RSS
From Spiked:
JAMES WOUDHUYSEN
WRITEROnce again, Westerners are foisting population control on Africa.
24 JANUARY 2018
It’s time more people knew just how much action, research and policy effort Western non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and Western governments now put in to try to limit population growth in Africa.
From the US, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Gates Institute, the Population Reference Bureau, the Population Council and the Ford Foundation are very active. In Britain, the charity Population Matters sees checks on population as vital to Africa’s ability to combat shortages of food, while the British quality press decries what it calls ‘unsustainable’ population growth in countries such as Nigeria. More broadly and more importantly, the US State Department, USAID, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and Britain’s own Department for International Development quietly spend billions on what they delicately call ‘family-planning’ in Africa.
Indeed, in global family-planning, Britain is the world’s second largest direct (‘bilateral’) donor. Britain has also upped its overall investment in overseas family-planning from £180 million to £225 million a year from now until 2022, and is easily the largest donor to the UNFPA (£100 million a year).
All these bodies trumpet what appear to be noble causes: a planet where every pregnancy is wanted, a woman’s right to choose, sexual and reproductive health, and women’s empowerment. …
Worse, what the media politely refer to as ‘the international community’ stigmatises the African masses – and, in the first place, African men – for Africa’s economic backwardness. Our population warriors don’t blame Western (and now Chinese) banks, multinationals or governments for Africa’s poor economic development. They don’t even much blame despotic African regimes. No, they start from a heavily or purely demographic vision of Africa’s future. As a consequence, in their view the ‘choice’ they offer African women, of whether or not to use contraception, can and should be resolved in only one way.
… What’s more, such programmes are more about propaganda than practicalities. Since 2012, the UK has helped fewer than 8.5 million women around the world get access to modern methods of contraception – a drop in the ocean.
OK, which is it? I’m confused? A drop in the ocean or a tidal wave?
What are the motives of Western-style ‘family-planning’ in Africa? They are to divert its economic course and prevent it from competing with Europe and North America. They are also to do with EU member states’ squeamishness about more African immigration. But today, any rationale will do in the noble crusade to stop African families each having ‘seven or eight children’, as French president Emmanuel Macron has notoriously put it. For instance: a nervous Guardian says that ‘some experts worry that rampant population growth in Africa will not just aggravate the current migration crisis but could play into the hands of terror groups across the Sahel who seek recruits among large, poor families with few options’.
Nice. Apparently, then, we need to repress African reproduction if we are to repress African terrorism.
Of course, our liberal friends are upset that Donald Trump, in a concession to anti-abortion Catholics in America, has refused to go on funding the UNFPA, has proposed to end US family-planning overseas, and has demanded that any global health body receiving US funds sign a pledge not to promote abortion (the ‘global gag rule’). But so what? Donald or no Donald, Western ‘family-planning’ in Africa is an insult to that continent’s independence, its economic advance, and its families.
James Woudhuysen is visiting professor of forecasting and innovation at London South Bank University.
I don’t doubt that, deep down inside, Bill Gates (who is a very smart guy) thinks like Prof. Woudhuysen alleges he does. But wouldn’t it be better if we had a climate in which the second richest man in the world had the freedom to explain what’s worrying him about African population growth, instead of occasionally delegating his wife to explain to the media their latest triple bankshot plan to help moderate African population growth without mentioning that that’s what they are trying to do?
Oh yeah! And how’s that working out for ya, Fellow Westerners?
Yes we all need freedom of speech. Trying to make the super clever plans for social policy, in which the real intent is hidden, never works out.
And then there's the Indians. And the Africans.... and...
Another example of government intervention going wrong, and producing the exact opposite of its intent by increasing population growth. If it was left to the market, this wouldn’t happen. There’d be no subsidy of population growth. And there’s little demand for African labor. To get anything done in Africa, you have to import engineers and labor from abroad.
All “assistance” for the African continent should be abolished. How to create functioning societies is known to all these days.
Also, the insect apocalypse seems very ominous:
https://e360.yale.edu/features/insect_numbers_declining_why_it_matters
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/where-have-all-insects-gone
Chris Hamilton, author of the Econimica blog, frequently puts up a lot of good charts and analyses pertaining to global demographics. His main thrust, which I consider to be irrefutably established, is that the reproductive age population of the world ex-Africa has already peaked and will continue to get to get smaller every year for the foreseeable future. Africa’s population will continue to grow if present trends continue, but Africans are devoid of saving, capital, and the ability to consume. It is also a rather minor source of immigrants, which may seem somewhat surprising considering the many stories we’ve all read about the boat people coming from Libya. But most Africans are too poor and too remote to ever make the journey off the continent.
The upshot is that there is literally no possibility of economic growth from now on. The demographic numbers do not support it. This is borne out by the devastating economic analyses of Jeffrey P. Snider, whom I have referenced before and who is simply the most brilliant finance guy writing today.
Here is Chris Hamilton’s post with a particular emphasis on Africa.
And here is a recent post by Jeffrey Snider deftly explaining how the last decade has been absent any economic growth.
The two go nicely together but they are very sobering. The first thing that must be done is to stop cherishing the illusion that business can go on as usual. It simply will not. It cannot.
For additional commentary on the oil and energy situation, these two podcasts from the Peak Prosperity blog should not be overlooked. The first is with Gail Tverberg and the second is with Art Berman.
Definitely required reading/listening all around.
One of Tverberg's points, that is relevant to a discussion of population growth, that about half of GDP growth is contributed by nothing more than population growth. So if population growth stops, by itself that cuts GDP growth in half. Once you understand that, you understand why businessmen and politicians (other than Trump) are so determined to get more immigrants into obviously full developed countries, by hook or crook. Its anything to get GDP growth up.
Of course population growth has to stop eventually, but certain types of people have a really hard time understanding that. I remember a discussion on Marginal Revolution where people argued that the Earth could have a literally infinite population. A scientist came on and tried to demonstrate that this was physically impossible, but to no avail.Replies: @eD, @Autochthon
For now at any rate.
