>>Yes, if you want to do a though experiment on how things will be different if we shut off immigration (yeah right), then looking at the birth and death rates is obviously going to be important. But there's no push to shut off immigration that I've heard of (illegal immigration is a different matter though).
It's not really about immigration - I just mentioned that because it's important to separate natural birth and death rates and immigration, which can cover up demographic trends if you just rely on things like census data. For example, during the 1800s, health was so low in cities like New York that it actually had a much higher death rate than birth rate, but immigration kept it alive (so to speak) and booming. If you just look at the raw numbers, you miss very important details about what is going on.
>>If that isn't your argument as to why this is a "crisis", I'd like to hear what your argument is.
It IS a real crisis. Japan's population is in a severe decline. (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Population_of_Japan_since_1872.svg) They'll either have to open up the country to 500 million (not hyperbole) new immigrants in the next 80 years, or their social system will collapse. But if they open it to 500 million new people, their country will probably collapse. So "crisis" really is the right word, as it means the end of Japan as we know it unless they can reverse these trends. Similar problems exist in Singapore, Hong Kong, France, etc.
>>Yes, but we don't know it works everywhere, and energy use rises with standards of living and we may not be able to afford that happing in the third world.
It has worked in every country where conditions improved, except Saudi Arabia and Israel, and there's reasons for those two guys.
Energy issues are mostly overrated. If Benin ever developed a strong middle class, there'd be plenty of options to supply them with power, not even counting coal or gas.
The population is NOT calculated from the birth rate and the death rate. It's calculated by something called a "census". The census counts the number of people living within the nation's borders at any particular point in time. Where the people came from isn't a factor. The math is even easier than you think, since it's just a simple count, resulting in a single number (rather than a rate).
Similarly, the rate of change can't be calculated from the birth and death rates alone, since the immigration and emigration rates are a big factor. Looking at the record of censuses over the years shows the actual rate of change of the population.
Why do you keep trying to exclude immigration?
I'm really trying not to call you ignorant, Grishnakh, because that was the name of my favorite D&D character of all time, but it's tough.
You use birth and death rates to calculate the replacement rate (there's similar measures with different names) instead of using a census because you need to know how your population will do if you, say, shut off all immigration. There's a real crisis around the world, where pretty much all 1st world countries are in population decline, with only immigration propping them up.
I could tell you more, but I can see you're just not going to believe me. This is a common problem with people that have been fed lies all their life. They have a tremendous ability to blindfold themselves to facts.
Except that people aren't getting richer in most places, and continue to breed like rabbits. Resources are limited, and becoming moreso every day. There's only so much fertile farmland to grow food, and only so much important minerals (such as lithium, needed for most battery-powered devices these days) available for mining, and of course only so much fuel. A "rich" population needs access to lots of food, energy, and natural resources to build and sustain an advanced civilization.
A rich population needs less food (because there's less people), and more energy. The natural resources issue sorts itself out via supply and demand. (A rich populace doesn't necessarily all have to have two cars per person. Look at Europe.)
Energy problems are vastly overhyped from an engineering perspective, and are mainly caused by environmentalists, who turn around and point out the problems with energy generation.
>>And exactly where do we get the other 4 planets worth of natural resources required for this?
I love hippie math.
I've run through several of those "how many Earths worth of resources do you use?" quizzes, and never got below even one entire Earth, no matter I was apparently packing 10 people into a house, growing my own food, walking everywhere, and all the other hippie things. I think the lowest I got was 1.3 Earth.
But it's irrelevant; the entire notion is entirely fucking stupid, and meaningless.
No, they're not. The USA's population is increasing rapidly, due to immigrants and recent immigrants who have lots of children. Other 1st-world countries are similar.
Leaving out immigration is stupid, since population numbers don't exclude people based on their national origin.
No offense, Grishnakh, but you don't know how these stats are calculated. We know the birth rate in a country, and we know the death rate. The math is actually very easy, and basically all 1st world countries are not making enough babies to replace the existing people. That's why I excluded immigration - it's the only thing propping up, say, France right now, whose social welfare system depends upon a larger working class than retired population.
