If Robots Are Set To Displace Human Workers - We Need To Cut The Population

Again, American (and global) workers are being told two different narratives, only one of which can be true. The first is that there are abundant jobs for those with the necessary talent and who seek to find them. I skewered this balderdash in an earlier post, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-real-reason-too-many-companies-cant.html

Therein I noted  Lauren Weber's investigation  into why so many companies are having a difficult time filling their openings.  What she found was the "companies are reluctant to raise pay, in part to protect their profit margins".  They also prefer right now to have more money set aside to buy back their own shares if it can help their bottom line, increase share prices.  According to managing director of Aspen Advisors, Andrew Gadomski, that is "holding back hiring".   He notes that when companies lament they can't find workers to fill key openings, that is code for:

"I can find talent, I just don't want to pay them as much as they cost."

Also noted was that what employers often viewed as a labor shortage is in reality a retention problem, according to Gadomski. If you are losing workers - chasing better pay or benefits - you have to replace them. 

In the case of Colorado, the so-called job "boom" has largely been exposed as a myth. In last Sunday's Denver Post (p. 1A) we saw and read of the new exodus out of this state because once people arrived to take the promised jobs,  they found they didn't pay enough to allow them to live here. This has forced many talented people - many Millennials - to rent tiny bedrooms as opposed to full apartments. Others have just given up, packed and left to return to their home states.  The other aspect, a nasty one, is the explosion of housing costs in the West (for example) has increased the nation's homeless population to over 534,000. And there's no indication this will lessen anytime soon.

The other narrative is that nearly all repetitive jobs will be replaced very soon. E.g. 

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2017/11/robots-ai-based-systems-set-to-displace.html

Thus, according to a WSJ  report ('Firms Leave The Bean Counting To The Robots') in the Business and Investing section (p, B5, Oct. 23) AI -based robots will soon be taking over CFO and accounting work across the land, as well as the jobs of "accountants, bank loan officers, and insurance claims adjustors.  Even FORBES now uses an AI system called  'Quill" to pen its articles, so less need for journalists.

Reinforcing the latter narrative is the new finding by McKinsey Global Institute that over the next 13 years 70 million workers in the U.S. will have to find another way to make money. In addition, "technology could replace up to 375 million employees worldwide by 2030". (Denver Post Business, p. 1K, Dec. 3).  Again, we're informed all the jobs at risk involve repetitive tasks -  and the robots at work can already "scan Tylenol bottles and lip balm at the drugstore"   as well as "build pickups and take your grilled cheese orders at Panera Bread." McKinsey estimates that "half the duties workers handle globally could be automated."

What this means, when you boil it down, is there won't be enough paid labor for humans to do given the magnitude of worker displacement via automation. And we know that another third narrative is also false, i.e. that corporations fear regulations more than labor costs. That trope has been exploded so many times it's a wonder it still emerges in debates.   But this could be on account of too many spending excessive time on smartphones as opposed to reading newspapers, or books.

This is also what blows the mega hole into Greg Ip's arguments about "needing more humans to support older workers"  in the aging nations of the world. It also skewers the typical Neolib meme that low birth rates are undermining the global economy.

Here's the real skinny: Ip and his Neolib cohort know damned well the problem can't be solved by more human workers -  because AI systems and robots are already going to take over their jobs by the freaking millions.  There won't be support for social safety nets because you don't pay an AI system or robot. So there is no way to build up any equity or monetary resources to support the aging population - OR the growing workless population. 

This is exactly why - in the 1973 conspiracy thriller 'Executive Action' (based on the novel by Donald Freed and Mark Lane that exposed the real conspirators in the JFK assassination) the featured cabal-   based in Vienna, VA -  wanted to use chemical -based genocide to "reduce a large part of the global populace."  At one point one of the  lead conspirators ("Robert Foster")  puts it to Burt Lancaster's character ("James Farrington") that: "With proper planning we can reduce the population to 500 million by the end of the century. The techniques used there can be used to reduce our own excess population, blacks, poverty prone whites".  See e.g. the clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hevxAt0sUfg 

"Foster's" concern was that the "overflow" mainly in Asia and Africa - had to be eliminated  - or they'd flood into the developed regions of North America and Europe.  Could such a crass and inhuman plan actually transpire? We don't know but the  human numbers projected  by 2030 and then 2050 do not allow much optimism that such a draconian solution might be under consideration by some global elites.   By 2050 we are talking about adding an equivalent population to that inhabiting all of Europe - plus all of sub-Saharan Africa.

Where will the jobs come to occupy all those beings? Where will the food come from to supply all those mouths-bellies? No one has a clue, not really. The so-called "green revolution" is itself basically over on account of the ongoing dilution of the soil.  And climate change will exacerbate all existing agricultural problems and shortages into a permanent nightmare. That's even if the planet can escape the monster fires we've beheld in California.

 A far better solution, in my opinion, is to begin immediately to reduce our human numbers by widespread, artificial birth control. o not let those numbers explode into a jobless, destitute future that might trigger the response of madmen and elitist thugs like "Robert Foster". A fictional character in a novel, true. But if you don't believe there aren't actual elites that exist right now with that conspiratorial mentality, you definitely have been spending too much time watching boxing kitties on Youtube.

