The children will likely end up moving into their parents' homes and paying off their parents' medical bills with reverse mortgages leaving the once young at mid-life or later with nothing to inherit and no job prospects in these areas typically away from major metro (and increasingly, employment-availability) areas. This will leave most Americans in the positions before WW2 about given there will be few assets in the hands of most Americans again.
I'm seeing housing prices in suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas dropping as lack of viable jobs in these areas combined with crushing commutes to cities makes these locations terrible for those still needing to work. There's an alarming number of people I've heard of commuting from West Virginia into DC and from Richmond into DC enduring 3+ hour commutes as cities that used to be self-sustained economies now become suburbs of the largest cities, and the trend is going to continue with a few deviants that buck the trend like remote workers or homesteaders.
Where I live, the local economy is driven by two demographics - tourists and local retirees sprinkled with some of the wealthiest households in the US living here part time to avoid paying state income taxes. Much of the US is eerily similar to this pattern and it's extremely depressing to think of a way out of the spiral where almost all of our money will go into paying outrageous mortgages / rent with lower-paying jobs and the few in the middle class are in finance, tech, or healthcare.
Whats even more fun is there other major problems approaching on roughly the same timeline...
- Less developed nations will be transitioning to a population crunch (WSJ 2050) with huge ramifications on global economics/politics
- fossil fuels (especially oil) reaching depletion or becoming too expensive to extract
- climate change impact in full swing, serious disruption to even domestic agriculture
- Ubiquitous AI, and all the associated social unrest of a deprecated generation of workers
Ultimately there's just too many people. Society doesn't need 8 billion humans anymore, the US doesn't even need 300 million... Arguably what youre describing is an emergent solution to that problem. Now we've reached the point where the next generation will need to support their parent's slow death instead of raising the next generation of children... That's going to wreck society's ownership of the future in a big way.
It think it's more like, human society is collectively deciding that optimum human population size is less than current size, and adjusting reproductive behavior accordingly.
It is still increasing, but the slope of the curve is decreasing. It will peak in the next few decades and then start to decrease if current reproductive trends continue.
Right, the issue of overpopulation is huge. It's going to need a different kind of society with very different values than the ones we have today. Capitalism can't grow like it has been once we realize the issue of overpop and work to reduce it. We have a crazy new world coming. And the transition has be fast.
Or alternatively human ingenuity adapts and overcomes - Malthusians have been consistently proved wrong in their constant cries of overpopulation. There is still plenty of land, plenty of ability to grow food to feed us and plenty of advances being made in areas which will allow that to increase. We've already seen a vast decrease in the number of people living on less than $1 a day across the world enabling many countries to start reaping a demographic dividend.
If the pessimists can quote fossil fuel depletion then surely I can optimistically promote fusion, carbon capture etc. Capitalism has been one of the greatest success stories of humanity.
I never understood how one could embrace prophecies of doom in this day and age. We live in a near golden age of plenty, and the train hasn't slowed down yet.
"We live in a near golden age of plenty, and the train hasn't slowed down yet."
If by "we", you mean "citizens in the most prosperous cities of the world", then yes.
If you mean "people in most of the USA", then I have some news for you: the train's wheels are locked, and sparks are flying while everything skids to a stop. It's absolutely shocking how much of the country has declined in prosperity in my lifetime. The smaller cities near where I grew up -- places that were thriving small towns as recently as the 1980s -- are nearly all trapped in downward spirals of poverty, debt and addiction.
If you mean "the citizens of this planet", well...for most people, the train never left the station. Even in modern "success stories" like China, you don't have to try very hard to find appalling levels of poverty and despair. A few have become incredibly wealthy, but mostly, people are struggling to keep up. In the third-world? Forget it. Yeah, people can pay for cellphones now, while they're dying of preventable diseases due to filthy water.
Optimism is one thing, but it takes a Silicon Valley (aka Leibnitzian) view of the world to claim that this is a "golden age". Mostly, a select group of people are getting richer, while everyone else stagnates (or just barely inches forward).
> Mostly, a select group of people are getting richer, while everyone else stagnates.
Actually this isn't true. Middle classes in the developed world are doing poorly relative to the richest in the developed world, but global poverty is on a steep decline.