Remember, Pakistan was a 'minor source of migration' into Britain, back in 1950.
An awful lot of wealth potential as China moves up the 'value added' ladder.
Plus, likely, high IQ China will stay ethnically Chinese, so they will withstand anything the 21st century will throw at it.
Habilitate ’em. Don’t abort ’em. I’m no Catholic but it seems like the West doesn’t have a clue about childrearing or maintaining a social order. First, Africans and other developing worlder’s adapt to an economy based on aid from wealthy nations. They’re stressed so will go for the low hanging fruit economically. And, after all, those successful white people know what they’re doing, right? Second, it doesn’t take a genius to build an economy. Africans can think economically. They are just conditioned to be psychologically dependent on foreign aid.
I’d say as long as the West is too embarrassed by the necessities of reigning in the welfare state and controlling immigration, it deserves to die. Also , stay out of people’s bedrooms. That’s creepy.
Now it’s if they marched 20-abreast. Which, it turns out, they’re actually doing.
And then there’s the Indians. And the Africans…. and…
Spiked must be a contender for the weirdest English language media outlet.
They are very good on free speech and reject identity politics, and have a better than average number or worth reading articles. But it’s hard to take them seriously because of their history; Spiked is the detritus of the Trotskyite groupuscule , the Revolutionary Communist Party, AKA the Cult of Frank Furedi.
As Trots go, they were exceptional in that they were mostly of working class, Irish, Roman Catholic descent, rather than Jewish.
I”m doing my part. I don’t contribute to any African cause. Time for everyone to do the same. Time for Africa to fend for itself. Only then will there be a return to a balance of nature. My guess is a population of about one hundred million would be sustainable.
But, by golly, Africans are certainly interested in *you*. Or rather, what you've got.
Stop giving them the food, clean water, sanitation and medical care they can’t produce for themselves and the population will control itself.
Well, avoid using Microsoft products right? Because the Gates Foundation has been instrumental in increasing African birth rates.
Exactly. And if they don’t want to listen to the West , we don’t have to take their refugees.
Let Africans do whatever they wanna do. Just keep them out of the West.
Problem solved.
Intelligent Dasein wrote:
Well… actually Snider does show growth, but he is complaining that it is generally under three percent.
There are two problems here:
First, you should look at per capita growth or, perhaps, growth in the quantity GDP divided by number of people between ages 21 and 65. We’re not really doing better if we have the same per capita income but total GDP is growing simply because of population increase.
The even bigger problem is that GDP is calculated on the assumption that what people produce is equivalent to what they get paid. For “public-sector” employees, that is idiotic. Indeed, for lots of government jobs, the negative damage done to the economy far exceeds what they are getting paid.
Unfortunately, even lots of “private sector” jobs involve carrying out tasks that would not be necessary in a real market economy. For example, I’ve known a number of well-educated people who work as “environmental consultants” in the private sector but whose contributions to the economy range from zero to negative (i.e., they are fulfilling anti-productive government mandates).
Talk to people in the health-care industry, and you’ll find that lots of “work” is filling out government paperwork, complying with government regulations, etc. And, Griggs v. Duke Power and other government actions result in far more workers in the education industry than make sense. I assume that I need not go into detail about accountants and especially lawyers.
I’ve tried to make an intelligent guess as to what fraction of “work” is actual productive work: my best guess is around half, give or take.
In short, GDP as an estimate of useful goods and service produced is way, way too high.
And, even more important, the rigidities and controls now built into our political-economic regime mean that attempts to bring about radically new economic development are severely hampered. Try thinking about what a radically innovative approach to health care or education would be like and then try to imagine implementing that in the current institutional and regulatory environment.
We should be in the process of an economic transformation bigger than the Industrial Revolution, but, except in a few areas (e.g., to some degree in retailing with amazon et al.). we have created a system that makes this impossible.
The stagnation we are experiencing, compared to the objective potential for development, is indeed far, far worse than most people realize, but looking at the misleading GDP statistics, as Snider does really entirely misses the true picture.
(Incidentally,, back in the ’80s, Mancur Olson addressed these issues in his The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities. I’m afraid the USA is now a textbook example of what he was writing about.)
Lemme see if I understand this:
1) The Western world (aka white countries) are required to absorb all of Africa’s excess burgeoning population.
2) We’re not allowed to do or say jack about how many children Africans produce.
The modern Left is effing insane…
Why did someone of Malthus’ stature get boiled down to one idea, and that usually mangled as well?
Oh, right, because he was on the Wrong Side of History.
Never, ever, ever? I don’t think that’s actually possible.
The upshot is that there is literally no possibility of economic growth from now on. The demographic numbers do not support it. This is borne out by the devastating economic analyses of Jeffrey P. Snider, whom I have referenced before and who is simply the most brilliant finance guy writing today.
Here is Chris Hamilton's post with a particular emphasis on Africa.
And here is a recent post by Jeffrey Snider deftly explaining how the last decade has been absent any economic growth.
The two go nicely together but they are very sobering. The first thing that must be done is to stop cherishing the illusion that business can go on as usual. It simply will not. It cannot.
For additional commentary on the oil and energy situation, these two podcasts from the Peak Prosperity blog should not be overlooked. The first is with Gail Tverberg and the second is with Art Berman.
Definitely required reading/listening all around.Replies: @eD, @Anonymous, @Anonymous
I’ve read Tverberg but have not read the others, and look forward (sort of, this is depressing stuff) to checking them out.
One of Tverberg’s points, that is relevant to a discussion of population growth, that about half of GDP growth is contributed by nothing more than population growth. So if population growth stops, by itself that cuts GDP growth in half. Once you understand that, you understand why businessmen and politicians (other than Trump) are so determined to get more immigrants into obviously full developed countries, by hook or crook. Its anything to get GDP growth up.
Of course population growth has to stop eventually, but certain types of people have a really hard time understanding that. I remember a discussion on Marginal Revolution where people argued that the Earth could have a literally infinite population. A scientist came on and tried to demonstrate that this was physically impossible, but to no avail.