Apart from the worst case scenario of a planned genocide, people need to grasp that by reproducing to appease a warped economic system they are merely perpetuating gross economic inequality by helping to sustain a vast pool of surplus labor. As Marx showed (and anyone with a brain can figure out- except perhaps the Catholic birth control dogmatists) surplus labor translates into lowest common denominator conditions and endless scarcity. It can never be  a recipe for upliftment, societal  improvement or even balancing the needs of an existing, aging populace.

The other solution, of course, would be to implement a universal basic income (UBI) - which would entail laying away trillions for that purpose starting now.  But the bugbear there is that the nations that might be able to afford it are saddled with monstrous debt.   For example, U.S. debt - set to reach over 20 trillion by the time the new spending bill is agreed on, is nearly 77 percent of GDP. 

Meanwhile, Europe is printing euros like there's no tomorrow, and debt - especially in nations like Spain, Portugal and Greece, piling up to unprecedented levels.  Then there is the Bank of Japan which has printed over 13.3  trillion yen   The Fed in the U.S. has done its own form of printing money by way of "quantitative easing", purchasing over $4 trillion in the bond market.

All of these signals in tandem show the instability of the global debt crisis and no one who looks into these can remain complacent.

It also shows that the solution of a UBI to help workers displaced by robots is a pure pipedream. It will never come to pass, especially with a preponderance of deficit hawks skulking around right now - who are just rubbing their mitts together and drooling waiting for the deficits to explode with this Reeptard tax bill.  Then they can go full throttle to suck every last remaining drop of blood from the social safety net. 

The solution is clear: our global population needs to be cut- and radically by 2030. If not,  either in Isaac Asimov's immortal words  "nature will cut it for us" (say by an Avian flu  pandemic or airborne Ebola) or the hidden powers that be might consider doing so - as portrayed in the Executive Action movie, and seen in the clip.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/phil-rockstroh/76622/capitalism-s-failure-of-the-flesh-the-rise-of-the-robots

Excerpt:

"Capitalists crave to replace workers with an automated labor force. The parasitic breed has always viewed workers as flesh machines, of whom, they were inconvenienced by having to pay wages. Capitalism is, by its very nature, dehumanizing. From the advent of the industrial/capitalist epoch, the system has inflicted mass alienation, societal atomization, and anomie. Moreover, the vast wealth inequity inherent to the system allows the capitalist elite to own the political class — a mindless clutch of flunkies who might as well be robots programmed by the capitalist order to serve their agendas."

Another Bloomberg 'Genius" Falls For The Myth That The U.S. Needs More People

Let's put it right out there in the open, that this country is bloody crowded with people. Here in Colorado if you decide to go to the mountains or Rocky Mountain National Park any given weekend, you are doomed to wait hours in long lines on the I-25. If you're in Miami or LA the highways are backed up 16 lanes with traffic almost all the time at peak hours. Here in Colorado Springs. unless you make reservations for most places - even 'Mom n Pop' cafes- you're likely to be out of luck. And woe betide you if you have to use an ER, you may wait for hours.

SO on basic observation the claim this country needs more people is bollocks. But here again, the economic eggheads who think they know better than anyone else, are convinced Americans need to make more babies given our decline in birthrate.  The latest one to make this argument is Bloomberg resident columnist Stephen Mihm whose piece 'Baby Bust!'  appeared in The Denver Post (front page Sunday 'Perspective', Jan. 8 )  He writes:

"Shortly before Christmas, the U.S. Census Bureau put some coal in the nation’s holiday stocking. It released data highlighting a worrisome trend: The population grew a subdued 0.7 percent, the lowest rate of growth since the Great Depression years of 1936 and 1937. Declines in the birthrate and the slowing pace of immigration are to blame.

Ask an economist why this matters, and you’ll get a welter of contradictory answers, as the relationship between population growth and economic expansion is a vexed and controversial subject. But if you sift through the historical data on the subject, it’s hard to deny that the demographic slowdown, should it continue, likely puts a damper on future economic growth."

Okay, two quick points to make at the outset. If the central argument is that the economy "needs more people" - which appears to be the case- then Mihm has already admitted (1st paragraph) that the cause need not be low birthrate, but  rather slowing immigration. This elides into another point I've made consistently in these economic arguments: that the world as a whole is overpopulated but any given nation per se may not be overpopulated. Thus, the world has more than ample people, but with different densities in different nations, regions. Hence, less densely populated places can make up for any perceived economic consequences by simply allowing more immigrants into their nations, while not increasing global population. I know this isn't popular with all the Reich wing populist nuts like Le Pen and Trump, but there it is. THAT is what you're going to have to do in an already overpopulated world.

In the OECD nations right now there are well over 230 m unemployed thanks to a combination of reasons including corporate restructuring, automation - and offloading jobs to cheaper nations.  So rather than add to the world's population burden (and the attendant environmental problems)  why not put these current unemployed back to work wherever needed? Make them 'citizen workers of the world' - since the whole market impetus is to globalization anyway.

Second, Mihm - like most of his economist brethren - misses the mark believing population is the major factor impacting economic growth. No, it is not. As I've noted before (Sept. 20, 2013), it is the decreasing energy return on energy invested (EROEI) of fuel sources. In other words, our energy-dependent civilization is becoming ever more impoverished as the efficiency of the energy to run it diminishes over time. Essentially, a nation which had become addicted to energy delivering 20 to 30 or even 40 times as much energy as it cost to extract, now faces a future with energy return 5 to 8  times less. This spells monetary-economic disaster because at the end of the day it is energy which  determines wealth of nations- money is only a medium to represent it.

