"The Demographic Conundrum - An Existential Threat"

 The photo was taken on Tuesday. While snow can be a nuisance when driving or walking (at my age), it is also beautiful, and when the sun emerged the sky was a delight!

 

Sydney M. Williams

swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“The Demographic Conundrum – An Existential Threat”

February 27, 2026

 

“If we are unable to address our fertility crisis, the U.S. will face an

existential economic crisis driven by a steep decline in fertility rates...”

                                                                                                                                Jesús Fernández-Villaverde

                                                                                                                                Nonresident Senior Fellow

                                                                                                                                The American Enterprise Institute

                                                                                                                                February 11, 2025

 

The term “existential” is used with abandon. Many threats, from global warming to offending transgenders, are deemed existential. They are legitimate concerns but pale to the economic consequences that stem from a decline in birthrates, and an aging population with its attendant healthcare costs.

 

The scale of the threat is larger than most appreciate. The global total fertility rate (TFR)[1] has roughly halved over the past seventy-five years, from five in 1950 to an estimated 2.4 in 2025, according to the International Monetary Fund. In the U.S., the number is expected to be 1.6 for 2025 versus 3.1 in 1950. Europe’s TFR has fallen to 1.43 from 2.7 in 1950. Israel is the only member state of the 38-member OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) with a TFR above replacement. Over the next few decades, populations are set to decline in most of the developed world. It is in sub-Saharan Africa and in Middle East nations like Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria where birthrates remain above replacement.

 

As to the causes behind the decline, there are many but two worth mentioning. One reflects progress – improvements in birth control, particularly the oral contraceptive pill first approved by the FDA in June 1960, which allowed women to enjoy sex without the worry of pregnancy. As well, in January 1973, with the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, abortion moved out of the shadows and into legal healthcare. The second cause reflects cultural changes, which include everything from women’s desire to find fulfilling careers, to decisions about family size. As well, in 1968 Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb. His popular book warned of a 1970s global crisis driven by over-population. He predicted mass starvation. Instead, as we now know, world population growth peaked five years earlier, and annual global deaths from starvation declined from over a million in 1970 to about 40,000 today.

 

Demographics is a subject I have written on in the past, most recently two years ago. Fewer children and an aging population suggest changes for Social Security and Medicare. In that essay I wrote: “But there is no way to avoid an aging population with ever-higher costs of healthcare for the elderly. Robots and computers do not pay taxes. People do.” According to data from the Mercatus Center, in 1950 there were 16.5 workers for every one person receiving Social Security. Today that ratio is 2.8 to one. In April 1970, Apollo 13 may have had a problem, but today we have a problem, one largely ignored by politicians from both parties. The astronauts on that Apollo flight resolved their problem. Will we solve ours?

 

A few days ago, in a talk about CCRCs (continuing care retirement communities), we were informed that Connecticut’s population ranks as the 7^th oldest in the union, with 19.1% of population over sixty-five. That number, expected to grow by 57% between 2010 and 2040, implies that over 30% of Connecticut’s population will be over 65 in fourteen years. While the numbers suggest increased demand for CCRCs, those numbers scared the hell out of me. Will Social Security recipients equal the numbers of people paying into the system? What do those numbers say about the viability of Social Security and Medicare? Who will support a growing number of senior citizens?

 

There are no clear answers as to how to halt declining birth rates. Pronatalism does not receive wide-spread support. Greece, Poland, Japan, Russia, Germany, Italy, France and China are among more than fifty countries whose populations are expected to decline in 2026. As populations shrink, the median age rises. In China, for example, the median age is double what it was fifty years ago. In the U.S., while our population is still growing, the median age has risen from 30 in 1950 to 39 today.

 

Those trends, both here and abroad, are likely to persist for the next several years. People my age are unlikely to be affected by a declining workplace and a surging retiree base. But unless something drastic is done to address Social Security and Medicare our children and grandchildren will face an existential problem. Starting in 2033, Social Security will not be able to make full retirement payments unless Congress intervenes. Tough choices confront us: raise the age of eligibility, increase taxes, or reduce payments. None are attractive alternatives. As former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors Herb Stein famously said: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” Increases in legal immigration may provide a short-term solution – one that should be pursued, in my opinion – but with world population growth slowing, it is not a long-term answer. 