Well, I'm neither an AGW-denier nor a creationist, but at least Mr. Fuckwit would have some basis for calling me an AGW denier, even though my criticisms are valid; the CRU was behaving in an anti-scientific sort of way, and the investigation rightly called them out for it.
Calling me a creationist, though, is as stupid a criticism as calling me short.
>>finally, he's acting like a proper evil mastermind...
A couple weeks ago I was telling a class of community college students I was lecturing to that Bill Gates was planning on doing this, and gave a proper evil mastermind laugh, but none of them thought it was funny.
Kids these days...
But yeah, this is old news. Most people learned about it from Super Freakonomics. Maybe it's news that he's actually going to do it, I guess.
The real debate is coming... who gets to control the weather?
>>Good enough? I doubt it. The quality may compare to other shitty health care that has been successful in terms of profits, but it isn't quality health care by any means.
If you're expecting an MRI when you kinda sorta maybe need one, then no. You're not getting an MRI.
But they do an outstanding job for the budget they have. Even RAND likes them, and they're about as anti-socialized medicine as they come.
If we cut our war budget from six times the next-biggest country to three times the next-biggest country, our budget would balance and our economy would grow. And we would still be far and away the best-defended nation.
What a wonderful, hippie, idea!
Unfortunately the numbers aren't anywhere like you think they are.
Total outlays this year: $3.5T (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7a/U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2007.png) Total receipts: $2.1T (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f9/U.S._Federal_Receipts_-_FY_2007.png) Deficit: $1.4T
Total military spending: $782B.
Unless you can somehow draft nega-soldiers that get paid in negative dollars, I find it rather unlikely that cutting the military budget by $390B or so will make up a $1.4T deficit.
It pays, sometimes, to get your facts from sources other than your hippie friends sitting around a campfire.
>>So the biggest periods of accrued and unnecessary debts were during the Reagan years (81-89) and the Bush Jr years (2002-2007). Both militaristic Republicans.
>>This has to be the most idiotic story I've read in years. Someone clearly isn't in touch with reality here.
Heh, when I was in high school back in the 90s, I was in journalism. We had very nearly the exact same story happen in our area. The reason was different (educators didn't want kids sticking them to desks), but the effect was the same.
We also got to run a story about a Boy Scout being kicked out of school and refused graduation because he brought a (dull-tipped) Swiss Army knife to school. I think that was upheld on appeal, too, but I can't recall the details.
In local news, a year back we had a school shooting at a local community college. The board met to discuss what should be done, since the guy clearly was in violation of the zero tolerance signs posted up all over campus.
Their decision? They made the font bigger on the signs.
You're one of those people blaming hurricanes on ol' GW, are you?
I'm curious what your camp will do when it gets more and more tenuous to connect GWB to anything. Keep blaming him? Or find a new scapegoat for all of life's misery?
>>The way the British do it -is- a reasonable commonsense system and it lets -everyone- more or less have their voices heard.
I was also being firmly sarcastic with my comment.
In all honesty, the American system is heavily flawed (it excludes third parties almost entirely), but it's also given us a reasonable government that hadn't screwed up things too too badly over the years.
It's actually very interesting to study early American history and the notions they had of deference and whatnot. While I'm not advocating returning to a system where you had to be a landowner in order to vote, the Jacksonian revolution led to the rise of the political machines and whatnot, which is a legacy we're still dealing with today.
Slashdot Mirror
>>What about India and China, at the same time? Maybe you are right. The point is we don't know what will happen until we try it.
China has a massively growing middle class, and they haven't run out of power yet, case in point.
China is even trying to build out more nuclear power, since I think even they realize the negative consequences of coal.
>>Yes, if you want to do a though experiment on how things will be different if we shut off immigration (yeah right), then looking at the birth and death rates is obviously going to be important. But there's no push to shut off immigration that I've heard of (illegal immigration is a different matter though).
It's not really about immigration - I just mentioned that because it's important to separate natural birth and death rates and immigration, which can cover up demographic trends if you just rely on things like census data. For example, during the 1800s, health was so low in cities like New York that it actually had a much higher death rate than birth rate, but immigration kept it alive (so to speak) and booming. If you just look at the raw numbers, you miss very important details about what is going on.