A report issued by the London investment firm Tullet Prebon as recently as five years ago, and circulated via 'Strategy Insight' newsletter warned:

"For 2020, our projected EROEI of 11.5 to 1 is not as catastrophic as 5: 1 but would nevertheless mean that the share of GDP absorbed by energy costs would have escalated to 9.6% from about 6.7% today. Our projections further suggest energy costs would absorb as much as 15% of GDP (at an EROEI of 7.7 to 1)  by 2030."

This shows the trend in a nutshell and it has nothing to do with population, only that increasing it globally would make matters worse because all those added people would require much more energy to live, including for fuel, food cultivation, transport etc.. And 2b more are expected by 2030.

Again, this shows the problem is not too few people but too many and the core sane solution is to redistribute them for economic maximization. This as opposed to insisting all the more developed nations have more babies.  Not to sound too hyperbolic, but that's kind of like tossing cans of gasoline on a slow burning fire.

We don't need it. But don't try to tell that to these economists! Mihm goes on to admit, however:

"these declines in the birthrate — and the larger rate of population growth — weren’t bad news in and of themselves; if anything, they seem to have been quite positive, going hand in hand with dramatic economic growth."

Well, this is not really surprising given that it costs a hell of a lot to raise a kid from birth  As per a Denver Post Business story ('Discovering What It Costs To Raise A Child') from Jan. 3rd, 2013 (p. 5K) we learn an "average middle class family will need $245, 340 over 18 years, for a child born in 2013"(From a U.S. Dept. of Agriculture 'Cost of Raising A Child' report).   And this is bound to be more expensive in the future as medical expenses will rise, and health care is much more difficult to afford (thanks to the GOP).

That chunk of moola, nearly a quarter million or what each retiree needs to cover medical expenses Medicare doesn't,  includes: "diapers, formula, child care, baby furnishings, new clothes every year, electronic computers, smart phones...and other gear and seemingly don't end when the young one finds a job".

So it's no wonder economic growth would rise if that albatross was removed from many couples' necks.  Additionally,  recall this pullback is being done in an energy environment which is regressing in terms of efficiency.  Northwestern University's Robert Gordon has posited that the Industrial  Revolution (at the turn of the 19th century) had a vastly bigger effect on productivity, economic growth than the so-called "PC revolution" in the 20th. Think about it! The former meant a transition from the impossibly laughable energy of whale oil to kerosene, coal etc., a mammoth jump in the EROEI of available energy sources. The latter transpired over a period of roughly 20 years, over which the EROEI of oil actually decreased from 16:1 to roughly 12:1. So no wonder that even millions of computers were not able to match the sheer change in productive output that accompanied the Industrial Revolution- and within the scope of the latter's purview we include the internal combustion engine, electricity, and indoor plumbing.

Gordon argues, and he's correct, that by the time the digital revolution got under way- say in the 80s- the big payoff in productivity began shrinking. Meanwhile, the PC-computing payoff basically has "come and gone" dissipating by 2004, when EROEI reached below 10:1 and fracking began as a last desperate effort to snare the vestigial ""riches" of oil - along with deep sea drilling.

We come back again to Mihm's reliance on Canadian economist Clarence Barber's study tying economic growth to a nation's population:

"In theory, immigration might have picked up the slack. While Barber didn’t address this in his study, it’s worth noting that Congress put drastic curbs on inflows of people in 1924. That year, approximately 706,000 immigrants legally entered the country. The number dropped precipitously the following year, and by 1933, the number had fallen to 23,000, a decline of almost 97 percent.
How these demographic declines set the stage for the Great Depression is hard to know with certainty, but Barber believed that the decline in birthrates among native-born Americans was sufficient to set the stage for declines in aggregate demand."

But again, I can make the symmetric argument that Barber was remiss in not factoring immigration into his work. And if this is so, then the claimed drop-offs in aggregate demand are a function of labor inputs, numbers not native birth rates.  I can vouch for my own maternal grandfather who came to the U.S. from Croatia in 1914 and had his own corner grocery operating in Depression-era Milwaukee by the mid 1920s. His business did so well he could help many native born Americans adversely affected. Hence, one cannot and must not dismiss the role of immigration, particularly in an already overpopulated world.

The solution for nations perceived to be underpopulated, then,  is to allow a larger influx of foreign workers.  To be sure, I am not elated about adding any more people to this country, because I think 300-plus million is more than enough. We already risk a large surplus labor force which can drag down pay or at least keep it stagnant. But ...if the choice is between Americans having many more babies, and allowing in more immigrants to try to enhance economic growth - I am definitely in favor of the latter!

The truth?  Increased populations only assist Neoliberal  (or conservative - like the Koch bros.) elites who can afford to live apart - in their gated enclaves- but who can profit handsomely by the vast surplus labor pools created. As investors, or even owners,  they can basically bid down wages and benefits to whatever lowball number they want, and if the peons.....errr  workers.....don't like it....they can tell them they will send the jobs to China.  Or, automate them.

