Well, well, well, environmental problems are everywhere! From India:

Killer roads, rail tracks snuff out wild animals

Those Got Milk? ads are getting creepier with each passing day

https://twitter.com/cnqmdi/status/941610076145700864

Lies are soft and squishy

https://twitter.com/shenanigansen/status/941817838129463296

Modest proposal: For a term of three years, we inoculate/exonerate Uber from all torts and prosecutions relating to bad outcomes for passengers during and following transportation to medical facilities.

Then we look at the numbers.

"The Great Baby Bust of 2017: Fertility Is Falling Faster than You Realize"

https://medium.com/migration-issues/the-great-baby-bust-of-2017-2f63907402fc

What's odd is that it's much shorter than what I saw in the newspaper and I can't seem to find the full version. In the latter, he claimed that the number of American babies that women WANT to have, but couldn't (often for financial reasons) may soon outnumber unplanned babies. (He didn't have any strong solutions, though.)

Follow-up:

https://medium.com/migration-issues/more-thoughts-on-falling-fertility-366fd1a84d8

(Lyman Stone is an economist from Kentucky.)

Picture from the future:

https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/941848632222978048

"How Doug Jones Destroyed Roy Moore’s Whole Shtick with One Well-Chosen Verb"

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-doug-jones-destroyed-roy-moores-whole-shtick-with-one-well-chosen-verb

Amusing.

Last paragraph:

"...in the age of Trump and Bannon, plenty of them (2018 races) will feature ersatz tough-guys eager to turn politics into a pissing contest. By making his opponent look ridiculous, Doug Jones reminded us that Democrats don’t have to play that game to win elections. With carefully-chosen words, and a healthy appreciation for the power of mockery, they can corral the pigs without getting mud on their hands."

Just gonna put it out there... The kid's a total dreamboat!!

> "...they can corral the pigs without
> getting mud on their hands."

That's their fantasy, isn't it?

We lefties need not consider the patterns by which we surrendered executive power to perhaps the least-qualified, least-attractive, least-competent candidate in history; we continue to imagine that out desperation for social removal from people we disagree with —no matter how grateful they are for that distance— will somehow persuade them to recognize our elevated reasoning.

(Also, we can still liken them to filthy barnyard animals to win their trust.)

Consider our inevitable fate as we develop the self-flying warcopter.

Fortunately our military is controlled by our political elites, and a finer bunch of right-thinking morally strong incorruptible geniuses cannot be found on this planet.

So don't worry. Just enjoy the kill videos on YouTube.

"The Great Baby Bust of 2017: Fertility Is Falling Faster than You Realize"

Well, this link MAY work:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2017/12/08/the-baby-boom-long-gone-get-ready-for-baby-bust/x9JYDX7zzV6xeCkP76RC0M/story.html#comments

Excerpts:

"...As the ratio of working-age people to dependents rises, we either have to raise taxes on workers, lower benefits for dependents, or take on more debt. Japan’s solution has been to take on debt. But Japanese citizens have vastly higher savings rates than Americans, so this is a lot more manageable for them than it will be for America. We will have to work out our problems somewhere on the fiscal balance sheet, with taxes or spending, or else we’ll have to print money to pay for retirees..."

Last paragraphs:

"...Unfortunately, there isn’t much policymakers can do about the problem. Financial incentives for fertility do have some small effect, but the cost is high compared to the number of births they produce. Cash payments are worth doing anyways: parents deserve to be compensated for their unpaid labor on behalf of society’s next generation. But cash alone won’t boost fertility.

"Progressives often favor generous family leave policies, universal healthcare, and government-provided childcare as pro-natal solutions. Family leave policies, however, have little to no demonstrated impact on fertility, although they may be laudable for their positive effects on parental career paths. Childcare subsidies do have a small impact on fertility, but ultimately less than pure cash incentives. Though, again, it may be worthwhile to support childcare costs anyway. Universal healthcare, meanwhile, has no empirically demonstrated effect on childbearing, and, indeed, many single-payer countries have much lower fertility than the United States.

"Restrictions on abortion or contraception favored by many conservatives are likewise ineffective: Research on clinic closures in Texas and contraception restrictions in abortion-restricting Chile suggest that, in developed countries, women are able to find ways to manage fertility despite restrictive policies, and so changed contraceptive access does not alter total fertility enough to really matter. Like progressives’, the pet-policies of conservatives simply are insufficient to the present crisis.