>>If that isn't your argument as to why this is a "crisis", I'd like to hear what your argument is.
It IS a real crisis. Japan's population is in a severe decline. (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Population_of_Japan_since_1872.svg) They'll either have to open up the country to 500 million (not hyperbole) new immigrants in the next 80 years, or their social system will collapse. But if they open it to 500 million new people, their country will probably collapse. So "crisis" really is the right word, as it means the end of Japan as we know it unless they can reverse these trends. Similar problems exist in Singapore, Hong Kong, France, etc.
>>Yes, but we don't know it works everywhere, and energy use rises with standards of living and we may not be able to afford that happing in the third world.
It has worked in every country where conditions improved, except Saudi Arabia and Israel, and there's reasons for those two guys.
Energy issues are mostly overrated. If Benin ever developed a strong middle class, there'd be plenty of options to supply them with power, not even counting coal or gas.
I'm really trying not to call you ignorant, Grishnakh, because that was the name of my favorite D&D character of all time, but it's tough.
You use birth and death rates to calculate the replacement rate (there's similar measures with different names) instead of using a census because you need to know how your population will do if you, say, shut off all immigration. There's a real crisis around the world, where pretty much all 1st world countries are in population decline, with only immigration propping them up.
I could tell you more, but I can see you're just not going to believe me. This is a common problem with people that have been fed lies all their life. They have a tremendous ability to blindfold themselves to facts.
Start reading here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate
And pay especial attention to this graph:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/TFR_vs_PPP_2009.svg
Notice that nearly every wealthy country is below the replacement rate for population growth.
Negative population growth is as real a worry as positive growth.
A rich population needs less food (because there's less people), and more energy. The natural resources issue sorts itself out via supply and demand. (A rich populace doesn't necessarily all have to have two cars per person. Look at Europe.)
Energy problems are vastly overhyped from an engineering perspective, and are mainly caused by environmentalists, who turn around and point out the problems with energy generation.
>>And exactly where do we get the other 4 planets worth of natural resources required for this?
I love hippie math.
I've run through several of those "how many Earths worth of resources do you use?" quizzes, and never got below even one entire Earth, no matter I was apparently packing 10 people into a house, growing my own food, walking everywhere, and all the other hippie things. I think the lowest I got was 1.3 Earth.
But it's irrelevant; the entire notion is entirely fucking stupid, and meaningless.
No offense, Grishnakh, but you don't know how these stats are calculated. We know the birth rate in a country, and we know the death rate. The math is actually very easy, and basically all 1st world countries are not making enough babies to replace the existing people. That's why I excluded immigration - it's the only thing propping up, say, France right now, whose social welfare system depends upon a larger working class than retired population.
>>2) ignore the problem, and suffer the consequences
>>simply no way we can provide a 1st-world standard of living for 100 billion people
Riiight. Because all the 1st-world countries are suffering such massive population growth.
Oh, wait.
They're all declining in population (immigration excluded).
The solution to the Malthusian trap is to make everyone live at 1st World standards, not the opposite.
She's the new Harriet Miers, I think. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Miers)
I'm leery of anyone who has no experience at being a judge serving as a judge.
Well, I'm neither an AGW-denier nor a creationist, but at least Mr. Fuckwit would have some basis for calling me an AGW denier, even though my criticisms are valid; the CRU was behaving in an anti-scientific sort of way, and the investigation rightly called them out for it.
Calling me a creationist, though, is as stupid a criticism as calling me short.
>>Yes, you have read the same old creationist bullshit propaganda.
Creationist??
WTF, man. Who said anything about creationism?
You know what, I'm going to stop feeding the trolls now. You're out of your fucking mind.
>>finally, he's acting like a proper evil mastermind...
A couple weeks ago I was telling a class of community college students I was lecturing to that Bill Gates was planning on doing this, and gave a proper evil mastermind laugh, but none of them thought it was funny.
Kids these days...
But yeah, this is old news. Most people learned about it from Super Freakonomics. Maybe it's news that he's actually going to do it, I guess.
The real debate is coming... who gets to control the weather?