In terms of providing health care to the people already residing in the U.S. this is a big deal. There is already a projected physician shortage across all specialties and at least the immigrant physicians - say from India, Jamaica, Iran etc., had been making the shortage manageable. Now, with idiot Trump's new "EO" this may be truncated, even as he's altered his "bad guys" list from 7 nations to 6 - already showing it was contrived to begin with. (Apart from which a Dept. Of Homeland Security Report from a week or so ago stated clearly no attacks of any kind came from any of those 7 nations.)

In addition, the fact that the new GOP health care plan wants to pull the rug out from underneath families shows this is not the time to have more kids. What support - health wise- will you get,  especially if your child has autism, muscular dystrophy or some other condition that demands extraordinary  medical expense?  The answer is none. So the decision not to have children  is rational in this hostile environment. One in which the majority R -party is more exercised and outraged about the unborn than protecting the health of the already born.

Oh, and protecting their financial health too while also not emulating  Jacob Chaffetz- who actually suggested if people want to afford their new Reepo health care they should not buy that new I-phone. Evidently, this monkey isn't aware that a typical premium for health care now costs $18,000 a year, compared to a few hundred bucks for an I-phone. (With blabber like this, Chaffetz is ripe for a takedown by Katherine Allen, a physician from Salt Lake City now planning to run against him.)

By the end of his piece, Mihm seems to catch a glimmer of realism but then that recedes as he writes::

"data released by the real estate firm Trulia last week indicates that the number of young people living with their parents (or siblings) recently hit levels not seen since 1940. That statistic suggests that a baby boom isn’t likely, never mind a boom in consumption fueled by the formation of new households.

But at least the U.S. still has immigration, right? Perhaps not: President-elect Donald Trump has been vocal about his opposition to illegal immigration, but since the election, he has started to send signals that he intends to crack down on legal immigration, too. If that happens, only a homemade baby boom will save us from further decline in the Trump years."

But alas, as I showed, no such "baby boom" will save us because it merely means more biologic energy "sinks" to draw on ever diminishing EROEI energy sources. In addition,  it will massively add to the debt of any families that do have more kids - given their atrocious expense- and in an environment where Repukes will be slicing all possible benefits (including healthcare) to the working and middle classes.

All it will do is speed our nation's accelerating decline, especially given the upside down economics of the Trumpites.

Neoliberal Global Population Pushers Rebuked Again - By Indonesia

One of the most irritating aspects of  Neoliberal market dogma posits that population growth is essential for future economics' growth. This simpleton proposition, for example,  was expressed in one Nov. 23, 2015 Wall Street Journal  article(p. A1, 'Population's Flagging Growth Undermines Global Economy')

The author, Greg Ip, had written:

"Previous generations fretted about the world having too many people. Today's problem is too few. This reflects two long-established trends: lengthening lifespans and declining fertility.

Simply put, companies are running out of workers, customers or both. In either case economic growth suffers"


Which is total, unadulterated balderdash that no serious, rational person should buy. In fact, I demolished Ip's bunkum in a blog post the same day. Why this is so difficult for guys like Ip to grasp, I have no idea. Maybe, at heart, they are so used to covering Ponzi schemes on Wall Street, they can't see one staring them in the face when it's global. Thus, the notion of undeveloped nations overpopulating to provide a vast labor surplus for developed ones (to support their elderly pensioners) is one such scheme - given that labor class will be looking to remain and received pensions too. So who will pay for them?

Thankfully, more and more sensible nations aren't buying this bull crap and recognize foolish economic prescriptions when they see them. One such case that has been in the news is Indonesia which according to a WSJ piece from December ('Indonesia Looks To Reduce Birth Rate') "seeks to rein in its population growth in the hope it will promote more sustainable economic development"

Well, it should - given a nation is blessed with only a finite store of resources - and simply can't expect to grab them from others if it can't control its own numbers and consumption. As the nation's President Joko Widodo pointed out (ibid.):

"Investment in family planning is an absolute necessity to sustain economic growth in every nation and every nation"

Which begs the question of how it is he could demonstrate more smarts than Ip. Well, maybe because he has to actually summon resources to keep a country running, as opposed to simply writing nonsense.

Joko's perceptions are also spot on given Indonesia is now the 4th most populous nation in the world and comes - as the WSJ article notes - "as China and Japan are striving to do the opposite .....to address the threat aging populations poses to their economies".

Which again, is bunkum, given that in the OECD nations right now there are well over 230 m citizens unemployed thanks to a combination of reasons including corporate restructuring, automation - and offloading jobs to cheaper nations (as the TPP trade pact will do).  So rather than add to the world's population burden why not put these current unemployed back to work wherever needed? Make them 'citizen workers of the world' - since the whole market impetus is to globalization anyway.

Indonesia obviously sees a risk in adding to population the other nations fail to see, given that its current fertility rate is 2.3 per woman (down from 2.6) and it seeks to further lower that to 2.1 What do they see? Well, that the numbers of people added to supposedly support the aging demographic don't square with the greater consumption of resources needed to get them up to working age and sustain them. DUH!

Again, the solution - if one is needed  - would seem to be to allow already mature 'guest workers' in to do any jobs, if support of an elder pension class is required. (Or if higher production is via more human labor capital).  What is not needed is generating an average of 5 million more mouths to feed each year when those mouths will take decades to become labor ready - unless, of course, one opts for child labor.