But if you know history, you know that quasi-permanent growth rates are a product of the industrial revolution. They just didn't happen in pre-industrial economies, though this should be amended that there was a global expansion due to Europeans reaching the New World. But the industrial revolution can't be permanent, it depends on a by definition finite supply of fossil fuels and technological innovation is subject to diminishing returns.Replies: @Anonymous
One of Tverberg's points, that is relevant to a discussion of population growth, that about half of GDP growth is contributed by nothing more than population growth. So if population growth stops, by itself that cuts GDP growth in half. Once you understand that, you understand why businessmen and politicians (other than Trump) are so determined to get more immigrants into obviously full developed countries, by hook or crook. Its anything to get GDP growth up.
Of course population growth has to stop eventually, but certain types of people have a really hard time understanding that. I remember a discussion on Marginal Revolution where people argued that the Earth could have a literally infinite population. A scientist came on and tried to demonstrate that this was physically impossible, but to no avail.Replies: @eD, @Autochthon
There is also the issue that pretty much all thinking on economics and finance assumes that economies normally grow by a certain percentage each year, and if they don’t, something is really wrong but it will be temporary and fixable.
But if you know history, you know that quasi-permanent growth rates are a product of the industrial revolution. They just didn’t happen in pre-industrial economies, though this should be amended that there was a global expansion due to Europeans reaching the New World. But the industrial revolution can’t be permanent, it depends on a by definition finite supply of fossil fuels and technological innovation is subject to diminishing returns.
Given the power of science, and the doubtless great discoveries and inventions of the future, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to think it will flag anytime in the conceivable future.
But, of course, the mindless, limitless importation of unskilled third world immigrants - as advocated by The Economist, which basically runs the Deep State - directly militates against per capita productivity growth.
You can’t foist self-control on Africans, or anyone else for that matter. So Mr Woudhuysen is foist with his own petard.
By the way, that name looks suspiciously like the Dutch or Flemish cognate of Wodehouse. Are we talking Malthus here, or Jeeves?
Well, the guy does play bridge with Warren Buffett. And I’m sure there’s a bridge counterpart to “triple bankshot”, but Omar Sharif is no longer here to explain it.
Their ultimate founder and leader, who was O’Niell’s mentor, is a Jew, Frank Furedi. It’s also not that unusual for a British Communist party to have lots of Irish in.
Intelligent Dasein wrote:
Well… actually Snider does show growth, but he is complaining that it is generally under 3 percent.
There are two problems here:
First, you should look at per capita growth or, perhaps, growth in the quantity the GDP divided by the number of people between ages 21 and 65. We’re not really doing better if we have the same per capita income but total GDP is growing simply because of population increase.
The even bigger problem is that GDP is calculated on the assumption that what people produce is equivalent to what they get paid. For “public-sector” employees, that is idiotic. Indeed, for lots of government jobs, the negative damage done to the economy far exceeds what they are getting paid.
Unfortunately, even lots of “private sector” jobs involve carrying out tasks that would not be necessary in a real market economy. For example, I’ve known a number of well-educated people who work as “environmental consultants” in the private sector but whose contributions to the economy range from zero to negative (i.e., they are fulfilling anti-productive government mandates).
Talk to people in the health-care industry, and you’ll find that lots of “work” is filling out government paperwork, complying with government regulations, etc. And, Griggs v. Duke Power and other government actions result in far more workers in the education industry than make sense. I assume that I need not go into detail about accountants and especially lawyers.
I’ve tried to make an intelligent guess as to what fraction of “work” is actual productive work: my best guess is around half, give or take.
In short, GDP as an estimate of useful goods and service produced is way, way too high.
And, even more important, the rigidities and controls now built into our political-economic regime mean that attempts to bring about radically new economic development are severely hampered. Try thinking about what a radically innovative approach to health care or education would be like and then try to imagine implementing that in the current institutional and regulatory environment.
We should be in the process of an economic transformation bigger than the Industrial Revolution, but, except in a few areas (e.g., to some degree in retailing with amazon et al.). we have created a system that makes this impossible.
The stagnation we are experiencing, compared to the objective potential for development, is indeed far, far worse than most people realize, but looking at the misleading GDP statistics, as Snider does, really entirely misses the true picture.
(Incidentally,, back in the ’80s, Mancur Olson addressed these issues in his The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities. I’m afraid the USA is now a textbook example of what he was writing about.)
I'm assuming you read more of the article than just the headline, in which case you should have seen that Snider's real point was that a GDP print of anything less than 3% is merely noise and is indicative of no structural change in the economy. The housing bubble alone would have been sufficient to account for all reported growth between 2004 and the present at a compound annual growth rate of 3%. Therefore, since GDP has never held steady at >3% at any time during that period, subtracting out the housing bubble equals zero growth. That was the point.This is ridiculous. The substance of the many statistics patiently gathered by Chris Hamilton is that growth is not possible given the global demographic realities. I'm not sure how many different ways I can say this, but I'll repeat it one more time: There cannot be growth when the reproductive age cohort---the only group that does the primary producing and consuming---is in absolute numeric decline. Likewise, the two podcasts I've linked to make the case that it is impossible to meaningfully ramp up energy production at a price that the global economy can afford. The price to produce the marginal barrel of oil, above the 95 million barrels per day that the world already consumes, is greater than the additional wealth generated by burning that oil. Therefore the economy cannot grow by consuming more oil, but it also cannot grow if it doesn't consume more oil. We have reached the limit to growth.
The two decades since the advent of the technological revolution have actually seen the sharpest declines in productivity growth than any time since the 1790s. The massive build-out of technological infrastructure (and its attendant consumer products) consumed far more wealth than it generated. The point of diminishing returns has been exceeded and the tech sector is now a money pit, impossible to maintain without globally arbitraged labor and credit expansion.
