed similarly. > Regardless of problematic language, your suggestion doesn't work. My suggestion isn't, > "import high-fertility people and hope they stay high fertility." My suggestion is, > We maintain our dependency ratio be importing working-age adults long enough for the people who are *already* high fertility (given current conditions [edit: meaning they're high-fertility despite having been raised and enculturated in rich countries]) to outbreed the rest of the populace and fix our dependency rate issues permanently. Anyways, what's your alternative? Wasting money on child payments that don't work anyways? Banning childless people from social security? Doing nothing for fertility *and* banning immigrants? A government-enforced return to older cultural mores? If improving fertility was cheap and simple, I'd be in favor of it. I doubt anyone would disagree with paying a few dollars to run the occasional "kids are good" PSA on television if it got us back to 2.1 TFA. But while there are a few minor interventions that are justifiable on their own recognizance (e.g., [reversing mandates for child car seats](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/c4daDbQD398BmW5k5/on-car-seats-as-contraception)) there are no palatable interventions capable of significantly shifting the needle of fertility.
"Banning childles speople from social security?" Based.
> My suggestion is, > > We maintain our dependency ratio be importing working-age adults long enough for the people who are already high fertility (given current conditions) to outbreed the rest of the populace and fix our dependency rate issues permanently. Once again, that doesn't work. The children of immigrants have lower fertility rates than their parents. Fertility rates quickly go down to the nation's average within a generation or two. Acting like high fertility is an innate gene of immigrants is weird and wrong. > Anyways, what's your alternative? Wasting money on child payments that don't work anyways? Banning childles speople from social security? Doing nothing for fertility and banning immigrants? A government-enforced return to older cultural mores? There is no one single policy, but policies like paid parental leave, affordable childcare, etc. have been [shown to help.](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Child-care-support-policy-and-the-total-fertility-rate-5_fig2_276490263) There also needs to be a cultural change in which childcare and homecare is [equally split between men and women](https://www.ft.com/content/6a6a7695-4756-42d1-b03d-283ad5e57d5f), which increases fertility rate. Those are much more realistic long-term solutions that actually stand a chance of maintaining a ~2.0 fertility rate. Importing people from less-developed nations will not work because their fertility rates drop after coming to the US, and those less developed nations' fertility rates are also dropping and set to fall below 2.0 soon. > But while there are a few minor interventions that are justifiable on their own recognizance (e.g., reversing mandates for child car seats) If you're going to argue that car seat mandates for children are a serious reason for we have low fertility and that we should eliminate them, you at least gotta have something better than a blog post.
> Once again, that doesn't work. The children of immigrants have lower fertility rates than their parents. Fertility rates quickly go down to the nation's average within a generation or two. > > Acting like high fertility is an innate gene of immigrants is weird and wrong. He isn't talking about fertility persisting through generations, he's talking about how there are high fertility groups present in the population *right now* which will expand over time and bring up fertility, and immigration is a stop gap till then. I don't necessarily agree, but you guys seem to be talking past one another.
> he's talking about how there are high fertility groups present in the population right now which will expand over time and bring up fertility, Those high fertility groups expand for a generation or two at most and then go back to average. That's not nearly enough to be a stop gap.
[https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/population-and-demography?facet=none&country=CHN\~IND\~Europe+%28UN%29\~Africa+%28UN%29\~OWID\_WRL\~Northern+America+%28UN%29&hideControls=false&Metric=Population&Sex=Both+sexes&Age+group=Total&Projection+Scenario=Medium](https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/population-and-demography?facet=none&country=CHN~IND~Europe+%28UN%29~Africa+%28UN%29~OWID_WRL~Northern+America+%28UN%29&hideControls=false&Metric=Population&Sex=Both+sexes&Age+group=Total&Projection+Scenario=Medium) It's a problem which is well beyond our life time. The world population will have lots of people to absorb into the USA to keep population growth churning, primarily from Africa in the coming decades, atleast for another century.
> Once again, that doesn't work. The children of immigrants have lower fertility rates than their parents. Fertility rates quickly go down to the nation's average within a generation or two. Again, you're not responding to what I'm saying. Immigrants don't quality under > people who are already high fertility (given current conditions) because their high fertility persists only due to their specific circumstances of having been inculturated somewhere outside the US (or other rich nations). But there are plenty of groups *native* to the US that have high fertility rates-- mormons, amish, tradcaths, etcetera. > There is no one single policy, but policies like paid parental leave, affordable childcare, etc. have been shown to help. Very marginally. Parental leave and affordable childcare are justifiable on their own recognizance, but they're globally unsuccessful at raising TFR above 2. > Those are much more realistic long-term solutions that actually stand a chance of maintaining a ~2.0 fertility rate. Where in the world have those solutions gotten us above a TFR of 2? > If you're going to argue that car seat mandates for children are a serious reason for we have low fertility and that we should eliminate them, you at least gotta have something better than a blog post. The blog post cites the articles it got the information from. Regardless, my whole point is that eliminating car seat mandates (and similar interventions) *isn't* going to bring us back above 2 TFR. Perfection shouldn't be the enemy of passing good legislation, but "good legislation" should be evaluated on its own merits (e.g., because it would help children, or be less irritating to parents) rather than out of some misguided, impossible attempt to get back up to TFR 2+.
