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If Demographics is Destiny, then America’s Future Sucks
Desperate homeowners counting on a "V" shaped recovery in residential real estate prices to bail them out better first take a close look at global demographic data, which tells us there will be no recovery at all.
I have been using the US Census Bureau's population pyramids as long leading indicators of housing, economic, and financial market trends for the last four decades. They are easy to read, free, and available online at http://www.census.gov/. It turns out that population pyramids are something you can trade, buying the good ones and shorting the bad ones. These graphical tools told me in 1980 that I had to sell any real estate I owned in the US by 2005, or face disaster.
No doubt hedge fund master John Paulson was looking at the same data when he took out a massive short in subprime securities, earning himself a handy $4 billion bonus in 2007. To see what I am talking about, look at the population pyramid for Vietnam. This shows a high birth rate producing ever rising numbers of consumers to buy more products, generating a rising tide of corporate earnings, leading to outsized economic growth without the social service burden of an aged population. This is where you want to own the stocks and currencies.
2) Now look at the world's worst population pyramid, that for Japan. These graphs show that a nearly perfect pyramid drove a miracle stock market during the fifties and sixties which I remember well, when Japan had your textbook high growth emerging market economy. That changed dramatically when the population started to age rapidly during the nineties. The 2007 graph is shouting at you not to go near the Land of the Rising Sun, and the 2050 projection tells you why. By then, a small young population of consumers with a very low birth rate will be supporting the backbreaking burden of a huge population of old age pensioners. Every two wage earners will be supporting one retiree. Think low GDP growth, huge government borrowing, deflation, and a terrible stock and housing markets. If you are wondering why I am aggressively shorting the yen right now, this is a big reason. Dodge the bullet.
3) If Brace yourself. The US is turning into Japan. As a silver tsunami of 80 million baby boomers retires, they will be followed by only 65 million from generation "X". The intractable problems that unhappy Japan is facing will soon arrive at our shores. Boomers, therefore, better not count on the next generation to buy them out of their homes at nice premiums, especially if they are still living in the basement, and not paying any rent. They are looking at best at an "L" shaped recovery, which is a polite way of saying no recovery at all. What are the investment implications of all of this? Get your money out of America and Japan, and pour it into Vietnam, China, India, Brazil, Mongolia and other emerging markets with healthy population pyramids. You want the wind behind your investment sails, not in your face with hurricane category five violence. Use any serious dip to load the boat with the emerging market ETF (EEM).
4) Vietnam is a Paradise for Demographic Investors. Now that we have figured out that Vietnam is a great place to invest, take a look at the Van Eck Groups Vietnam Index Fund (VNM). The venture will invest in companies that get 50% or more of their earnings from that country, with an anticipated 37% exposure in finance, and 19% in energy. This will get you easily tradable exposure in the country where China does its offshoring. Vietnam was one of the top performing stock markets in 2009. It was a real basket case in 2008, when zero growth and a 25% inflation rate took it down 78% from 1,160 to 250. This is definitely your E-ticket ride. Vietnam is a classic emerging market play with a turbocharger. It offers lower labor costs than China, a growing middle class, and has been the target of large scale foreign direct investment. General Electric (GE) recently built a wind turbine factory there. You always want to follow the big, smart money. Its new membership in the World Trade Organization is definitely going to be a help. I still set off metal detectors and my scars itch at night when the weather is turning, thanks to my last encounter with the Vietnamese, so it is with some trepidation that I revisit this enigmatic country. Throw this one into the hopper of ten year long plays you only buy on big dips, and go there on vacation in the meantime. Their green shoots are real. But watch out for the old land mines.
To see the data, charts, and graphs that support this research piece, as well as more iconoclastic and out-of-consensus analysis, please visit me at www.madhedgefundtrader.com . There, you will find the conventional wisdom mercilessly flailed and tortured daily, and my last two years of research reports available for free. You can also listen to me on Hedge Fund Radio by clicking on the “Today’s Radio Show” menu tab on the left on my home page.
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Agree.
But this says nothing about now and the near future. IQ drift and gradual rise takes a century or more to manifest.
As nutrition betters in the 3rd world, assuming it does, one should expect attributes to rise with it. But, in the meantime, there is no falloff in the already developed world.
Few are tracking the rate of IQ change across populations and whether the discrepancies will ever normalize or whether they will continue to persist.
There is a pretty substantial gap between an IQ of 120 and one of 100. That's in excess of 1 sigma.
