If the citizens hate the law against front yard gardens (yardens?) so much they should change it. Until then, if the law is proven to define no front yardens, then that's the law.

It's all a matter of degree, isn't it liberals? You're upset about THIS when your eco-fascism is now fully one-third of fedguv's laws...LOOK at the arbitrary power you've given your masters!

All of a sudden you're FOR private property rights? Out-RAGEOUS!



Here's some of the voices of reason of your heroes:

"We already have too much economic growth in the United States. Economic growth in rich countries like ours is the disease, not the cure."

--Paul Elrich, Stanford University biologist and Advisor to Albert Gore

"I think if we don't overthrow capitalism, we don't have a chance of saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have an ecological society under socialism. I don't think it's possible under capitalism."

--Judi Barri of Earth First!

"Capitalism is a cancer in the biosphere."

--Dave Foreman, Founder, Earth First!

"The northern spotted owl is the wildlife species of choice to act as a surrogate for old-growth forest protection," explained Andy Stahl, staff forester for the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, at a 1988 law clinic for other environmentalists. "Thank goodness the spotted owl evolved in the Pacific Northwest," he joked, "for if it hadn't, we'd have to genetically engineer it."

--Andy Stahl at a 1988 law clinic for environmentalists, staff forester, Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund

"Now, in a widening sphere of decisions, the costs of error are so exorbitant that we need to act on theory alone, which is to say on prediction alone. It follows that the reputation of scientific prediction needs to be enhanced. But that can happen, paradoxically, only if scientists disavow the certainty and precision that they normally insist on. Above all, we need to learn to act decisively to forestall predicted perils, even while knowing that they may never materialize. We must take action, in a manner of speaking, to preserve our ignorance. There are perils that we can be certain of avoiding only at the cost of never knowing with certainty that they were real."

--Jonathan Shell, author of Our Fragile Earth

"A global climate treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the greenhouse effect."

--Richard Benedict, an employee for the State Department working on assignment for the Conservation Foundation

"[W]e have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."

--Stephen Schneider, Stanford University Professor and author Quoted by Dixey Lee Ray in Trashing the Planet (1990)


"More science and more technology are not going to get us out of the present ecological crises until we find a new religion, or rethink our old one."

--Lynn White, Jr. "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis," Science, (Mar. 10 1967), p 1206

"Childbearing [should be] a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license.... All potential parents [should be] required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing."

--David Brower, Friends of the Earth

"The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals but absolutely limited by the state."

--Keith Boulding, originator of the "Spaceship Earth" concept

"If radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human populations back to sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS. It [AIDS] has the potential to end industrialism, which is the main force behind the environmental crises."

--Earth First! newsletter

The Big Lie About The Great Depression

Ben Shapiro

In her vital and fascinating new book, "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression," Amity Shlaes tells a story about national icon President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Shortly after FDR took office, Shlaes explains, he began arbitrarily tinkering with the price of gold. "One day he would move the price up several cents; another, a few more," writes Shlaes.

One particular morning, Shlaes relates, FDR informed his "brain trust" that he was considering raising the price of gold by 21 cents. His advisers asked why 21 cents was the appropriate figure. "It's a lucky number," stated Roosevelt, "because it's three times seven." Henry Morgenthau, a member of the "brain trust," later wrote: "If anybody knew how we really set the gold price through a combination of lucky numbers, etc., I think they would be frightened."

Ignorance of basic economics — and the concurrent attempt to obfuscate that ignorance by employing class-conscious demagoguery — remains the staple of the Democratic Party. For over 60 years, Democrats and their allies in the media and public school system have taught that the Great Depression was an inevitable result of laissez-faire economic policies, and that only the Keynesian policies of the FDR government allowed America to emerge from the ashes. The Great Depression, for the left, provides conclusive proof that when it comes to economics, government works better than business.

This point of view has a sterling reputation. That reputation, unsurprisingly, was created by FDR himself. FDR turned the Great Depression into a morality play — a morality play in which those in favor of individual initiative were the sinners, while those who relied on government were the saints. "We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals," Roosevelt intoned in 1937. "We know now that it is bad economics."