"Middle classes in the developed world are doing poorly relative to the richest in the developed world"
This, I believe. Part of the driving force of the trends in global poverty is globalization. And despite what I said earlier about middle-class America, I don't necessarily cry for the loss of overall wealth in this country, if it means greater equity for the rest of the world (I just wish the richest people in the world were paying a greater share).
"global poverty is on a steep decline."
This is highly debatable. The data you linked to seems to be mostly based on the World Bank data -- a single, rarely modified, global metric of $1.25 (now $1.90) a day, using self-reported statistics. Meanwhile, regional context is critical -- for example, sub-saharan Africa has actually seen increases in poverty. In India and China, there's good reason to believe that wealth inequality is increasing [1]:
"the benefits of economic growth in many developing countries often accrue to the rich. In India and China, inequality has been increasing in recent years. From 1981 to 2010, the average poor person in sub-Saharan Africa saw no increase in their income even as economies expanded. Because there is no household data since 2012, it is impossible to know if these trends towards greater inequality have since changed."
Meanwhile, the metric itself is questionable (ibid):
"Someone living today at the new poverty line does not necessarily enjoy the same standard of living as someone at the old line did in the past, however....Looking at national price indices rather than PPPs, half of the world’s population live in countries in which $1.90 buys you less now than $1.25 did back in 2005, according to a paper released this week by Sanjay Reddy of the New School for Social Research in New York."
Even the World Bank itself acknowledges that poverty is on the increase in sub-saharan Africa (a region, which, by the way, has over a billion people, or 1/7th of the world's current population) [2]:
"However, despite its falling poverty rates, Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world for which the number of poor individuals has risen steadily and dramatically between 1981 and 2010. There are more than twice as many extremely poor people living in SSA today (414 million) than there were three decades ago (205 million). As a result, while the extreme poor in SSA represented only 11 percent of the world’s total in 1981, they now account for more than a third of the world’s extreme poor. India contributes another third (up from 22 percent in 1981) and China comes next, contributing 13 percent (down from 43 percent in 1981)."
In other words: it's great that more people are self-reporting as living on more than this bottom-of-the-barrel income metric, but it isn't really a counter-argument to my point, except to say that we've made the absolute poorest of the poor a bit less poor. Maybe. And mostly in China.
We've made over a billion of the poorest of the poor less poor - that is a massive achievement. The crucial thing about that being less poor is that they are then not in subsistence mode and able to consider things like educating their children, engaging in capitalism, i.e. economic activity which can increase their wealth further rather than merely trying to stay alive.
Your quotes highlighting the problems of SSA move quickly into using percentages of an overall number that has decreased - it acknowledges that in all other regions in the world poverty has fallen dramatically, especially in China where their middle class is now around 340 million.
"We've made over a billion of the poorest of the poor less poor - that is a massive achievement."
That's a pretty meaningless claim. Again, the data you're leaning on to say that is using an exceptionally low bar, and it doesn't really take into account regional economic differences. The whole reason the World Bank had to raise it to $1.90 a day from $1.25 a day was because in many parts of the developing world, $1.90 a day buys you less than $1.25 did at the start of the measurements!
More importantly, $1.91 a day still makes for a pretty miserable life anywhere in the world. You're not magically on a trajectory to the middle class. You may be dying of waterborne illnesses and malnutrition, but you're not absolutely poor by World Bank standards!
The claim that there are far fewer poor people from 1820 to present is more reasonable, but the problem there is that the gains mostly came from things like "industrialization", which were big, one-time gains that, again, accrued mainly to the winners.
Bucky Fuller outlined the problems facing us in his book Critical Path.
To quote Abebooks's description: "Critical Path is Fuller's master work--the summing up of a lifetime's thought and concern--as urgent and relevant as it was upon its first publication in 1981. Critical Path details how humanity found itself in its current situation--at the limits of the planet's natural resources and facing political, economic, environmental, and ethical crises.
The crowning achievement of an extraordinary career, Critical Path offers the reader the excitement of understanding the essential dilemmas of our time and how responsible citizens can rise to meet this ultimate challenge to our future."
In 1981 since when we've moved on from the Cold War (political crisis), massively decreased world poverty (economic crisis) and moved from an era of 14% inflation in the West being considered something economics couldn't address. On all of those measures we're doing much better than in 1981 - surely that demonstrates our capacity to improve and overcome problems.