Those that track them generally find that the gaps persist. Especially telling is that, after controlling for socio-economic status, health, etc., the gap is significant and persists for major groups. Even Flynn of the 'Flynn Effect' has thrown in the towel on that one. Watson comments related to this got him substantial trouble with the PC police. All he essentially duid was say that hiding and/or downplaying the evidence on this wasn't doing anybody any good (i.e., in terms of public policy mistakes being magnified by ignoring or hiding it). If social security is the 'third rail' of American politics, this one is it's atomic bomb. Needless to say this is somewaht akin to man made global warming, the PC police have a result they desparately want to be true (i.e., convergence), but hard facts suggest strongly otherwise.
By the way, yes, there is a steady falloff in, for example, the United States.
Well, Europe step in and saved Islamic societies from the sad fate they made for themselves. They can now feed off of the dying carcass of Europe for a few generations. Perhaps they can steal enough money and technology to make a difference back home.
Europe learned from Islam the value of learning and education in the middle ages. It was Islam which promoted education and property rights for women in those dark times. Iran has more women in Universities than men and more and more women are being educated even in Arch conservative Saudi Arabia. Wake up and smell the roses. I am an agnostic Hindu and my people have also suffered under Muslim invaders but we have to recognise facts.
Somewhere along the way you seem to have missed that explosive spread of Sharia Law????
Ever heard of it.....
No, it really didn't.
Islam is not monolithic...the standard of "progress" was borne by Turks and Persians and Kurds and whatnot, not generically by "muslims." Arabs have been relatively backward since Carthage fell.
The Ottomans were an outgrowth of the Byzantine and Roman...look at what the capital of Turkey is. That was the eventual seat of the Roman Empire and subsequently the capital of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires. Basically, it was the same people as it had been since Rome operating under a different ridiculous and punitive religion.
Too bad the Islam of that time is dead and buried, and unlikely to come back. And any advances made by Iran in the secular days of the past are completely undermined by the past thirty years. Because of the rule by the mullahs the Iranian model is unlikely to spread to the rest of the Islamic world.
Actually, Iran is the way it is because of US and british action. They actually had a free democracy system until 1953. Then in 1979, as I remember it clearly, they were going to let the hostages go and return to a democracy until Carter decided to attack with "Operation Eagle Claw" and failed. The Iranian people rallied around the most anti US group afterward.
I know they likely don't teach stuff like that in school but facts are facts.
Awesome work MHFT.
But instead of relying on the 3rd world, why not invest in the corporations that will inherit the world once the governments are shunned out of work. For example, GE will be paid by in the VND, so if you are right and that currentsea stays strong (I am sure you are correct, you know currentsea as well as anyone as far as I''m concerned), the GE gets a big pay day! And they do not need to pay Obama's fascist taxes.
I say be your own contractor, and buy and hold PMs. Welcome to the new world.
+1
When I was in Vietnam about a year ago I was kidded gently by our guide... i.e. the US fought a war 40 years ago to stop communist socialism taking over in Vietnam... and now look at the result... Vietnam is far more capitalistic than the US. Will the Vietnamese come to the US to help us fight Obama's socialism from taking over the US? :)
You're right, Market Monkey, President Obama is definitely a socialist, as is Diana Farrell, Henry Kissinger, Larry the Hut Summers, Timmy Geithner, Herb Allison, Gary Gensler, Laura Tyson, Tara O'Toole, Robert Hormats, Richard Holbrooke, Benjy Bernanke, and all the rest.
Actually, they and their prez, are all plutocrats, Market Monkey.
I know these are truly complex concepts for you to grasp, so go eat some bananas. (Psssst! They're the low hanging fruit.)
obama is a socialist like george w. bush was a fighter pilot.
Demographics are slow moving compared to things like MZM or M3... I don't think they matter much. I mean, look at oil, food, gold, auto sales, etc... They swing violently within a 30 - 50 year demographic change.
Yes the demographics are in favor of India, Vietnam, Brazil et al BUT buying equities there is a complete waste. Equity bubbles in India & Brazil mirror the craziness that started in the US in 1982 alongwith the 401k / IRA so-called retirement programs. Yes, individual companies in those countries may do well but the correlation with equity prices in completely broken down. The histoical trendline for India suggests the Sensex should be no higher than 6000. Yet here we are with that index at 18000.
Demographics is immensely important, but it is only half of the story. The other great shaper of destiny is culture -- the core beliefs held by a majority of a people.
If the culture of a nation is largely of the pre-Enlightenment variety (i.e. tribal, theocratic, feudal, etc...) then all of the great demographics are not going to do much good, as economic growth will remain stunted. These top down, command-and-control societies rarely trust their own populations enough to entrust them with the necessary economic freedom or property rights to allow broad based development.