The institutional malaise you refer to is a direct result of our chosen ends. There cannot be any revolution in healthcare or education because those things which we call healthcare and education are useless anyway---symbols of the 20th century bureaucratic state. The bureaucracy, in these cases, always was the entire point. The point of the public school system is the public school system, just as the point of Big Pharma is Big Pharm, etc.
These institutions will not survive the passing of the Boomers and the collapse of the debt bubble, but their dissolution will not clear the way for a new era of growth. Instead it will be as if you sheared off the highest organizational levels of civilization and left only the towns and peasants behind. Schools and books will always exist for those who want them; doctors will always be there to set your broken arm or give you some laudanum; but "education" and "healthcare" as symbols of mighty civilizational import will have gone irrevocably by the boards.Replies: @Anonymous, @PhysicistDave
Spiked are the latest front for the Revolutionary Communist Party, a Trotskyist sect headed by the Jewish-Hungarian sociologist Frank Furedi. They’re very big fans of the Bolshevik Revolution and untiring champions of what Leszek Kołakowski called “‘the Promethean motif … the idea that it’s the destiny of humanity to steal fire from the gods and make the world whatever we want it to be.” They want free speech, open borders, genetic engineering, industrialization, to the max. I.e., they hope to rule the ruins after everything collapses.
At times it’s harder to work out whether they madder than they’re bad or badder than they’re mad. They’re scientifically and statistically illiterate, as “Return of the Malthusians” proves. And that includes their ally the biologist Kenan Malik, also a member of the RCP but now pretending to plow a solo furrow.
There are two problems here:
First, you should look at per capita growth or, perhaps, growth in the quantity the GDP divided by the number of people between ages 21 and 65. We’re not really doing better if we have the same per capita income but total GDP is growing simply because of population increase.
The even bigger problem is that GDP is calculated on the assumption that what people produce is equivalent to what they get paid. For “public-sector” employees, that is idiotic. Indeed, for lots of government jobs, the negative damage done to the economy far exceeds what they are getting paid.
Unfortunately, even lots of “private sector” jobs involve carrying out tasks that would not be necessary in a real market economy. For example, I’ve known a number of well-educated people who work as “environmental consultants” in the private sector but whose contributions to the economy range from zero to negative (i.e., they are fulfilling anti-productive government mandates).
Talk to people in the health-care industry, and you’ll find that lots of “work” is filling out government paperwork, complying with government regulations, etc. And, Griggs v. Duke Power and other government actions result in far more workers in the education industry than make sense. I assume that I need not go into detail about accountants and especially lawyers.
I’ve tried to make an intelligent guess as to what fraction of “work” is actual productive work: my best guess is around half, give or take.
In short, GDP as an estimate of useful goods and service produced is way, way too high.
And, even more important, the rigidities and controls now built into our political-economic regime mean that attempts to bring about radically new economic development are severely hampered. Try thinking about what a radically innovative approach to health care or education would be like and then try to imagine implementing that in the current institutional and regulatory environment.
We should be in the process of an economic transformation bigger than the Industrial Revolution, but, except in a few areas (e.g., to some degree in retailing with amazon et al.). we have created a system that makes this impossible.
The stagnation we are experiencing, compared to the objective potential for development, is indeed far, far worse than most people realize, but looking at the misleading GDP statistics, as Snider does, really entirely misses the true picture.
(Incidentally,, back in the ’80s, Mancur Olson addressed these issues in his The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities. I’m afraid the USA is now a textbook example of what he was writing about.)Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Intelligent Dasein
Mostly agree. GDP (or formerly GNP) misleads as it measures merely activity, whether for good or ill, rather than actual productive value creation.
I suppose GDP has attained its sanctified status in part because it requires no judgement to be rendered. Simply add up all recorded final transactions in a region and voilà: GDP! Whether the transactions are productive or destructive need not be inquired into. This suits the non-discriminatory (i.e., anti-thought) spirit of our age. It may have some second-order merit inasmuch as you can’t waste a lot of value in destructive GDP if you didn’t formerly build it up with productive GDP. But really it tells you no more than knowing the temperature of a building tells you whether it is probably inactive (cold), active but for unknown purpose (warm) or burning itself down (hot).
My own guess as to the actual productive portion of GDP is much lower. Certainly less than a quarter in the modern US. Maybe better than that in Europe, which lacks America’s large underclass that needs economic mollification (though Europe seems to be working hard to to catch up with the US’s debilitating handicap!). There was an iSteve thread several weeks ago as to the merit of Keynes’s forecast of a fifteen hour workweek. As I recall, the consensus was that yes, most people are capital burners, not capital creators, but that instead of the immense productivity leverage of the (post-)industrial world being democratically spread to the workers in fifteen hour workweeks as Keynes had naively assumed, the surplus had been captured by the 0.01% and the welfare class while the productive workers got stuck with 60-to-80-hour workweeks.
https://www.unz.com/isteve/has-keyness-much-derided-forecast-of-a-15-hour-workweek-come-true-at-google/
I have to disagree a little with the assertion that, absent institutionally imposed sclerosis, “we should be in the process of an economic transformation bigger than the Industrial Revolution.” As I’ve banged on about here before, humanity has made no serious technological leaps for at least two generations, and there is no imminent prospect of any such ahead. Absent the productivity gains of technological leaps, there is no reason to expect “economic transformation”, unless it is the kind of transformation imposed by, for example, the Khmer Rouge on Cambodia or the Bolsheviks on the Ukraine.
Actually, Mr Woudhuysen, western elites – as distinct from western peoples – wish to encourage as much African immigration as possible into Europe due to ideological and political reasons.
It’s all there written in The Economist, the voice of the Deep State.
The upshot is that there is literally no possibility of economic growth from now on. The demographic numbers do not support it. This is borne out by the devastating economic analyses of Jeffrey P. Snider, whom I have referenced before and who is simply the most brilliant finance guy writing today.
Here is Chris Hamilton's post with a particular emphasis on Africa.
And here is a recent post by Jeffrey Snider deftly explaining how the last decade has been absent any economic growth.