In the U.S. the problem of low birth rates and the Neolibs carping to increase them, arrives from a different angle. That is, it is just too damned expensive for most people to raise a child (especially without full government assistance) to maturity.  As per a Denver Post Business story ('Discovering What It Costs To Raise A Child') from Jan. 3rd (p. 5K) we learn an "average middle class family will need $245, 340 over 18 years, for a child born in 2013"(From a U.S. Dept. of Agriculture 'Cost of Raising A Child' report)

That chunk of moola ("a lot to jam into anyone's squeezed budget" - especially given wage stagnation) includes: "diapers, formula, child care, baby furnishings, new clothes every year, electronic computers, smart phones...and other gear and seemingly don't end when the young one finds a job".

Housing is the biggest expense, according to the report, an estimated 30 percent of the total cost. This is germane because in OECD nations while labor may not be as oversupplied as in Indonesia, resources for housing starts can be - leaving the most vulnerable marooned with exploding costs.  As per a WSJ piece ('Seniors Hit Hard by Hot Housing Market',  4/1, p. A3), in the San Mateo County, CA area alone while 54, 000 new jobs have been created, only 2,100 new housing units have been built to house the job holders. The ones left out must pay scalper rates for rent (often as much as $2,000/ month) and travel far into the boonies to get anyplace to live.  Seniors over 65 stuck in the rental market, since the 2007-08 housing collapse, are left with skyrocketing rents forcing them to ration groceries as well as meds. Has increased population helped San Mateo, or San Francisco (now experiencing one of the biggest explosions in housing-rental costs in the nation)?  Not at all. Rising population has only created more congestion, more problems.   As the WSJ piece puts it:

"Adding more housing can be a daunting task in suburbs where locals are wary of more residents and traffic"

The truth?  Increased populations only assist Neoliberal elites who can afford to live apart - in their gated enclaves- but who can profit handsomely by the vast surplus labor pools created. As investors, or even owners,  they can basically bid down wages and benefits to whatever lowball number they want, and if the peons.....errr  workers.....don't like it....they can tell them they will send the jobs to China.  Or, automate them.

Can't anyone see that when the Neolibs demand higher birth rates - for whatever reason - they are insisting on having their cake and eating it? They want their precious Pareto-based economic system of endless consumption supported indefinitely by the "Proles", but they don't want to raise the Proles' wages to assist that endeavor. Nor, if Neoliberals' main screeds are to be believed, do they want government to do it either, say via higher taxes on the wealthiest.

People need to grasp that by reproducing to appease a warped economic system they are merely perpetuating gross economic inequality by helping to sustain a vast pool of surplus labor. As Marx showed (and anyone with a brain can figure out- except perhaps the Catholic birth control dogmatists) surplus labor translates into lowest common denominator conditions and endless scarcity. It can never be  a recipe for upliftment, societal  improvement or even balancing the needs of an existing, aging populace.

This was also why Sir. Arthur C. Clarke branded Pope John Paul II one of the worst ever "enemies of humanity" after penning the encyclical 'Veritatis Splendor', which upheld the antiquated birth control position of the Church's Magisterium.

At least Indonesia has now figured this out.

The Global Economy Cannot Be Based On Population Growth!

Isaac Asimov makes a crucial point about over population at his Queen's Park Lecture in Barbados, on Feb. 6, 1976. This photo was part of a write-up in The Barbados Advocate newspaper.

There is a good reason why most physical scientists consider the majority of economists to be blockheads and simpletons: they don't use rational or testable models. One of the most irritating aspects of market economics posits that population growth is essential for future economics growth. This simpleton proposition was expressed yet again in today's Wall Street Journal (p. A1, 'Population's Flagging Growth Undermines Global Economy')

The author, Greg Ip, writing:

"Previous generations fretted about the world having too many people. Today's problem is too few. This reflects two long-established trends: lengthening lifespans and declining fertility.

Simply put, companies are running out of workers, customers or both. In either case economic growth suffers"


Which is total, unadulterated balderdash which no serious rational person should buy. It is merely PR and propaganda for a world we simply cannot afford.  See, e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/04/earth-day-alert-biggest-problem-remains.html

And:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/11/bret-stephens-as-ill-informed-on.html

As noted therein, there's an 80 percent probability that world population - now 7.3 billion - will increase to between 9.6 billion and 12.3 billion by 2100.  This portends a basically unlivable world featuring assorted life-destroying forms of blowback (new diseases, mass starvation, antibiotic failure, disasters, wars) .

As Isaac Asimov bluntly put it in a magnificent lecture delivered in Barbados in February, 1976:

"We can either control our numbers, or.....let nature increase the human death rate"

A serious marker is the fact we humans are currently consuming the equivalent resources of 1.5 Earths per year, which is clearly unsustainable. In fact, it is now approaching 1.6 Earths because of the added humans - more than eighty million per year (1 million added every 4.5 days according to Alan Weisman).   The excellent BBC documentary last year on the Earth's population (hosted by Richard Attenborough) entitled: 'How Many People Can Earth Hold?' also provided much needed realistic insights on sustainability and the planet's bio-support capacity.

