Population and economy.

[Sir Kenyth]

I'm hoping to attract some knowedgeable people here to help explain this. It seems that it's almost inevetable that population goes up in any given country. If our natural population isn't increasing, we open the doors on immigration to compensate. I wondered why this is?

Here's my uneducated thoughts and reasoning. Economics isn't my strong suite, so bear with me.

The first thing to remember is that people are also resources. In very poor areas a large family is the only way to bring in more money from labor. Unfortunately, like any resource, population becomes less valuable as it becomes more plentiful, so it has a diminishing return. Why is immigration such a big deal right now? I think our service workforce was becoming very costly to maintain comfortably for businesses. They wanted a cheaper source of labor. So they got it. Regardless of what we do, the economy seems to always push for an ever increasing workforce population. As I think about it, the rich basically get a lot more money for very little work comparatively. It's called interest and return on investment. But the physical representation of money is goods and services. If you're not doing a fair portion of the economic work for the money, then that basically means that people further down the economic food chain are supporting you for the difference in physical labor. It seems the object of those in economic control is to pay the average person only as much as they need to spend to be a productive worker. This minimizes the resources spent in creating the goods and services, reserving more of the pie for those controlling the distribution of wealth (investing). It seems that the lower classes support the upper by producing less goods and services than they consume. As you try to increase the size of the upper classes, you need supporting growth in the lower classes or it collapses. Automation and production machinery has minimized this to a point, but somebody still has to put in the elbow grease! Without physical goods and services to back up the money figures, inflation runs rampant. To maintain momentum in the middle to upper class, we need to keep increasing our worker population. We know that this can't go on forever. The only way for it to stop is a collapse. Is this what we have to look forward to? An inevetable economic collapse right after a world wide resource shortage?

[Gabrielles blades]

i disagree with the suppositions put forth

first, population not rising doesnt necessarily equate to anything at all in regards to immigration policies. For example, china i believe has a goal of zero population growth.

second, populations 'value' is unaffected by its own growth. simple reasoning...the more people there are, there more needs there are, therefore more jobs etc, probably is all linearly related.

we push for a workforce population because the more people working, the more stuff there is to go around - whether that be intangible stuff such as service, or tangible such as goods. If less people worked, then we would see less things available. this would probably cause a recession or depression. Note, working doesnt necessarily mean physical labor or even mental labor. For example, if everyone saved your money at home rather than spending it on investment, goods, services etc, then the economy would be affected by a higher inflation rate than if people invested or spent their money.

If you are trying to point out the flaws in a capatalistic system (that there are rich, middle class, and poor), then i think the flaws pointed out are actually merits. The rich got rich at first by working hard, true some people inherit their wealth from their parents - but that simply means that the parents really worked smart or hard. while it may seem to the average working class guy that he is working hard and the CEO is making money doing nothing, it actually isnt the case. those people really do have important jobs, which if they failed at could mean a loss of jobs for all of the lesser payed employees.
also, a smart CEO does not 'pay only what is needed for a productive worker' a smart ceo will know that to keep happy employees who are productive, he must offer financial or emotional rewards good enough to keep them. what that means is, they must be competitive in their wage/salary with regards to anyone else in their business. this competition to keep good labor leads to wages that are fair. after all if the wage was unfair, people would look elsewhere for a job.

upper class growth doesnt necessarily mean the necessary increase in lower class available for physical labor. the middle class for example is as likely to be gaining more jobs as the lower class.

No matter what economic system you are working under, if you take away the resources to produce the goods, then there will be a loss of jobs, and a loss of goods produced. it is only natural that this would spark a recession or depression depending upon how severe the shortage is. The only true way to avoid such a thing is if we somehow move past physical goods as a commodity; which can realy probably only happen if we somehow create a massive cybernetic mind where the population can reside virtually without physical bodies.
of course in such a high tech civilization it would be unlikely to ever run out of needed resources since the resources necessary to maintain such a civilization would no doubt be extremely minimal comparatively to our current resource needs.

[wellard]

OK simple economics for simple people (ME!)

Larger workforce helps keep down inflation. Anything under 4 to 5% unemployment and the fight to attract quality workers pushes up wages and conditions. Basic supply and demand

Larger population = larger market. It is the easy solution to the annual growth that our capitalist society feeds upon.

Even in western European countries where the RATE of population increase is slowing and largely fuelled by immagration, it is still enough to provide the market economy’s oxygen of growth. What I have yet to see is how capitalism can thrive in a shrinking market place over a long period of time.

[ZaRos]

"What I have yet to see is how capitalism can thrive in a shrinking market place over a long period of time."

Growth in productivity.

What I mean is; every year we see a growth in the national income, the growth is not driven by an expansion af the workforce, but is instead driven by more and more effective production methods. I live in denmark (scandinavia) and we are experiencing a decreasing workforce and still we have a positive growth in BNP.

And by the way "a shrinking market place"?!? The size of the market is defined by the markets power too consume, and therefore it is the amount of money (the BNP) and not the population that define the size...
Come to think of it; there have never, through out history, been a long term decrease in the market size in any nation. Not even during the economic crisis in Japan has der been more then 3-5 years (if that many) with decrease in BNP.

Hope this helps you... Any way if what I have written is readable, I am, when it comes to it, a dane with very bad linguistic skills [img]smile.gif[/img]

Hmmm. Sounds to me like replacing people with robots or machines that do it all. No need for manual labor; even have robots to fix robots. Then maybe people will be occupied with mental and spiritual pursuits and let robots do the manual, physical labor. Interesting.

[Gabrielles blades]

*starts thinking about the terminator movies and gets scared*
i sure hope they dont do anything like that
doing that, and eventualy the entire workforce will be robots who may or may not kill us all.

[ZaRos]

Hehe... As long as we don't give the robots an AI i don't think the will run around killing humans [img]smile.gif[/img]
Hey!!! why can't the robots do all the work, personally i would like my days to go
somtehing like this. 12.30 Just gor out of bed, 12.30 hanging around, maybe watch a movio or call some frinds. 15.00 take a trip to the beach maybe play some beach wolley and a have a copple of beers... etc. That would be the world of my dreams . anway it would be if we included a couple of chicks [img]smile.gif[/img]
All power to the robots... ehhh... all work to the robots

[ 11-04-2003, 03:32 AM: Message edited by: ZaRos ]