The two go nicely together but they are very sobering. The first thing that must be done is to stop cherishing the illusion that business can go on as usual. It simply will not. It cannot.
For additional commentary on the oil and energy situation, these two podcasts from the Peak Prosperity blog should not be overlooked. The first is with Gail Tverberg and the second is with Art Berman.
Definitely required reading/listening all around.Replies: @eD, @Anonymous, @Anonymous
‘ a minor source of migration’.
For now at any rate.
Remember, Pakistan was a ‘minor source of migration’ into Britain, back in 1950.
The upshot is that there is literally no possibility of economic growth from now on. The demographic numbers do not support it. This is borne out by the devastating economic analyses of Jeffrey P. Snider, whom I have referenced before and who is simply the most brilliant finance guy writing today.
Here is Chris Hamilton's post with a particular emphasis on Africa.
And here is a recent post by Jeffrey Snider deftly explaining how the last decade has been absent any economic growth.
The two go nicely together but they are very sobering. The first thing that must be done is to stop cherishing the illusion that business can go on as usual. It simply will not. It cannot.
For additional commentary on the oil and energy situation, these two podcasts from the Peak Prosperity blog should not be overlooked. The first is with Gail Tverberg and the second is with Art Berman.
Definitely required reading/listening all around.Replies: @eD, @Anonymous, @Anonymous
Doubtless, China and the Pacific rim will continue to go ‘onwards and upwards’ , economically speaking, at least this present century.
An awful lot of wealth potential as China moves up the ‘value added’ ladder.
Plus, likely, high IQ China will stay ethnically Chinese, so they will withstand anything the 21st century will throw at it.
I'd say as long as the West is too embarrassed by the necessities of reigning in the welfare state and controlling immigration, it deserves to die. Also , stay out of people's bedrooms. That's creepy.Replies: @Anonymous
Actually, it *does* require genius to build an economy that is anything above basic barter.
You might not be interested in Africa.
But, by golly, Africans are certainly interested in *you*. Or rather, what you’ve got.
But if you know history, you know that quasi-permanent growth rates are a product of the industrial revolution. They just didn't happen in pre-industrial economies, though this should be amended that there was a global expansion due to Europeans reaching the New World. But the industrial revolution can't be permanent, it depends on a by definition finite supply of fossil fuels and technological innovation is subject to diminishing returns.Replies: @Anonymous
The key is ‘productivity per capita’.
Given the power of science, and the doubtless great discoveries and inventions of the future, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to think it will flag anytime in the conceivable future.
But, of course, the mindless, limitless importation of unskilled third world immigrants – as advocated by The Economist, which basically runs the Deep State – directly militates against per capita productivity growth.
What are the motives of Western-style ‘family-planning’ in Africa? They are to divert its economic course and prevent it from competing with Europe and North America.
Gosh, if only Africa could compete with Europe and North America. That would mean it was producing a lot of useful product instead of just hungry bodies.
Yes. Ironically, I use Ubuntu for this purpose…
One of Tverberg's points, that is relevant to a discussion of population growth, that about half of GDP growth is contributed by nothing more than population growth. So if population growth stops, by itself that cuts GDP growth in half. Once you understand that, you understand why businessmen and politicians (other than Trump) are so determined to get more immigrants into obviously full developed countries, by hook or crook. Its anything to get GDP growth up.
Of course population growth has to stop eventually, but certain types of people have a really hard time understanding that. I remember a discussion on Marginal Revolution where people argued that the Earth could have a literally infinite population. A scientist came on and tried to demonstrate that this was physically impossible, but to no avail.Replies: @eD, @Autochthon
Welcome to the party. I’ve played the rôle of that exasperated scientist in this very forum more times than I care to recall…. Some (most?) people are just willfully stupid.
There are two problems here:
First, you should look at per capita growth or, perhaps, growth in the quantity the GDP divided by the number of people between ages 21 and 65. We’re not really doing better if we have the same per capita income but total GDP is growing simply because of population increase.
The even bigger problem is that GDP is calculated on the assumption that what people produce is equivalent to what they get paid. For “public-sector” employees, that is idiotic. Indeed, for lots of government jobs, the negative damage done to the economy far exceeds what they are getting paid.
Unfortunately, even lots of “private sector” jobs involve carrying out tasks that would not be necessary in a real market economy. For example, I’ve known a number of well-educated people who work as “environmental consultants” in the private sector but whose contributions to the economy range from zero to negative (i.e., they are fulfilling anti-productive government mandates).
Talk to people in the health-care industry, and you’ll find that lots of “work” is filling out government paperwork, complying with government regulations, etc. And, Griggs v. Duke Power and other government actions result in far more workers in the education industry than make sense. I assume that I need not go into detail about accountants and especially lawyers.
I’ve tried to make an intelligent guess as to what fraction of “work” is actual productive work: my best guess is around half, give or take.
In short, GDP as an estimate of useful goods and service produced is way, way too high.
And, even more important, the rigidities and controls now built into our political-economic regime mean that attempts to bring about radically new economic development are severely hampered. Try thinking about what a radically innovative approach to health care or education would be like and then try to imagine implementing that in the current institutional and regulatory environment.
We should be in the process of an economic transformation bigger than the Industrial Revolution, but, except in a few areas (e.g., to some degree in retailing with amazon et al.). we have created a system that makes this impossible.
The stagnation we are experiencing, compared to the objective potential for development, is indeed far, far worse than most people realize, but looking at the misleading GDP statistics, as Snider does, really entirely misses the true picture.
(Incidentally,, back in the ’80s, Mancur Olson addressed these issues in his The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities. I’m afraid the USA is now a textbook example of what he was writing about.)Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Intelligent Dasein
Dave, you’re really not being charitable here. Jeffrey Snider knows all about the embedded fallacies in how GDP is calculated. So do I. So does everybody with any passing familiarity with economics. That isn’t the issue right now.
