The end of Progressivism

Jccarlton · Post by **Jccarlton** » Sun Nov 25, 2012 4:41 pm

Why the progressive society is doomed:
http://alfin2100.blogspot.com/2012/11/w ... psing.html
The problem is that the high costs and taxes of supporting entitlements forced too many families in to two income households and suppressed birthrates and family growth among the creative and twisted teh job pool more toward law and finace and less toward engineering as well as raisng the cost of credit and suppressing small business starts. Well you reap what you sow.

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Sun Nov 25, 2012 10:13 pm

I haven't read Al Fin in a while. Thanks for the link.

Jccarlton · Post by **Jccarlton** » Mon Nov 26, 2012 3:33 am

Here's a look at dying Japan: http://spikejapan.wordpress.com/2012/11 ... /#comments
When you look at demographic collapse as it's happeing it's not pretty. I've seen things like this all over japan.

williatw · Post by **williatw** » Mon Nov 26, 2012 4:20 am

Jccarlton wrote:Here's a look at dying Japan: http://spikejapan.wordpress.com/2012/11 ... /#comments
When you look at demographic collapse as it's happeing it's not pretty. I've seen things like this all over japan.

Well Japan is after all an island, and not a very large one or resource rich one at that....just how many more people were you going to be able to pack into it anyway? Population isn't declining for the usual historical reasons, like war, famine, or pestilence. Their population hasn't been genocided out of existence, they have just decided many people to have fewer kids. Other than the temporary demographic problems (lots more old people needing/drawing benefits than young paying in), would it really be such a bad thing if Japan in 2100 had only half the pop it had in 2000?. Or for that matter the world? If there were only 2-3 billion people in the world by 2200(not likely) instead of 8-10 billion would that be a bad thing?

kcdodd · Post by **kcdodd** » Mon Nov 26, 2012 4:23 am

I don't think our problem is not having enough people.

choff · Post by **choff** » Mon Nov 26, 2012 8:25 am

The birthrate will rise once there is a genuine labour shortage, and wage gains by men allow women to stay home and both have more children and care for them. Unlike supply and demand for other commodities, it takes 20 years to fill a labour shortage, providing government and business policies don't exasperate the situation.

Business sacrificed the next generations of workers in order to sustain stock market gains for a generation. It will cause them even greater losses for two generations. It wasn't just being shortsighted, it was class warfare mentality that fed the stop'm from breading mentality, they just plain hated working people.

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Mon Nov 26, 2012 1:18 pm

John Henry couldn't compete with steam. John Smith will not be able to compete with microprocessors.

We really don't need the level of labor we used to.

And then you have the thermodynamic problem in politics.

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... d-red.html

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Mon Nov 26, 2012 2:06 pm

I think that the lack of children is a real big problem in western society. Part of that problem is that children are expensive and they limit the amount of work a family can do. It is a really complicated situation and there is no simple solution for it.
Some people say that there should be more government support for families with children. In Austria there is a lot more of that than in the US, yet our fertility rate is lower. So that allone can not be the solution.
I think that part of the problem is that having children is painted as undesireable by the media.

kcdodd · Post by **kcdodd** » Mon Nov 26, 2012 2:51 pm

I think it would be a problem if our society depended on an ever increasing population. This obviously could not continue, even if it were true.

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Mon Nov 26, 2012 3:31 pm

I think it would be a problem if our society depended on an ever increasing population. This obviously could not continue, even if it were true.

Yeah, only problem is that with birthrates as they are in Europe right now, population will decrease.

choff · Post by **choff** » Mon Nov 26, 2012 4:43 pm

I was reading one of those websites on population control and the Club of Rome a while back. They were saying if the bottom 10 or 20% of the worlds population in terms of income were to double, adding 2 billion to the human race, the impact on resources would be minimal. If, on the other hand, the top 300,000 people in terms of income worldwide were to double in number, we would need another planet earth.

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Mon Nov 26, 2012 4:58 pm

I was reading one of those websites on population control and the Club of Rome a while back. They were saying if the bottom 10 or 20% of the worlds population in terms of income were to double, adding 2 billion to the human race, the impact on resources would be minimal. If, on the other hand, the top 300,000 people in terms of income worldwide were to double in number, we would need another planet earth.

That sounds like nonsense to me.

choff · Post by **choff** » Tue Nov 27, 2012 6:30 am

Skipjack wrote:
I was reading one of those websites on population control and the Club of Rome a while back. They were saying if the bottom 10 or 20% of the worlds population in terms of income were to double, adding 2 billion to the human race, the impact on resources would be minimal. If, on the other hand, the top 300,000 people in terms of income worldwide were to double in number, we would need another planet earth.
That sounds like nonsense to me.

I tried to find the original article from back when we were debating eugenics and global warming and couldn't. But I did find a report on wealth by Credit Suisse that says the bottom half of the global population only hold 1% of the world's wealth. The report said the top 1% own 44% of the wealth, the top 10% have 84%, we can extrapolate from this what would happen if the top percentile wanted to have more kids living in the same style as the parents.

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Tue Nov 27, 2012 2:25 pm

I tried to find the original article from back when we were debating eugenics and global warming and couldn't. But I did find a report on wealth by Credit Suisse that says the bottom half of the global population only hold 1% of the world's wealth. The report said the top 1% own 44% of the wealth, the top 10% have 84%, we can extrapolate from this what would happen if the top percentile wanted to have more kids living in the same style as the parents.

Yeah, but wealth does not equal use of resources. The very rich do not buy that much more resource using things compared to their wealth. You can only have so many cars, private jets, etc and drive them in a day. I would argue that billionares only use modestly more resources than the average millionare does.
In fact, one could argue that poorer people in poorer nations use resources less efficiently (older crappier cars that need more gas per mile, coal burning stoves, etc), so that the gap becomes even smaller.
Particularly nations that are transitioning to more wealth and industrialization like China and India produce an enormous amount of pollution and are big on wasting resources.

choff · Post by **choff** » Tue Nov 27, 2012 8:11 pm

If the 1% decide to propagate to double and still retain the accustomed lifestyle, everythings fine so long as they create the wealth to do it with. The problem comes if they decide they need to take it from somebody else. That would be the middle, and the taking from the middle by the top is the actual whole basis of communism.