This, as Shlaes convincingly shows, is hogwash. The Depression lasted nearly a decade longer than it should have, due almost entirely to governmental meddling under both Herbert Hoover and FDR. High tariffs and government-sponsored deflation followed by enormous taxation and unthinkable government expenditures turned a stock market stumble into a decade-long nightmare. Only the devastation of World War II lifted America out of the mire, solving the drastic unemployment problem and providing a legitimate medium for FDR's pre-war wartime policies.

Nonetheless, the myth of a grinning FDR leading America forth from the soup kitchens remains potent.
And today's Democrats rely desperately on that fading falsehood, hoping to bolster their bad economics with worse history. Hillary Clinton routinely hijacks Rooseveltian language, most recently disparaging the "on your own society" in favor of a "we're all in it together society." John Edwards' "two Americas" nonsense drips of FDR's class warfare. Never mind that Keynesian economics does not work. Never mind that it promotes unemployment, discourages investment and quashes entrepreneurship. For Democrats, the image of government-as-friend is more important than a government that actually protects the rights that breed prosperity.

"The impression of recovery — the impression that a President was bending the old rules and, drawing upon his own courage and flamboyance in adversity and illness, stirring things up on behalf of the down-and-out — mattered more than any miscalculations in the moot mathematics of economics," novelist-cum-economist John Updike recently wrote, defending FDR from Shlaes' critique. "Business, of which Shlaes is so solicitous, is basically merciless, geared to maximize profit. Government is ultimately a human transaction, and Roosevelt put a cheerful, defiant, caring face on government at a time when faith in democracy was ebbing throughout the Western world. For this inspirational feat he is the twentieth century's greatest President, to rank with Lincoln and Washington as symbolic figures for a nation to live by."

For Updike and his allies, image trumps reality. The supposed harshness of the business world matters more for Updike than the fact that profit incentives promote economic growth, efficiency and creativity. The "caring face" of government is more important for Updike than creating a framework that produces jobs and affordable commodities. Updike's sporadically employed father liked FDR because FDR made him feel "less alone." No doubt Updike's father would have felt less alone if he had been steadily employed by a private enterprise — the kind of enterprise stifled by Roosevelt.

"We are beginning to wipe out the line that divides the practical from the ideal," FDR announced in 1937, as unemployment stood at 15 percent, "and in so doing we are fashioning an instrument of unimagined power for the establishment of a morally better world." Today's Democrats continue to embrace the vision, even at the cost of a prosperous reality.

>> ^jwray:

>> ^blackoreb:
Let me get this straight - you are in favor of increasing government spending, so the government can spend more money on it's people? Very sociable of you.
>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
I am in favor of any program that takes money away from government, and returns it to people.


He's also apparently in favor of increasing the national debt to pass short term tax cuts for the rich that don't really have any benefit to economic growth, just like dubya did.


But he's in favor of increasing the debt to return money to the people. I'm still not sure what the difference is, but apparently there's a difference. I've yet to hear anyone explain it in a logical fashion, though.

>> ^blackoreb:

Let me get this straight - you are in favor of increasing government spending, so the government can spend more money on it's people? Very sociable of you.
>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
I am in favor of any program that takes money away from government, and returns it to people.



He's also apparently in favor of increasing the national debt to pass short term tax cuts for the rich that don't really have any benefit to economic growth, just like dubya did.

>> ^Drachen_Jager:

Let's see.
Conservatives say tax cuts on the rich help the economy.
Yet, taxes on the rich have hardly ever been lower, the economy sucks.
Liberals say that the tax rate on the rich does not have a major impact on economic growth. Let's see who's right.
http://kemstone.com/Journal/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/marginalGrowth
.jpg
Oh, would you look at that! Back in the 1930s when tax rates on the wealthiest were 90% Yes, 90%! The growth rate averaged about the same as it does now, perhaps a little higher even. Rapid drops in the marginal tax rate did not have any appreciable impact on the economic growth rate.
Imagine that. The conservatives have been lying to everyone all these years. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that conservative politicians get most of their financial support from the wealthiest citizens?