I’m assuming you read more of the article than just the headline, in which case you should have seen that Snider’s real point was that a GDP print of anything less than 3% is merely noise and is indicative of no structural change in the economy. The housing bubble alone would have been sufficient to account for all reported growth between 2004 and the present at a compound annual growth rate of 3%. Therefore, since GDP has never held steady at >3% at any time during that period, subtracting out the housing bubble equals zero growth. That was the point.
This is ridiculous. The substance of the many statistics patiently gathered by Chris Hamilton is that growth is not possible given the global demographic realities. I’m not sure how many different ways I can say this, but I’ll repeat it one more time: There cannot be growth when the reproductive age cohort—the only group that does the primary producing and consuming—is in absolute numeric decline. Likewise, the two podcasts I’ve linked to make the case that it is impossible to meaningfully ramp up energy production at a price that the global economy can afford. The price to produce the marginal barrel of oil, above the 95 million barrels per day that the world already consumes, is greater than the additional wealth generated by burning that oil. Therefore the economy cannot grow by consuming more oil, but it also cannot grow if it doesn’t consume more oil. We have reached the limit to growth.
The two decades since the advent of the technological revolution have actually seen the sharpest declines in productivity growth than any time since the 1790s. The massive build-out of technological infrastructure (and its attendant consumer products) consumed far more wealth than it generated. The point of diminishing returns has been exceeded and the tech sector is now a money pit, impossible to maintain without globally arbitraged labor and credit expansion.
The institutional malaise you refer to is a direct result of our chosen ends. There cannot be any revolution in healthcare or education because those things which we call healthcare and education are useless anyway—symbols of the 20th century bureaucratic state. The bureaucracy, in these cases, always was the entire point. The point of the public school system is the public school system, just as the point of Big Pharma is Big Pharm, etc.
These institutions will not survive the passing of the Boomers and the collapse of the debt bubble, but their dissolution will not clear the way for a new era of growth. Instead it will be as if you sheared off the highest organizational levels of civilization and left only the towns and peasants behind. Schools and books will always exist for those who want them; doctors will always be there to set your broken arm or give you some laudanum; but “education” and “healthcare” as symbols of mighty civilizational import will have gone irrevocably by the boards.
You don't need me to add that Singapore has nigh on damn all natural resources.The *only* factors which matter are intelligence, ability, ambition and application. Given those, the sky is, literally, the limit.
I simply cannot believe in these simplistic defeatist arguments - although I prate on and on and on about the baleful influence of The Economist magazine.
What are the motives of Western-style ‘family-planning’ in Africa? They are to divert its economic course and prevent it from competing with Europe and North America.
That is a WTF is he talking about moment!
However at Spiked they allow almost total freedom of speech, hope to see you in the (Disqus) comments!
Drivel like this leads me to think that James Woodhuysen is one of those clever fools who find niches that allow them to pontificate without ever being called out on their suspect and often plain silly prognostications.
He posted an ‘analysis’ of the German “Marshall Plan for Africa” last year that crowed about how condescending, militaristic (!) and misguided the Germans are.
His own suggestions included advising Africa to manufacturer electronic clothing that can cool the wearer in hot countries; to use robots in farming and to have drones deliver consumer goods.
Strangely for a man who now thinks population control is imperialistic he has noticed Africa’s unemployment problem and the dire and worsening shortage of water.
http://www.woudhuysen.com/africa-what-would-real-progress-look-like/
I'm assuming you read more of the article than just the headline, in which case you should have seen that Snider's real point was that a GDP print of anything less than 3% is merely noise and is indicative of no structural change in the economy. The housing bubble alone would have been sufficient to account for all reported growth between 2004 and the present at a compound annual growth rate of 3%. Therefore, since GDP has never held steady at >3% at any time during that period, subtracting out the housing bubble equals zero growth. That was the point.This is ridiculous. The substance of the many statistics patiently gathered by Chris Hamilton is that growth is not possible given the global demographic realities. I'm not sure how many different ways I can say this, but I'll repeat it one more time: There cannot be growth when the reproductive age cohort---the only group that does the primary producing and consuming---is in absolute numeric decline. Likewise, the two podcasts I've linked to make the case that it is impossible to meaningfully ramp up energy production at a price that the global economy can afford. The price to produce the marginal barrel of oil, above the 95 million barrels per day that the world already consumes, is greater than the additional wealth generated by burning that oil. Therefore the economy cannot grow by consuming more oil, but it also cannot grow if it doesn't consume more oil. We have reached the limit to growth.
The two decades since the advent of the technological revolution have actually seen the sharpest declines in productivity growth than any time since the 1790s. The massive build-out of technological infrastructure (and its attendant consumer products) consumed far more wealth than it generated. The point of diminishing returns has been exceeded and the tech sector is now a money pit, impossible to maintain without globally arbitraged labor and credit expansion.
The institutional malaise you refer to is a direct result of our chosen ends. There cannot be any revolution in healthcare or education because those things which we call healthcare and education are useless anyway---symbols of the 20th century bureaucratic state. The bureaucracy, in these cases, always was the entire point. The point of the public school system is the public school system, just as the point of Big Pharma is Big Pharm, etc.
These institutions will not survive the passing of the Boomers and the collapse of the debt bubble, but their dissolution will not clear the way for a new era of growth. Instead it will be as if you sheared off the highest organizational levels of civilization and left only the towns and peasants behind. Schools and books will always exist for those who want them; doctors will always be there to set your broken arm or give you some laudanum; but "education" and "healthcare" as symbols of mighty civilizational import will have gone irrevocably by the boards.Replies: @Anonymous, @PhysicistDave
Look, perhaps it’s an egregious example but the tiny city state of Singapore, which as far as I know has marginal levels fecundity has a very high GDP per capita, and what’s more that GDP per capita just keeps on increasing at a fair clip.
You don’t need me to add that Singapore has nigh on damn all natural resources.
The *only* factors which matter are intelligence, ability, ambition and application. Given those, the sky is, literally, the limit.
I simply cannot believe in these simplistic defeatist arguments – although I prate on and on and on about the baleful influence of The Economist magazine.
