The De-Population Bomb
5,338,333
Published 2022-09-14
In 1970, Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich published a famous book, The Population Bomb, in which he described a disasterous future for humanity: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” That prediction turned out to be very wrong, and in this interview American Enterprise Institute scholar Nicholas Eberstadt tells how we are in fact heading toward the opposite problem: not enough people. For decades now, many countries have been unable to sustain a #population replacement birth rate, including in Western Europe, South Korea, Japan, and, most ominously, China. The societal and social impacts of this phenomenon are vast. We discuss those with Eberstadt as well as some strategies to avoid them.
For further information:
www.hoover.org/publications/uncommon-knowledge
Interested in exclusive Uncommon Knowledge content? Check out Uncommon Knowledge on social media!
Facebook: www.facebook.com/UncKnowledge/
Twitter: www.twitter.com/UncKnowledge/
Instagram: instagram.com/uncommon_knowledge_show
All Comments (21)
-
"The comfort of the rich depends on an abundant supply of the poor" Voltaire
-
50 year carpenter I say no 3 bedroom 2 bath home I’ve built is worth more than 120,000 the lenders are greedy
-
He's just admitting that our entire economy is a pyramid scheme...
-
something to think about, but captive animals dont tend to breed either.
-
So many young people can't afford to have children. Cost of living is prohibitive, and our society is frankly crazy. Why would they have kids?
-
Having children is an act of hope. America's hyperpartisan fear-mongering has denied our younger generations hope.
-
My kid in 20s struggling to pay rent and for college Houses are unaffordable Cars are unaffordable Healthcare is unaffordable Seriously guys…. Maybe they just have common sense not to have kids I don’t have economics degree but I can see the problem Seems odd these experts cannot🤦🏻♀️
-
As a man that got married, for the first time, at 36, and just had a son at 39, children are a luxury good. One that is way to expensive. We will never have another child. No support from family, it’s ridiculous hard for the willing.
-
Add the 40% increase death rate to working age population- as reported by insurance companies in 2022
-
“What happened?” (regarding college attendance plunging) Americans discovered that modern college is nothing more than big business for the same old players in the shadows
-
Look at a chart of inflation since 1970 with a chart of wage growth overlaid and it becomes very clear.
-
I’m a 30 man married with 2 children I was raised in public school where every guiding voice told us that if you had kids before you finished college you we’re screwed and that children are a financial burden that will drain you and eliminate all chances of following dreams or aspirations. The specific community I grew up in viewed children as an unwanted responsibility everyone claimed they “loved their kids” but constantly complained about all the things they had to provide for them this was my entire childhood. I grew up believing I was a burden to my parents and all my friends were burdens to their parents. I believe this pessimistic view was instilled in us during our formative years in school. My wife homeschools my children and we will not repeat history. Thank you for this interview!
-
I am 68 have never had a vacation and still working and broke
-
I have never had children because I could not afford them. Working minimum wage and, then, working full time at a grueling job I did not have the stamina to do it on my own. No partner wanted kids. I had the dream of being a stay at home mom and sending them to the best schools. Children require time, dedication and money to support them. Today jobs take up too much time and energy.
-
People have fewer or no children because they cant afford them. Women want fewer or no children because they have to work full time and rhey are exhausted.
-
32 minutes. Employers begging for workers. Err, not at the pay levels required to make work pay. Especially the UK.
-
It's not mysterious how come western industrialized society has been having so few children. Previously most people lived on farms where people had as many kids as they possibly could as children were free labor that helped the farm be more successful and profitable. When such populations urbanized and industrialized, people moved to cities where children are not helpful to anyone's economic bottom line. In cities, children are messy expensive habits that don't pay for themselves in regards to the family budget, and adults are usually rational about expenses, so they have less children. This by itself explains the decline in birthrate, but then consider how oligarchy has set in and how the super rich and big bigness can just lobby the legislatures to change the rules to benefit the upper class to the detriment of the majority of people. Society as of lately is not made to reward or benefit family creation, it is made to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few hundred people.
-
If there was any discussion of the mainstream media’s role in producing fear and nihilism in our society, I missed it. The media has played a starring role, and people too often overlook its culpability.
-
Kids are expensive. People can barely afford to take care of themselves, having kids put a lot of people into poverty or keeps them there. Many I have spoken to have said they don’t want to bring a child into this crazy world.
-
29 year old childless woman here, I am married to a man with two of his own sons. I have thought about having a child with him of my own, but the thought is absolutely crippling. We can not afford housing or anything due to child support already, how on earth do I afford to have a child of my own? Everything is so expensive, we can't even begin to think about being able to survive with another mouth to feed..and I'm running out of time.
