Readit NewsOf all the areas that could manage this, SFBA seems up there in terms of feasibility at least.
This has been a known thing, an upcoming problem for decades. Everyone knew this was coming. Everyone.
Canada is trying to get out of this hole (the fact that there are 1.4 births per two Canadians), the "population collapse" hole, via immigration, with 500k immigrants per year.
That would be like 5M immigrants per year in the US.
For a comparison, due to the 1 child policy, China's population will halve before 2035.
China is in very, very serious trouble. The entire West is too, but China's trouble will be far worse. Japan keeps building robots, and mechanized walk-assist devices.
There was no "great resignation", simply a well known "great retirement".
Now, should people be paid a decent wage? Of course!! But that won't change this problem one bit, as there are simply not enough working age adults.
And to highlight this, not only do retirees reduce thr number of candidates available for work, they also require more care. Health care, end of life care, nursing homes.
Heck, expecting an independent 70 year old to shingle a roof, something a cash strapped 30 year old might engage in, is far less likely.
So a "too heavy" society is a major issue. And we knew it was coming, for decades, and did not resolve the issue.
For additional clarity, the world will be at about 5 billion at 2040, without war or plague.
I can find no immediate evidence that any demographers actually claim this.
Absolutely. What's surprising to me is the absolute lack of that nuance on HN. It's all just BURN IT ALL TO THE GROUND over the last few days.
People love tearing others down. This is the rule.
That’s a different issue than companies thinking they didn’t need to prepare for bank troubles. Some of those were naively managed by people who didn’t understand the scale of wealth they were tasked to manage and its risks, nor understood that they needed to hire someone who could manage it for them safely. And some of those were managed or advised by people intentionally betting that the government would bail them out of the tail risk that they did know about.
We need to be extremely wary of encouraging that latter group, even if it comes at the expense of burning a few inexperienced startup founders.
> Her father, who owned a travel agency, among many other companies, provided us with first-class tickets to Athens on a KLM “sleeper” flight.
It's true what they say, everybody wants to think of themselves as middle-class
I think a reasonable meaning (that the author might accept given the quoted statement) might go like “I live in a neighborhood with a bunch of other successful business owners or highly paid professionals, I must be pretty middle class”. As you rightly point out, that makes you pretty dang successful — more than “middle” seems to imply.
Of course, historically, that is the middle class. But no one cares about history.
From what I can tell, anyone richer than me is clearly not middle class; those bastards are rich. I’m clearly middle class, and hardworking, too. And damn it would suck to be poor in the US.
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2023/02/place-y...
(Which I don't buy)
(I hence appreciated the quotes).
I am also not sure it’s so simple; the tools are so much more powerful than I would have believed just a couple years ago. But there’s value and then there’s perceived value; the fact that there’s so much nontechnical interest is perhaps suspect.
My understanding is that there are actually a fair amount of planners and engineers who like walkability, but that they fairly often get overriden by politicians. Local politician elections have fairly thin margins, and the most motivated voters and the most motivated NIMBYs tends to overlap.
(Like, 5 people. This is not a study).
I’ll never be a billionaire, but I’m feeling on excellent terms with myself and with the universe.