Attenborough didn't pull punches or mince words, noting that every current major societal, environmental problem:  from clogged highways, to overflowing hospital ERs to crowded schools, as well as scarcity of commodities (reflected in their much increased prices) to fouling of our water and atmosphere and the greenhouse effect, can be laid at the feet of too many people on this planet - each needing food, air, water and energy from the time it's born.  The more people generated the more CO2 produced as a result of their gobbling resources and assorted carbon footprints. While the latter are greatest in the West, because our societies are based on consumption,

By the same token, Greg Ip's idiotic complaint that the global economy will suffer from flagging population growth is based upon the market economy's over reliance on consumption - as opposed to services. It is also flat out wrong in its claims!

For example, Ip claims companies are "running out of workers". Absolutely not so!  There are an estimated 93 million unemployed or under-employed workers in toto in all the industrial (G 20)  nations and that may well be an underestimate. There are an estimated 150m - 250m unemployed workers world wide all with marketable skills. Why aren't their talents being put to use?  The answer is that capitalist market economies demand higher unemployment numbers - called the "employment rent" - a barometer used by the Federal Reserve to stave off inflation. (Alan Greenspan once stated that every 1 million unemployed workers lowers inflation by 1 percent).  Then there is the general tenet that too few unemployed workers  will drive up wage pressure. Also a goodly pool of "surplus workers" is supposed to strike fear into the existing workers not to complain too much about their jobs or one of the next 20 in line will take them. In other words, unemployment is based on FEAR in market economies.

This simply cannot hold and this attitude is unsustainable! This also applies to healthy, older workers - of whom there are tens of millions in the U.S. alone, who want work and are willing to work - not just sit in recliners watching reruns on TV all day! Why aren't these older workers being hired instead of being let go? Because of rampant ageism which the AARP has repeatedly exposed!  (This goes back to a Fortune 500 white paper that appeared in 1996 claiming that keeping workers past age 50 threatened companies with "diminishing returns". What utter bullshit!)

Hence, Ip's claim is palpable bullshit!

He also insists that companies are "running out of customers". In fact, the truth of the matter is too few companies are producing the service-based artifacts and devices that most people really need. Matching that, current wage levels don't generate the salaries needed (even for existing workers) to provide the disposable income to buy most of the durables  on offer without going into serious debt. (Subprime car loans are now among the fastest growing - totaling $30b according to the WSJ) . Hence, existing customers go for the low hanging more affordable toys such as HDTVs and Ipads etc, available on Black Fridays or at major sales.

Elderly people, since Ip complains about "lengthening life spans" -also need more and varied medical and other services. A recent AARP Bulletin report ('Caregiving in America 2015', Nov. p. 6) notes:

"An invisible army of 40 millions heroes sacrifice their days and nights to care for loved ones. It's time the nation recognized their work"

Indeed! So where the hell are the additional service workers to take over those stressful jobs or at least help them to make lives easier. THAT IS WHERE THE JOBS ARE NEEDED AND CUSTOMERS!  The piece notes that a total of "37 billion hours of unpaid caregiving worth $470 billion" is administered. Why can't companies do it and for a decent price?

Thus, Ip's whining that there is a "shift toward demand of services such as health care"  and away from durable goods - like cars and TVs - is understandable. Can't these stupid capitalists grasp that most Americans already have enough 'stuff'? What they need are more services of every variety, especially in the caregiving realm. (Not just for the elderly but also disabled younger citizens and those ravaged by serious cancers and/or cancer treatments.) There is plenty of work to go around and millions of "customers". And there will be no end to either going forward!

Ip admits (p. A14) that the population increase is indeed more than ample - up 32 percent by 2050- but the "working age" population (ages 26-64) "will only have increased 26 percent". Well, then "working age" needs to be redefined! He admits this means "working longer" or encouraging people to do so, but has absolutely no prescriptions, none, for getting companies to escape their ageist mold and hiring them.   It is obviously one thing to say people should work longer, another to ensure they can get the chance and not be discriminated against.

Contrary to Ip's obsession with durables production, we certainly don't need more stuff in our homes to end up in the massive trash piles and landfills for which we are already running out of space.  Already the inventories of unpurchased durables are so great that warehouses may not be cleared out in 2 years even if there's no further production. What we need, therefore, is a total re-orientation of jobs -including fixing our mangled infrastructure - as opposed to generating more crap to sell:  more Ipads, more Barbies, more X-boxes etc.

Besides all this, economic growth imperatives are toxic by their very nature.

As Charles Reich poignantly notes in his book, Opposing the System, Crown Books, p. 103:

"When society itself comes to be modeled on economic and organizational principles, all of the forces that bind people together are torn apart in the struggle for survival. Community is destroyed because we are no longer 'in this together' because everyone is a threat to everyone else. "

In such a capitalist-driven, consumerist organizational economic model, wherein the resource “pie” for the non-wealthy elite grows ever smaller, the young are threats to us oldsters, as we are threats to them, as neighbor is to neighbor. It can't be otherwise. This capitalist model has seen fit, in other words, to destroy our areas of commonality and common cause, replacing neutral civic space with demeaning commercial space and commercialist, market values.

Reich then describes the visceral 'dog-eat-dog', endless economic warfare that ensues between people in the never ending quest to 'make it' and not be left behind. A tragic game wherein every one, every man, woman and child has a 'market value' and all abiding principles, social or moral, are reduced to economics. Alas, the cost resides in devastated marriages, families and communities.