The people themselves in such societies can often be their own worst enemies as they cling to the beliefs of their ancestors. For instance: Some modern-day feudal societies view education as an upper class attribute, leading to high drop-out rates for the bottom segments of the population. Others hold family/tribe as the core of society, and as such have difficulty establishing the necessary legal system for much development (they see blood as thicker than truth, and will support "their own" regardless of the facts). Another cultural stumbling block for tribal societies is the social imperative to take care of your own, so governmental/business power turns into a tribal reward system, hardly the basis of a growing economy. The flaws in theocratic societies are obvious enough, no need to expound on them here...
This acknowledgement of the importance of culture will only be supressed as America and the rest of the Western world try to import enough people to counter their native demographic decline. The powers-that-be will continue to pretend that culture doesn't matter, that a person is a person no matter where they were born, how they live, or what they believe, but any observation of the real world will destroy that conceit.
If the West is going to continue to try and import their way out of the demographic time-bomb they would be wise to begin assimilating the newcomers once again, as they were a century ago in America. That was successful; expecting the same success now without the difficult but essential process of assimilation will not end the same way. They will not become us, we will become them. We will revert to pre-Enlightenment societies with pre-Enlightenment values. The Dark Ages return.
Agree. You mention demographics are half the story, also strongly agree. Waves of immigrants came and assimilated at various times....Irish-German-Polish in my family, not uncommon in Chicago. I worry however that todays largest single group ever, seems to have the least interest in assimilation. It has nothing to do with racism. Assimilation means different things to different groups, especially groups that lobby well, demand we add Spanish to pre-flight instructions...and most 800 help lines....oh...and a march down LaSalle street in Chicago to demand something or another just for fun. Thats what makes the country great, the melting pot in action. Is this constructive? Should ZeroHedge have an American flag and a another flag represnting another langauge at the top of the page....so no one feels badly of course.
This is a politically correct backing into the truth.
I'll ask you this flatly: WHO creates culture?
And I will answer...the people do. There's a reason that people who are primitive have primitive cultures. There's no amount of education that can surmount a fundamental lack of critical mass attributes to support enlightenment.
Stupid is as stupid does. Groups of smart people do not revert to the Dark Ages; they are who dragged us out of it.
I mean, do you or do you not accept that India ostensibly has a culture that is Pre-Enlightenment? They incontrovertibly do. It's really not about that. Among certain populations, progress, civilization, math, and technology have stickiness; among others, they do not. It's really about intelligence more than the artifacts of the past.
In fact, in the 2nd world, like India, you can see stratification along intelligence lines among the same cow worshippers. All people do not have the same capacities; it's as simple as that. Expecting a person who is mentally retarded to do calculus is foolish and self-defeating. Pretending that he can is absurd.
Three chord sloth
At first glance, your post seemed rather thoughtful. It’s well written with lots of big words and phrases that flow well. By the end of your post though, I got a weird feeling that behind all those fancy phrases were symptoms of paranoia and delusion mixed evenly with self-righteousness. Sometimes eloquence can mask complete nonsense, and I think your post is a perfect demonstration of that.
Assimilation? Seriously? What sort of arrogant, archaic, cult-like garbage is that? Which culture is so perfect that it does not benefit from outside influence, or God forbid, diversity? If a culture just Xerox’s itself from one generation to the next, I would argue that it’s as “healthy” as a family of home schooled religious zealots, who go to great extremes to “protect” their children from the outside world. Or I think of guys who wear white cone-shaped hats, dancing around a noose and reciting some nonsense about cultural supremacy.
First of all, one does not need to look at cultures from the pre-Enlightenment Age to find ludicrous examples of flawed cultural ideals. Sure, tribal or feudal cultures are not humanity’s best examples of growth and prosperity, but neither is the culture of modern day Wall Street, a place dominated by highly educated, like-minded, assimilated cannibals—most of whom are white and Anglo. Tell me which group is more dangerous to America, the unassimilated immigrants working remedial jobs, or the assimilated cannibals on Wall Street who have the power and money to unravel this country with nothing more than a few wagers gone bad (or good)? If America finds itself in the Dark Ages, it won’t be due to the immigrants. Rather, it will be due to the like-minded, assimilated bankers and politicians who control the money and laws of this country. Blaming the demise of America on unassimilated immigrants is so…white trash of you. That’s the sort of conversation I’d expect at a Kentucky fundraiser for Sarah Palin. “We want our country back!”
