Is the country full up

[daneha 10]

That's absolutely fine if you have the capacity to work longer, the ideal scenario from a macro economic point of view is that we all work til we're 65 and drop dead the day after retirement...that used to be the case, if you got to retirement age at all.

 

Not really, the ideal situation is we live longer healthier lives and remain productive longer and pay tax longer, even looking after the grand kids whilst their parents work is productive.

 

 

Again that's fine if you can isolate yourself from the consequences of an ageing population, but the population is heavily weighted towards people in middle age and older. We want the best for our kids which invariably means getting them a good education which they then bugger off with, the days of being able to rely on your our children to run us about in our dotage or tart up a granny flat are increasingly reducing.

Its only a problem if you are negative about old age, its easy to solve if you have the will to solve it.

 

 

 

But realistically they can't be productive (income generating) for ever..the overwhelming issue surrounding pensions right now is the government and other public bodies compelling employees to work longer...it nearly caused a revolution. We want our cake and eat it, we want to retire at 50 and live til we're 100, that's human nature I'm afraid.

 

You don't need to be income generating for ever because increasing retirement to 70 dramatically increases the amount of workers whilst drastically reducing the amount pensioners.

Edited September 5, 2013 by daneha

[unbeliever 10]

Environmentalists are always saying that the world population is too high. I'm not clear on what they intend to do about it. Are we suggesting a mass cull, perhaps involving a scythe? Perhaps a reproduction limit which sounds plausible until you consider the inevitable demographic crisis it would create. Expand or die.

 

I'm not too keen on importing freeloaders, but I'm forced to consider from what moral principle derives the idea that somebody who has the good fortune to be born into a first world country has a greater entitlement to sponge from it than anybody else. Work clearly needs to be more incentivised, but I'm not sure that immigrants are any better or worse than natives in terms of work ethics.

 

Getting to the main point: There are examples of countries in the world with much higher population densities and comparable or higher standards of living. How many people are we prepared to condemn to sub-standard over-priced housing in order to protect the pretty grass? A big house-building program would provide a very nice long-term economic boost, pretty much solve the affordable housing problem and all we would have to do is give up a few fields.

 

There is no great virtue in an industrialised country growing its own food when buying food from poorer countries is more efficient and provides a means for said poor countries to grow their own economies and thereby improve their own standards of living.

[daneha 10]

 

Getting to the main point: There are examples of countries in the world with much higher population densities and comparable or higher standards of living. How many people are we prepared to condemn to sub-standard over-priced housing in order to protect the pretty grass? A big house-building program would provide a very nice long-term economic boost, pretty much solve the affordable housing problem and all we would have to do is give up a few fields.

I can't think of any could you give us a couple of examples.

 

There is no great virtue in an industrialised country growing its own food when buying food from poorer countries is more efficient and provides a means for said poor countries to grow their own economies and thereby improve their own standards of living.

 

It doesn't quite work like that, we buy food from poor countries and rich people in said poor countries get richer whilst the poor people in said poor countries starve.

[El Cid 220]

 

A big house-building program would provide a very nice long-term economic boost, pretty much solve the affordable housing problem and all we would have to do is give up a few fields.

 

 

So that will solve our problem; but then the population will continue to increase, so we will need to do it again.

 

When will we be full?

[unbeliever 10]

I can't think of any could you give us a couple of examples.

 

Japan stands out.

 

It doesn't quite work like that, we buy food from poor countries and rich people in said poor countries get richer whilst the poor people in said poor countries starve.

 

In the spirit of your reply to me, can you back that up with any examples?

A big gap between rich and poor in a particular country is perhaps less of a problem in practical terms than whether or not the poor are better off in absolute terms.

 

---------- Post added 05-09-2013 at 22:20 ----------

 

So that will solve our problem; but then the population will continue to increase, so we will need to do it again.

 

When will we be full?

 

I suspect never. We've been warned for centuries that the world population is unsustainable and that standards of living will fall dramatically, but such prophecies are yet to be realised. When it comes to real standards of living, the amount of ground per person is in practice far less important than their access to the resources they need in every day life. Right now living standards are being driven down by high energy and housing prices, but this has been created artificially by regulation and does not genuinely derive from the increase in population density.

[Stan Tamudo 10]

I can't think of any could you give us a couple of examples.

 

 

 

It doesn't quite work like that, we buy food from poor countries and rich people in said poor countries get richer whilst the poor people in said poor countries starve.

 

That's very thought provoking.

[Penistone999 10]

Maybe get some more doctors, dentists or midwives then. There's no shortage of people who want those jobs, the medical schools are full of keen students.

 

 

Or maybe just put a stop to mass immigration before we push the infrastructure of the country to the point of collapse.

[daneha 10]

That's very thought provoking.

 

Ethiopia is one of the hungriest countries in the world with 2.8 million people needing food aid, but paradoxically the government is offering at least 3m hectares of its most fertile land to rich countries and some of the world's most wealthy individuals to export food for their own populations.

[SpikeMac 10]

Or maybe just put a stop to mass immigration before we push the infrastructure of the country to the point of collapse.

 

Maybe we should deport those who frivolously squander natural resources in the name of freedom.

 

Then we might have enough cash to support our infrastructure.

[daneha 10]

Japan stands out.

Japan faces the same over population problems that we face and as 21 million people below the poverty line.

 

In the spirit of your reply to me, can you back that up with any examples?

A big gap between rich and poor in a particular country is perhaps less of a problem in practical terms than whether or not the poor are better off in absolute terms.

 

We buy flowers and food grown in Ethiopia whilst millions of its people starve, a few people get rich at the expense of the majority.

[Halibut 12]

Japan faces the same over population problems that we face and as 21 million people below the poverty line.

 

 

 

We buy flowers and food grown in Ethiopia whilst millions of its people starve, a few people get rich at the expense of the majority.

 

Which foodstuffs are we importing from Ethiopia?

[SpikeMac 10]

Which foodstuffs are we importing from Ethiopia?

 

Sugar and coffee for a start. And a variety of out of season vegetables too.