Among those who study demographics there is a universal acknowledgment that human population in increasing, and will continue to increase.
Because you don't seem to follow math very well I will explain something to you. 3.5 billion people need a birth rate roughly TWICE what 7 billion people have, in order to add a billion people to their population in the same amount of time.
Because we now have 7 billion people, rather than 6, a declining birth rate will STILL add another billion people faster than 6 billion at a higher birth rate added another billion.
I don't remember, back when there were only 6 billion people on Earth rather than 7, MISSING them in an economic sense.
Similarly, if the illegal population of these United States were to be economically encouraged to go home, it would not be an economic blight upon the USA because of their ‘missing’ population.
How do you reconcile your out of the mainstream view with the economic blight of those nations with huge birth rates, and the economic blight we suffer because of illegal immigration?
Shouldn't all those extra people provide an economic boon? Why don't they?
IS POPULATION GROWTH A DRAG ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT?
Julian L. Simon1
This is the economic history of humanity in a nutshell:
From 2 million or 200,000 or 20,000 or 2,000 years ago until
the 18th Century there was slow growth in population, almost
no increase in health or decrease in mortality, slow growth
in the availability of natural resources (but not increased
scarcity), increase in wealth for a few, and mixed effects
on the environment. Since then there has been rapid growth
in population due to spectacular decreases in the death
rate, rapid growth in resources, widespread increases in
wealth, and an unprecedently clean and beautiful living
environment in many parts of the world along with a degraded
environment in the poor and socialist parts of the world.
That is, more people and more wealth has correlated
with more (rather than less) resources and a cleaner
environment - just the opposite of what Malthusian
theory leads one to believe.
For many years until recently, it was thought by
"development economists" that population growth is a drag upon
economic development in poor countries. And even after a
considerable shift in professional opinion in the 1980s,
population growth is commonly believed to hinder development.
This belief was the underlying assumption at the United Nations'
World Population Conference in Cairo in 1994 just as it was at
previous World Population Conferences and as it probably will be
again at the World Population Conference in 2004, irrespective of
respectable scientific opinion.
In accord with the earlier professional opinion, since the
early 1960's official institutions such as the U.S. State Depart-
ment's Agency for International Development (AID), the World
Bank, and the United Nations Fund for Population Activities
(UNFPA), have acted on the assumption that population growth is
the key determinant of economic development. This belief has
misdirected attention away from the central factor in a country's
economic development: its economic and political system. This
misplaced attention has resulted in unsound economic advice being
given to developing nations. It also has caused (or allowed) the
misdiagnosis of such world development problems as supplies of
natural resources, starving children, illiteracy, pollution, and
slow growth.
From the 1970s through the date of this publication, the
U.S. government directly and indirectly has been spending
hundreds of milions of dollars annually in foreign assistance for
family planning and other programs aimed at slowing population
growth in the poorer countries. Not only could these funds have
been put to other purposes, but in some cases, the population
control programs funded by U.S. taxpayers have involved coercive
policies designed to reduce birth rates in LDCs.
One reason that population growth has been viewed as a
villain is that poor countries tend to have a high birth rate.
And it seems "common sense" that if fewer babies were born, there
would be more of the supposedly fixed quantities of food and
housing to go around. Furthermore, in earlier decades most
economists did not have another persuasive explanation of growth
and wealth. Population growth became the villain by default.
The belief that population growth slows economic development
is not a wrong but harmless idea. Rather, it has been the basis
for inhumane programs of coercion and the denial of personal
liberty in one of the most valued choices a family can make --
the number of children that it wishes to bear and raise. Also,
harm has been done to the U. S. as donor of foreign aid, over and
beyond the funds themselves, by way of money laundered through
international organizations that comes back to finance domestic
population propaganda organizations, and so on. This topic has
been addressed in detail elsewhere (Simon, 1981, Chapters 21, 22)
This paper makes two points. First, there is persuasive
explanation for why some countries grow faster than others, and
the explanation has nothing to do with population growth. This
factor leaves little room for population growth to be the cause
of slow growth. Second, there is persuasive direct statistical
evidence that population growth is not associated negatively with
economic development in the short or intermediate run, and may
well be a positive influence in the long run. A corollary is
that a more dense population does not hamper population growth.
In the very short run, additional people are an added
burden. But under conditions of freedom, population growth poses
less of a problem in the short run, and brings many more benefits
in the long run, than under conditions of government control.