>>The troll here is the asshole who keeps parroting the blatant lies about the hacked e-mails.
So... you?
I've read the primary documents, fuckwit. You haven't, apparently. I'm sorry if truth conflicts with your tightly-held ideals.
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=914
>>Good enough? I doubt it. The quality may compare to other shitty health care that has been successful in terms of profits, but it isn't quality health care by any means.
If you're expecting an MRI when you kinda sorta maybe need one, then no. You're not getting an MRI.
But they do an outstanding job for the budget they have. Even RAND likes them, and they're about as anti-socialized medicine as they come.
>>That must be a different George W Bush from the one that lead the USA into a disastrous illegal war.
Neither disastrous for us, nor illegal. But I'm sure your friends on HuffPo would love to hear all about it.
>>And also a different one to the G W Bush who presided over the worst economic disaster since The Great Depression.
Don't worry, the other team will make it worse.
>>I take it you have zero experience with the VA.
The VA actually does a pretty good job providing "good enough" health care for people, and on a tight budget.
Don't knock it; Kaiser has made a fortune off "good enough" health care.
It's certainly better than Medicare, or whatever Chimeric monstrosity the Democrats will dream up next.
What a wonderful, hippie, idea!
Unfortunately the numbers aren't anywhere like you think they are.
Total outlays this year: $3.5T (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7a/U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2007.png)
Total receipts: $2.1T (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f9/U.S._Federal_Receipts_-_FY_2007.png)
Deficit: $1.4T
Total military spending: $782B.
Unless you can somehow draft nega-soldiers that get paid in negative dollars, I find it rather unlikely that cutting the military budget by $390B or so will make up a $1.4T deficit.
It pays, sometimes, to get your facts from sources other than your hippie friends sitting around a campfire.
>>When Bush/Haliburton said "mission accomplished" they meant it literally.
Haliburton said Mission Accomplished? What, did they pay for the banner or something?
Did Haliburton buy your tinfoil hat as well?
>>So the biggest periods of accrued and unnecessary debts were during the Reagan years (81-89) and the Bush Jr years (2002-2007). Both militaristic Republicans.
Uh, no. Obama certainly takes the cake.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Revenue_and_Expense_to_GDP_Chart_1993_-_2008.png
>>This has to be the most idiotic story I've read in years. Someone clearly isn't in touch with reality here.
Heh, when I was in high school back in the 90s, I was in journalism. We had very nearly the exact same story happen in our area. The reason was different (educators didn't want kids sticking them to desks), but the effect was the same.
We also got to run a story about a Boy Scout being kicked out of school and refused graduation because he brought a (dull-tipped) Swiss Army knife to school. I think that was upheld on appeal, too, but I can't recall the details.
In local news, a year back we had a school shooting at a local community college. The board met to discuss what should be done, since the guy clearly was in violation of the zero tolerance signs posted up all over campus.
Their decision? They made the font bigger on the signs.
>>1) Their districts are drawn by an independent body. Ours are drawn by the state legislatures in almost all cases.
And both systems have their problems.
Here in California we had a proposition to have a bipartisan body draw district lines. Voters shot it down.
Yeah, lots of studies. I'm not sure there's any solid conclusions, though.
You're one of those people blaming hurricanes on ol' GW, are you?
I'm curious what your camp will do when it gets more and more tenuous to connect GWB to anything. Keep blaming him? Or find a new scapegoat for all of life's misery?
Precisely. Not great (I'm not a fan of the man), but not a total disaster either.
Well, I guess it was a disaster for Iraqis. But for Americans, he presided over a relatively stable and growing nation.
>>The way the British do it -is- a reasonable commonsense system and it lets -everyone- more or less have their voices heard.
I was also being firmly sarcastic with my comment.
In all honesty, the American system is heavily flawed (it excludes third parties almost entirely), but it's also given us a reasonable government that hadn't screwed up things too too badly over the years.
It's actually very interesting to study early American history and the notions they had of deference and whatnot. While I'm not advocating returning to a system where you had to be a landowner in order to vote, the Jacksonian revolution led to the rise of the political machines and whatnot, which is a legacy we're still dealing with today.