This is true. The Revolutionary Communist Party (Furedi) was weird enough to begin with, because most political parties do not have an entrance exam.
When communism became unfashionable, Furedi and his followers changed their views, but stuck together. This is enough to justify their description as a cult. Their strategy since then has been media entryism. Mick Hume writes for The Times (London); Brendan O’Neill, Claire Fox, and Frank Furedi himself are frequent contributors to the British media; if they want to campaign they often do so by creating a front organisation (Africa Direct, Litigious Society etc).
Their goals are anybody’s guess. A Leninist/Trotskyist party aims to be swept to power as the vanguard of a workers’ revolution, and it is hard to believe that they have given up their ambition for power.
OMG, truly rolling on the ground laughing at that one.
I'm assuming you read more of the article than just the headline, in which case you should have seen that Snider's real point was that a GDP print of anything less than 3% is merely noise and is indicative of no structural change in the economy. The housing bubble alone would have been sufficient to account for all reported growth between 2004 and the present at a compound annual growth rate of 3%. Therefore, since GDP has never held steady at >3% at any time during that period, subtracting out the housing bubble equals zero growth. That was the point.This is ridiculous. The substance of the many statistics patiently gathered by Chris Hamilton is that growth is not possible given the global demographic realities. I'm not sure how many different ways I can say this, but I'll repeat it one more time: There cannot be growth when the reproductive age cohort---the only group that does the primary producing and consuming---is in absolute numeric decline. Likewise, the two podcasts I've linked to make the case that it is impossible to meaningfully ramp up energy production at a price that the global economy can afford. The price to produce the marginal barrel of oil, above the 95 million barrels per day that the world already consumes, is greater than the additional wealth generated by burning that oil. Therefore the economy cannot grow by consuming more oil, but it also cannot grow if it doesn't consume more oil. We have reached the limit to growth.
The two decades since the advent of the technological revolution have actually seen the sharpest declines in productivity growth than any time since the 1790s. The massive build-out of technological infrastructure (and its attendant consumer products) consumed far more wealth than it generated. The point of diminishing returns has been exceeded and the tech sector is now a money pit, impossible to maintain without globally arbitraged labor and credit expansion.
The institutional malaise you refer to is a direct result of our chosen ends. There cannot be any revolution in healthcare or education because those things which we call healthcare and education are useless anyway---symbols of the 20th century bureaucratic state. The bureaucracy, in these cases, always was the entire point. The point of the public school system is the public school system, just as the point of Big Pharma is Big Pharm, etc.
These institutions will not survive the passing of the Boomers and the collapse of the debt bubble, but their dissolution will not clear the way for a new era of growth. Instead it will be as if you sheared off the highest organizational levels of civilization and left only the towns and peasants behind. Schools and books will always exist for those who want them; doctors will always be there to set your broken arm or give you some laudanum; but "education" and "healthcare" as symbols of mighty civilizational import will have gone irrevocably by the boards.Replies: @Anonymous, @PhysicistDave
Intelligent Dasein wrote to me:
Well… that is why I suggested we need to look at GDP per adult of working age. That can increase, whether or not total GDP increases.
ID also said:
Prices (and costs, which are the flip side of prices) are not immutable facts of nature: they are determined, inter alia, by technological, economic, and institutional factors. There is no reason energy must cost more: technology should and can correct for that.
ID also wrote:
Yes, you are reiterating my central point (and the point of Olson’s book to which I referred): our political/economic/social structure has become rigid, stagnant, corrupt, impacted, sclerotic — whatever metaphor you prefer.
Upper middle-class people are looking for ways for their kids (and themselves) to live comfortably without having to do real work, and our laws, regulations, and institutions accommodate that desire. The people who do actual productive work get shafted. We live in what economists call a “rent-seeking” society (in my opinion, a poor choice of words, due to Anne Krueger, but that is the technical term among the economists).
ID also said:
Well, we’ll see. Nothing lasts forever. But, as Niels Bohr supposedly quipped, “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”
You know Steve, this is one of the more annoying things about your coverage on this.
I get the sense of powerlessness you feel, but don’t you think you should I dunno stick to getting your country to adopt a Norwegian immigration policy–go check it out, doubt Norwegian Steve is as obsessed with African sex lives.
P.S Has it ever occurred to you that those numbers are slightly exaggerated to justify more aid. Go on, find me three African countries that have conducted what would pass for a decent census.
Go check out voting rolls differentials for Nigeria and Indonesia e.t.c
Just saying, it’s your attitude that leads to “invade the world” and its consequences, quit keep being the neighbourhood grandma, mind your own kids and grandkids.
I get the sense of powerlessness you feel, but don't you think you should I dunno stick to getting your country to adopt a Norwegian immigration policy--go check it out, doubt Norwegian Steve is as obsessed with African sex lives.
P.S Has it ever occurred to you that those numbers are slightly exaggerated to justify more aid. Go on, find me three African countries that have conducted what would pass for a decent census.
Go check out voting rolls differentials for Nigeria and Indonesia e.t.c
Just saying, it's your attitude that leads to "invade the world" and its consequences, quit keep being the neighbourhood grandma, mind your own kids and grandkids.Replies: @Olorin
Perhaps all that Scrabble genius willl come in handy for censuses and such, eh?
They are very good on free speech…
No, Spiked / the Revolutionary Community Party are very good on Muh Free Speech, which they simultaneously work to destroy by supporting unlimited immigration and always blaming Whitey for problems caused by Muslims. Have a look at Frank Furedi’s response to the Charlie Hebdo massacre:
And the fault doesn’t lie in mass immigration either. Obviously.
AM also wrote:Well, I have been saying for decades that it was my great grandmother's generation (she was born in 1883) that really saw technological progress -- telephone, radio, television, autos, airplanes, home refrigerators, washers, and dryers, home air conditioning, and, of course, incandescent lights. (Of course, some of these were invented before she was born, but they came into widespread use during her life -- I actually remember when the family bought her a room air conditioner, and I also remember her using her old wringer washing machine.)
