My grandmother was born in Dallas in 1896, when the city had about 40,000 people. Her mother and father had moved there 20 years earlier, from Alabama and Massachusetts, respectively, and it was even smaller then. Dallas was much bigger, with nearly 200,000 residents, when my grandfather moved there from Missouri in 1920. The two of them married in 1923 and spent 65 years together as Dallas continued to grow into one of America’s biggest metropolises, with 7.5 million people as of this writing.
Will This is cool. Sounds like we both travelled a similar journey. My first mineral economics class in 1979 (my major) was an explicit takedown of Limits to Growth. Somewhere around here I have a Julian Simon books that he noted and autographed for Mancur Olsen. I was always the population optimist (we can always tax away wasteful externalities after all). But I agree climate change is a different animal than resource exhaustion.
Here is a different take on the economic effects of negative population growth: I don't worry so much about a crisis in health care as the dependency ratio and care intensity rise. That can be fixed via immigration, robotics or, most likely, a combination of both.
Rather I worry about the prospects for Capitalism. The central feature of capitalism is the ACCUMULATION of productive capacity and without population growth the incentive for net investment (signaled through the interest rate) turns negative.
It will certainly be interesting to see what technical change is motivated by the baby boom's coming dotage:). As for immigration, it can certainly solve the US' problem, but it cannot solve the world's....or am I missing something.
That's interesting, Jeff. A lot of 1970s economists thought that LTG was pretty flawed, but then the world doesn't always listen to us. Also, that is very cool about those autographed-for-Olsen versions of the books.
Well thanks, you learn something every day. Well on a good day.
Will This is cool. Sounds like we both travelled a similar journey. My first mineral economics class in 1979 (my major) was an explicit takedown of Limits to Growth. Somewhere around here I have a Julian Simon books that he noted and autographed for Mancur Olsen. I was always the population optimist (we can always tax away wasteful externalities after all). But I agree climate change is a different animal than resource exhaustion.
Here is a different take on the economic effects of negative population growth: I don't worry so much about a crisis in health care as the dependency ratio and care intensity rise. That can be fixed via immigration, robotics or, most likely, a combination of both.
Rather I worry about the prospects for Capitalism. The central feature of capitalism is the ACCUMULATION of productive capacity and without population growth the incentive for net investment (signaled through the interest rate) turns negative.
But aren't those also problems for alternatives to capitalism? Regardless, thanks for the thoughtful comments!
It will certainly be interesting to see what technical change is motivated by the baby boom's coming dotage:). As for immigration, it can certainly solve the US' problem, but it cannot solve the world's....or am I missing something.
That's interesting, Jeff. A lot of 1970s economists thought that LTG was pretty flawed, but then the world doesn't always listen to us. Also, that is very cool about those autographed-for-Olsen versions of the books.