THE ROLE OF THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC SYSTEM IN ECONOMIC PROGRESS
If there is another convincing explanation for the bulk of
differences among countries in economic growth, then the
likelihood that population growth is an important drag on
development is logically diminished. The most powerful evidence
explaining the rate of economic progress is found in the
aggregate statistics which relate economic-political systems to
their rates of economic growth.
Raymond Gastil (annual) categorizes the systems. He grades
each nation on three measures of liberty: political, civil, and
economic. Economic liberty comprises two sub-measures -- the
extent of government intervention in markets, and the level of
personal economic liberty.
Gerald Scully (1988) related Gastil's data to economic
results. Allowing for other relevant factors, he finds a strong
relationship between each of the three liberty variables and the
rate of economic growth during 1960 to 1980 among 115 nations.
And when he folds all three measures of liberty into a single
variable, he finds that nations characterized as "politically
open, individual rights, and free market" had an average growth
rate per capita of 2.73 percent, whereas those characterized as
"politically closed, state rights, and command [economy]" had an
average growth rate of 0.91 percent. This is a huge difference
in performance.
Gary Becker (1989) deepens confidence in Scully's result
with a study along the same lines which finds that "political
democracy" is positively related to economic growth. And using a
somewhat different methods, Keith Marsden arrived at much the
same now-solid conclusion.
The results in China's agricultural sector before and after
the 1979-1981 period are an important illustration of the
decisive effect of the political and economic structure upon
economic development. Under a system of collective production
where there was little incentive for farmers to work hard and
take risks, but great incentive for them to loaf on the job, food
production stagnated in the years before 1979. The combination
of bad weather and The Great Leap Forward during the years 1959
to 1961 caused production to fall so drastically that 30 million
people died of starvation. This was certainly the worst food-
production performance of any country in modern times, and
perhaps the worst ever.
Then the Chinese government undertook the largest and
fastest social movement of all time. Within a period of three
years, the 700 million people in the agricultural sector shifted
from collective enterprise to individual enterprise, and
agriculture became the largest "private" sector in the world, by
far. And since then Chinese agricultural production has
skyrocketed. Per capita food production showed almost no
increase from 1950 to 1978. But starting with the reform in
1979, per capita production almost doubled by 1985, a truly
incredible increase, with continued growth since then and no
limit in sight. The visitor to China is confronted with
bounteous appetizing food on every streetcorner, it seems, in the
sharpest contrast to the situation in the former Soviet Union.
One may wonder whether the Chinese agricultural turnaround
was "just" an isolated event, and could have other causes than
the shift in social system. We may therefore consult a wider
range of experience, though using prose accounts rather than
statistical analysis. Sven Rydenfelt analyzed the experience of
fifteen socialist countries on four continents and finds a
pervasive pattern of economic failure. However, each of these
cases also can be "explained" on the basis of its individual
culture rather than its socialist system.
Most vivid is the eyeball evidence. One need only travel by
bus across the Karelian peninsula which was wholly within Finland
until World War II. The part that is still within Finland has
incomparably better roads and more modern shops and facilities
than the part that is now within the Soviet Union. Or drive from
West Berlin to East Berlin. Or take the train from the mainland
portion of Hong Kong across the border to China. The differences
in favor of a free-enterprise private-property society are
literally unmistakable for all who are not entirely masked by
ideological blinders.
Evidence that is both dramatic and powerful statistically
arises from the unique experiment that the world's political
system created following World War II. Three nations - Germany,
Korea, and China - were split into socialist and non-socialist
parts, producing three pairs of countries whose members began
with the same culture and language and history. The members of
the pairs also had much the same standard of living when they
split apart, and the same birth rates. Their subsequent
histories enable us to determine the effect of economic system,
because it is the only relevant variable that differs between the
elements of each pair. These comparisons constitute a useful
combination of scientific rigor with ease of communication and
understanding. (Similar comparisons can be made with such
neighboring countries, one socialist and one capitalist, such as
Austria with Czechoslovakia.)
Other than the case of Korea, which will provide a
continuing laboratory example, the results are now in and are
known to all. (For a full display of the data, please see the
predecessor to this essay, Simon, 1990).