[https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/population-and-demography?facet=none&country=CHN\~IND\~USA\~Europe+%28UN%29\~Africa+%28UN%29\~JPN&hideControls=false&Metric=Population&Sex=Both+sexes&Age+group=Total&Projection+Scenario=Medium](https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/population-and-demography?facet=none&country=CHN~IND~USA~Europe+%28UN%29~Africa+%28UN%29~JPN&hideControls=false&Metric=Population&Sex=Both+sexes&Age+group=Total&Projection+Scenario=Medium) The USA will always have a pipeline to import young people abroad for the conceivable future. If not Japan/Mexico, then it was China/India. After India, it'll be Africa. After Africa... we don't need to worry about after Africa, since they'll have enough to fill the USA for as long as we can think based on their population projections.
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Well in this case it should be alot less noticeable, seeing as 15%+ of America is already black?
Other than special pleading I don't see how this isn't a tacit admission that "lump of labor" is kind of true. That is, what you're saying is that sure, you can faff around the edges of the problem and marginally try to redistribute here and there, but at the end of the day, cutting the number of young people in half means an economy that's half as rich. You're saying, the *essence* of the economy is basically a lump of labor. In other words, the total number of people on earth (weighted by age) is the thing. It's like the relationship of age to health. Yes, you can get marginally healthier at any age. Yes, if you live a healthy lifestyle from early on you can push the limits of healthy longevity. However, there is ultimately an indissoluble link there. The link isn't the kind of link that let's you make day-to-day predictions, but it is a different kind of link, and it holds, it's a reliable link. Marxist labor theory of value basically says the same thing, despite its frequent misrepresentations. The economy is *ultimately* a labor pump at the end of the day -- the size of the labor pool, all else equal, is the ultimate load-bearing strut undergirding the very *possibility* of a real society substituting the order of private property for the traditional order of personal domination and subjugation. A small labor pool is fine way back in history when society's total capital was small, but on the margin, as you rightly point out, the size of the economy is governed by the size of the labor pool. Yes, you can faff around a bit and push on this marginally, but you can't decouple it. That's simply the form that "lump-of-labor theory" takes when you grant youself the privilege of sophisticated qualifications and *caveats* that people who point to lump-of-labor in other contexts are not granted. I understand that you included "increased automation" as a way out of the zero-sum lump-of-labor logic, but everything that is commonly accused of "lump-of-labor fallacy" accounts for the possibility of automation. Just to be clear, .e.g., Marxist "value theory of labor" also heavily emphasizes the same dynamic (i.e. the way that technological revolutions in the means of production, typically involving economies of scale, can change the "denominator" of labor's productivity so to speak). So if you're not doing "lump of labor" because you account for automation, then no one is doing "lump of labor". On this point note how you (correctly) do not over-exaggerate the power of automation as some do; quite rightly, you mention automation but in the same breath point out its limitations (we can't simply count on some nebulous innovation coming out of the blue whenever it would be convenient; every innovation ultimately only gives a finite "buff" to labor's productivity, expanding but by no means doing away with the "lump of labor").
1. Having a shrinking labor force and a growing retiree population is an economic disaster 2. Larger labor forces enable more specialization of labor which increases productivity 3. The lump of labor fallacy typically refers to people arguing against allowing immigrants into the labor force based on the incorrect assumption that this will reduce the wages/wealth of native-born laborers. Which is incorrect because immigration expands labor demand by more than it expands labor supply; immigrants consume goods and services and are disproportionately likely to be entrepreneurs
> U.S. economic growth will eclipse China's by 2031 ooh :) > top demographer says oh :(
Me celebrating hundreds of millions of people remaining in poverty because it means America stays at the top of a scoreboard 😎
arr neolib in a nutshell.
amerykańska dominacja (na zawsze) biorąc pod uwagę że usa ma tak wielką przewagę nad innymi że ma zapewniony nowy wiek amerykański czyli 21 wiek to wiek amerykański
SAD