How about fewer PROBLEMS?

Not only did the Black Death raise the wages of the working class it greatly expanded the use of water power. With labor in short supply new technology was pushed -- in this case water power. Other labor savings also followed.

deblacksmith

Doesn't it seem logical that fewer members of a species sharing the same resources would be happier and more prosperous - almost by definition? I know economics can seem counterintuitive, but is this basic idea in dispute?

Also, I don't know what this guy was tracking, but it also stands to reason that baby busts and booms would be caused by paucity and prosperity (respectively), not the other way around. That is the way it works across species, I think. So he's got cause and effect mixed up. You can't make more resources by having more babies.

Am I missing something?

With no peoples, here in Rio Frio usa, to keep the waters and foods moving; Where is the prosperity ? You need to have the maching food production in one site and the peoples in the other. The big problem is to keep the food moving; because you can not produce it in the same place. There is a lot of food , but in the other site.

America in the 19th Century suffered from a chronic labor shortage. (Granted, there were numerous depressions, but generally, the labor market was tight.) This is why American wages were much higher than in Europe. Which also explains why America attracted so many immigrants. It also led the U.S. to rely much more heavily on labor saving devices. The "American System of Production," i.e. the use of interchangeable parts and mass production, made much more sense in America than Europe because of the shortage of labor. America became the world's leader in productivity as result. Productivity is the key to increased wealth. And the way to achieve productivity gains is through the substition of capital for labor.

America in the 19th century is a perfect example of an under-populated and under-utilized land. And on the whole, it worked out rather well. (at least from an economic development view point.)

Don't let them fool you. There will be plenty of people around, 2.5 billion more as Leonard points out.

Anytime these faux neo-cons start complaining about baby busts and the lack of new babies, you can be assured they're only thinking about one thing: war. They're afraid they can't keep having their absurd wars (as opposed to the few, sane ones we fight) without their usual influx of new recruits.

Here from the New York Times article:

" Allan C. Carlson, president of the Rockford Institute, an Illinois-based policy group, said, "I think we're going to face serious economic trouble in our desperate attempts to sustain a welfare state.

As more resources go to health care for an aging population, he said, "It will be difficult for us to defend our immediate security interests."

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE1D81731F932A35751C0A96F948260&n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/Subjects/P/Population

Not a problem for me. Maybe now you can worry about only fighting the necessary wars. Most large explosions of babies are part of a post-war boom anyway. The Baby Boomers were the children of the World War II generation, they were the children of the World War I generation and so on. Frankly I hope we do see a decline in birth rate. There are too many of us as it is and we find every excuse known to humankind to try and kill each other. Maybe fewer babies will prevent Gulf War IV in 2024.

Either in historical or modern terms! The Black Death theory -- which also proposed that it was the seed of the Industrial Revolution, because there were too few people to operate the essentials like grinding grain, so people had to invent machines -- was elucidated nicely by the late Harvard professor David Herlihy (who happened to be House Master at Mather House when I was there) in his posthumously published book of lectures called The Black Death and the Transformation of the West. It's short, pithy, and fascinating. Some have questioned it, some have taken it further, but at least it provokes serious discussion.

As for the fear of a declining population, it isn't actually a reduced population that is the problem as such -- it's a reduction in the best-educated, most capable percentage of the population. McKinsey (the strategy consulting firm) wrote a book a few years ago called The War for Talent where they predicted a shrinking group of potential business leaders as the Baby Boomers retired. I am part of the largest executive search firm, and it is already happening. Companies thinking farther ahead are already planning how to manage their internal talent to develop future leaders so they don't have to try and hire them from a progressively smaller (and more expensive) population.

The population pyramid scheme is already collapsing. Some people think that no number of people is too many people. But all the major, intractable problems we're seeing in the world today come down to the fact that we've already overshot earth's carrying capacity with too many damn humans.

It's time to depopulate, and fast. Nature is already working on killing us off in unpleasant ways, and it will only get worse if we don't get serious about limiting our numbers voluntarily.

This guy has been besmirching the pages of the Boston Globe with false arguments supporting his loaded agenda for too many years now.

While I know next to nothing about this subject, if Jacoby says decreased population is going to be a problem, I am all too willing to assume that the opposite is true.

I'm sorry but you sound like the dystopian assholes Ira Levin made fun of in This Perfect Day.

A decline in population doesn't necessarily correspond to a decline in the educated proportion. I'd argue that it should correspond to an increase in the educated proportion, as each child has a larger pool of adults to support them. Think of the Chinese "little emperors" where the hopes of many parents and grandparents rest on few children. There is both a lot given to and a lot expected from these kids.

The Black Death argument stands here, but with the newly freed resource being parental attention instead of land & cows.