Standard measures of development that show the huge
differences in results with different socio-economic systems
include:
Output Per Person
Whether per person is measured by either the exchange-rate
method or the purchasing-power-parity method, the result of the
comparison is the same. The pairs began with roughly-equal
incomes after World War II. In each case, by the 1990s the
communist country had a much lower income. Taiwan's income is
three or four times as high as China's, S. Korea's about twice as
N. Korea's, and W. Germany's was vastly higher than E. Germany's.
Differences in product quality are not reflected in the
standard statisticaly comparisons, but are important. In East
Germany the four-cylinder primitive Trabant was almost the only
car one can buy. A person had to work 3,807 hours to earn enough
to purchase a Trabant, whereas in West Germany 607 hours work
paid for a much better car. And people had to wait in line for
ten years to get a car in East Germany.
A refrigerator required 293 hours of work in East Germany,
but only 40 hours in West Germany; a suit required 67 hours of
work, versus 13 hours in West Germany.
Only 36 percent of housing facilities in East Germany
hadcentral heating, 60 percent an indoor toilet, and 68 percent a
bath or shower. In West Germany the corresponding percentages
were 70 percent, 95 percent, and 92 percent.
Life and Health
Goods only have value if one is alive to enjoy them.
Concerning the number of years that a newly-born person could
expect to live, the free-enterprise countries did better in each
pair, though each pair started out with much the same life-
expectancy after World War II. The same is true of the results
for infant mortality. These results are particularly interesting
because public health had been one of the more-successful
activities of socialized countries. And indeed, for a while the
differences between the members of pairs were small. But
throughout Eastern Europe, life expectancy actually fell in the
last decades of the socialist experiment, and infant mortality
has increased. This reversal is not yet well-understood, but it
certainly stemmed from a congeries of characteristics of a
publicly-run health system, and from the general poverty of
socialized economies.
Proportion of the Labor Force in Agriculutre
The best long-run indicator of the extent of development of
a society is the proportion of the labor force that is employed
in agriculture. The fewer the people that are needed to feed the
population, the larger the number of people that can be employed
in providing other goods. The countries with freer markets --
including freer labor markets and freer agriculture -- needed
fewer people to feed the rest.
Economic Infra-structure
The number of telephones is a good measure of the
development of a country's infra-structure, and more particularly
its crucial communications infra-structure. The communist
countries lagged behind the development of the market-oriented
countries.
These data for the paired-country experiments in political
and economic systems provide evidence that is well-grounded
scientifically as well as dramatic and easily-understood. They
prove that the socio-economic system is the main determinant of
economic growth. There is little other variation in
developmental rates that might be explained by population
growth.
POPULATION GROWTH AND DENSITY AS INFLUENCES ON DEVELOPMENT
The paired-country data corroborate a larger body of other
scientific studies which show that population growth and density
do not hamper development. The first line in Table 1 shows that
in each split-country case the centrally-planned communist
country began with less population "pressure," as measured by
density per square kilometer, compared to the paired market-
directed non-communist country. And the communist and non-
communist countries in each pair also started with much the same
birth rates and population growth rates. There is certainly no
evidence here which suggests that population growth or density
influences the rate of economic development. Contrary to the
idea that population growth necessarily inhibits economic growth,
the free market countries, each with faster expansion in
population, experienced more rapid development -- on a per capita
basis -- than their neighboring socialist nations. If anything,
the data show that more people have a positive effect on
development.
The most powerful evidence on the relationship between the
rate of population growth and the rate of economic growth are the
global correlations. There now exist perhaps a score of
competent statistical studies, beginning in 1967 with an analysis
by Simon Kuznets covering the few countries for which data are
available over the past century, and also analyses by Kuznets
(1967) and Richard Easterlin (1967) of the data covering many
countries since World War II. The basic method is to gather data
on each country's rate of population growth and its rate of
economic growth, and then to examine whether -- looking at all
the data in the sample together -- the countries with high
population growth rates have economic growth rates lower than
average, and countries with low population growth rates have
economic growth rates higher than average. Various writers have
used a variety of samples of countries, and they have employed an
impressive battery of ingenious statistical techniques to allow
for other factors that might also be affecting the outcome.
The clear-cut consensus of this body of research is that
faster population growth is not associated with slower economic
growth. Of course one can adduce cases of countries that
seemingly are exceptions to the pattern. It is the genius of
statistical inference, however, to enable us to draw valid
generalizations from samples that contain such wide variations in
behavior. The exceptions can be useful in alerting us to
possible avenues for further analysis, but as long as they are
only exceptions, they do not prove that the generalization is not
meaningful or useful.
It has been suggested (e.g. by Roger Conner, 1984) that the
studies showing the absence of a relationship between the
population rate and the economic growth rate also demonstrate
that additional people do not imply a higher standard of living
in the long run. That is, because these studies do not show a
positive correlation, one is said to make claims beyond the
evidence if one says that over the very long sweep of human
history a larger population in the world (or perhaps, in what is
the developed part of the world at any moment) has meant faster
rates of increase of technology and the standard of living.
