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[RedKing]

Re: the overpopulation discussion

Would just like to point out that Harry Harrison wrote Make Room! Make Room! (the dystopic sci-fi novel that Soylent Green was adapted from) in 1966, in which future America of 1999 is a hellish overcrowded nightmare of 344 million citizens, out of a world population of seven billion.

Estimated current US population is just under 325 million, out of a world population of 7.4 billion. And we're still far, far away from being a dystopia so crowded that we're eating algae biscuits and dead bodies. So yeah, overpopulation is a problem, but overpopulation alarmism is nothing new.

And US population growth has been remarkably stable over the last fifty years, with growth rates hovering just under 1% annually for the last 15 years. Immigration has ticked up, but fertility rates have declined and mortality rates have increased (no surprise as the demographic bulge of the Baby Boom hits their senior years). If you were to extrapolate current trends out, then by 2050, over 2/3 of all population growth would be due to immigration, and yet the overall population growth would be at the lowest in over a century, and population density would only have increased about 25% over current levels.

Plus we have a lot of uninhabited land in the United States, with 10 states having a population density lower than that of Saudi Arabia.
Now the UK might have legitimate worries, but that's what you get with living on an island. 

[Max™]

Memphis had this whole program recently where they spent some cash on implementing a library card+photo id system which would count for voting and such... until it got taken to court and thrown out, hurray disenfranchisement!

Well, that is England, which doesn't necessarily match the context of the US. Your earlier post was in context of the US, where that premise seems particularly hilarious.

Well, are conditions improving for the working class in America? If not, it seems it'd be equally applicable there.

Furthermore, all that report states is that people will more likely rent than own. Doesn't mean we're going to shove everyone into random buildings like sardines.

Allow a little imagination, if you please. We're not going to wake up one day and suddenly enact 'Mandatory Houseshare Act'. But the same factors that make it impossible for many aspiring families to own (forcing them to rent) will continue to act, and eventually ensure that many families can no longer afford the rent on house themselves. Out of necessity, it will become more and more normal to find families sharing housing.

It seems rather inevitable if the trend of wealth inequality and a rising population isn't reversed. The only alternatives I can see are to either continually build masses of increasingly-low-quality housing (which is still basically 'shoving everyone into random buildings like sardines', it's just that in this scenario you'd be trading off somewhat, losing house quality and green space in the country and instead gaining a greater amount of privacy), or, alternately, to adjust the expected work-life balance, so that workers are expected to spend a greater proportion of their time working and less in leisure.

The first option is probably more practical in America, but here we've already done that. If you take England, which is where the vast majority of people in the UK live, we're already packed in like sardines compared to much of America - over 65 million of us in an area roughly a fifth the size of Texas.

Sure, there's room to wiggle your toes, but eventually something is going to give.

In the US context, it's particularily ridiculous when you see the trend in house size

This is somewhat countered by the fact that the US home ownership rate is at a five-decade low.

You, did notice that thing in 2009 which had something to do with this, right?

As for the whole "did our grandparents have two income earners per household" thing, we're talking about an era where women working was only something that happened during wartime, vs an era where women working and men staying at home to raise kids isn't unusual enough to bother talking about anymore.

[martinuzz]

As for the whole "did our grandparents have two income earners per household" thing, we're talking about an era where women working was only something that happened during wartime, vs an era where women working and men staying at home to raise kids isn't unusual enough to bother talking about anymore.

In theory, yes. In practice however, try finding a wife outside of academic circles that will allow you to stay at home, do the household, shopping, cleaning, washing, gardening and raise the kids. You'll be called a lazy bum and told you're expected to work for the family income, because you're the man. Biggest threat to emancipation is not men machism, it's female machism.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

*vaguely panicking over polls*

TIME TO PACK THE KIDS, BAGS

CAUSE WE'RE GOING TO

*spin the wheel*

SENEGAL

[martinuzz]

EU leaders are holding an emergency meeting about how to deal with the massive stream of US refugees after the election.

[Rolan7]

At this point I can't even tell what's a joke anymore

[PTTG??]

The Cubs winning always causes empires to collapse. That's how it works.

[scriver]

EU leaders are holding an emergency meeting about how to deal with the massive stream of US refugees after the election.

Doctors and nurses can stay, we have enough uneducated immigrants to go around already though.

I'm also seriously worried about the impacts of the much more conservative (and hateful!) American culture, though.

[Max™]

As for the whole "did our grandparents have two income earners per household" thing, we're talking about an era where women working was only something that happened during wartime, vs an era where women working and men staying at home to raise kids isn't unusual enough to bother talking about anymore.