You do know that government spending is counted in GDP right? That isn't "real" growth this chart is measuring, just money being spent...even if that money was government debt. They weren't building the job of the future in many cases. The argument for taxation shouldn't start at what makes the economy the best as the first argument, but what is the most fair. Why are people that have more money less entitled to it than those that have less, perhaps not even substantially less? Obviously, you don't need to add incentives to getting rich with low taxes, but taxes shouldn't be the means of social change but funding the affairs of government. Anything else is a moral argument which shouldn't be in the realm of governments to answer. What you view as "good" in economic growth, a environmental-minimalist sees as a rape of the natural world...who is right, more important, who are you to tell either one they are wrong?

Let's see.

Conservatives say tax cuts on the rich help the economy.

Yet, taxes on the rich have hardly ever been lower, the economy sucks.

Liberals say that the tax rate on the rich does not have a major impact on economic growth. Let's see who's right.

http://kemstone.com/Journal/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/marginalGrowth.jpg

Oh, would you look at that! Back in the 1930s when tax rates on the wealthiest were 90% Yes, 90%! The growth rate averaged about the same as it does now, perhaps a little higher even. Rapid drops in the marginal tax rate did not have any appreciable impact on the economic growth rate.

Imagine that. The conservatives have been lying to everyone all these years. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that conservative politicians get most of their financial support from the wealthiest citizens?

SS is a Ponzi setup, plain and simple. The government isn't "investing" the money into anything but the government and returning that to their tax investors. It requires a larger working population coming on board to subsidize the older holders. The only reason it hasn't blown up is we have had continual increases in population as well as a mostly growing economy. Throw in a major economic paradigm change where population isn't tripling every century or the economic growth doesn't increase exponentially and the problem hits you in the face. You either have to raise taxes, lower the value of the dollar, reduce distributions, or raise the age cap; there is no other solution. With the baby bloomers finally coming of age, the change of this system to something that doesn't completely implode has to happen sooner than later.

There is no "surplus" in SS. That surplus it in U.S. government bonds which tie their worth to the general perception of the health of the US economy. The surplus owns no real assets in other words. Your 401k invests in actual companies, the SS trust invests in the government. For there to be an actual "trust" like a 401k, then the totality of nation wide spending would have to remain consistent and taxes be the same.

"From an economic standpoint, the question of whether the trust fund is fact or fiction comes down to whether the trust fund contributes to national savings or not. If $1 added to the fund increases national savings by $1, the trust fund is real. If $1 added to the fund increases national savings by $0, the trust fund is not real. A substantial body of economic research argues that the trust funds have led to only a small to modest increase in national savings and that the bulk of the trust fund has been spent."

http://www.nber.org/papers/w10953
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=233130

The proof is in tax cuts and increased spending via the Bush/Obama spending packages and tax breaks. This has a net effect of the government spending more. If they are spending more then they are saving, it doesn't matter where, then there effectively is no actual trust via inflation tax. To put it more plainly, the government has spent in 2 years what ss has taken decades to accumulate...there is no savings really.

---
I can only work with proven results, not what others want things to be or theorize is possible. Obamanomics has failed to deliver prosperity, and this may be because increasing prosperity is not what it's designed to do. It could be working beautifully if its goal is to increase dependency on government and curtail American influence worldwide.

REAL American unemployment is currently 18%, not the BS that D.C. is spouting. 2 to 3% more wouldn't even register with the crew in D.C.
---

You cannot 'prove' anything in a social science. What you can do is historically look at past crises and see what worked and what didn't.

Financial crises historically have high levels of unemployment following them. This is because as in this case for the US, consumers have overspent and must spend years rebuilding their savings levels. As they rebuild them, demand is low, the demand for employees is low, and there is relatively higher unemployment.

This is historically accurate for Latin America's debt crisis in 1982, the 1990 asset bubble bust in Japan and so far entirely consistent for the financial crisis in the US.

The way you label fiscal stimulus as Obamanomics leads me to believe you think that his policies are idiosynchractic and unique. They are not. Virtually every country in the world hit by the global financial crisis has enacted the same combination of direct spending, lower taxes and looser monetary policy. You would be well advised to be aware of this.

