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China’s depopulation has begun. While it’s true that they still have a
big number of younger workers, they also have a rising number of ageing people
who need more healthcare, more pension and other retirement benefits. So the
burden of taking care of the ageing people will really fall on the shoulders of
the younger population.
The China communist government cannot simply dispatch its hundreds of millions of bureaucrats, or robots, to take care of their oldies.
A friend noted that the “inequalities
in the distribution of the benefits of the fruits of its development will make
China implode.” While this may be true, “more equitable” European societies are
also slowly imploding. They sustain their forced equality only via endless
borrowings, but those huge debts are now calling the kettle. For countries with
declining working age population, there are three solutions: raise the
retirement age from 60 to 65-70, more migrants, and/or more robots.
I read
that in the US, there is no more retirement age, people choose when to stop
working. This is good, encourage people to stop being “employee forever”
and become start up entrepreneurs and job creators themselves. While it is
relatively easy to do this in the US, it is more difficult in in socialist
China or some near-socialist European economies as government taxes and
bureaucracies are high.
Is big population a liability to more
economic growth?
The
advocates of the recent RH law said YES, that is why they supported more
government coercion — more taxes, more sex education, more forced but free
services by OB professionals, etc. — to control the country’s population,
especially that of the poor. The debate ended in favor of the lovers of more
government coercion, but implementation is another issue.
The
Malthusian alarmism of “we will have less land, less water, less food and even
less radio spectrum bandwidth per person” as the population expands is wrong.
There is zero limit or constraint to vertical space. Too many people die every
year because there is too much rain water and flooding not because there is
lack of it. And the main health concern now is more fat, more obese people than
undernourished ones because there are lots of food and drinks. The number of
cell phones and laptops are rising and yet internet speed is rising.
So the
Malthusian population alarmism is pushed always by statists. Control
inequality, control prices, control businesses, control population.
People are
assets, not liabilities. The real liabilities — killers, rapists, thieves, land
grabbers, carnappers, extortionists, etc. — both in the public and private
sectors, that’s the proper role of government to control, to implement the rule
of law. If the poor become construction workers or public market vendors or
department store cashiers, so be it. They are working, they produce various
goods and services. Government should not penalize and over-bureaucratize the
poor if they become self reliant and independent.
Those
construction workers, bus and taxi drivers, security guards of expensive
buildings, malls, shops and villages, etc. – those useful people, they normally
do not come from 1 or 2 children households, but from 4 or more children
households. And the RH camp demonize the fast growth of the population of the
poor.
Population
control or population expansion, leave it to civil society and individuals.
Government should step out of that concern. Instead, government should
over-bureaucratize, over-regulate, over-control and over-penalize criminals ,whether
rich or poor, whether in the private or government sectors.
Singapore, Japan, some European
countries now are into government-sponsored population expansion, but there are
not much takers. The governments for instance give allowance per child until 18
years old (Germany, etc.).
We are far
from what China, Japan, HK, Sing, Taiwan, Europe, are experiencing of greying
population. And that is precisely our strength — we have a high and young
population, many of those aged people in Europe, Japan, etc. would be feeble or
dead by now without the Filipino healthcare professionals assisting them. But
the government and the bleeding hearts say that high population is wrong and
hence, government-sponsored population control should proceed.
It would
have been different if population control is done by civil society and
individuals themselves — they buy those condoms, pills and injectibles
themselves and distribute for free to the poor, put their money where their
mouth is. But they did not. They went for national coercion and legislation, so
that even people who do not believe their “bright idea” are now forced to
finance their actually stupid idea.
Another friend noted that there are
plenty of “jologs” among the poor, they just multiply fast then ask the government
to take care of their kids. There is some truth to this, and many NGOs and the
foreign aid/consultancy establishments hype up the problem, to get more public
funding for their various “save the poor” contracts and projects.
But it is
also true that many of the poor want to stand on their own and do not want to
run to government and politicians whenever possible as they are simply being
used by many corrupt politicians. Problem is that government gives them various
bureaucracies if they start some micro entrepreneurship projects, so they go
for unregistered, informal businesses, and are subject to harassment and
extortion by the barangay, the police, and/or city hall bureaucrats.
There are
more jologs in government than in the private sector. The most opportunistic,
the shrewd and cunning among the population, are always attracted to politics
and government. The honest ones do not need politics nor government position to
help others, or to create jobs for other people.
One indicator if an idea is bright or
stupid, is if it requires new legislation and coercion. If it does, then
90-100% it is a bad or even stupid idea.
For
instance, some people want to help the poor have more food, so they simply
develop their farms, or they put up carinderia and other cheap sources of food.
They did not require a single lobbying, a single peso of tax money, to help the
poor. This is one example of a good idea. In contrast, the RH law is an example
of a bad idea.
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See also:
Population Control 13: Excess People are Liabilities kuno, August 25, 2012
Population Control 14: Lessons from the Cybercrime Law, October 08, 2012
Population Control 15: Debate, Debate, on the RH Bill, December 03, 2012
Population Control 16: RH Bill as HR, Coercion as Choice, December 13, 2012
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