Secondly, no one is “suppressing” the power/influence that various cultures have on this country—quite the opposite, really. Only those who are overly paranoid by various “outside” cultures believe that it’s being deliberately hidden from the public. The difference is this: the “powers-that-be” view the melting pot as something that gives this country more depth and richness. You view it as an infiltration, like a virus. In much the same way, I view your narrow-minded intolerance of other cultures like a virus that attacks one’s ability to think reasonably and rationally.
Third, I find it laughably ironic that you are so critical of theocratic societies, yet you are in favor of assimilation, which is the defining characteristic of theocracy. It’s so contradictory of you. Both are forms of brain washing, yet you’re in favor of one and not the other. You’ve got me stuck in the spin cycle with that one.
And I am most curious how you reconcile your allegiance to the political right with your acknowledgement that theocracy is highly flawed. Without a doubt, the core of your party is a modern day theocracy. I believe your last president got his advice on Iraq from “a higher father.”
Lastly, let’s unplug our brains for a minute and assume you’re right—we should start the process of assimilating. Let’s cleanse this country from all other cultural infestations. Just how exactly do you suppose we do that? A call to Pat Robertson seems like a reasonable start.
I think you're missing the point a bit. This particular addition of foreign culture that the US is going through now is different from previous additions because 1) Mexicans form by far the single largest unmixed ethnic group that ever was in the US, 2) the home country is right next door, so keeping up cultural contact is easy, which makes it less likely they'll become true blue Americans, 3) so many of them came and are still coming here so quickly that they have no need to learn English or assimilate because many just create their own self-sustaining subcultures, and 4) there's the whole history issue...many Mexicans still feel the southwest was 'stolen' from them, they feel they have a historical claim, and if their numbers in the region become a clear majority and their cultural solidarity remains intact, the American southwest will resemble a giant Kosovo.
America has experienced all kinds of immigration waves over the year, but it's different this time.
Granting all your points, what is the point, after all?
What is the economic engine of what is left of this so-called American economy?
With the five top banks making up 63% of the GDP, and including the rest of the financial services and investment firms, that number goes up to over 80% of the GDP, where's the economy?????
What do these people produce? The category of credit derivatives -- the weapon of choice to rig and manipulate the markets, and then speculate on their insider information -- has thousands upon thousands of individual financial instrument contructs now.
Who needs more of them, other than the super crooks screwing everyone?
Well, I will try to explain things using small words and easily absorbed concepts. Contrary to your self-congratulatory self-conceptions, those like you on the left need such accommodations.
Assimilation?! Yes, seriously. No garbage, no cult. Some cultures work, others do not. The culture that built America works, and I want it restored and protected. If we can excise the educrat-theory-of-the-week lesson plans and the nobody-fails ethos from our school systems, and the mincing, whinging pc junk from our media culture then perhaps it is doable. It sure isn't doable buried under a flood of ready-made serfs from other lands.
As for the Wall Street crowd, well I agree with you. They have gone wildly out of control and are in desperate need of an epic bitch slap. But they were once assets to the nation, and I see no reason they couldn't eventually be so again.
As for your slap at Sarah Palin, well that's a miss on your part; I'm not a big supporter of her. But I will tell you this -- we'd be better off with her as president than Barack "the corporatist pig" Obama. He is not what he pretends to be, and if the Democrats want to stick by him they will all end up working for Goldman Sachs. Obama is their best buddy, despite the wrist slap coming down the pike.
Your next mistake is the melting pot. That is assimilation. Repeat: melting pot = assimilation. Today's model is multiculturalism, aka the salad bowl. So you are right, the melting pot brings strength, but unfortunately for you, you are not advocating the melting pot. You are talking about the salad bowl model.
As for your so-called "points" about theocracy... well, yeah, your mind is in some sort of spin cycle 'cause your "points" make no sense. The insistence by various religions that their adherents follow one set of rules to live by is not the problem with theocracy, the problem is who gets to write and enforce those rules, and in a theocracy it ain't "the people".
Your belief that the core of the Republican party is theocratic is nonsense. Drooling, swivel-eyed, paranoid nonsense. Tell me... do you also call your opponents "reich wing" "wingnuts" "teabaggers"? Why do I think yes, yes you do?
Here's a bit of free advice: the folks who need questioning are the intellectuals and their academic parrots. Question everything they tell you; take none of it at face value. They have by far the worst batting average of any segment of society, point zero zero zero. Literally none of their ideas work. Their world view is an ivory tower fiction, and their agenda is obvious to all who see -- power. Every idea of theirs starts and ends with one simple idea -- society should be run by intellectuals. Everything they advocate is just a repackaging of that idea.
