Comments on: A large population is not always the road to economic success

By: Greg Atkinson

Greg Atkinson — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 02:41:17 +0000

Rudd is a curious fellow isn’t he? He reckons he can reduce our CO2 emissions via a tax while ramping up our population all without using nuclear power and investing in technological solutions.

And where will these people find jobs? Mainly in the domestic focused economy I suspect which means the nation needs to consume more to create employment..now how exactly will that save the planet?

So Rudd’s plan in a nutshell is to introduce a tax, encourage population growth, bury some C02 underground and hey presto..we have changed the climate of the planet! He really has no idea.

By: Senator13

Senator13 — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 05:16:46 +0000

Looks like Rudd has stated a population target of 35 million.

Not sure where he got this figure from or if there is any planning to sustain it… I still have not seen anything to substantially improve transportation between our cities and regional areas…

I think this is an issue that is going to cause Australia more of a problem then the likes of having an emission trading scheme or not.

By: Greg Atkinson

Greg Atkinson — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:23:01 +0000

Senator if political leaders want to be truly visionary then they should be setting things like population targets and developing plans on a national level to support this population. At the moment Australia just seems to have an increasing population without any plans on where these people will live or what jobs their children will have.

The current government spending spree would have been a great time to do something a bit radical like pushing ahead with a high speed rail link between at least Sydney and Canberra. This would open up a lot of possible areas for people to live along the train line and if powered by “green” electricity then it would help reduce carbon emissions. (since there would be less people flying between Sydney and Canberra)

Better still the high speed rail link could have been powered by a nuclear power plant and surplus power pumped into the electricity grid….yes this would be radical but isn’t what we should be looking at now as we are about to enter the second decade of the 21st century?

You could even get the private sector to probably fund most of the high speed rail network if the government committed to developing some urban centres along the train route or setting up some low tax developments zones for high tech industry. But alas we get school halls for schools that don’t even need them!

By: Senator13

Senator13 — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 02:13:58 +0000

Good points Greg. It is something that I think needs a lot more attention paid to it. Many of the cities are “bursting at the seams” so to speak. Besides flight, it is also very difficult to travel between cities (and within them). An increase in population would make something simple like that much more difficult. Water management is another difficult question… But, could an increased population expand our means to enable us to combat these things? I don’t know, but I think your right that a population target is needed to better manage all of these things.

By: Greg Atkinson

Greg Atkinson — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 23:26:47 +0000

Hi Senator 13 – I am not really sure about that. I think in the future we need to think about things like:

- Will the same type of jobs be around? For example will there be any significant car industry in Australia or will most of these jobs simply vanish.

- Will productivity be increased further by automation etc. (seems likely) Therefore can the nation do more with around the same number of workers?

- Will we see a truly global workforce? In other words perhaps there will be hundreds of thousands of skilled workers who spend most of their working lives moving between countries to find work and thus a pool of workers is available to fill labour shortfalls where needed. This already happens now to some extent.

- Will older people in some professions work much longer than now..say up to 80?

- Can some Australian cities actually hold more people..for example Sydney? Maybe we need new cities? Can the nation’s resources (in particular water) support continued population increases?

So it is a complicated issue…and I just do not have simple answer for you. Personally I think there needs to be a serious debate about the issues above because at the moment I do not think there is any clear population target in Australia. (or any plans how these people will be housed and what sort of jobs will be available)

By: Senator13

Senator13 — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:12:37 +0000

Would you say that in the case of Australia it would be good to continue to increase the population so that there are a sufficient number of younger people to fill the vacant jobs left by the baby-boomer generation?

By: Greg Atkinson

Greg Atkinson — Sun, 31 May 2009 23:50:13 +0000

Phil I agree with you but especially regarding Japan. The rural sector is Japan has plenty of room for improvement and many farms simply sit idle because the owners are now too old to work the fields. One of the by products of the recession in Japan has been a trickle of younger workers into rural areas to work in farming and the fishing industry. But I wonder how many workers will stay there once the urban jobs come back?

By: Phil

Phil — Sun, 31 May 2009 15:55:54 +0000

Hmmm, if we go back to first principles.. Population isn’t so much important as the ability to trade, specialise and generate large amounts of capital to invest that it can provide. Population + rule of law, common language/culture -> growth (Japan, USA). On the other hand Taiwan with it’s small population could get it’s act together much better than China.

Japan might be nicer with a smaller population, there’s still plenty of room for productivity growth, and if they could un/re-develop chunks of the countryside it would be much nicer, and more productive (larger scale agriculture, less spread out industry etc).