It is indeed the case that the existing body of empirical
studies does not prove that fast population growth in the more-
developed world as a whole increases per person income. But this
is not inconsistent with the proposition that more people do
raise the standard of living in the long run. Recall that the
studies mentioned above do not refer to the very long run, but
rather usually cover only a quarter of a century, or a century at
most. The main negative effects of population growth occur
during perhaps the first quarter or half of a century so that, if
these effects are important, the empirical studies referred to
should reveal them. These shorter-run effects upon the standard
of living include the public costs of raising children -- schools
and hospitals are the main examples -- and the costs of providing
additional production capital for the additional persons in the
work force. The absence of an observed negative effect upon
economic growth in the statistical measures therefore is enough
to imply that in the very long run more people have a positive
net effect. This is because the most important positive effects
of additional people -- improvement of productivity through both
the contribution of new ideas, and also the learning-by-doing
consequent upon increased production volume -- happen in the long
run, and are cumulative. To put it differently, the statistical
measurements of the relationship of population growth to economic
growth are biased in favor of showing the shorter-run effects,
which tend to be negative, and not showing the longer-run
effects, which tend to be positive. If such negative effects do
not appear, one may assume that an unbiased measure of the total
effect would reveal a positive effect of population growth upon
economic growth.
There is still another reason why the studies mentioned
above do not imply an absence of positive effect in the long run:
They focus on the process of population growth. If we look
instead at the attained level of population -- that is, the
population density as measured by the number of persons per
square mile, say -- we see a somewhat different result. Studies
of MDC's are lacking. But Everett Hagen (l975) and Charles
Kindleberger (l965) show visually, and Simon and Roy Gobin (l979)
show in multivariate regressions, that in LDC's higher population
density is associated with higher rates of economic growth; this
effect may be strongest at low densities, but there is no
evidence that the effect reverses at high densities. Again, the
statistical evidence directly contradicts the common-sense
conventional wisdom. That is, if you make a chart with
population density on the horizontal axis and either the income
level or the rate of change of income on the vertical axis, you
will see that higher density is associated with better rather
than poorer economic results.
The data showing a positive effect of density upon economic
growth constitute indirect proof of a positive long-run effect of
population growth upon economic growth, because density changes
occur very slowly, and therefore the data pick up the very-long-
run effects as well as the short run effects.3
Hong Kong is a vivid example of this phenomenon. In the
1940's and 1950's, it seemed impossible for Hong Kong to surmount
its problems -- huge masses of impoverished people without jobs,
total lack of exploitable natural resources, more refugees
pouring across the border each day. Today, Hong Kong enjoys high
living standards, low unemployment, an astounding collection of
modern high-rise apartments and office buildings, and one of the
world's most modern transportation systems. Hong Kong starkly
demonstrates that a very dense concentration of human beings does
not prevent comfortable existence and exciting economic
expansion, as long as the economic system gives individuals the
freedom to exercise their talents and to take advantage of
opportunities. And the experience of Singapore demonstrates that
Hong Kong is not unique.
Check for yourself: Fly over Hong Kong -- just a few decades
ago a place seemingly without prospects because of insoluble
resource problems -- and you will marvel at the skyline of
buildings. Take a ride on its excellent smooth-flowing highways
for an hour or two, and you will realize that a very dense
concentration of human beings does not prevent comfortable
existence and a rapid rate of economic growth.2
At this point the question frequently arises: If more
people cause there to be more ideas and knowledge, and hence
higher productivity and income, why are not India and China the
richest nations in the world? Let us put aside the matter that
size in terms of population within national boundaries was not
very meaningful in earlier centuries when national integration
was much looser than it is now. There remains the question,
however, why so many human beings in those countries produced so
little change in the last few hundred years. Yes, low education
of most people in China and India prevents them from producing
knowledge and change (though we should note the very large, in
absolute terms, contemporary scientific establishments in those
two countries.) But though education may account for much of the
present situation, it does not account nearly as well for the
differences between the West and the East over the five centuries
or so up to, say, l850.
William McNeill (l963), Eric Jones (1981) and others have
suggested that over several centuries the relative instability of
social and economic life in Europe, compared to China and India,
helps account for the emergence of modern growth in the West
rather than in the East. Instability implies economic
disequilibria, which (as Theodore Schultz [1975] reminds us)
imply exploitable opportunities which then lead to augmented
effort. (Such disequilibria also cause the production of new
knowledge, it would seem.)
