The impact of a declining population, on individual countries and the world as a whole

Collapsing birth rates will meet rising child mortality rates halfway -- Americans will be too scared to have more kids

 

Apparently by their MAGA saying, they want to go back to that time when women only left the kitchen to pee, sleep and make babies by the time they turned 16.

 

Partying like it was 1859…

 

If progressives want, well, progress...why isn't the other side known as regressives?

 

Danes are realistic people. If life expectancy keeps increasing in Denmark, that means the government needs to spend more on pensions for the average Dane. Tying retirement age to life expectancy is a rational policy.

Do you think elderly Americans are better off than their Danish counterparts?

 

Most people can work longer.

 

I can definitely teach for a few more years.

If I was a roofer, it would probably be a different story.

 

But that's not about age it's about unions and voters demanding better working conditions and public services, as well as preventive care.

 

As a whole - no - take a visit to a nursing home

 

This is only news if you've had me on ignore for five years.

 

Anecdotally, elderly Danish people seem healthier than their American counterparts. Last time we were there, I can't recall seeing any obese people. Certainly not the type of obesity you routinely see in Wal-Mart in the US.

A healthy 70 year old without the type of comorbidities you tend to see among American seniors can keep working in a non-physical job.

 

For some reason, housing is the only market where many people seem blind to how supply and demand works.

The reason housing is so expensive in the US (I don't know about the Netherlands) is that we simply haven't built enough of it to keep up with a growing population. But there are people here who don't understand this fact.

 

Yes, they are called "NIMBYs." They don't want to build anything new where people want to live because of "traffic" and "property values."

A real issue is that Boomer's are empty nesting and won't sell, but they also block all attempts to build more housing. There is also a backlash from steamrolling local opposition, because in the past steamrolling local opposition destroyed thriving communities of color to build interstate highways.

There is also the fact that every American Family deserves a single family home with a garage. People are willing to drive two hours a day to support this fact.

 

And many boomers are empty nesting in houses that are too big for them, which means that those houses aren't available to people who could actually use the space and the extra bedrooms. My in-laws live in a 5 bedroom house, for example.

 

That's not really correct.

There are probably 1.5 vacant dwellings for every person / family group seeking a dwelling, and because the residential (SF & MF) construction industry is an industry just like the auto industry, it requires continual consumption of a product to exist.

However, because of a variety of factors (demand +/- due to population shifts, NIMBYism, workforce changes, industry arriving or leaving a market) we have gluts of unoccupied housing in some areas, lots of existing housing that is substandard / suboptimal for large portions of the population and areas where housing demand makes reasonable dwelling options unaffordable and even the most fast tracked housing project takes 18 months to permit and construct for anything above a 3 unit dwelling. So supply will always lag behind demand.

 

Yeah...we had a 9 room center hall. When the 3 kids moved on and wifey not mobile there was no way I could cope. Daughter showed up with big U-Haul and me 'n my Billie ended up in So Cal. Unknown to me my sis-in-law arranged and paid for a ramp van 120 mi to Logan and 1st class direct to San Diego.

 

Really interesting conversation here. Could have something to do with why we are seeing young folks skew conservative. In general, conservatives have more kids, so it’s just a numbers game. One has to wonder if the progressive replacement rate will be able to keep up with conservatives long term. Then factor in migration trends.

 

Well...Musk has 14 kids...a couple of them with his wife [wive's]!

 

This is pseudoscientific bullshit

 

We commute over an hour into the city but it’s about more than simply affordability, it’s about safety. Different calculation when you have children. We also don’t commute in 5 days a week.