"It takes a cultural change to fix this problem. Businesses giving carseat-designated parking places, Hollywood changing the presentation of (especially 20-something) parenting on screen, social attitudes about marriage, university support of nontraditional students. We have to get creative about ways to nudge our country towards a more sustainable footing. We need society to decide that it’s worth listening to women and easing the path to their desired family life. We need society to stop free-riding off the free labor of parents (especially women), and start shouldering the cost, financially and otherwise. And we need young people to fall in love and marry the person they love, then transform that love into a new love, the love of children.

"It’s rare that 'love' is the solution to a policy problem. But maybe, just maybe, this Christmas season, it can be."

(end)

Oddly, while he talks again and again about how women want more children, he doesn't say anything about whether MEN really want more children than they might already have. Maybe they DON'T want more?

Paul Ryan has also been talking about the baby "shortage" lately...

How Doug Jones Destroyed Roy Moore’s Whole Shtick with One Well-Chosen Verb" ~ lenona at December 16, 2017 7:37 AM

Doug Jones won 49.9% of the vote to Roy Moore's 48.4%. And that was with roughly 40% of the electorate voting. That's hardly "destroyed."

And since this election was only to finish Sessions' term, it does not even indicate that the Dems can keep Alabama, merely that a small percentage of Alabamans preferred Jones to Moore.

Jones now has 4 years to convince Alabamans that he'd be a better choice to be their Senator than whatever non-Moore candidate the Republicans run in 2021.

I thought you approved of this 'baby shortage' Lenona. Why the long posts?

Chill, everyone, and remember the real meaning of December 16th.

Of course, it depends on whom you ask.

Santa is a white supremacist -

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5186289/Jingle-Bells-RACIST-claims-Boston-University-professor.html

Romanticizing the Hunter-Gatherer -

http://quillette.com/2017/12/16/romanticizing-hunter-gatherer/

These people like Mr. Lee and Dr. William Davis, the otherwise great author of "Wheat Belly", who romanticize the hunter-gatherer culture back in the day, should be ignored on this subject.

Do you know why we can so efficiently put on weight? Because, BACK IN THE DAY, we would sometimes go days without food, that's why!

Interesting, Snoopy.

I DO have to wonder if she was just trolling for publicity - or what.

But in the meantime, here's the most DISLIKED comment under the article:

GreatUncleBulgaria, Wimbledon, United Kingdom, 1 day ago

"It should be banned because it's rubbish, not because possible racists sang it."

Why IS that so disliked as a comment?

Makes me think of all the annoying commercialized Christmas songs that we're always forced to hear at the supermarket and that I never want to sing. Our family was never religious, but my late mother would still have been appalled to play any song on the piano that wasn't an old-time carol - no "Rudolph" or "The Little Drummer Boy" - or any post-1930 Christmas song, I suppose. My favorite hymn was "Angels We Have Heard on High."

In fact, when I look at the list "Most-performed Christmas songs (U.S.)" - you have to scroll down a bit -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_music

- I KNOW she would never have willingly played those songs.

I thought you approved of this 'baby shortage' Lenona. Why the long posts?
_________________________________________

Because it's pretty rare that anyone writes about the consequences of too many elderly people without wallowing in partisan politics - or completely ignoring the fact that unwanted babies are not good for society. (The reason that single adult women don't give up babies for adoption, most of the time, is that that's a lifelong trauma in a way that abortion usually is not - but that doesn't mean the kid won't grow up in poverty or worse.)

I thought it was refreshing that someone dared to point out that neither the left or the right necessarily has the answers when it comes to getting people to have more babies.

It isn't that rare Lenona. You just aren't reading in the right places. Japan is often noted for going through the baby shortage problem. Their solution so far is more robots and automation. They've gone so far as to try developing exoskeletons so old people can pick crops easier. Debt is not actually part of this. Italy is another commonly noted one with their vanishing villages. Their solution is third world immigrants and hence they big conflicts over religion and crime. Not that all immigrants cause crime. But there is a conflict between the local crime gangs and new ones since much of their organized crime is ethnically based.

As for unwanted babies, that too has been thoroughly discussed. You almost always end up with massive crime waves and possibly revolution 15-20 years later.

Stone's solutions won't work. Complete bullshit. If anything it will probably further reduce the fertility rate. One policy change that actually would work, no more child support. Another, embrace religions that encourage large families. But those are both third rails that no one is close to touching.

Oh, and that was for the US. The correct change is different for different nations. For Japan they need to cut back on the work week. They flat work too many hours to make kids much less raise them. For Italy they need to massively slash the government and cut corruption. When people have the view that life can only get worse they aren't inclined to have kids. And for Italy that is largely true due to massive government corruption and control.

"Jones now has 4 years to convince Alabamans that he'd be a better choice to be their Senator than whatever non-Moore candidate the Republicans run in 2021."