Also, despite what you may claim, the fact that unemployment is high and has risen under Obama is not evidence that his policies have not worked. In fact again there is historical evidence to suggest the US has fared better than other countries. See the first graph below:

http://www.economist.com/node/17041738

Unemployment is measured by virtually all countries as the number of unemployed out of the proportion actively seeking work. Yes, this is not an accurate measure when previous employees have been discouraged from looking for work and have dropped out, but it is consistent with most measures used internationally.

---
Though the government obviously denies it, the origins of this financial crisis were largely the fault of government policies and meddling.

"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong … somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. … I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. … And an enormous debt to boot."

----Henry Morgenthau, FDR's Secretary of the Treasury

Keynesian economic theory does not work. It mistakes action for results. Despite enormous spending (which began as Bush was sunsetting) Obamanomics hasn't created any jobs, unless you count the temporary kick of the useless Census.

The American people have the wealth and are indeed holding onto it. There are 2 trillion dollars in assets waiting to rejoin the economy. So why don't people jump in again?

No sane business is going to invest heavily or hire workers with our leftists in power, threatening to tax everything in sight and "punish" profits. This current govt--even with the coming Republicans in January--also offers no stability or confidence, and I don't expect this to change anytime soon.

The current US Secretary of the Treasury is a tax cheat, and well before they installed the SOB they knew he was a tax cheat. Does it get any more obvious the lack of integrity and disdain for the public harbored by the crew in DC.
---

I agree that the financial crisis has much to do with government meddling. Policymakers in the US have historically encouraged the quintessential notion of homeownership frivolously and irresponsibly. At the other end equally though, predatory lending exacerbated the issue. Left to their own devices, banks knew full well that they could generate huge returns by lending, and then selling off those financial assets to wipe themselves clean of risk. They also knew that if worst came to worst, the government would bail them out as they were too integral to the functioning of the world economy. Both less intervention and more regulation was necessary to prevent what happened.

Either of these 2 factors in and of itself would have led to a crisis sooner than later, would you not agree?

I can't take a quote seriously that skips over text 3 times in 4 lines. For all you know, the original intent has been completely manipulated. For all you know (based on previous experience) this wasn't even SAID by who it's claimed to have been said by.

Besides, there is no evidence there. It is someone's opinion, without any facts, without any figures. Nothing to substantiate what is being said. I genuinely hope you don't rely on people's pure opinions as gospel and factcheck what you read.

Again, you are simply wrong the stimulus has not created jobs. It has created both permanent jobs by giving subsidies to industries, and temporary jobs to prevent skills loss from unemployed workers:

http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2010-08-30-stimulus30_CV_N.htm

Read the title of the article above.

Frankly, how is it POSSIBLE that you think it hasn't created any jobs? Where do you think the money goes? Do you think it's laundered into people's bank accounts and shipped overseas? How can you possibly think that a stimulus has not created any jobs? That the only jobs it has created are for the census is a typical right wing talking point from what I hear. Again, I implore you to consult some less idealogical sources without absolutist views.

Not to go on a tangent here, but how often have these sources you rely on information for actually lauded something that Obama has done? Do you really think it is possible that Obama has done nothing good, or let alone nothing that ideologically they would agree on? Take for example the increased drone strikes in Pakistan, relative to even Bush. This seems like a clear cut policy that right wing pundits and blogs would laud. Why is there no one mentioning this?

Or do you think that possibly, just possibly, they have an agenda or an absolutist view with which they perceive the Democrats and the left-wing that blinds them to anything that doesn't conform to their predisposed views that Democrats = bad?

Why would you want to emulate and follow the opinions of someone who cannot look at things at face value?

For your comment on why investors are not investing, they are not investing because of the debt which will worsen if taxes fall - this is historically proven as fact. But let's say for argument that taxes were drastically reduced. Demand is still low in the US though. People are still rebuilding their balance sheets. What will the multinational and wealthy corporations do with this excess revenue?

They will invest it overseas in developing markets with high growth rates. Lower taxes will be paying for growth in foreign countries. Since the money will be invested elsewhere, even less of it will be reaped back in tax revenue. Growth overseas will be rising while the US is falling further and further into debt default.

I am curious where exactly you don't agree with this logic.

I have nothing cogent to say against your notion that Democrats want to punish profits.