The hypothesis that the combination of a person's wealth
and opportunities affect the person's exertion of effort may go
far in explaining the phenomenon at hand. Ceteris paribus, the
less wealth a person has, the greater the person's drive to take
advantage of economic opportunities. The village millions in
India and China certainly have had plenty of poverty to stimulate
them. But they have lacked opportunities because of the static
and immobile nature of their village life. In contrast,
villagers in Western Europe apparently had more mobility, less
stability, and more exposure to cross-currents of all kinds.
Just why Europe should have been so much more open than
India and China is a question that historians answer with
conjectures about religion, smallness of countries with
consequent competition and instability, and a variety of other
special conditions. This matter need not be pursued here. But
we should at least mention Lal's 1988 book on India's economic
development over thousands of years, which suggests that it was
only the rapid population growth starting around 1921 which
cracked the "cake of custom" and the Hindu caste system, and
caused the mobility which allowed India to begin modern
development.
Most (if not all) historians of the period (e.g. Nef, 1958/
1963; Gimpel, 1976) agree that the period of rapid population
growth from before AD 1000 to the beginning of the middle of the
1300s was a period of extraordinary intellectual fecundity. It
was also a period of great dynamism generally, as seen in the
extraordinary cathedral building boom. But during the period of
depopulation due to the plague (starting with the Black Death
cataclysm) and perhaps to climatic changes from the middle 1300s
(though the change apparently began earlier at the time of major
famines around 1315-17, and perhaps even earlier, when there also
was a slowing or cessation of population growth due to other
factors) until perhaps the 1500s, historians agree that
intellectual and social vitality waned.
Henri Pirenne's magisterial analysis (1925/1969) of this
period depends heavily upon population growth and size. Larger
absolute numbers were the basis for increased trade and
consequent growth in cities, which in turn strongly influenced
the creation of a more articulated exchange economy in place of
the subsistence economy of the manor. And according to Pirenne,
growth in population also loosened the bonds of the serf in the
city and thereby contributed to an increase in human liberty
(though the causes of the end of serfdom are a subject of much
controversy).
A corollary, of course, is that once the people in the East
lose the shackles of static village life and get some education,
their poverty (absolute and relative) will drive them to an
extraordinary explosion of creative effort. The happenings in
Taiwan and Korea in recent decades suggest that this is already
beginning to occur.
This explanation would seem more systematic, and more
consistent with the large body of economic thought, than are
explanations in terms of Confucianism or of particular cultures,
just as the Protestant-ethic explanation for the rise of the West
(discussion of which goes back at least to David Hume) now seems
unpersuasive in the face of religious counter-examples (e.g. the
Catholic Ibo in Nigeria) and shifts in behavior of Protestant
nations.
Though the statistical studies together with the historical
analogies would seem to constitute persuasive evidence of the
positive long-run effect of additional people, experience shows
that it is not convincing. Perhaps a few thought experiments in
the form of hypothetical comparisons will add conviction.
Therefore, please ask yourself: i) Would the world be in better
or worse shape today if all the people who have ever lived in the
area now called the Netherlands (or India, or China, or Portugal,
or wherever) had never lived at all? ii) If you were colonizing
another planet such as the moon or Saturn, would you prefer that
ten, or a hundred, or a thousand, or a million, or ten million
persons were also colonizing along with you? Under which
condition would exploration and mapping of the resources of the
moon take place more rapidly? Under which condition would the
moon be more rapidly rendered habitable so that one could travel
safely and find accommodations and a fast-food outlet? iii) If
you were Robinson Crusoe, would you have preferred that the
island were not devoid of other humans, but rather contained some
or many others? Under which conditions do you think that you
would be in less fear of your life, and feel less need to erect
fortifications and stand watch at night? Under which conditions
would there be a greater pool of useful skills, and of the
manpower to build a ship and leave the island? Would the
"congestion" of more people outweigh the isolation of none? iv)
Were the Pilgrims better or worse off for the the presence of
Native Americans in the area when they arrived?
CONCLUSION
For 25 years our institutions have mis-analyzed such world
development problems as starving children, illiteracy, pollution,
supplies of natural resources and slow growth. The World Bank,
the State Department's Aid to International Development (AID),
The United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) and the
environmental organizations have asserted that the cause is
population growth -- the population "explosion" or "bomb" or
"plague." This error has cost dearly. It has directed our
attention away from the factor that we now know is central in a
country's economic development, its economic and political
system. It suggests that attention be paid to population growth
rather than to fighting tyranny and working for economic freedom.