The capitalist driven “rupture” can occur as quickly as when your neighbor builds a large recreational pool, or puts in a hot tub, and you can’t afford one. Or when he makes a great home improvement add-on while you are left to humble by with the status quo.

By comparison, the endemic socialist, communitarian structures of Barbados or Norway (for example) promote a healthy growth of the social commonweal and the belief that what is done for the benefit of one, or a few, redounds to the benefit of all. Hence, the imperatives for government subsidized low cost housing, national health insurance for all, free education through college. The result is no one becomes hyper-rich (by virtue of the progressive, leveling tax scales), but no kid is starving when he goes to bed at night either, as shown on one CBS '60 Minutes' piece several months ago.

In the U.S. capitalist system, it is more rank commercialized competition that prevails - and that engenders a perpetual creative destruction that ravages precious resources.

IN a world in which already we are consuming the equivalent of 1.6 Earths a year, we simply can't afford more consuming inhabitants. The aim must be to continue toward a stable population policy and adapt economics to suit. Endless growth can no longer be part of the conversation or on the table. See e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/09/44-trillion-in-deficits-by-2024-minus.html

And here is a more useful template for our economist friends (or economics journalists)  like Greg Ip to go by:

1) The definition of economic assets must be extended to include ecological resources, including virgin forests (what is left!) fresh, potable water, and arable land.

2) The definition of growth must be expanded to include entities/activities that are not resource-intensive. For example, let's look at reading and writing poetry, giving singing classes or physics tutorials.

3) Time must be fully exchangeable for money, thereby allowing workers to have more of it via a reasonable monetary exchange. This is especially geared to the 40 million- odd caretakers in the U.S. who currently receive no remuneration for the 37 billion hours of time they invest caring for loved ones - saving the gov't $470 b a year.

Conservatives Are Totally Detached From Economic and Social Reality

The Pew Research Center is out with part two of its huge survey of American politics and it appears the American Right is even more whacked out of its collective head than we thought. Recall the first part, released a couple weeks ago, focused on political polarization see e.g.

 http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/06/ideological-polarization-why-its.html

For this round, Pew's researchers have created a political typology which "sorts voters into cohesive groups based on their attitudes and values." There's bound to be much interest on this and you can see where you fall in Pew's typology quiz here - but for now let's focus on the chart above, particularly the left half.

 

We find more than three quarters of conservative Americans - those in the steadfast conservative, business conservative, and young outsider typology groups - agree that "poor people have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything." Only seven percent of steadfast conservatives say that the poor "have hard lives."  Now, which group do you think is detached from reality? (And displays beliefs at least as egregious as saying climate change isn’t human engendered)

 Incredibly, and to show the extent Neoliberals and their media have mind-fucked everyone, even a not-insignificant share of left-leaning groups say that the poor have it easy.  In my book these folks aren’t truly left at all, but wine and brie chasing Neolib dilettantes most likely in the employ of Wall Street or a media company… or perhaps the beneficiaries of an inheritance so they don’t have to get off their keysters and work. But lucky for them, they aren't my targets in this post.

 

Overall, it is the widespread agreement among conservatives on this point of grabbing benefits without doing anything that's really striking. There are reasonable, well-intentioned arguments on either side of many poverty-related issues - about the causes of poverty (see the right half of the chart), or whether government benefits provide a leg up or simply perpetuate poverty, for instance. But at root the conservative beliefs about what agents perpetuate poverty are totally out of whack with the actual data - which I will get to.

As an educated liberal (some might call me - and have- "over-educated") I  have a hard time understanding how any semi-literate American could read about the experience of families relying on food stamps to eat, or those trying to manage chronic conditions with Medicaid, and conclude that these people “have it easy”. Do these morons even understand how tough – as well as humiliating – it is to even get enrolled in the respective benefit programs? Do they remotely grasp or have they a clue that in many states – since Clinton’s 1996 ‘welfare to work’ law passed- many are forced to work at menial jobs for below minimum wage pay to garner benefits?  Do these turkeys understand how the SNAP program was actually cut back in December and that the bulk of those affected are KIDS under age 18? (15.7 million in all).

It makes a citizen ashamed to call himself an “American” when so many of one’s countrymen can be so fucking ignorant, or stupid. But hell, for conservatives it’s not a handicap but a pastime – they embrace being fucking stupid and ignorant. It’s in their blood! Other salient facts and data points they might wish to process:

1) Compared to middle and upper-income Americans, the poor are three times less likely to have health insurance coverage, and more likely to put off or skip necessary medical treatment as a result;

 

2) The poor are three times more likely to be victimized by crime;

 

3) The daily stresses of living under poverty impose a cognitive burden equivalent to losing 13 IQ points;

 

4) Poor children are three times more likely to be affected by food scarcity and obesity;

 

5) Poor children receive a lower quality education in public school, and the ones who make it to college are more likely to drop out;

 

6) Poorer Americans breathe dirtier air, they sleep less, and they  even have less sex;

 

7) In the end all this "easy living" literally shaves decades off their lives.  

 The aggregate data above shows the beliefs of the conservatives are as baseless as their beliefs about climate change (i.e. not being human-caused)  We might have pity on these jokers, but their arrogance prevents it.  What I’d really  like to see is all the fat and content rich or merely comfortable conservatives try to live the lives the poor have had to- then come back and tell me how “easy’ they have it!