Less than that, actually. Sessions was elected in 2014, so his term is up in 2020.

It isn't that rare Lenona. You just aren't reading in the right places. Japan is often noted for going through the baby shortage problem.
________________________________________

I was talking about writers on the American population, as Stone was referring mainly to that population.
________________________________________

As for unwanted babies, that too has been thoroughly discussed.
________________________________________

Yes and no. It's been said that if any people are really responsible for taking away the stigma surrounding unwed mothers, it's the anti-abortion groups. Women facing unplanned pregnancies who are given more money won't necessarily have fewer abortions (it varies quite a bit in different countries), so anti-abortion groups had little choice but to stop condemning single adults, in particular, who gave birth and refused to choose adoption.

But if there are more than one or two famous Republicans who are willing to support the Donohue–Levitt hypothesis on abortion's effect on the crime rate (yes, I know there's been plenty of debate on it) I haven't heard their names yet. What I DO hear from conservatives, again and again, is that couples have to stop believing in the concept of "unwanted," because it's the easiest thing in the world to fall in love with an unplanned baby AND keep it out of poverty, regardless of the circumstances. Tell that to all the foster kids who still have to beg in the newspapers to be adopted. (Maybe some of them were initially wanted, but by the wrong parents, apparently.)

My view is that pretty soon, we'll have to choose between a world population that is 50% senior citizens but that never rises above 9 billion, and a population of 12 billion and counting, long before the end of the century. Does anyone really believe there are enough resources to feed, house and educate that many, never mind more? (One thing I REALLY don't understand is why so many claim the global population is suddenly going to increase much more slowly than in the last 20 years or so - they never offer any simple proof of that. We reached 7.5 billion in late April and things only seem to be speeding up. At the current rate, we'll be at 8 billion by early 2021. It seems that we've done a flip-flop - in the mid-1960s, it was predicted that we'd be at 7 billion by the mid-1990s, which was wrong - we reached 6 billion in 1999 - but now we seem to be erring in the opposite direction. Why?)

Humanity like any other species could survive just fine on less than 500K individuals world wide.

A good population crash is ultimately a good thing of human inventiveness and technology

"Tell that to all the foster kids who still have to beg in the newspapers to be adopted."

Have you actually looked into what is required to adopt any of them? If you aren't black (and even if you are) it is pretty much impossible. Also, poverty isn't why most of them are in the foster system. Parental drug use is the issue.

"Does anyone really believe there are enough resources to feed, house and educate that many, never mind more?"

Yes. Without much difficulty. The biggest issue isn't resources. It is corruption. It doesn't matter how much money you have if it all gets stolen. Even in the so called first world this is an issue. All of southern europe is devastated by corruption. For all of my comments above Italy is actually one of the least corrupt. The WSJ had a piece today about how Greece is passing up billions of dollars selling bulk olive oil under Italian brands. The writer didn't understand why they did something so foolish. The answer is quite simple, if you actually make significant money the government will just take it all. Why put in the effort to make a brand when you won't make any money from it? This problem is prevalent in 90% of the world. The issue isn't resources but the efficient use of them.

In a similar vein, kids aren't that expensive. Poverty isn't the issue. We have produced and educated kids on far less than is common today and got far better results. Money is not the issue. So while kids aren't that expensive they are time consuming. Children, especially small children, need a huge amount of adult time. Or to put things a different way, no matter how much money you spend it won't make a difference.

"but now we seem to be erring in the opposite direction. Why?"

Models always lag the data. You noted there was an unforeseen upward trend. That is now baked into the model. So an unforeseen downward trend it typical. You would think people could do a better job but history says otherwise.

Have you actually looked into what is required to adopt any of them? If you aren't black (and even if you are) it is pretty much impossible.
_____________________________________________

Then how does ANY child get adopted, when EVERYONE says that adopting a non-foster child is much harder, much more expensive, and takes longer? Doesn't make sense.

Also, I see plenty of white foster kids in the papers, so I don't know what you mean.

Does anyone really believe there are enough resources to feed, house and educate that many, never mind more?

To phrase it differently:

If corruption and inefficiency have been making it impossible to solve the hunger problem even after WWII - that is, for over 70 years - common sense says that increasing the population by a few more billion will only make corruption and hunger much worse.

(For the record, I predict that what the U.N. said in 1990 will be correct; they said we'd be OVER 10 billion by 2050. Right now they're saying, I think, that we won't be over 9.5 by then. Again, no one ever offers simple proof as to how the slowdown will happen when we're still speeding up.)

If we do reach 8 billion by early 2021, that would mean it took fewer than 10 years to go from 7b to 8b.