One of the unspoken implications of the environmentalist movement is a Malthusian sense that the planet is literally filling up with more human beings than it can hold. Since the earth is finite this assumption has a ready logic to it. Luckily for us, we are not in fact reaching carrying capacity for the planet, nor are we ever likely to do so. The great urbanization of the human race over the past century has sent birthrates around the world plummeting, as people crowd into cities where cultural and economic changes makes having tons of kids unlikely. The West and Japan were the first to modernize in this way, but the rest of the world is already progressing down the same direction. Birthrates in China, Brazil, and even possibly India are already below replacement level. In the long-term this is good news for the planet, as cities themselves are more ecologically sustainable forms of living. The more complicated reality though is that this new status quo of low birthrates may be bad news for
Is their any mention in the book of what will happen to national debt once the major economies of the world have declining populations? If their economies begin to contract along with population, won't debt per GDP begin to soar? That doesn't seem like a very stable situation.
Is their any mention in the book of what will happen to national debt once the major economies of the world have declining populations? If their economies begin to contract along with population, won't debt per GDP begin to soar? That doesn't seem like a very stable situation.