demagogue on 2/7/2006 at 23:09
Quote Posted by Strontium Dog
It's not quite as simple as that. If your birth rate gets too low ...
Well, the first thing I said to qualify my entire discussion was I was talking about my experience studying developing countries, like in Africa, where the birthrate is like 5+ kids/couple* and then I said that I wasn't sure how the argument plays out for developed States where the birthrate is already low.
So you're just telling me another consideration for developed States. I don't have any problem with what you say, either. It makes perfect sense to me: "What you need is to maintain a steady ratio of working-age citizens to non-working-age citizens", and fits in with everything I've learned.
Actually, on that note, I do know Japan is about to run face first into a brick wall because its demographics-curve seriously look like a wine glass, the birthrate is so low. And they are loathe to boost the immigration rate and lose the "Japaness" of their country. I don't know what they're going to do.
*[In Africa, seriously the number one priority is just getting people to stop fucking (well, "family planning" is the better term), reduce AIDS, kids, and get some good % of the population working. "Too low" really isn't an issue.
Maybe I was going a little off topic, but this is the one place where population size really makes all the difference in the world -- between abject African poverty and Singapore-growing economy -- and in contrast I feel like a country of 300 million with a very strong economy like the US can absorb much better, and neither the birth rate nor immigration rate is going to change too much over the course of time anyway, so population size really isn't the most important thing to be talking about, I feel. So I guess I just started to talk about the experience of developing countries where it is very relevant as long as the topic was up.]
Deep Qantas on 3/7/2006 at 05:45
I always found it amusing that apparently education is the best form of contraception.
aguywhoplaysthief on 3/7/2006 at 09:56
.Why?
Convict on 3/7/2006 at 11:36
Quote Posted by Renegen
Here's an easy one, does the Army spending or the NASA spending go up with a population increase? Of course not, they go up because of other variables. Hell in 10 years these spendings could be LOWER than today for any particular reason.
Government expenses do not just increase because you like to think so, and with the ones I've mentioned, they are not directly related to population increases, while social security on the other hand does put more money down for the retirees with every single new worker.
It would be much easier if you answered the points 1-3 I raised so that I could find out where the misunderstanding lies.
Government expenditure examples:
- Social security
- Education
- Hospitals
- Roads
- Public transport
You need to realise that raw government expenditure on social security, education, hospitals, roads, public transport, etc will rise with more people in the country.
So let's recap
1) The economy grows with more people in it. I.e. more goods and services are produced.
2) The government will most probably collect more revenue with more people in it. E.g. from more income taxes and more corporate tax.
3) The government will need to spend more money (raw amount, not necessarily as a percentage if this is where the confusion lies) on roads, public transport, social security, education, hospitals, etc.
3) If the government ends up spending more money on social security, education, hospitals, roads, public transport, etc than it raises from (increased) revenue then the government is losing money on those immigrants.
I don't see where you misunderstanding this. :confused:
Smaller countries spend less money (in raw terms, not necessarily as a percentage) on social security, hospitals, roads, public transport, etc.
E.g. America spends a lot more money on roads than New Zealand because there are more people in America than in New Zealand.
You can have increased economic growth (more goods and services) but in the scenario that there are more people causing this economic growth, if the economic growth is not large enough then you will have less money per capita for the country's population. Therefore if you bring in lots of unskilled labour who are less likely to gain employment, economic growth will increase but almost certainly not enough to keep the same (or more) amount of money per capita for the population.
Quote Posted by StD
It's not quite as simple as that. If your birth rate gets too low, then you don't have enough young people to sustain an ageing population - which is increasingly becoming the case in most Western countries. We're having to raise the pension age as we simply can't afford to let people retire at the age of 60 any more, because they'll then go on to live for another 20 or 30 years after that.
What you need is to maintain a steady ratio of working-age citizens to non-working-age citizens, which you either do by boosting the birth-rate (not really an option) or importing people of working age from overseas.
The first part is basically correct, however if you improve productivity of workers then you can increase economic growth and therefore (almost certainly) increase government revenue.
However the problem with the second paragraph is that (2nd and 3rd world) immigrants tend to
1) begin to mimmick the lower birthrate of the country they move to (which defeats the purpose); and
2) tend to bring old aged relatives with them who require social security.
Quote Posted by AGWPT
Why?