And if you want to see the actual, on-the-ground effects of today's immigration model, I'd read the book "The Latino Education Crisis -- The Consequences of Failed Social Policies" by Patricia Gandara and Frances Contreras. They are academics, so you might listen to them. They see America being destroyed by a massive wave of unassimilated hispanic immigrants who are keeping their native countries' attitudes toward education, and dropping out of school at a 40% - 50% rate even in the third generation here.
You might want to also check out "Intellectuals and Society" By Thomas Sowell, the single best book written in the past five years.
Ciao, baby!
Three cord sloth
You haven't seen the ball since kickoff. Perhaps it's under the El Camino in your front yard.
First, I’m not a liberal, nor do I subscribe to the ideals of the left. I am a former Republican, who finds the modern Republican party reprehensible and equally complicit in the unraveling of this country.
I can't walk away from your comments on Sarah Palin. Do you think she's assimilated? I have attached a link to Sarah Palin’s Facebook page for your easy reference, since you seem to think she would be an effective world leader. Personally, I think she’s a joke, better suited for the MILF genre of pornography than politics. (Although fucking others comes in quite handy in politics, so maybe I need to rethink that). Perhaps if you peruse through her webpage, you’ll get a better grip on the direction of the current Republican party and the sort of personalities that they stand behind. http://www.facebook.com/sarahpalin
If you want to talk about corporatist pigs, how can you willingly ignore the Bush administration? They created the bailout monster. From investment banking to selling cars, the Bush administration redefined fascism in the modern world. Obama is guilty of it too, no doubt. But I find it horribly short-sighted for you to tag Obama as a corporatist pig, while pledging your allegiance to the party that promotes socialism for the rich. Both parties engage in socialism—the only difference is the beneficiary.
Oddly, you spend considerable time criticizing “intellectuals and their academic parrots” who have the “worst batting average of any segment of society.” You continue by stating “literally none of their ideas work…their world view is an ivory tower fiction.” Yet in your very next breath you are advocating that I read the works of some of your favorite academics, which will apparently prop up your position on immigration, social policies and intellectuals. You call Sowell’s book “the single best book written in the past five years.” Obviously, you haven’t read Going Rogue, a dandy bit of conservative catnip for you that might impact your scale.
Why the dramatic flip-flop on academics from one paragraph to the next? It cheapens your argument. So academics are idiots, except when they agree with you. That fits perfectly with your view of multiculturalism in America: as long as your beliefs aren’t compromised, the great melting pot can keep simmering. Right?
Back to yesterday’s post—you never answered my question. How do you suppose we assimilate those who believe in values different than yours? From your posts, I detect a tone of arrogance and self-righteousness. If only our immigrants believed exactly what you believe, right? If only you could instill your values and concerns into the belief system of others, you could get your country back, right? That sort of self-righteous intolerance reminds me of all the religious fanatics around the world. Everyone is going to hell, except me.
And you conveniently avoided my question about which group has had a more detrimental impact on this country: immigrants who have not been indoctrinated with your beliefs, or our perfectly assimilated bankers and politicians who control and direct the affairs of this country? The answer is obvious, and it blows a hole straight through your original ideals on assimilation. Perhaps that’s why you avoided the question.
Here is a handy link to Pat Robertson’s webpage. You might find others with the same mentality as you. http://www.patrobertson.com/
>Some modern-day feudal societies view education as an upper class attribute, leading to high drop-out rates for thebottom segments of the population.
Fox/Limbaugh "elitism/creationism"?
>Others hold family/tribe as the core of society, and as such have difficulty establishing the necessary legal system for much development (they see blood as thicker than truth, and will support "their own" regardless of the facts).
"The Bush Family"
>Another cultural stumbling block for tribal societies is the social imperative to take care of your own, so governmental/business power turns into a tribal reward system, hardly the basis of a growing economy.
Bank bailouts / capitalism for the poor, socialism for the rich
Nicely stated! Thanks
Its actually much worse than you let on, your graphs only show population levels and ages, not racial demographic changes in the population, like a shift from 85% caucasian 15% minority population to a 45% white 55% minority population.
For instance Latinos have a 100% higher high-school drop out rate than whites http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=19 and will have significantly lower incomes as well as lower tax contributions than whites, they also have more kids on welfare.
Latinos have a 200-400% higher diabetes rates http://www.organicconsumers.org/school/diabetes072705.cfm (depending on country of origin).
On top of that they'll have a much higher tax burden further reducing the competetiveness of their productivity and far more competent educated competition ( they dont have to compete with only bloated brain dead communist states) but will also have to compete with hard working educated capitalist states with far lower tax burdens.