 

Nevertheless, a response to these concerns might well emerge from left field. At the risk of sounding Panglossian, I took comfort in a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal by columnist Holman Jenkins. He wrote about some of the foolishness associated with “green” politics. He ended: “A paradox of our time is a media with hair on fire about everything, yet democratic societies so complex, weighty and built on the emergent order of millions of people acting on their own information and initiative...tend to right themselves. They find a sensible course...” His words could apply to this population challenge – that we and the West will find our way out of this demographic maze before it becomes an existential crisis. I pray that we do.

 

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[1] The TFR is a measure that represents the average number of children a woman is expected to have over her lifetime. A number of 2.1 is needed for population stability

"Thoughts on Donald Trump"

While cheerleaders for Mr. Trump and protesters who see him as evil are the nosiest, it is those in the middle – those who weigh his weaknesses, which are widely exposed, against his positives which are more hidden – who, in my opinion, are the more numerous. However, this essay risks alienating Mr. Trump’s fans as well as his foes. But that is why I have included the photo of the scales, so that his positives and negatives may be weighed.

 

    Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Thoughts on Donald Trump”

February 7, 2026

 

“I’ve led a school whose faculty and students examine and discuss every aspect of our legal system.

And what I’ve learned most is that no one has a monopoly on truth or wisdom. I’ve learned that we

make progress by listening to each other, across every apparent political or ideological divide.”

                                                                                                Elena Kagan (1960-)

                                                                                                Associate Justice, U.S. Supreme Court

                                                                                                Opening statement, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee

                                                                                                Confirmation hearings 

                                                                                                June 28, 2010

 

A quote that seems appropriate at the start of this essay is one attributed to British historian Edward Gibbon (1737-1794): “I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.” I quote Gibbon because I do have respect for people who view President Trump through conflicting and contrary lenses, even as emotion rather than reason dictates opinions. Those who love him do so fervently, without hesitation, ignoring his most blatant foibles. Those who hate him do so vehemently, deaf to any possibility there may be a sliver of good in what he does. There is not a glimmer of compromise between the two groups, neither of which would conform to the wisdom offered by Elena Kagan or allegedly by Abigail Adams (1744-1818): “I’ve always felt that a person’s intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.” Trump is either loved or hated, in equal measure.

 

Trying to view Mr. Trump dispassionately is close to impossible. His braggadocio gets in the way. I found his op-ed in the January 31-February 1 issue of The Wall Street Journal enlightening and offensive. He closed out the op-ed in typical – and unsavory – Trump fashion: “TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!” Hyperbolically, he defended his use of tariffs, which I have long opposed. However, he does use tariffs as bargaining chips, and foreign auto companies, semi-conductor manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies have committed to increased investment in the U.S. In any event and contrary to what many expected, U.S. GDP numbers reflected strong positive numbers for the 2^nd and 3^rd quarters. (Preliminary fourth quarter GDP numbers will be announced on February20th.) Tariffs did not create a recession or worse has some had predicted, but that was largely, in my opinion, due to fiscal policies. 

 

The tax bill passed in July of last year made the income tax cuts initiated in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent, and regulations have been pared. According to a January 9^th release from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis the trade deficit (imports minus exports) has been declining all year. The U.S. federal deficit – the more important number – declined by 2.8% from $1.8 trillion to $1.78 trillion.

 

It is overseas, though, where he has had the greatest impact, he is the elephant in whatever room he enters, or, an analogy our European allies might prefer, a bull in the proverbial china shop. But, it seems to me, there is some reason behind his apparent madness. For the past thirty-five years, since the end of the Cold War and the concomitant publication of Francis Fukuama’s The End of History and the Last Man, the West has been living a false and dangerous lie. Evil has not been banished. After forty-five years, liberal democracies did defeat the tyranny embedded in Communist Soviet Union, but the peace dividend has been used to increase the welfare state and to satisfy climate fear-mongers. History did not end with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall; it is a continuum, with challenges from both the right and the left. Like good, evil is endemic to humankind. Whatever its origins and whomever it infects, it will always be with us. 