In theory, yes. In practice however, try finding a wife outside of academic circles that will allow you to stay at home, do the household, shopping, cleaning, washing, gardening and raise the kids. You'll be called a lazy bum and told you're expected to work for the family income, because you're the man. Biggest threat to emancipation is not men machism, it's female machism.

Eh, my point was that two income homes are less unusual than single income/female earner homes, which aren't unusual enough to care about these days.

The Cubs winning always causes empires to collapse. That's how it works.

Does that have anything to do with the ominous rift that opened in the sky over Tulsa and St. Louis, and all points between, which seems to be glowing with a color that doesn't exist, and occasionally raining three headed frogs?

I'm not sure, has that always been there?

[martinuzz]

I'm also seriously worried about the impacts of the much more conservative (and hateful!) American culture, though.

It's not just American. It a worldwide revival of nationalism and populism. US actually caught on late compared to EU countries, where Trump-like demagogues have been  stealing a lot of the electorate for two decades now. US is just more vulnerable to populism than most West European countries, because it has a two party system instead of multiple party coalition based system. Traditional party loyalty, and splintering of populists over multiple parties has been keeping the populists from gaining enough votes to come into power so far.

[Rolepgeek]

In this specific context, the root of the problem is a sub-replacement birth rate in the existing citizens of the United State, going entirely from what you were saying immigration would solve. A country's obligation is first to it's existing citizens, not it's hypothetical ones from other countries in the future. The solution to the problem of an aging population isn't to just replace the young folks like cogs in a machine with people from entirely different cultures and backgrounds and hope everything keeps going fine. Hint: what is the second most popular political platform running on, and what is it bringing with it as baggage? Blaming racism for everything and doubling down on your strategies and just trying to run over anyone who disagrees hasn't worked, because that's not how democracy works, and racism has found it's place to thrive in that resentment.

Are you sure on that? Considering that the US, like many other countries, is suffering from an aging population, and the only reason the US is actually managing to circumvent a majority of the side effects is through immigration, it seems that immigration is the solution to an aging population. Just ask Japan; they have aging population and no immigration, and they're suffering quite badly.

As for that last line, all I did was imply that changing demographics would make the hypothetical "splitting the country by partisan lines" an idiotic idea.

That's my point. It works in the short term. But that's largely cultural, so their children would quickly stabilize around the richer parts of the country's average, especially the more you increase equality and access to contraception for the poor, and other countries will find themselves not growing much longer either. It's not a solution, it's a band-aid. A solution would be something so that birth rates rose, because, oh, childcare was more affordable and employers didn't mark having a family against you. The whole work-life balance thing, like they're in opposition? That's a fair part of the issue. Japan is suffering from an aging population, and they've decided to try other methods to counter-act it, rather than just grabbing more people. Immigration isn't bad of itself. But it's not something to be encouraged for the sole purpose of staving off less taxes. That's very much a government-centric viewpoint. As healthcare gets better, retirement can be put off longer, which helps counteract aging populations, and if we could reduce the ridiculous costs associated with healthcare(and if hospices become more popular, as dark as that is), the tax burden will be less of an issue, especially if we can increase the top tax brackets again.

Let people in if they want to be in and can show that they're qualified to naturalize into the country, but diversity for the sake of diversity is missing the point, and building off the backs of immigrants and expecting them to do all the work is basically saying 'our society can only function on expendable labor in the form of people, so let's import that'. Immigration is probably usually a net positive. But that doesn't come from intrinsic value, and thinking that immigration is the solution seems like it's optimizing poorly. Population can't grow forever, so we also need to find an economic structure that works with a stable or declining(and thus elderly or aging) population.

[martinuzz]

I vote for a topic sub-title change to 7 Days to Die. Or 7 Days to D-oh

[Sergarr]

Is there any actual explanation as to why Clinton seems to be losing votes every day to Trump at an alarming pace? It feels like I'm missing some part of the picture here, because the other, pro-Democrat, forum, is either keeping silent on that issue, or saying that "fivethirtyeight wants a horse race", which is pretty interesting since I remember them praising 538 for its accuracy when it was predicting Trump having no path to victory as all a few months ago...

[MetalSlimeHunt]

He's not, the undecided who are settled on Trump have finally started saying so now that the election is immanent.

[Criptfeind]

They aren't, Cthulhu deep ones are surging out of the sea in unprecedented numbers this fall, drastically increasing their normally insignificant vote for the Republicans.