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Economic arguments against population growth : Comments
By Cameron Murray, published 7/5/2010While Population Minister Tony Burke may be new to the debate, the population debate itself is certainly not new to politics.
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If high population growth is as beneficial as Curmudgeon and Cheryl would like us to believe, then they need to explain why there is no link between a developed country's population size, density, or growth rate and its GNP per capita. (There is a link between population growth and prosperity among the poorer countries, but it is negative.)
The top 10 countries on the World Economic Forum Competitiveness Index are Switzerland,the US, Singapore, Swededn, Denmark, Finland, Japan, Germany, Canada, and the Netherlands. Note the absence of Australia. None of these countries have even half our rate of population growth. Switzerland, the leader, has a 0.276% growth rate (CIA World Factbook) compared to our 2.1%. Germany and Japan, numbers 7 and 8, are actually declining in population. These ten countries all need skilled labour as much as or more than we do. Since many of them have little immigration or population growth, they must be training their own. Why aren't they going bankrupt?
It is unreasonable to consider economies of scale but not diseconomies of scale. stevenlmeyer mentioned some. Another very important one happens when a city outgrows its natural water supply. Desalinated water is 4-6 times as expensive as dam water, as city dwellers have been progressively finding out from their water and electricity bills.
We currently export about two thirds of our agricultural production, but it is easy to imagine the combination of a doubled population and a long, severe drought leading to serious problems, even if we don't consider peak oil, peak phosphorus, permament water shortages due to climate change, etc. All of the recently reported international investments in agricultural land in Third World countries, aka "land grabs", by developed countries that are not self-sufficient in food are good evidence of lack of confidence that the world market will be able to supply enough.