 

Could Mr. Trump have caused Europe to confront their minuscule defense budgets, their over-burdened welfare systems, their climate goddesses, or their immigration, demographic and cultural challenges through diplomacy and sensitivity? I don’t know, but I sense not. Would Islamic terrorists in Syria, Gaza or Iran, or drug runners in Venezuela and Colombia listen to reason? Do Putin and Xi Jinping admire anything other than strength? Again, I don’t know,  but I would guess not. The world is, has been, and always will be a dangerous place. Mr. Trump, in his bombastic way, has forced Europe to re-think their priorities. Mr. Trump’s unpredictability unsettles those like Putin and Xi Jinping. A strong military is our (and Europe’s) greatest safety valve. I will always remember the sign outside Pease Airforce Base – a former Strategic Air Command base that was closed in 1991 – in Portsmouth, New Hampshire: “Peace is Our Profession.” It was and it should be.

 

From where I sit, and unlike the Roman God Janus (or many of our sanctimonious politicians), President Trump does not present two faces, but he does elicit two strongly held and opposing views. He is either the savior of the West by exposing Europe’s and the West’s economic, military and cultural weaknesses and the booster of America, or he is the megalomaniac who will destroy the world order so carefully constructed after the devastation of World War II. I find myself disagreeing with both his fans and his foes.

 

He gets correctly admonished for his bullying and boorish behavior and impolitic words. He refers to his opponents as “radical left lunatics.” Is he trying to be funny? I am not sure. Grimly, they return the favor, calling him a “fascist, Nazi, or would-be dictator.” While pejoratives don’t resolve differences, Mr. Trump does confront problems many have chosen to ignore. He belittles Europeans, even as that continent’s realists recognize they have a problem, even if they will not admit it: climate pietists, an expansive welfare system that has hampered economic growth, limited defense spending and a tsunami of debt that may be unpayable. Yet the EU seems to have been listening, at least in part, to his message. Defense spending has increased and border-tightening has been implemented. However, there is little assimilation of Muslim immigrants. And there is a reluctance to admit that debt and welfare spending are a problem, especially as populations age. Birthrates in France have fallen below death rates for the first time since 1945.  

 

When Mr. Trump speaks of invading Greenland, sending troops to Minneapolis, or forming a Board of Peace to replace the UN, my inclination is to not get upset but wait for the next shoe to drop – for him to retract his initial obnoxious statements (without apologizing, of course), find another way, open another negotiation. He is not, I believe, tied to an ideology, apart from a desire to increase his family’s wealth.

 

Many of his policy prescriptions are answers to real problems. Take Greenland. It is strategically important, commercially and militarily. Denmark has a population of six million, a land mass one fiftieth that of Greenland, a GDP per capita of $71,000 (about 15% below that of the U.S.) and a standing army of 9,000 active troops. With both China and Russia active in the arctic, would Denmark or the U.S. best defend it? And, by the way, Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, is 200 miles closer to Washington, D.C. than Copenhagen. Yes, Mr. Trump could have been (and should have been) more tactful, but Greenland and the arctic were issues before Mr. Trump made his outrageous bid. As for Minnesota, and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, there is little question in my mind – admittedly without knowing all the facts – that ICE over-reacted. On the other hand, people or government officials cannot decide which laws they choose to obey and which to flaunt. As well, common sense tells us that Governor Walz was anxious for the media to be detracted from the welfare fraud that has consumed $9 billion of tax payers money. 

 

Mr. Trump is what Will Shortz would call an oner – a one of a kind, for better or worse. He is not a man with whom I could ever be friends. On the other hand, he is not the evil dictator-in-waiting his critics fear.