An economic paradox of jobs and population

An economic paradox of jobs and population

 

We need more young people so that there will be enough to fill all the jobs to keep our aged population surviving. So it is said. We have a problem with more aged people all the time, needing more younger people to support them. So it is said.

We need more jobs, so that there will be enough to give employment to all our unemployed young people. So it is said.

When both are said at the same time, more people needed to fill all the jobs,, and more jobs needed for all the unemployed, they must surely contradict each other. Is it just that the unemployed are not fit to fill all the empty jobs? What can be done?

Cam we look at the jobs that are at present held – are all of them necessary, or is their function just to be jobs, whether useful or not? Where does the money come from, to pay for all the useless jobs?

Can we look at the jobs which are needed – how many of them are not filled, because there is not the money to pay for them?

Australian population

We cannot hope to do anything about protecting nature while we expect enormous population increases. Melbourne growing to 8 million people
with the loss of some of the most beautiful country and wildlife in Australia is
No profit to anyone except developers and big retailers.
Great trouble for all other inhabitants with horrid housing, transport, loss of amenities and fertile farmland, more landfill etc.

We must keep our population low while we still can.
Climate change requires a smaller population to survive.
No more baby bonuses after the first two children is easy to do, for example.

The Japanese problem of an ageing population

Up to 1950, Japanese population was under 90 million. I was there in 1950, and the place seemed just right regarding population, ability to feed itself after the war, and beautiful countryside.

A few years ago the Japanese produced a film called something like The Mountain of Nagoyama, which told about life in a medieval village. The village kept itself off starvation by a rule (among other strategies) that people over sixty went up the mountain to die. Everyone, including the elderly, accepted this. It fitted the Japanese willingness to sacrifice for the good of everyone else, which is also seen in the kamikazi suicide flying in the 2nd world war.
The Japanese are very pragmatic, and have a history of self-sacrifice and stoicism. Their attitude to death is not that of the West.
They may well solve their ageing population not by increasing the total population with more young people – a growth policy which must reach disaster point at some time – but by decreasing the numbers of the elderly.
This could be by the voluntary deaths of the demented and painfully-dying, two very costly groups. The Japanese people could very well be wiling to do this for themselves – (and bring the numbers of adult nappies down to the numbers of child nappies.)

Declining populations need a new economic theory and practice, not raising populations

We are now in the middle of perhaps the greatest demographic change in recorded history.(Mike Seccombe)

The fact of low-fertility, declining populations should not be seen only in the light of the financial profit consequence of ageing populations, but as a rational response to the world’s present and increasing shortages of water and other essential natural resources, cramped life-styles of the masses, decreasing land for wildlife, and increasing challenges of climate changes. It is irrational to think that we must always have growth of economic production requiring growth of population. The continued population growth of Africa sets problems of political instability, forced emigrations, droughts, loss of wildlife and jungles, increasing deserts and continued oppression of women.
The problem of ageing populations needs to be met by other means than increasing birthrates. The healthy old are an asset not a burden. The sick aged are a burden on other people to care for them, that is, demands on labor, with minimum need for economic production of goods to keep them alive. We must solve the problem of the chronic slow dying of the ‘struldbrugs’ that we must fear for ourselves.
We must change our model of economic production and profit to meet declining populations. World population in 1950 was far fewer than now; it was not excessive. We might retreat to those figures.

Fantasy solutions to major problems

Magic solutions

 

During the day we can seek practical solutions to the insoluble problems of our day.

At night, we can dream of Magic solutions.

Here are some favorites:

 

The Nasty Tastes – the second alcoholic drink in a day tastes awful

The Personal Car – you put it on like a garment; it is no bigger.  Then off you go.

The Speeded up Food-Chain – strait from the rocks and lichen, to appetising food, (and thence,  to compost for the soil)

The Libido Sublimed. A breeze blew over the world, and human sexual desires were changed to desire for affection.  At that breath were solved most of the problems of humankind, and much of its literature.

The Neural Attitude Card – to see with other people’s thinking

The Stuck Oil – Suddenly all the oil in the earth becomes stuck and gushes no longer

The Escalated Photosynthesis – we could do it ourselves, at the risk of turning green

The Palestinian Canyon – between the Israelis and the Palestinians.  Its river is navigable, and fresh water.

The Retrospective Videos –  find out what has really happened in history

The Self-Exploding Weapons –  pull the trigger and you blow up yourself

The Gun Catastrophe that ends the American Dream of a Gun for every Good Guy –  a man with an assault rifle or two manages to shoot most of the platform speakers and a good many of the audience at the National Rifle Association general meeting

 

Articles on political and social issues

 

The future of fire in Australia Environment – 28/02/2012 – 14 comments

Rapid obsolescence as a form of waste Economics – 3/02/2012 – 6 comments

The effects of violent video games Media – 19/01/2012 – 7 comments

The curse of the McMansion Economics – 24/11/2011 – 7 comments

Free trade and fair trade September 2011 Feature – 19/09/2011 – 11 comments

Bias on ABC Radio National Media – 6/09/2011 – 38 comments

Climate change at Radio National Media – 12/08/2011 – 39 comments

Ageing populations need not be disastrous for Western governments Society – 27/07/2011 – 29 comments

Our age of paradoxes Society – 31/05/2011 – 5 comments

The Arabian Nights and Muslim beliefs and practices Religion & Spirituality – 4/05/2011

How puny are you? Environment – 8/04/2011 – 19 comments

Unnecessary costs of the elderly Society – 31/03/2011 – 13 comments

Australian consumers, and our floods and cyclones Economics – 9/02/2011

Challenges and responses to disasters Nation Building – 19/01/2011 – 1 comment

Spare that tree: the arithmetic of supply and demand Environment – 23/12/2010 – 5 comments

