Hungarian Politics

[Sheilbh]

I support policies that help parents - though not to do with pensions but to do with costs of child care and the extra costs of having a kid.  If the population's not stable then growth will decline and more and more of our money will go on old people.  It's not a good thing for society.  I also like immigration for the same reason.

[Barrister]

I have been saying for a while now: want more children, from parents who can actually feed and raise them on their own? Offer tax breaks after children. Not a fix monthly sum like we do, running a breeding program in the lowest strata, because their shitty lifestyle actually benefits from this (they can keep the child in shitty conditions and get by on the grants).

I'm not sure that's quite right.

It's been a common complaint for the last 100+ years that we need "the right people" to have more kids.  But I think demographics and social scientists have shown that what's important is to have enough children being born period.  Yes some may stay mired in poverty, but many will climb the socio-economic ladder as well.

I have no problem with tax breaks to have more kids.  But you have to make sure that such a policy actually works to raise birth rates.

[Barrister]

I support policies that help parents - though not to do with pensions but to do with costs of child care and the extra costs of having a kid.  If the population's not stable then growth will decline and more and more of our money will go on old people.  It's not a good thing for society.  I also like immigration for the same reason.

It's not that growth will decline.  It's that growth will stop.  Economies with a shrinking population will be in a permanent recession.

[Sheilbh]

It's not that growth will decline.  It's that growth will stop.  Economies with a shrinking population will be in a permanent recession.

True enough.  It's a long-term problem in much of Europe.  Not those areas (like France and UK) where they like people having children and have immigration though

[Zanza]

It's not that growth will decline.  It's that growth will stop.  Economies with a shrinking population will be in a permanent recession.

Not necessarily. Population decline can be overcompensated by productivity growth.

[Barrister]

It's not that growth will decline.  It's that growth will stop.  Economies with a shrinking population will be in a permanent recession.

Not necessarily. Population decline can be overcompensated by productivity growth.

Potentially.  But that means the population decline had better be pretty gradual.  If you start getting into a -4% population growth it's going to be pretty hard for a developed country to compensate for that.

[Neil]

Most of the gay parents I know had kids the old-fashioned way.  In your case Marty all you need is to rent a womb for 9 months and a turkey baster.   

My partner would not have any legal rights to the child in case something happened to me. And btw, I knew you were not exactly romantic, but I pity your attitude to child rearing.

Partner?  Why would one of your rentboys want to be saddled with a child?

[Tamas]

During the last couple of weeks, multiple holocaust memorials have been vandalized, the jewish cemetary in the city I work at damaged, the chief rabbi (whatever his official title may be) insulted on the streets of Budapest in broad daylight, and yesterday a 70 years old jewish guy was beaten for being a dirty jew, close to the synagogue

[Zanza]

Potentially.  But that means the population decline had better be pretty gradual.  If you start getting into a -4% population growth it's going to be pretty hard for a developed country to compensate for that.

-4% population growth is Poland from 1939-1944. I would agree that's not sustainable, but then most countries are not the victims of genocidial total war.

Germany's population declined by 0.1-0.2% annually in the last decade, yet per capita GDP and total GDP went up.

[Barrister]

Potentially.  But that means the population decline had better be pretty gradual.  If you start getting into a -4% population growth it's going to be pretty hard for a developed country to compensate for that.

-4% population growth is Poland from 1939-1944. I would agree that's not sustainable, but then most countries are not the victims of genocidial total war.

Germany's population declined by 0.1-0.2% annually in the last decade, yet per capita GDP and total GDP went up.

As pointed out Germany is one of those countries that is compensating by immigration.

Check out some of the projections for places like Japan.  They've only just tipped in the last few years into population decline, but it's set to increase rapidly over the next few decades.

[Zanza]

4% population decline would mean that Japan would lose about 110 million of its current 128 million population over the next fifty years. I can't think of any serious predictions claiming that.

From predictions I can find, their annual population decline will be less than 1%. Which might be compensated through productivity growth when you consider that Japan had a productivity growth rate of something like 1.5-2% over the last decades.

[Barrister]

4% population decline would mean that Japan would lose about 110 million of its current 128 million population over the next fifty years. I can't think of any serious predictions claiming that.

From predictions I can find, their annual population decline will be less than 1%. Which might be compensated through productivity growth when you consider that Japan had a productivity growth rate of something like 1.5-2% over the last decades.

Not going to spend too much time on it, but the first credible link I could find:

But by far our most serious problem is a declining and aging population. Given present trends, total population will likely decline from around 130 million to under 90 million in 50 years or so. By that same time, 40 percent of Japanese could be over 65.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/opinion/02tamamoto.html?_r=2&em

and

On U.N. calculations, the 2010 population of 127 million will shrink by a fifth, to 101.6 million in 2050. Moreover, the decline speeds up over time, with the population dropping by 6.65% between 2015 and 2030, but plummeting a whopping 13.4% from 2030 to 2050-far and away the worst growth projection in the world. Consider that Pakistan is expected to nearly double its population, to 335 million, in the same period.

http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2012/01/19/japans_coming_demographic_crisis_99850.html

So no, not anywhere near a 4% annual decline.  Less than 1% annually in fact.

But it's pretty darn hard to increase productivity in a fully industrialized nation at rates greater than 1% per year.  And the total population figures mask the more serious problem that the % of the total population that is working is also going down.  Not only are populations getting smaller, but the proportion of that population that is actually productive is decreasing.

Not sure where you are getting the 1.5-2% figure for Japan.  Japan of course had tremendous productivity increases from 1945-1990 or so - because it was industrializing and developing.  Since then it's been fairly stagnant.

[Viking]

Gypsies kidnapped a baby from a norwegian hospital last week. This is the right thread for this right? The mother was a Gypsie so the response was the label the journalist a racist for peddling in stereotyping of Gypsies. The kid was a Gypsie as well so it didn't matter that it was kidnapped.

sigh...

[Tamas]

Gypsies kidnapped a baby from a norwegian hospital last week. This is the right thread for this right? The mother was a Gypsie so the response was the label the journalist a racist for peddling in stereotyping of Gypsies. The kid was a Gypsie as well so it didn't matter that it was kidnapped.

sigh...

Screw you dude. ROMAnians have more gypos. Probably Bulgarians as well

[Zanza]

Not sure where you are getting the 1.5-2% figure for Japan.  Japan of course had tremendous productivity increases from 1945-1990 or so - because it was industrializing and developing.  Since then it's been fairly stagnant.

OECD puts multi-factor productivity growth at 1.5% for 1985-2010, at 0.8% for 2000-2010 and at 1.6% for 2001-2007.

Labor productivity growth was even higher for most years.