Zero Population Growth has “Worked” ??
SBINSIDER NEWS\OPINION| February 15th, 2025
In the 1960’s when all sorts of progressive political ideas were coming to the fore one, Zero Population Growth, appealed to the part of our brains that believes that limits are inherent in nature and that humans were outstripping the ability of Earth to sustain human life. The sole solution they believed (and older SaddleBrooke’s Left and other precinct’s still do) was that we should affirmatively seek smaller families to “save the planet.”
Part of the ZPG was based on Marxist thought on the perils of capitalism and its crucial need for more and more consumers-more people equals more profits and ergo more capitalist exploitation.
Well the earth fooled the neo-Luddites and production of resources has never been higher and food scarcity anywhere today is a function of either bad governments or localized weather disasters. Paul Erlich the author of The Population Bomb predicted world-wide famine in the 1970’s. So popular, he was a guest on The Johnny Carson Show over twenty times.
The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate…Dr. Paul Erlich
Ehrlich has proposed different solutions to the problem of overpopulation. In The Population Bomb he wrote, “We must have population control at home, hopefully through a system of incentives and penalties, but by compulsion if voluntary methods fail. We must use our political power to push other countries into programs which combine agricultural development and population control
Nothing is more satisfying to a conservative skeptic than seeing the public humiliation of academic tower nonsense. Yet, in 2021, many fell for the dire COVID predictions, even long after the Biden predictions of a “winter of severe illness and death from the variant OMNICRON if unvaccinated.”
Then, it never happened. One wonders if Anthony Fauci studied under Erlich?
Zero Population Growth Achieved
Much to everyone’s surprise, the Green Revolution in plant development combined with the use of pesticides and insecticides vastly increased the world’s supply of food, so much so more that real income of American farmers has steadily dropped for many years.
An largely unpredicted by-product of economic stability and growing prosperity, particularly in the US, Western Europe, Japan and China has caused a huge downward trend to fewer and fewer children. Not much more that one hundred years ago the need for large families was a given, now the middle-class can enjoy their retirement without relying on their children for sustenance.
The Russians too, have not escaped this metric, losing population at a steep rate.
Retirement Programs Imperiled
But, 60 years ago with populations still on the upward swing, politicians assumed there would always be enough workers paying taxes to supply Social Security, Medicare and other retirement programs. They provided generous benefits based on that belief. In 1938 when Social Security sent out its first checks, there were 35 workers to every recipient. Today that ratio is less than 3 to 1!
Perhaps DOGE will find billions or trillions in savings from government fraud-it is a thriving criminal enterprise but no politician was willing to say it or take it on until now-still, the demographics cannot be overcome. Bush II tried by creating personal savings accounts for retirement but the Congress was unwilling to let the average citizen invest in their own future-they still think they know better than we do. Our view is that if you are under 30, you should be able to start a PSA with the Federal Government matching the deposits to a limited extent. The money would be yours to invest as you see fit. It has worked for years in Chile, but it took a dictator (Pinochet) to put it into effect.
Better health care and prevention for the elderly has long extended life spans beyond initial projections. Even Paul Erlich the “Bomb” author, is still alive at 92 having collected Social Security for 27 years!
Who Will Do the Work?
Many sectors of our work force (and in those aforementioned countries) particularly in health care, are severely strained as fewer student in general are entering college. Again, perhaps Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg will invented AI-Driven robots for home health care, driverless cars and all sorts of robotic tasks not yet imagined. The astounding growth of NIVIDIA and assorted AI providers leads one to believe the smart guys see it as the future of the world.
Augustus Tried and Failed
The ZPD advocates where 100% wrong in their predictions, as capitalism driven by the only real resource in the world, human ingenuity, overcame every supposed doom and gloom outcome. It is historically recorded that Augustus Caesar often lamented that Rome was losing its as the elites and the wealthy were not having children and he tried all kinds of incentives which all came to naught. Viktor Orban in Hungary has echoed the same lament as Augustus with generous tax subsidies to larger families-not likely to work as Hungarians are, pardon the pun, well fed.