Here’s the harshest truth for our clueless conservative brethren: the poor exist today because a large swatch of the American work force is regarded as “disposable” by the Neoliberal political elites. In most cases, this vast enclave of perhaps 47 million is the victim of simple population increase (including via illegal immigration) which has created a large surplus labor force. Because the size of the labor force is too much by nearly 40 million, not all citizens can be fully employed. There simply aren’t enough jobs nor will there ever be (As it is,  the jobs currently  created per month barely keep up with population replacement levels. Before about 4 years ago, the jobs numbers had fallen far behind population replacement levels.)

 The other harsh fact is that Neoliberalism's market imperative rejects work benefits and hence is driven to pare labor to the bone in favor of capital. This favors companies that are “lean and mean” rather than employee friendly and also mass-hiring. What divisions aren’t profitable are outsourced overseas. The Neoliberal isn’t even content with gov’t jobs and wants to outsource all those to private “lean and mean” concerns. See :
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/richard-eskow/56585/a-secret-plan-to-close-social-securitys-offices-and-outsource-its-work

 

The other jobs in the Neoliberal sphere that pay anything are generally reserved for the embedded Wall Street and financial enclaves (including the debt promoters and holders) and a relatively few “techies” and military hardware (e.g. drone, F35) engineers. Most others  not outsourced have been automated, to relieve the corporations of having to hire flesh and blood humans and pay them - including health benefits.  Hence, the 23 odd million citizens under-employed and another 15 million who remain chronically unemployed - at least until they can try to collect Social Security (which is also causing enormous pressure on the system)

 As for  the much maligned “welfare”,  author Charles Reich has this to say about it (Opposing the System’, Crown Books, pp. 125-126:

The claim that government is free to reduce or cut off welfare and other forms of support for people in economic need is totally mistaken. Welfare is not a gift, nor is it, despite frequent assertions, a transfer from those who earn a living to those who are not.

 Welfare is rather an obligation from society – and from those who are working- to those who have been deprived of work and the opportunity to earn a living. If we want to speak of transfers, it would be more accurate to say that those with a secure place in the economic system are enjoying a transfer of wealth from those who have been excluded from the economic system. Welfare then is partial compensation for a deprivation of livelihood that allows others to work

 

Clearly, a humane welfare model then must be based on the premise that welfare is an obligation from society and not a ‘gift’ or reluctant transfer from the working to the non-working. If an alleged model is assembled without this premise, then it is anything but a genuine welfare model, never mind the language.  In fact, it is more a Neoliberal indentured servitude model, a la "welfare to work" advocated and passed by Clinton.

 Apart from welfare, the only vehicle of possible escape from poverty is the military. But since the Neoliberals and conservatives don’t even wish to fund the VA properly, we’ve seen how that’s turned out. That pair of political degenerate factions loves to start wars and maintain 4,400 bases around the world, but they hate to pay the costs. The end result? Those who seek to escape poverty are often cast further into it since when they leave the military they find they have to deal with PTSD and other disorders, not to mention injuries, and can’t find jobs to use whatever talents they might have.

 As for food stamps, those are hardly “hand outs”. I consider them instead to be the balance of what poorly paid workers  are owed (most SNAP families have at least one primary worker) but which the cheapskate political system refuses to pay them in formal hourly wages.  This system would rather piss away trillions on unprovoked “wars” or massive tax cuts for the rich, than feed 15.7 million kids who have no control over their own fates. Here is how the system perceives all those kids:

 

The evident dynamic:  coupling  mammoth increases in military-defense spending with enormous tax cuts for the wealthiest – is to ensure the majority of the population is unable to obtain adequate remuneration from paid work, and hence become more impoverished over time. As they do, they lose control of their lives, fall into debt bondage and either die or have to work (in lowest level or paid jobs) around the clock just to survive.

 

 

Meanwhile, young people eventually will have to cease going to college and amassing debts equal to a mortgage and join the volunteer military instead - paving the way for the need to incite more conflicts. It’s a never ending cycle of  economic and social insanity.

In effect, the globalization of U.S. production, jobs and mobile capital has laid the seeds for the acceleration of the rate of exploitation ( S/V) ..see, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/12/theory-of-political-elite-1.html

The Political Elite thereby have engineered a built-in mechanism to spawn entrenched destitution among the nation’s  middle and working class populations over time, especially as the population continued to increase in Malthusian proportions

 The issue is simple here: if the political system refuses to approve a living wage – and forces families to live on $9.50 an hour or less, then it can’t be surprised such families need food stamps!  Only a congenital idiot would believe otherwise, which evidently most of these conservatives are if they believe food stamps are “handouts”.

 Sadly, the latest PEW results simply show how further corrupted the political system has become as well as too many of those within it. If these comfortable others – mainly conservatives- can’t seem to believe that they also may one day be poor – if the hammer of fate or Neoliberal ‘craps’ falls on them, then they really have no business sucking up air or space on this planet.  They are a liability and a continuing detriment to us all. They are part of the problem instead of the solution. What we need more than anything else is a powerful revival of the REAL Left, to counterbalance this regression to the lowest common denominator. I will deal with that issue in future blog posts.