China’s “expensive” workforce earns on average about one-third of the U.S. workforce. Expecting American wages to drop by two-thirds to match China’s while expecting that the economy does not contract to low Depression status is more than optimistic. Note that the implicit assumption is that China’s workforce wages would stay stable rather than also dropping by two-thirds. Unlikely, to say the least.
Office space in large cities is going through a crisis of low occupancy right now. Here’s a bit of optimism: How empty office buildings are setting cities on a doom loop. In a world that prefers remote working, assuming that people will flock back into cities or that companies will want to create offices in “obsolete” buildings (the article’s word) is also more than optimistic.
You say that “[consumers will] probably have more money, and thus be more lucrative.” The pressure on businesses will be to lower salaries and eliminate jobs. The U.S. has largely switched to a service economy over the past half century. After the boomers die off and the tremendous need for caregivers and health professionals plummets, the service economy will flatten. Therefore, the manufacturing workforce will crash, the office workforce will crash, and the service workforce will crash. None of this forecasts a wealthier population or the revival of broken cities.
Not to mention that global warming will make half the country uninhabitable.
As China will find out long before we do, unless it rapidly changes its strictures on immigration, a declining population is a curse, not a boon.
I would not count on that. The evidence seems to suggest that climate change will increase the extremeness at both ends, rather than trending warmer in winter. Global warming is a mean, across both miles and months. One other thing to consider is the collapse of the AMOC, which transports tropical warmth to more northerly climes. When it stalls out, the north sea will probably ice over in winter (which it has not done in a very long time), which will mitigate warming just a tad but probably cause other problems.
Manufacturing jobs aren’t moving here, they are moving to Vietnam, Bangladesh and India.
Sure companies want to cut wages. They always do. But demographics will make it impossible with a smaller work force. Higher wages makes automation more effective, true, but that improves productivity. Anyhow service jobs are less able to be automated, without much better AI anyhow.
The trend seems to be for less WFH than during the pandemic, though more than before. It will never be 5 days a week WFH, except in special cases. (We had a few at Sun 20 years ago, mostly due to special circumstances or an office closing.) Even a few days a week, there is a great incentive to avoid crowded highways. I live in the Bay Area, and even with more WFH I80 at rush hour still sucks, crowded because people were forced to move far away from the city due to housing afforability.
Most models that I’ve seen say that the areas around the Great Lakes will indeed benefit from more temperate climates. This major summary of research calls for increased average yearly temperatures, fewer extremely cold days in winter, lesser snowfalls, hotter summers, and wetter autumns across all models from high to low changes. I’ll take that over all the much more direr predictions for other areas of the countries.
Your link says that they cannot predict when - or really if - the AMOC will collapse. It’s a concern, certainly, but not a priority concern. And if it does happen, the Great Lakes would not suffer the worst effects.
Japan just reported its 17th consecutive year of natural (births - deaths) population decline. For 2023, it was a decline of 831,872, the biggest one yet (I assume since the war years).
For Japan, this isn’t really a future issue. Seven years ago demographers estimated that Japan’s population, currently around 123 million, would sink below 100 million (an 18% loss) by 2053 and decreases have only gotten worse since then.
Marriages dropped below half a million for the first time in 90 years.
I’ll certainly take it over the predictions for some other areas of the country and of the world, yes.
But what we’re getting in practice is repeated chilly soggy wet springs preventing planting on time, followed by very long dry stretches during the growing season, punctuated by high wind and heavy rains causing wind damage and flood damage, both in fashions that used to be unusual for the area but are becoming a lot more common. So it’s not an improvement over the previous climate, no.
We never used to get tornadoes around here. Now they confirm a few every year.
We’re also dealing with diseases – both human and plant – that used to stay further south, often because their transmitting insects stayed further south.
Plus which, people living in the Great Lakes area would certainly not be immune from the side effects of large numbers of simultaneous climate disasters elsewhere in the world.
I don’t know where your “here” is, but my “here” - Rochester, NY - is in fact seeing much milder winters, hotter summers without many days over 90, and no more than usual rain and wind. However, we’re right on Lake Ontario and others off the lake have not been so lucky. The major winery district in the nearly Finger Lakes is being disrupted, pretty much like every other wine-producing region in the world. Wine grapes are extremely sensitive.
But the total scoreboard is pretty good. Tornadoes. None. Hurricanes. None. Flash floods. Maybe farther south. Wildfires. None. Mudslides. None. Blizzards. Not for many years; we’re not Buffalo. Ice storms. Not for thirty years. What am I missing? Whatever it is we don’t get it.
We have plenty of clean fresh water, though. Everybody in the Southwest should think about moving up here.
And, relevant to this discussion, south of 5&20. And right smack in the middle of said major winery district, though growing crops other than grapes.
Haven’t had a tornado right here, no. See them on the news. Haven’t had a flash flood right on my place, no – but go talk to Penn Yan and Lodi. See a whole lot more days above 90 than I used to; and longer stretches of hot without cool breaks between them.
If you’re in the city you may not be dealing with insects and insect-borne diseases.
Couple of interesting things to me in that piece. First, the number of women college graduates has edged up higher than men’s, similar to what has happened here in the US. I didn’t know that.
Second, 10% of Japanese couples cohabitate before marriage. That seems low to me. Does anyone know our domestic rate?
These websites claim that most American couples live together before marriage (and note that I can’t verify what they claim and that I don’t necessarily agree with what they advocate about marriage):
And of course it is not just Japan’s social conventions but immigration policy that’s a big factor.
Wealthy countries have falling birthrates and ageing populations. We either accept that, along with all that goes with it – ghost towns, lack of care workers, big strain on social security, stagnant growth etc – or *horror* get used to seeing people of different ethnicities / cultures.
And we’ll need to anyway eventually start genuinely supporting parenting; with money, respect, and some fashion of not screwing up people’s other careers for those who want them as well as recognizing that child raising is itself a respectable career. Allowing more immigration will help – for a while. But eventually rates will drop elsewhere; at least, unless the less wealthy countries are forced to stay poor, and ban effective birth control.
I have kids. But in a free choice society I’m not sure I expect much support for having children in general. I’m guessing it’s become less profitable over time, to the point where children are a money sink at this point. Lord knows that TWINK couples can pile up the money and it’s certainly not being taken away from them in taxes in any great amount, if at all.
Plus you have the vicious cycle of a declining birthrate leaving more childless people in the voting pool, and the voters not connecting the dots between the population decline and their complaints about how much services cost.
If the population goes to zero, that is bad, assuming you like humans, but if there are, say, eight billion people at some point instead of twelve that does not spell the end of civilization.
Bumping for the US numbers from 2023: fertility rate dropped to 1.62, the lowest since the government has been keeping track, and the number of babies born was just shy of 3.6 million, about 76,000 fewer than in '22 and the lowest total since 1979.