Diabetes care consumes 70% of all medical dollars, if you double the number of diabetics you increase medical spending by 70%, if you socialize medicine you socialize the costs and burden on everybody including low wage workers.
This means as the population shifts from educated white people to uneducated diabetic tan people revenues go down and spending goes up-not even touching the ageing demographics.
Medicare's projected unfunded liabilities could be as much as or more than 200% higher than predicted.
That $75,000,000,000,000.00 in unfunded medicare liabilities could really be 150T or more.
Well said. Some may not like it but hard to argue with data. You rarely hear this mentioned in the discussion, but its a massive drain on resources.
Here's a thought experiment: Imagine that, overnight, everyone in Japan disappears and the entire population of Mexico is transplanted to the islands of Japan. Before the mysterious event, Japan had the second largest economy in the world, the highest national IQ average, regularly won Nobel Prizes for scientific research, and was in general very advanced technologically. Japan was also powerful enough and organized enough to take over much of east Asia in the early 20th century. But now, after the mysterious event, the islands of Japan are entirely populated by Mexicans. What happens? Do the Mexicans living in Japan suddenly become extremely intelligent, maintaining Japan's claim to the highest national IQ? Do they start winning Nobel Prizes in science? (only a single Mexican has ever won the Nobel Prize in science; 13 Japanese have) Do they start living like Japanese, speaking Japanese, following Japanese cultural and religious traditions? Do they suddenly acquire the long life expectancy of the Japanese? Are they suddenly a world power, able to militarily take over large parts of the world? Do they maintain Japan's status as the second largest economy in the world?
The answer to all of these questions is, of course, no. The physical environs of the Japanese islands are irrelevant; if anything, they are detrimental since the islands don't have much space nor many resources. What makes Japan a world power today is the Japanese people themselves. If you replace the Japanese with Mexicans, you get a bunch of impoverished Mexicans living on a group of islands.
In other words, the people make a country, not the physical land itself. America was a great nation because it was filled with hard working, honest, highly intelligent, highly organized white Europeans. If you replace these people with Japanese, you get another Japan; if you replace them with Mexicans, you get another Mexico. Guess what's occurring right now, and what the future of America looks like if it's allowed to continue.
What a thought experiment. Over night, a population X should be able to acquire features another population Y has developped over generations? I wonder how people can get satisfied with such ways of thinking which seem to work in no way.
Societies living on trade hubs all developp trade characteristics.
What is even stupider is that the idea stuff can be reversed in a trice. I wonder where it comes.
Two people. One fund. Should be parted between the two. No done. Everything is put on person A for him to developp skills.
Later on, the fact person B cannot step in A's shoes is a sign A is a success, no matter what happened before.
One key element of the US success was coincidental: finding a large continent largely preserved while benefiting from previous technological advancements provided by living in another environment.
As the world is global, from one key factor, it is turning into the one key element.
Your thought experiment denotes thoughtful reflection.
It reminds me of all those intellectual duds who keep recommending that clown, Jared Diamond (why are the vast majority of Pulitzer Prize recipients always clowns???), instead of that most brilliant of scholars, Joseph A. Tainter.
But, of course, your thought experiment may be thought to skirt superficially over a number of crucial variables: (1) the colossal influence of Mexico's northern neighbor, (2) the privatization of the Mexican economy, specifically their banking sector, with the passage of NAFTA, (3) the destruction of the small farmer in Mexico (and concurrently in the USA) by super-sized ag firms, (4) the critical corruption of both countries (Mexico and USA, both corporate fascist states), and (5) the ocean-protected culture of Japan which was allowed to evolve all on its lonesome (although admittedly, there was a bit of Basque Jesuit influence a century or so back), (6) the profound negative effects of globalization on the Mexicon economy, together with the northern Yankee influence of their War ON Drugs (and the help of former Bush chief of staff's Andrew Card, a director at Southern Pacific Railroad which has been a major transportation conduit for the northern movement of said drugs), etc., etc., etc.....
This is EXACTLY what was tried in Zimbabwe and South Africa.
Denude the landscape of the farmers and creators of the wealth, and turn the keys over to the indigenous population under the assumption that the infrastructure would carry them to wealth.
Sitting idly on farmland does not produce wealth, farming does. Houses don't build themselves. Apparently, the marxist left cannot grasp that or does not care.
Refer to deathofJohannesburg blog for results in S. Africa.
You now have a city resembling actually Detroit, which we all are familiar with. Empty highrises with bricked up fronts. Witch doctors on the 2nd floor.