In the US, the median retirement age keeps rising, and it's rising far faster than median life expectancy. My idea of a Golden Age of Plenty isn't one in which people punch a time card until they drop dead.
You know that famous YC question "What is something you feel most people are wrong about?"
Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired Magazine, believes the answer is overpopulation. He says it would be a disaster to stop population growth. Read more here:
The WSJ 2050 series of articles supports that. However population is shrinking in many parts of the world, despite government attempts to force growth... This is going to have a tremendous impact on the global economy and political unrest.
On the other hand, thats a good way to reduce humanity's contribution to climate change
> This is going to have a tremendous impact on the global economy and political unrest.
Why do you associate the decline in population numbers with political unrest? Are you referring implicitly to the phenomenon of immigration to make up for the falling numbers and the typical and usual problems that come along with this development?
I wasn't referring to the US with that line. We'll suffer but we're just along for the ride.
What do you think is going to happen when China finds itself with > 1 senior for every working age citizen, with a male-skewed population? Worse yet, what happens when China's heavy investments in AI/automation pay off? A dictatorship of 1 billion that has it's jobs permanently filled by machines while it's citizens struggle to raise their parents, working in overcrowded cities, with little hope for their own future? A country that's already rapidly depleting their agricultural resources through poor management, with dire projections ~20-50 years out?
That alone isn't a pretty picture.. But then remember that India's next door with similar problems, and the two aren't exactly buddy-buddy. Inevitably both countries will have to lean on regional allies to power through, but that might bring in the US (via S.K./Japan, today). And then we've got Russia upstairs, their future is a bit harder to see but today they're the nuclear-armed wildcard oligopoly... one that's not on friendly terms with the US's sphere of allies.
Then there's the middle east. If you think today's bad, wait until their oil money starts running out as climate change keeps turning up the oven. That's just adding fuel to the fires, millions of culturally alien people flooding relatively homogeneous societies already under pressure from their own needs.
And then Africa... yet another wild card. Today the various countries are in various states of development with mixed weak alliances to the East/West, but there's a massive population boom coming. No one is really certain where that's headed. Maybe it becomes the next China (selling environmental degredation and cheap labor), or maybe we'll end up with an under-developed continent of high unemployment/desertification. I'm really curious to see how the various countries land on that spectrum.
Taken alone, the Americas don't have a particularly risky looking future. South American drugs, guns, immigration, revolutions, old news for the US... though mass deforestation/desertification will be a tragedy with serious climate impact. Europe might build some walls but they're not going to war with each other again either. Australia probably won't play a big role unless it gets invaded. But the other big continents? I can't see the future, but today there are many red flags of something much worse.
Or the kids will say, "I'm sorry, but I'm moving where the jobs are, and I'm going to have a life of my own. I'll come visit you once a year, but I'm not giving up my life for yours."
The good parents will say, "Good! Don't sacrifice your chance for happiness for me. I'll make it through."
This is a terrible comment in hindsight given I made it on Christmas but spending the holidays in rural Appalachia for years makes me ponder how oblivious people in tech are to the realities of their countries. Enjoy the holidays, folks and go talk to everyone - get out of your comfort zones and experience something completely crazy perhaps. We have the best living standards worldwide in the history of the planet but we have a long way to go before we can achieve the humanist dream of providing the opportunity for each person to work hard for their dreams and realize them. I hope that during the holidays as a time of reflection we look for our common struggles and work towards creating human consensus rather than the every day popular rhetoric of creating division and controversy out of their own desperation to put food on the table.
You pretty much hit the nail on the head here. It really is alarming to think that we have not started to plan for this almost inevitable scenario in ~20 years time. We need to begin re-thinking our role as humans in an economy which increasingly does not require us.
Start by having level-headed discussions about the value of life.
I know a lot of families taking on massive debt to help pay for their parent's old age. Five-Six figures here and there to extend their parent's lives by a decade or two, saddling themselves with debt and leaving the next generation with no assets... Likely after moving the entire family to a decaying suburban city. All so the previous generation can stick around with a much poorer quality of life.
Health care has a far larger impact than the number on the bill. We need to openly talk about life and accept the inevitableness of death.
I'll fight tooth and nail for every minute of my own independent life... But I would never dream of crippling my children's future just to exist in an "assisted-living" retirement home. Personally, that's an undignified life that's not worth living... modern day vampires.
