UN Reports Population Explosion Worsening the Debt and Economic Crises
Nov 15th, 2011 | 7 responses
Britain and Germany are headed for a major clash on Friday when Prime Minister David Cameron travels to Berlin to tell Germany’s Angela Merkel that his country will not pay to bailout countries that use the euro currency. Britain is not part of the Eurozone and does not see why it should be penalized for the fiscal follies of others.
The spat is the latest in the crises of government debt in the US and Europe, which many now fear could kick off a deep recession in Eurozone countries. This is serious because their collective GDP and trade are much larger than China and almost equal to the US.
There are many reasons for the debt crises but the bottom line is an excess of expenditure over income in each of the affected countries, worsened by falling currency values that raise the nominal amount to be repaid.
This crippling imbalance between income and spending has a root cause upon which other more temporary causes collect layer by layer until the pyramid starts to cave in. That root cause is the ever-increasing number of people making demands of the global economy month after month. When there isn’t enough to cover everyone’s desires, competition heats up causing markets to push up the prices of our most coveted needs.
Demand and supply are brought to equilibrium by excluding those who cannot pay the price. Governments are then obliged to pay from taxpayer receipts to alleviate the living conditions of those at the pyramid’s bottom half, including through social welfare, health and food subsidies. That raises government debt to the point where it becomes unsustainable because lenders ask for too high a price, especially when economic growth falters and tax receipts become uncertain.
Thus, we get to the debt crises causing so much economic fear and the battle of Europe’s titans, Britain and Germany. Surely, the search for solutions will bring financial palliatives and remedies in coming months, including some severe austerity and brutal tax increases in several European countries and perhaps the US. Failing a miracle, this would slow down economic growth by dampening investment and jobs, further boosting government debt.
Meanwhile, the root cause will continue to worsen for decades. The United Nations estimates that the world population increased by one billion people in just 12 years to reach seven billion in October 2011. It will add another billion in 14 years to reach 8 billion in 2025. There may be over 9 billion people in 2050 and over 10 billion by the end of this century.
Just think of what this means for food and natural resources, including fossil and gas-based energy. Nearly all the population growth will happen in Asia, Africa and Latin America worsening the competition for resources and deepening social inequity. The good news is that people are living longer and the number of infant deaths has dropped because of more food, sanitation and medicine. Everything else is a challenge.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warns of dire consequences if the international community does not come together to create equitable and humane solutions. Alarm bells are already ringing. Growing public protests around the world demonstrate that mounting inequality, economic uncertainty and market volatility are at crisis points. The biggest challenge facing governments and institutions is that citizens are losing faith in their abilities to find and apply workable solutions. With a billion new people looking for food, jobs and decent lives, that trust deficit is sure to worsen.
Women and young people are the world’s next emerging economy because they make up more than two-thirds of the global population. They deserve more attention as do so many other aspects. For instance, the most precious resources for people’s wealth, health and well-being are the earth’s natural capital, which includes the air, rivers and oceans, soils and forests, and flora and fauna.
The point is that the current debt crisis is a symptom of many deeper and politically divisive ailments. It is the tip of an iceberg of confusion about where all of us in the world want to be in 10 years. The answers will determine whether these kinds of debt crises become chronic fixtures, since the population and needs explosions exacerbating them cannot be rolled back.
7 Responses to “UN Reports Population Explosion Worsening the Debt and Economic Crises”
What all too few are willing to admit is that the problem isn’t peak oil or peak water or peak whatever but peak people. Nature has a way of dealing with over population and it’s not pleasant. Too few resources + too many people = death.
Paul Erlich got people thinking seriously about this back in 68, but since then it’s been the elephant in the room nearly everyone has chosen to ignore. Seems like it should be obvious enough, but humans (for all their cleverness and creative abilities) are stupid creatures when it comes to planning for the future – meaning sane stewardship. That necessarily means controlling our numbers. Duh.
Europe’s problem isn’t global population or any other such thing, it’s the Euro, and not just the Euro but the Euro as the new Deutsche Mark.
For everyone sake, I hope that the idiot short term thinking European Politicians get their heads out of their asses, and figure out some way of fixing the Euro before blows in their face and takes down the EU (I would suggest some Euro Bond to absorb & refinance the debt of Southern Europe and some mild inflation to get the economy rolling).
No matter how expensive that is, it will be way cheaper than an EU break-up.
Lots of financiers and economists ridiculed the British when they refused to give up the pound and take on the Euro. Now they’re being hailed as prognosticators. The problem is that Britain’s prosperity is intertwined with the rest of Europe–like it or not. Much of the developed world’s prosperity will also suffer if Europe falls into depression (or worse). We could even end up here (in the US) with a dolt for a president just because our economy takes a hit due to European problems. The reason is that, like it or not, the president is usually rated based on the performance of the economy (even though he has very little control over the thing).
As for population and needs explosions not being able to be rolled back…I beg to differ. The Soviet Union discovered (to the horror of its people) exactly how a population increase can be ‘rolled back’ during the time period of 1933(est)-1945. It is not pretty, and it is morally repugnant, but if one looks at population charts for nations, the drop is right there.
China and India have lots of people and not a whole lot more water than what they exactly need. (One can include Bangladesh and Pakistan in the mix, along with (probably) much of SE Asia). Africa has already been at war for most of the past 50-60 years. South America has had very few wars, but the US is unlikely to contain a regional conflict if enough of our southern neighbors decide that they want to kill each other over resources.
Humanity will likely survive (we are too resilient to be wiped out that easily), but current civilization is not as equally likely to make it. I am not a pessimist (I believe civilization does have a chance), but I am an observer.
QF-
Uh it was BONDS that caused all this mess in the first place.
A BOND is a debt instrument.
BONDS only increase debt.
Unfortunately for us, BONDS are the favorite funding device of the Republican party in this country and what we owe on BONDS is exactly, and, nothing else, what our national debt IS in total.
There is no more room to sell BONDS in europe or here anymore. Not many buyers for them left.
So.
The only thing left to do is RAISE taxes and cut spending or default on BONDS.
You don’t have to go that far back to see Russian Population loss, Russia population dropped by at least 5 million since the end of the Soviet Union.
But Europe doesn’t have a population problem–if anything, they are in dire need of more people being born. The demographics show a large decrease in the numbers of babies being born in Germany, and France, and Italy, in particular. Most European countries would desire their native population to be more fecund.
This is not a one-size-fits -all issue. There are areas of the world where many fewer people would be a good idea, and areas where populations are dwindling, such as the former Soviet Union.