It does not make sense.

The buy-up of bank and auto industry stocks is being relinquished. Citibank recently bought back some of these shares, and the government made a profit. The auto industry is making a profit. There is simply no evidence that Obama wants to nationalize anything. There is no public option. The independent review committee to trim Medicare will MINIMIZE government involvement, something the right quite hypocritically, is against.

How is it not obvious that punishing profits would be bad politics? How is it not obvious that doing this would not win votes? Where is your evidence that he intends to do this? The health care plan is deficit neutral. Financial reform will reduce risk.

Will taxes have to rise? Sure, because without that, the budget will never return to neutral. This is fact. Cutting social policies by that much is not feasible. Why do you blame Obama for this and not Bush who allowed this to fester during prolonged periods of economic growth? Would you rather the problem fester while taxes are kept low and imperil the whole economy in the process? There are only those two options.

Also, I think I laid out, what is a pretty simple and logical explaining of fiscal policy, and why it works.

Where do you disagree with it?

---
Well, like you or anyone else, I'm just as likely to vote to stop the other side as promote my own. Where you live, govt is seen as a benevolent force for good. And as you can probably attest, you pay through the nose for the government services provided.

Individual > State = America

State > Individual = everywhere else

If the Republicans don't repeal or de-fund obamacare they are finished.
---

The funny this is, if I were making the same as I am not in the US, I would be paying nearly the same in taxes.

I'm a recent university grad and make 60K/year.

I pay 15% between 6-35k, and 30% between 35-60k. (4350 + 7500 = $11850)

The US income brackets are very similar.

For me they would be, 10% between 0 - $8375, 15% between $8376 - $34,000 and 25% between $34,000 - $60,000. (838 + 3844 + 6500 = 11182)

So let's see. I'm paying roughly $700 more (a bit more actually, say $1000 for argument considering the exchange rate of 0.95, but close enough) for free universal access to hospital treatment and subsidized out of hospital expenses; for generous unemployment benefits if I ever lose my job. For university cost assistance, despite the fact that I could easily pay off my university debt if I lived at home with minimal expenses in one year (It's ~25k from 5 years of study with nothing paid back yet). I hear that in the US for Ivy league schools it can be 20-30K US A YEAR. I mean that last point alone MORE THAN makes up for the difference. Frankly any of those do by themselves. I also have great job prospects being in an economy that never officially went into recession (only one quarter of negative growth) with a private sector one lined up for next year.

To sum up, I'm actually paying only 1.7% more in taxes for a WHOLE HEAP of benefits.

How is that a bad deal?

Incidentally much of our (Australia's) economic success can be attributed to good bank regulation than anything else. If you are curious I can elaborate on this.

What honks me off is that this deal is being called a compromise.

Sounds to me Republicans are getting everything they want regarding the tax cuts. How exactly is that a compromise? Silly me, I thought compromises were when neither side got everything they wanted but enough to move forward.

I'd be behind the tax cuts if there were some sort of stipulation to them. We've had these tax cuts since 2001...where the hell is that massive growth that trickle down economics is supposed to provide? The answer is that there was none. Trickle down is Simply....Not...Efficient. The vast majority of those tax cuts don't go toward economic growth, they go right into the wealthy's already obscenely large hoard.

If these tax cuts for the wealthy were somehow conditional, as in you only get them if you can document that you've put money into your company and hired more employees, then I would be willing to support tax cuts more. But we all know that will never happen.

Im just patiently waiting for the day that America collectively realizes that growth doesn't start at the top and trickle down, it starts at the bottom and grows upwards. Anything less is just a scam to make rich people even more rich.

Hey so qm, since you're still replying and haven't responded to me, can I assume that you agree that extending the tax cuts to the rich will increase the deficit and discourage jobs and economic growth?

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

I can get behind Ronnie on this one. The GDP is a poor gauge of the general well being of regular folk.

On that narrow subject, I agree.

Otherwise, Paul doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground. In Paul's example, anyone who just thinks for a few minutes about why he's wrong.