I'm not sure if you are questioning why is it ironically amusing or why does education lower the birthrate. If you are meaning the latter, research shows that with increasing wealth and with increasing education people have less children.
Demagogue just to clarify - I think birthrate is not per couple but rather for all women including women who can't or won't have children, hence average family size is larger than the birthrate.
SD on 3/7/2006 at 13:49
Quote Posted by Convict
The first part is basically correct
Gee, thanks for that professor.
Quote:
however if you improve productivity of workers then you can increase economic growth and therefore (almost certainly) increase government revenue.
Quite apart from the fact that nothing after "however" contradicts
anything I said, it doesn't matter what your productivity is, if you don't have enough people being born to replenish the workforce then you cannot maintain the status quo without bringing people in from overseas.
Quote:
However the problem with the second paragraph
It's not a problem.
Quote:
(2nd and 3rd world) immigrants tend to
1) begin to mimmick the lower birthrate of the country they move to (which defeats the purpose)
"Defeats the purpose" - how? They're not being brought in as baby-making factories, they're being brought in as persons of working-age to boost the workforce.
Quote:
2) tend to bring old aged relatives with them who require social security.
Do you have any evidence for this?
Renegen on 3/7/2006 at 14:02
Read the post about growth Convict, the immigrants coming in will be valuable workers and will bring more to the economy than they take.
As for the birth-rate of their children, I think that birth-rate is linked to economic conditions and not to the nationality of the family, all western rich countries have a low birth rate. The workers coming into the US again will not be low-skilled workers, but programmers who can be paid higher working in the US for example.
And it still goes back to balancing the books, to a degree the expenses on social security, education, hospitals, roads, public transport will go up with population increases, (and some of these are private) but they are not directly influenced by a bigger population, so some of these costs might not happen. Also the 'social security' is what we were debating and more immigrant workers will put more money in the pockets of retirees.
It's also important to look at absolute costs and relative costs. A bigger population will almost always equal bigger absolute costs, but if the only people infused in the economy will be skilled workers who will pay taxes, every new person will bring in more taxes than they demand(which is hard to find out how much it is anyway) and slowly the % of revenue increase will be higher than the % of expenses increase and thus more money for other projects.
Also go back to the balancing of the books in that ideally, taxes = expenses, the goal of the government will usually be that to happen(unless borrowing for future growth) and they won't just let expenses run rampant if that ever happened to be the case.(hence cutting social security)
Convict on 3/7/2006 at 14:10
I'm about to go to bed but I will try to keep getting more information for you since this is inadequate to answer all of what is being discussed.
(
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4768644.stm) BBC
Quote:
Increasing immigration is, in theory, one option for Europe, but most agree it is politically unfeasible in the current climate.
Others stress that it would not in any event solve the problem in the longer term - the migrants would themselves grow old and their own fertility patterns would start to match those of the country which received them.
Another option is to increase the productivity of the working population, drawing more people into the workforce - and more controversially - making them stay there longer. But moves to raise the retirement age tend not to play well with electorates.
That leaves boosting birth rates.
Convict on 3/7/2006 at 14:14
Quote Posted by Renegen
Read the post about growth Convict, the immigrants coming in will be valuable workers and will bring more to the economy than they take.
Ah I think this is where we are misunderstanding eachother. My doubting was that unskilled immigrants would be requiring more resources than their contribution to the economy. Of course, if you bring in lots of skilled migrants then this will have increase the per capita amount of money in a country (note this is an average). Indeed many countries such as Australia and now IIRC France are adopting the policy of trying to get only skilled immigrants (except for refugee intake).
Renegen on 3/7/2006 at 14:14
Quote:
the migrants would themselves grow old and their own fertility patterns would start to match those of the country which received them.
If you read it correctly that means that the fertility patterns of the US immigrants would start to match those of the US population.
The second option only deals with increasing the retirement age. This is interesting however since in Europe there is free movement of labor. For the free movement of labor advantages to work in the US it really means we would have to drain from the Mexican economy.
re: well gee Convict, how many times was the term unskilled immigrants mentioned and analysed in previous answers? The misunderstanding can only come from your side.
Convict on 3/7/2006 at 14:17
Quote Posted by Renegen
If you read it correctly that means that the fertility patterns of the US immigrants would start to match those of the US population.
I'm confused here - this is what I said a couple of posts ago? I think??
Quote Posted by Convict
1) begin to mimmick the lower birthrate of the country they move to (which defeats the purpose)
