Population

[Benton]

(07-16-2017, 01:24 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: I wonder if it's time for the US to severely limit immigration from all nations, and not just the terrorist-producing kind, to just people with valuable skills (doctors/engineers/etc). I have seen where people have argued for immigration saying it's what built this country and made it great, and that is fairly true. Times also change. I saw something today that kind of amazed me.

US Population in 1900: 76.2m
US Population in 2000: 281.4m
US Population in 2010: 308.7m

Here's a couple other countries for comparison sake...

France Population in 1900: 38m
France Population in 2000: 59.4m
France Population in 2010: 62.9m

UK (+Ireland) Population in 1900: 38m
UK (+Ireland) Population in 2000: 62.7m
UK (+Ireland) Population in 2010: 67.3m

Japan Population in 1900: 42m
Japan Population in 2000: 125.7m
Japan Population in 2010: 127.3m

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Only Japan had a somewhat comparable % (but still much less) jump between 1900 and 2000 and that was mostly them becoming a developed nation. They've barely grown between 2000 and 2010, though.

France 1900 to 2010 Population % Growth: 165.5%
UK (+Ireland) 1900 to 2010 Population % Growth: 177.1%
Japan 1900 to 2010 Population % Growth: 303.1%
US 1900 to 2010 Population % Growth: 405.1%

Even a nation that got developed and industrialized during that time period had 102% less growth over their original population than the US did. This population growth rate probably isn't sustainable for the US to keep up with. If the US has another jump of equal % from 2010 to 2120, the US population would be 1.25 BILLION.

Slowing immigration down to a drip will give the US time to figure out how to convince current US citizens they don't need to pump out a dozen children each and fix that angle too. Immigration was great in the past when we needed the population for our huge country, but now we're pretty set population-wise. If anything we need to figure out how to slow down it's growth.

To the first bold, the same can be said for much of the US. Our growth percentages 2000-2010 aren't much different. And there's been a decline as US immigration has been slowing the last decade.

To the second bold I'm not sure where that's coming from. The average number of kids is down slightly from the 1960s-70s when families were typically larger due to less access to birth control and less family planning education. It's not a huge down, like 3.16 kids down from 3.76 kids, but it's still not everyone pumping out a dozen children.

Although, no fear, our current healthcare and education reforms are poised to take us back to the days of abstinence only education and allowing employers to avoid paying for birth control... which should get us back up to that 3.76 kid average of yesterday.

Immigration largely is a non-issue for the majority of the US. There's several metropolitan areas where it has an effect, but that's always been true. Go back to any 50 year period in some large cities (New York, Boston, Miami, LA, Chicago, etc) and you're going to see some 'conflict' with a minority influx. Germans, Irish, Jews, Polish, Catholics, Mexicans, Chinese. All assimilated. The current fear mongering about Mexicans and Muslims is more of the same and is likewise unnecessary. Given time, those groups will assimilate, too. They must, for we are Borg. Resistance is futile.