After Katrina, we saw a slice of Little Africa, total chaos, roadside corpses, a population willing to sit in squalor and decay. Contrast this to the floods in the Mississippi Valley in the following years, the wildfires in San Diego (in which a large group of people gathered at QCom stadium), this year's floods in New England, the Kobe Quake, the Indonesian Tsunami.
The list goes on an on where certain populations inherently self-organize, maintain order, do not riot, loot, or participate in generalized decline. From ALL sides of the income spectrum, too...income is the LEAST correlated with this type of outcome of the relevant variables.
Nice post, Trav. It really hit home for me because I grew up in South Africa and I saw firsthand what you're speaking of... idle farms handed over to new owners of the right skin color who haven't a clue how to farm... or mid level management jobs given to people who fit the correct demographic description who were smart enough to realize that they were being hired for their skin color and so had precisely zero motivation to actually work hard.
My older brother used to teach electric engineering courses as a PhD student at University of Durban. He used to have to pass students who literally couldn't read or write through 3rd/4th year engineering courses because the university needed to fill its quota for graduating black engineers, as decreed by the government. Royal fucking mess it was (and I assume still is).
In the end all that happened was a tiny black overclass was created, wealthy as a result of leeching on the fat of the system. The other 95% of blacks are in many ways worse off than under apartheid (but wait! they can vote!) and the majority of entrepreneurial and economic activity remains in the hands of...you guessed it...the whites. And this despite monumental legal obstacles put that have been erected over the past 15 years in the name of equality and affirmative action.
Not so simple. Compare England and Japan. Being on an island, with all that that meant, contributed to their similar economic and imperial histories.
The race factor in Japan was simply that they were all Japanese so had maximum groupthink potential.
England was never that kind of monoculture but with some similarities. Now as the UK, its another UN experiment in how to turn a nation into a pliable multicultural vassal state serving global elites and their corporations.
So, to sum up, if Mexico was an island off the coast of China or Europe, Mexicans would have fewer siestas.
Sorry. Accidentally bold letters.
The important thing isn't race, it's culture. If we assimilated the newcomers, they'd follow the same path as past immigrants did. But since the left, in its zeal to destroy the West, has deemed assimilation to be cultural suicide and has banished it from our classrooms and media, then these new citizens will truly end up as permanent drains on the nation.
By design.
By the left.
Vote accordingly.
We need to recognize it is global competition for capital, resources etc...The US should have an aggressive LEGAL immigration policy to attract the best and the brightest of the world. The process should be easy for these people who recognize the opportunity here.
Who creates culture, the Culture Fairy?
Cultures are or are not BESTOWED upon peoples???
Cultures, as I have said many times, are a reflection of the aggregate attributes of a population.
In Forrest Gump's words, Stupid IS as Stupid DOES.
If you remember High School, the dumb kids had cultures in their subgroups that reflected the base and the crude. The smart kids gravitated toward things like chess and math.
Culture is NOT an accident. Monkeys and Dolphins have their own cultures because of their capabilities. One should not adopt a chimp and expect it to acclimate to human culture because it is a chimp. This is a clear example where inherent attributes matter.
Stupid white people have cultures that are lowbrow and crude and base just the same as stupid people of any other race who have the same aggregate or average attributes.
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That is simply not true of most groups, only those most like the assimilators. So yes, the evidence would suggest that race matters; yet most have been indoctrinated by the blank slate myth and can't see beyond hurling reflexive ad hominem attacks. Again, go back to one poster's thought experiment: replace the Japanese with Mexicans and you know you will get a hell hole, not Japan. Without the Japanese, it wouldn't be Japan, and it's not just because they forgot to assimilate the Mexicans. You ignore that fact that there tends to be a very strong link between group to culture (i.e., there is a circular component). So, alright, the U.S. in the old days (i.e., before political correctness shut down even attempting assimilation) was generally able to assimilate other Europeans, and that is not just coincidence.
Sorry, but I do not buy into the early progressive-era belief in racial essentialism.
The various races do not have pre-programmed "tendencies" that their culture is built upon. One only needs to look at Hispanic Americans who's families came over 50 or more years ago. They are as assimilated into mainstream American culture and beliefs as anyone else.
The difference today is all about expectations -- and if these expectation don't revert to their earlier, successful model, then I fully expect a race war in the next few decades as Americans-in-name-only of Mexican extraction attempt to repatriate parts of America, and Americans resist.
Such treason will be dealt with properly. A bullet to the base of the skull is apropos.