Guy with $200k/yr job, and has $300k in existing debt, and loses his job. Paul neglects to mention assets. Generally speaking, people don't take out loans, and then light the borrowed money on fire. If the guy has $300k debt on a mortgage for a home worth $1 million, he's actually in pretty good shape fiscally speaking, though he may have to sell his house. If he can get a million dollar loan even in that situation, say to start a business, he'll probably have a negative net worth for a few years, but it seems to me that if he can get a million dollar loan for a business in that situation, people believe he will be able to make it work...

Same applies with his insinuation that we should subtract debt from GDP. This is like saying that the only number you should look at to judge your financial situation in your private life is your yearly salary, minus all of your debts. That's seriously negative for me, while a homeless unemployed guy would be only $0. Is the homeless guy really better off than me?

The adbusters clip implies that there should be a social utility factor involved in our measurements of economic growth, otherwise we have perverse incentives that lead us into broken window fallacies (e.g. cigarettes are awesome because not only are they profitable in their own right, they also boost sales in the lung cancer treatment industry). Paul makes that argument too, but he myopically picks an example that's government-specific (i.e. war), when it's a problem all over the place in private industry too.

>>A widely held but incorrect view. Limited global population MUST be the desired outcome or humans will exceed the carrying capacity of the Earth. Relying on the promise of new technologies is a naive recipe for possible disaster.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity
If you want to talk assumption, you're assuming that maximum relative wealth is the desired outcome. Pretty selfish, eh?
Baby boomers leaving the workforce is really only a problem because of Social Security and health care costs and an unbalanced worker to retiree ratio. That ratio will change over time and we'll probably have a period of austerity as it changes back to something resembling equilibrium. The baby boom being correlated with economic growth/decline is really not proof that increased population causes increased wealth. There are many other factors involved which have nothing to do with population.
Wealth is obviously not directly tied to population, or the United States wouldn't have vastly higher wealth with such a relatively low population density compared to the rest of the world. If you mean overall world wealth, perhaps that's true, since more people = more work = more promises to pay back debts, but when you're talking about a closed loop system, it's all relative. So, if you take the view that more world population means more poor people for rich countries to exploit, that would be true, but then you also have to assume infinite resources and an undamageable environment.



@mgittle "So, if you take the view that more world population means more poor people for rich countries to exploit, that would be true, but then you also have to assume infinite resources and an undamageable environment."

The rich exploting the poor is like a wolf eating a chicken... Natural, human and even necessary. There would be no rich if all were on equal terms. We would not have science, medicine, machinary or such on the same scale. Sure, happenstance would bring about these things eventually, but that is the same as a wolf getting through the chicken coop eventually too.

At least that is MO.

Those two billion would gladly exploit the rich and become what they detest or envy so much.

>> ^mgittle:

>> ^Sniper007:

A widely held but incorrect view. Limited global population MUST be the desired outcome or humans will exceed the carrying capacity of the Earth. Relying on the promise of new technologies is a naive recipe for possible disaster.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity
If you want to talk assumption, you're assuming that maximum relative wealth is the desired outcome. Pretty selfish, eh?
Baby boomers leaving the workforce is really only a problem because of Social Security and health care costs and an unbalanced worker to retiree ratio. That ratio will change over time and we'll probably have a period of austerity as it changes back to something resembling equilibrium. The baby boom being correlated with economic growth/decline is really not proof that increased population causes increased wealth. There are many other factors involved which have nothing to do with population.
Wealth is obviously not directly tied to population, or the United States wouldn't have vastly higher wealth with such a relatively low population density compared to the rest of the world. If you mean overall world wealth, perhaps that's true, since more people = more work = more promises to pay back debts, but when you're talking about a closed loop system, it's all relative. So, if you take the view that more world population means more poor people for rich countries to exploit, that would be true, but then you also have to assume infinite resources and an undamageable environment.


If there is a carrying capacity for the earth, humanity has not even come close to it. I'd say the limit is somewhere in the hundreds of trillions, based on the fact that it only takes 1/5 of a acre to feed an entire family a vegetarian diet. This is not a theoretical figure, it is currently being done. I'd say the earth is grossly underpopulated based on the obscene amount of lawn space (and golf courses) in existence.