This error also has led to Westerners condoning and abetting
inhumane programs of coercion of couples to prevent them having
children in China and elsewhere. Perhaps the events in Eastern
Europe in 1989 and 1990 will open minds to the irrelevance of
population growth for intermediate-run economic development, and
to the all-importance of the social and economic system.
page 1/article0 catonew/July 3, 1995
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Becker, Gary, "An Environment for Economic Growth", The Wall
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Easterlin
Conner, Roger, "How Immigrants Affect Americans' Living
Standard," A Debate Between Julian Simon and Roger Conner, The
Heritage Foundation, May 30, 1984.
Easterlin, Richard A. 1967. Effects of population growth in
the economic development of of developing countries. The Annals
of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 369:98-
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Gastil, Raymond D., Freedom in the World (Westport, Conn:
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Hagen
Hagen, Everett E. 1975. The economics of development. Home-
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Jones, Eric L., The European Miracle (New York: Cambridge
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Krueger, Anne O., "Aid in the Development Process," The
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Kuznets, Simon, "Population and economic growth".
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Lal, Deepak, The Hindue Equilibrium: Cultural Stability and
Economic Stagnation: India 1500 BC-1980 AD (New York: Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1988).
Keith Marsden, "Why Asia Boomed and Africa Busted," WSJ,
June 3, 1985, op ed page.
McNeill, W. H., The Rise of the West - A History of the
Human Community (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
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Nef, John V., Western Civilization Since the Renaissance
(New York: Harper and Row, 1950/1963).
Pirenne, Henri, Medieval Cities (Princeton: Princeton
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page 2/article0 catonew/July 3, 1995
FOOTNOTES
1In this paper I draw freely upon a variety of Simon's other
writings that have touched upon the subjects at hand, especially
"Why Do We Still Think Babies Create Poverty", Washington Post,
October 12, 1985; and "The War on People", Challenge, March-
April, 1985, pp. 50-53. I appreciate comments by Jim Dorn, David
Boaz and Theodore W. Schultz. Stephen Moore helped prepare the
tabular material.
2Hong Kong is a special thrill for me because I first saw it
in 1955 when I went ashore from a U.S. Navy destroyer. At the
time I felt great pity for the thousands of people who slept
every night on the sidewalks or on small boats. It then seemed
clear to me, as it must have to almost every observer, that it
would be impossible for Hong Kong to surmount its problems --
huge masses of impoverished people without jobs, total lack of
exploitable natural resources, more refugees pouring across the
border each day. And it is this sort of picture that has
convinced many persons that a place is "overpopulated" and should
cut its birth rate (e.g. Ehrlich at the beginning of The
Population Bomb). But upon returning in 1983, I saw bustling
crowds of healthy, vital people full of hope and energy. No
cause for pity now.
3It may at first seem preposterous that greater population
density might lead to better economic results. This is the
equivalent of saying that if all Americans moved east of the
Mississippi, we might not be the poorer for it. Upon reflection,
this proposition is not as unlikely as it sounds. The main loss
involved in such a move would be huge amounts of farmland, and
though the United States is a massive producer and exporter of
farm goods, agriculture is not crucial to the economy. Less than
3% of U.S. income comes from agriculture, and less than 3% of the
U. S. working population is engaged in that industry. The
capitalized value of all U.S. farm land is just a bit more than a
tenth of just one year's national income, so even if the U.S.
were to lose all of it, the loss would equal only about one
year's expenditures upon liquor, cigarettes, and the like. On
the other hand, such a change would bring about major benefits in
shortening transportation and communication distances, a factor
which has been important in Japan's ability to closely coordinate
its industrial operations in such a fashion as to reduce costs of
inventory and transportation. Additionally, greater population
concentration forces social changes in the direction of a greater
degree of organization, changes which may be costly in the short
run but in the long run increase a society's ability to reach its
economic and social objectives. If we were still living at the
population density of, say, ten thousand years ago, we would have
none of the vital complex social and economic apparatuses that
are the backbone of our society.
page 3/article0 catonew/July 3, 1995
Wall Street Journal, Sept 4, 1987, p. 1, re the two Germanies
On mark exchange rate: Wash Post, Nov 15, 89 p. A26
page 4/article0 catonew/July 3, 1995
Global warming was a mainstream view till not too long ago too.