Correction, you are espousing a 'progressive' belief, not me. Yes, of course culture is important but there are "pre-programmed tendencies" (e.g., read the Global Bell Curve). Regarding 'Hispanics' (which include a whole spectrum of groups, thus not allowing for much of a controlled experiment), in fact, for example, 50 years later and certain groups are regressing not assimilating at all (e.g., central American indians from Mexico). For evidence of this see, for example, read Generations of Exclusion: Mexican Americans, Assimilation, and Race. The writers are 'progressives' yes find the following:
"In many domains, however, the Mexican American story doesn't fit with traditional models of assimilation. The majority of fourth generation Mexican Americans continue to live in Hispanic neighborhoods, marry other Hispanics, and think of themselves as Mexican. And while Mexican Americans make financial strides from the first to the second generation, economic progress halts at the second generation, and poverty rates remain high for later generations. Similarly, educational attainment peaks among second generation children of immigrants, but declines for the third and fourth generations."
As to repatriating parts of America, I strongly doubt any patriot would be willing to risk such a war based on their false politically correct beliefs.
Nice graphs thank you.
IMHO we don't have an overpopulation problem, we have a problem with overconsumption of resources and overproduction of pollution.
Every society needs a sustainable population age distribution and yes Japan (among others) has a big problem.
What a dementedly short-sighted view, to call the HEALTHY population trend in Japan, for example, a "disaster"! The fact is that NO system, and no population, can grow indefinitely, and it is in the LONG-TERM best interests and health of Japan that there population is decreasing, as they have been a monstrously crowded society with very little in the way of internal natural resources. To suggest that those nations that are all but committing social suicide through population explosions are somehow thereby "healthy" is exactly the same kind of blinkered and self-destructive "short-termism" that has landed the western developed nations in the current unsustainable, disastrous and doomed financial situation that they find themselves in today.
If one feels that the population of densely populated Vietnam is "healthy" at 80 million, then 100 million, then 150 million, at just what point does the trend of rising population cease being "healthy"? 300 million? 500 million? 1 billion? 10 billion? Or would all these be "healthy" numbers as well?
If you are a socialist country, an increase in population is bad... more people on the dole
If you are a capitalist/free market country, an increase in population is good... more business ... greater wealth for all
It's not that complicated.
My immediate take as well.
It is grotesque to call a growing population healthy and a steady-state or contracting one bad.
Growth is healthy until you run out of headroom. And then it goes apocalyptic. Everything is fine until the last doubling interval and all hell breaks loose. Every assumption must change, everyTHING must change.
This idiot's commentary shows the inherent and fatal flaws in the "study" of economics.
Yeah, on the bright side, I've read it argued that the Black Death and similar events triggered an increased wealth effect over time, because the the physical infrastructure, housing, farmland, and such were shared by far fewer people after the die off. Just looking on the bright side you know, like akak, or that Malthus-like pseudonym who has been posting here.
The Black Death created such a shortage in labour to work the lands that the lords and landholders had no choice but to bid up the wages paid to the serfs, thereby setting the stage for the emergence of freedom and market economics in the western world.
But as I have noted here before, this 700+ year experiment has clearly demonstrated itself to be a failure (our maximum leader has said so much himself), and so it is time for us to go back to the security of feudlism and the protection of our lords and masters.
Same goes for elections.
Seriously, what were we thinking?
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Wrong.
First point -- the only short term thinkers around here are the Malthusian/Ehrlich worshippers who draw straight line projections based on short term trends, and then sell those projections as "the future, unless everyone gives me and mine the power to run the world". Stay away from them, they only care for power and control.
Second point -- a healthy society doesn't need to grow indefinitely, it just cannot crash. Population growth makes economic growth easier, population stability still allows economic stability, but population decline makes economic decline a certainty. And if you've designed your national retirement system on any kind of transfer payments from workers to retirees, well, you're screwed. All of you, young and old. And good luck paying back any debt you've accumulated.
Third point -- A healthy nation doesn't just decide to fade away. A society that refuses to reproduce has become toxic in some way. In the West the problem is perpetual adolescence; in Japan perhaps it is the same, or maybe it's the over-worked company man syndrome, or the refusal to treat wives well... I don't know. But I do know this -- it ain't a sign of social health.
As to your third point regarding declining population: What about the economics of it? Just living is getting more expensive, inflation is starting to outrun wage growth. You need both parents working jobs and debt out the ass. Then stagnate wages, keep energy inflating, and voila! A shrinking fertility rate.
Advanced capitalism also sees population shrink by virtue of the fact that children are more a liability than an asset with production under the division of labour. They just chew through money. People have fewer kids because it's cheaper.