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From: sbishop@desire.wright.edu
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Human Population Growth/Decline
Message-ID: <1991Apr6.115436.3127@desire.wright.edu>
Date: 6 Apr 91 16:54:36 GMT
References: <21376@crg5.UUCP> <1991Mar20.125112.2920@desire.wright.edu> <21418@crg5.UUCP>  <1991Apr5.074139.23484@newcastle.ac.uk>
Organization: University Computing Services, Wright State University
Lines: 31

In article <1991Apr5.074139.23484@newcastle.ac.uk>, william@lorien.newcastle.ac.uk (William Coyne) writes:
> szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) writes:
> 
>>In article <1991Mar29.112327.3031@desire.wright.edu> sbishop@desire.wright.edu writes:
> 
>>I will certainly agree that overpopulation has been a problem, and 
>>continues to be so in some pockets of the world.  However, increasingly
>>underpopulation is becoming a problem -- in Japan, where there is a
>>severe shortage of young workers, in Hungary, where population is rapidly
>>decreasing (by over 1%/year), in Amazonian tribes that are being given birth
>>control and driven off their lands at the same time, and increasingly 
>>across most of the developed world, where retirement funds are coming 
>>under severe pressure as a first symptom.  We should not let overpopulation 
>>problems, severe as they have been and still are, keep us from seeing the 
>>problems of underpopulation that are starting to occur.  We pretty much 
>>know how to lick overpopulation; underpopulation is a difficult problem with 
>>which we have not yet come to grips.
> 
> The problem in Japan and other rich countries is not underpopulation, it is 
> there are an increasing number of old people and a decreasing proportion of 
> younger people, so fewer workers to pay the taxes which are used to finance
> benefits for the old and very young.
> 
>     Potentially it could be a very good thing that there are not enough young
> people in the richer countries if it means their companies will transfer some 
> work to the poorer countries.

Some how this got edited so that my statement was omitted and the entire
posting looks like I wrote it.  I didn't.  That was the reply to my posting.

sue Bishop