And, of course, studies have shown that the productivity gains from the digital revolution have been slow to materialize. However, if you have followed, as I have, changes in manufacturing in the last fifty years, computers really have made a big difference there. And amazon has shown what they can mean for retailing.
We should be seeing similar results in education, health care, etc. Why aren't we? I think part of the answer is that our society has become fundamentally dysfunctional. Sailer has written at some length about this -- e.g., our current inability to carry out fairly straightforward civil engineering projects compared to what we did seventy or eighty years ago.
2017 was never really going to be like the Jetsons -- there are a lot of things wrong with flying cars! And the space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey never really made much real sense. But there are so many areas where we should expect to be doing better than we are -- something is very wrong.
Almost Missouri wrote to me:
Could be. It’s very, very hard to say with any precision. E.g., the fact that a checkout person in a store has no customer at this instant does not really mean he is being wasted: the store needs to be ready for surges, for peak time periods, etc. On the other hand, many jobs are so obviously unproductive — i.e., they are not providing any good or service that people would actually pay for voluntarily with their own money — that it is pretty obvious that we have a lot of avoidable waste.
AM also wrote:
Well, I have been saying for decades that it was my great grandmother’s generation (she was born in 1883) that really saw technological progress — telephone, radio, television, autos, airplanes, home refrigerators, washers, and dryers, home air conditioning, and, of course, incandescent lights. (Of course, some of these were invented before she was born, but they came into widespread use during her life — I actually remember when the family bought her a room air conditioner, and I also remember her using her old wringer washing machine.)
And, of course, studies have shown that the productivity gains from the digital revolution have been slow to materialize. However, if you have followed, as I have, changes in manufacturing in the last fifty years, computers really have made a big difference there. And amazon has shown what they can mean for retailing.
We should be seeing similar results in education, health care, etc. Why aren’t we? I think part of the answer is that our society has become fundamentally dysfunctional. Sailer has written at some length about this — e.g., our current inability to carry out fairly straightforward civil engineering projects compared to what we did seventy or eighty years ago.
2017 was never really going to be like the Jetsons — there are a lot of things wrong with flying cars! And the space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey never really made much real sense. But there are so many areas where we should expect to be doing better than we are — something is very wrong.
When you breed like rats, don’t be surprised if you end up living, and DYING, like rats. Plotted on a graph, Africa’s projected Year 2100 population is greater than the number on the whole Globe back around 1970, some three billion. Now, REALITY has a way of disrupting projections. The MATH says four billion plus [I believe they just revised the estimates upward – AGAIN!] Resource depletion and resulting border strife, disease, could easily come into play before mass starvation. But, one thing YOU can bet on is human nature, or, should I say, the most BASE elements of that nature. As food becomes scarce, Libtards assume everyone will sacrifice and share the scarcity. That’s utter Bull! The Strong what they want, not just what they ‘need.’ You will see more failed states like Somalia. Nigeria will not be a ‘rich’ country, even by African standards, once the oil reserves are depleted and dwindling revenue has to be divided more than 600,000,000 ways. Europe will need heavily armed maritime patrols, backed up with machine gun nests on the beaches, and a native populace ready and willing to use them.
How do you get FOUR BILLION Africans in the Year 2100? Feed ONE billion TODAY!
What utter rot; shear word salad. Who’s suppressing that ‘hard debate’ if not the fascist Left?
When it comes to production, there are just two things of which Africa produces more than the First World. The first would be poached rhino horns which idiots in Asia think can make them, well, horny. The second is obvious: Africans.
Well, that Ripley’s item, from the 1960’s probably, is undoubtedly true as more than four Chinese were born within a couple of seconds’ time even then. China was in the midst of what I call “Mao’s FIVE Child Policy” as that idiot thought China could advance on cheap human labor. After that mass murderer was gone China had the “one child policy” which was going to have population peak at One Billion, Seven Hundred Million, and take 50 years from there to get back UNDER a whopping one billion. Now China is easily going to overshoot two billion, and where the peak will be, no one knows ad the current regime no longer cares.
There are two problems here:
First, you should look at per capita growth or, perhaps, growth in the quantity GDP divided by number of people between ages 21 and 65. We’re not really doing better if we have the same per capita income but total GDP is growing simply because of population increase.
The even bigger problem is that GDP is calculated on the assumption that what people produce is equivalent to what they get paid. For “public-sector” employees, that is idiotic. Indeed, for lots of government jobs, the negative damage done to the economy far exceeds what they are getting paid.
Unfortunately, even lots of “private sector” jobs involve carrying out tasks that would not be necessary in a real market economy. For example, I’ve known a number of well-educated people who work as “environmental consultants” in the private sector but whose contributions to the economy range from zero to negative (i.e., they are fulfilling anti-productive government mandates).
Talk to people in the health-care industry, and you’ll find that lots of “work” is filling out government paperwork, complying with government regulations, etc. And, Griggs v. Duke Power and other government actions result in far more workers in the education industry than make sense. I assume that I need not go into detail about accountants and especially lawyers.
I’ve tried to make an intelligent guess as to what fraction of “work” is actual productive work: my best guess is around half, give or take.
In short, GDP as an estimate of useful goods and service produced is way, way too high.
And, even more important, the rigidities and controls now built into our political-economic regime mean that attempts to bring about radically new economic development are severely hampered. Try thinking about what a radically innovative approach to health care or education would be like and then try to imagine implementing that in the current institutional and regulatory environment.
We should be in the process of an economic transformation bigger than the Industrial Revolution, but, except in a few areas (e.g., to some degree in retailing with amazon et al.). we have created a system that makes this impossible.
The stagnation we are experiencing, compared to the objective potential for development, is indeed far, far worse than most people realize, but looking at the misleading GDP statistics, as Snider does really entirely misses the true picture.
(Incidentally,, back in the ’80s, Mancur Olson addressed these issues in his The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities. I’m afraid the USA is now a textbook example of what he was writing about.)Replies: @bomag
Good analysis. Thanks.