Nothing over a million dollars Society – 14/12/2010 – 37 comments

The cost of elections Domestic Politics – 12/10/2010 – 5 comments

Don’t waste the Murray River! Environment – 1/07/2010 – 3 comments

Ballyhoo and balloons: political elections Domestic Politics – 23/02/2010 – 3 comments

We’ve never had it so good Society – 9/02/2010 – 7 comments

What a difference a lot of humans make Society – 21/01/2010 – 6 comments

Combatting prejudice: African Australian refugee youth Society – 19/08/2009 – 6 comments

The Internet at home – a member of the family August 2009 Feature – 5/08/2009

A stitch in time … Society – 25/06/2009 – 9 comments

Damage control – a greater problem than climate change Environment – 14/05/2009 – 34 comments

Carbon trading has problems Environment – 5/03/2009 – 7 comments

Housing for our changing climates Environment – 23/02/2009 – 17 comments

ABC TV for children Media – 22/12/2008 – 4 comments

Rupert Murdoch on education for the disadvantaged Education – 4/12/2008 – 1 comment

Manufacturing, jobs and low technology Science & Technology – 9/10/2008 – 12 comments

Language and literacy Education – 8/09/2008 – 2 comments

Could the Olympic Games become fair sport? Sport – 27/08/2008 – 7 comments

An audit for educational disadvantage Education – 15/08/2008 – 9 comments

Cardinal Pell’s babies – quantity or quality Society – 31/07/2008 – 18 comments

Marriages for the modern world Society – 16/07/2008 – 7 comments

Who owns your sewage? Environment – 3/07/2008 – 8 comments

The case for an Australian-made small second car Environment – 5/06/2008 – 29 comments

Rubbishing on about plastic bags Environment – 30/04/2008 – 12 comments

An ambit claim for the Ruddfest 2020 March 2008 Feature – 11/03/2008 – 2 comments

Revolutionary change in education February 2008 Feature – 20/02/2008 – 10 comments

Cutting waste – saving the planet without destroying economies Environment – 7/02/2008 – 19 comments

Australian citizenship and human rights Law & Liberties – 17/01/2008 – 12 comments

Population is not a front page issue Environment – 17/12/2007 – 43 comments

Improving politicians’ behaviour Domestic Politics – 5/12/2007 – 11 comments

The big election myth – is the economy strong? Economics – 24/10/2007 – 62 comments

Compensation as a right? Health – 8/10/2007 – 10 comments

Mudslides and deserts

Mudslides and deserts caused by increasing population

Many poor people in countries like China, Nepal and sub-Saharan Africa are caught in a dilemma. They need fuel for cooking, timber for building. Some cut the trees and scrub in the hills above; some in the semi-deserts around them. The population is growing in numbers, and so they need to build where the trees have been.

Mudslides have many causes, but the most common feature today is human interference with the stability of hills, especially removal of trees for fuel and building. Illegal logging companies, stimulated by population growth among other things, also remove trees and need the terrain graded for transport. All these disturb the natural stability of slopes. Heavy rains, droughts, earthquakes, bushfires or volcanic eruption trigger the mudslides, which overwhelm the people’s villages, their cattle and their crops.

There may be efforts to reafforest.  In pre-war Korea I saw the efforts to replant on the bare hills. Afterwards I saw the poor people following after, taking the new saplings for fuel. It took a strong government post-war to manage to get trees back on the hills, and employ poor people as foresters, to avoid them stripping the hills in their poverty.

But what can the people do?  They need the fuel and the wood now, at the price of safety in the future.

We see many touching pictures of African semi-desert and desert, in which elephants move across the stony plain, where once they luxuriated in jungle. The elephants too, pick the only surviving trees. The pictures shown in charities’ leaflets show women walking ever further afield across the stony plain to bring home the bundle of twigs which mean that next time she must walk farther. We are torn with pity for her seven children, who mean the problems are greater still when they are grown up, if they have seven children each themselves.

So many of the climatic troubles we bring on ourselves – by our Western way of easygoing life, and by the stressful lives of the poor people.

Towards solutions by humane population reduction

The West has had compassion that has brought the poor medicine,so that more children survive than ever before – but has failed in the compassion that would ensure they had a fair chance in life.  We need to help other countries achieve social welfare to ensure families survived without having to invest in as many children as possible, and for families to have sources of fuels and structural materials so that the hills and the stony fields were not made dangerous ecologically.

The solar stoves are more important than the games for children, when it has to be a choice. And contraception is more important than the advice for abstinence to people who have few of the other pleasures that we have.

These must be our aid responses to the mudslides, and to all the soil blown away that leaves desert.

Australian population

Water, soil fertility, animal and plant life, and people’s comfort, all demand a stable population.
Lacking our own manufactures, we rely on escalating property values and the building industry, as well as imports, for our economic prosperity on the existing economic model.
We need another model.

The pressure groups for escalating population are all short-sighted.

Migration

20 3 2010

Migrants are caught in two great injustices –  the countries that want them in order to keep wages low in manual and semi-skilled jobs, and the injustices that make them flee their home countries.

Low wages for essential industries are an anomaly; top salaries are thousands of times the lowest paid.

We could do more to help people in countries the migrants come from – the sums spent on armaments the world over, corruption, preventing them building up sustainable industries to keep them to producing commodities we want cheap, foreign or corrupt ownership of resources, and  lack of family planning.

In the middle ages,  the Jews had a role to fill a gap in a low-regarded industry (usury) and today’s migrants to fill a gap in low-regarded industries (manual and semi-skilled).