Again, this is just my personal position regarding my life's value vs my descendants. I'm advocating the questions, not my answer.
This is a hard problem, which means the questions are hard to ask and the answers are difficult to accept... Death has never been easy. However it's a conversation that families and society at large need to have.
Culturally, we are lagging behind what science can do... We can do so much but never stepped back to ask if we should. Society needs to make conscious decisions instead of blindly following our biological instincts.
The first step is to invest, as communities, into producing as much food as possible locally in order to lessen our dependence on the global economic system. We have the technology to turn all those shuttered Targets and malls into indoor farms powered largely by renewable sources. An ironic side effect would be the creation of jobs and a reduction in the net cost of feeding a city.
Locally grown food is an unsustainable luxury that doesn't work for large portions of the US because there is not year round farm worthy land close enough by to sustain the population.
You could do what people always did, and grow crops that keep through the winter. You're not going to be eating fresh kale and tomatoes in January, you'll be eating your turnips and beets and potatoes and apples out of cold-storage, and making bread with your oats and corn and wheat that you harvested in the fall.
What's the difference in energy cost from farming indoors in an area that can't support it normally and growing things in season in areas that can and transporting it? Got any studies to link? I'm curious. Heat is incredibly energy costly so I'd be interested in seeing a calculation.
The crop yields from climate controlled agriculture can be inferred a bit from the results that are coming in from Japan. This is not economical in rural regions like much of the US only (IMO) because locals make so little capital. But if we treat it a lot like subsistence farming and communities pool together capital to start indoor farms, this could help.
My skepticism is mostly around not the economics but the sheer accumulation of desperation in these small communities creating high corruption and theft rates ruining the efficacy of the concept.
I don't have any links to studies - I'm relying on the idea that renewable sources can contribute significantly to the overall energy requirements.
When you take into account the amount of energy required to grow food, refrigerate it, ship it halfway around the world, and distribute it to stores, surely the amount of energy required to grow food locally is inconsequential.
I'm just thinking about all of that aluminum/steel and glass you have to get to build the green houses, which you then have to heat, and wonder with the payoff term is for it.
You're still going to have to refrigerate and ship the stuff locally; Train and ship shipping are relatively cheap compared to the last mile shipping.
Oh, I assumed we were talking about a post-jobs era. The idea that growing food to sustain a community can be done as a after-hours hobby sounds a little naive.
Yep, not to mention these people who are struggling to take care of their parents are dealing with medical bills and debt slavery of their own. They can forget about owning a home or car. They can forget about having children, as the money is needed to care for the old. They can forget about retiring, as they have no savings. Wages have been stagnant since their parents' careers were at their start.
The banks will be extracting wealth from the fading boomers until their last breaths, leaving their children with no inheritances and a large debt of their own.
I hear this "inherit housing riches" a lot and I'm glad to see you aren't fooled by it. Housing isn't wealth. The value of land represents the ability to make use of it.
If the support ratio slips (ratio of working to non-working) then if we are to maintain the living standards of the non-working we either have to have a big productivity leap or lower living standards for those in work.
Reverse mortgages aren't going to cut it. And as you say, what then when the millenials have to hand over the keys to their parents' house?
Land isn't a thing of value in and of itself if we can't work it.
The only use ramping land value has is as an inflationary tax by private banks on workers.
My $0.02 on this is we give the boomers+ a massive haircut right now. Just pull the rug right out from under them, their politicians and their banks.
I'm seeing housing prices in suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas dropping as lack of viable jobs in these areas combined with crushing commutes to cities makes these locations terrible for those still needing to work. There's an alarming number of people I've heard of commuting from West Virginia into DC and from Richmond into DC enduring 3+ hour commutes as cities that used to be self-sustained economies now become suburbs of the largest cities, and the trend is going to continue with a few deviants that buck the trend like remote workers or homesteaders.
Where I live, the local economy is driven by two demographics - tourists and local retirees sprinkled with some of the wealthiest households in the US living here part time to avoid paying state income taxes. Much of the US is eerily similar to this pattern and it's extremely depressing to think of a way out of the spiral where almost all of our money will go into paying outrageous mortgages / rent with lower-paying jobs and the few in the middle class are in finance, tech, or healthcare.