Just drive somewhere (anywhere) for 10 miles, and tell me how much un-utilized, or under-utilized SPACE you see in your immediate vicinity. I'm not talking tilled, fertilized farmland. I'm talking empty parking lots, front lawns, abandoned buildings, etc. All those places need some human who is willing to engage in the proper behavior and responsibly utilize that space. The world is not overpopulated with bodies. It's 'over populated' with the wrong mindset and work ethic.

I didn't mean to imply that maximum relative wealth is a desired outcome. It is not.

I do agree, population growth is certainly NOT the only ingredient needed for an increase in sheer economic wealth. Though, for the families who engage in it, it can be the very definition and 'object' of their wealth and their increase in quality of life (though it may lead temporarily to a decrease in economic abundance). But the question of how to increase monetary wealth for most of the world is an entirely vain one that ought not to be entertained as it is relying on to many insidious assumptions.

It is sufficient to recognize that large families are NOT a plague, and go on living your own life as best as you know how. As to that discussion, ethical standards cannot be philosophically advanced by empirical data. Philosophy is inherently and necessarily theoretical.

>> ^Sniper007:

He's assuming limited global population is the desired outcome. It just so happens that limiting your population growth is what will take the blue box to below the 'sandal people'. The tremendous economic growth has risen and fallen in the US following exactly in line with the demographic phenomenon called the baby boom. Now that the baby boomers are leaving the work force, the entire US financial house of cards is falling.
This guy has NO CLUE what he's talking about. Wealth is CREATED by humanity. If you limit humanity's growth, you limit wealth's growth.
If he's worried about 'climate change', then he should realize that it's not the number of people, but their behavior which (potentially) affects that. In FACT, there are humans which by living their lives (ironically, in a lifestyle manner not unlike the 'sandal people') have a POSITIVE effect on their local climates, and thus the global climate (sic).


A widely held but incorrect view. Limited global population MUST be the desired outcome or humans will exceed the carrying capacity of the Earth. Relying on the promise of new technologies is a naive recipe for possible disaster.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity

If you want to talk assumption, you're assuming that maximum relative wealth is the desired outcome. Pretty selfish, eh?

Baby boomers leaving the workforce is really only a problem because of Social Security and health care costs and an unbalanced worker to retiree ratio. That ratio will change over time and we'll probably have a period of austerity as it changes back to something resembling equilibrium. The baby boom being correlated with economic growth/decline is really not proof that increased population causes increased wealth. There are many other factors involved which have nothing to do with population.

Wealth is obviously not directly tied to population, or the United States wouldn't have vastly higher wealth with such a relatively low population density compared to the rest of the world. If you mean overall world wealth, perhaps that's true, since more people = more work = more promises to pay back debts, but when you're talking about a closed loop system, it's all relative. So, if you take the view that more world population means more poor people for rich countries to exploit, that would be true, but then you also have to assume infinite resources and an undamageable environment.

>> ^Sniper007:

He's assuming limited global population is the desired outcome. It just so happens that limiting your population growth is what will take the blue box to below the 'sandal people'. The tremendous economic growth has risen and fallen in the US following exactly in line with the demographic phenomenon called the baby boom. Now that the baby boomers are leaving the work force, the entire US financial house of cards is falling.
This guy has NO CLUE what he's talking about. Wealth is CREATED by humanity. If you limit humanity's growth, you limit wealth's growth.
If he's worried about 'climate change', then he should realize that it's not the number of people, but their behavior which (potentially) affects that. In FACT, there are humans which by living their lives (ironically, in a lifestyle manner not unlike the 'sandal people') have a POSITIVE effect on their local climates, and thus the global climate (sic).


Ironic that you say Hans Rosling doesn`t know what he`s talking about. How can 2 billion of the poorest people turning into 4 billion help economic growth? In fact, its one of the factors that perpetuate the cycle of poverty, as limited land is passed down to successive generations. When your small plot of land is divided amongst your 6 children, and they each divide their land amongst each of their 6 children, it does not help your condition one bit.

Also, sure an individual from a developed nation choosing to live frugally (like the 'sandal people') may result in a net positive effect on their local climate by reducing their individual carbon footprint. However, an additional 2 billion 'sandal people' will significantly increase our environmental impact through increased demand and things like deforestation.