Dick Smith wants a reduction in world population and here in Ausralia.He however fails to look at the reality here in Aust.Dick is alarmist is predicting that having 3 children will spiral our pop to 100 million at the turn of the century.

If you only have 2 children,the pop falls due to death rates and infertility.Also we have the factor of people choosing not to have children.Aust is ranked 167 of 221 countries in birth rates of 12.33 children born per thousand,which is a quarter of the top ranked countries like Niger.Even having 3 children pop remain steady because of infertility and accidents.

Dick Smith has failed to address the big influence on pop growth in Aust,ie immigration.25% of our pop is born overseas.This is the biggest influence on pop growth.

Why is Dick Smith attacking the size of our families instead of the size of immigration?

Why is Dick Smith attacking the size of our families instead of the size of immigration?

AJ....That has to be, the best Question I've ever seen.

LEAP

"Why is Dick Smith attacking the size of our families instead of the size of immigration?"

In the article I read,

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/limit-australian-families-to-two-kids-says-dick-smith/story-e6frf7l6-1226031080419

DS called for an immigration rate of 70,000 per annum. or well under half of what it is currently. So to answer your question, he addresses both issues, not just one.

Fester why have an immigration intake at all if pop growth here is that serious? Even 70,000 is a lot of people.Surely we should consolidate our culture here and create stability instead of division when given a choice between natural births and imported people.

In all reality,immigration is used to keep wages low.Dick admitted he prospered on high growth but Dick wants future generations to have much lower living standards.The lack of housing is not due to lack of resources,it is due to Govt policy of profiteering on land and the fact that we sold off our Govt Banks.All our new money for growth is now created as debt by private banks.That is the prime reason for fall in living standards.

Arjay:“Surely we should consolidate our culture here and create stability instead of division when given a choice between natural births and imported people.”

Why? Or how does stopping immigration and letting people breed consolidate our culture? Last time it was bought up on OLO I don’t think anyone could even describe the Aussie culture.

And when exactly in living memory were we hunter gatherers like Dick suggests? And chicken coops was mentioned in the article whereas you’d like to close the gates and make it a rabbit hutch Arjay?

Whole thing gave me the giggles, wanting to shut people out who already exist and start dropping new sprogs about the place. I wish countries would start acting like they are part of a whole world.

For weeks the news headlines have been dominated by cuts, food prices, Arab rebellions, nuclear disaster. Arguably these all have their source in the same fundamental problem: too many people chasing too many resources. Far-fetched?
Why are food prices going up? Because fuel prices are going up. Why are fuel prices going up? Because fossil fuels are beginning to run out.
Why should there be cuts in government expenditure? Because in the light of cost increases we can no longer go on offering ourselves the generous public services that we have come to expect as a right during the good times.
The rebellions in the Arab countries are thought by analysts (e.g. at the World Bank) to have come about right now because of food shortages. And famine is increasing, not decreasing, in Africa.
And nuclear disaster? The earthquake and the tsunami were geological phenomena. But if Japan had not been one of the most densely populated countries of the world, it might have been able to locate its (fewer) nuclear reactors more judiciously.
Perhaps Malthus was right after all. Perhaps we should indeed be doing all we can to ensure that our global population 'only' increases by one more billion to 8 billion in 2050, the minimum currently forecast by the UN, rather than the maximum it forecasts, 11 billion, a staggering 60% increase over present-day figures. Anything we can do to reduce the numbers in our little corner is worth many times the dubious value of a Carbon Tax

There are factors not being taken into account.
If you plot world population with oil production you find that the
population increased slowly over the years till about 1900.
As oil production rose population tracked exactly with it.
It rose from 1 billion to the present 6.8 billion because the high
energy content of oil made for increased food supply to feed the new
billions via industrial farming.

However if the supply of oil starts decreasing then the supply of food
must also start decreasing and it follows the number of people must
start decreasing.

There is a problem here. We are told that if no more babies are born
in the world the population will fall at 1% per year.
However typical oil depletion rates are between 3% and 10 % per year
with 5% about average. This will mean that if no more babies are born
then around 4% of the world population must starve to death every year.

These figures are estimates of course, but even so it does mean that
millions are doomed to starvation and no way around this can be seen.
At present something like 1% of the population are farmers.
Without oil we will need about 30% of the population to be farmers.

Have a think about these figures and what it will mean for population
migration.

Dickybird:>> Why should there be cuts in government expenditure? Because in the light of cost increases we can no longer go on offering ourselves the generous public services that we have come to expect as a right during the good times.<<

Dicky whatever the "good times" level of amenities and services previously, that service level is available and affordable to our government right now if they become sovereign again rather than acolytes to corporate global domination.

Here are the IMF GDP/population stats for 2010.
1 Luxembourg 104,390
2 Norway 84,543
3 Qatar[4] 74,422
4 Switzerland 67,074
5 Denmark 55,113
6 Australia 54,869
7 Sweden 47,667
8 United Arab Emirates 47,406
9 United States 47,132
10 Netherlands 46,418

Per head we are the sixth most prosperous nation on earth per our GDP. We should be living like kings and queens, but we are not, we should have the infrastructure of Singapore in all our capital cities, but we do not. Our national household savings against GDP 40 years ago was over 6% and today it struggles at just above 1%, and that encapsulates the reality. That reality is no matter how much we produce as a nation the proceeds go to a diminishing number of hands, and those hands are corporate.

TBC

Here is a lift from the IMF report.

>>The OECD top national average statutory corporate tax rate declined from 42.2 per cent in 1985 to 30.8 per cent in 2000. The OECD-30 full corporate average statutory tax rate declined from 33.8 per cent in 2000 to 28.5 per cent in 2006. Australia’s statutory corporate tax rate increased from 46 per cent in 1985 to 49 per cent in 1987 before declining to 30 per cent on 1 July 2001 and to 28.5 in 2006.<<

This conspiracy by corporate to bring down their taxable incomes has worked brilliantly in all OECD countries, but why would it not, they own the governments and the IMF and The World Bank and the United Nations.

Dicky even with the diminishing tax burden on corporate and the extra tax burden on the citizen we should still be living with social and infrastructure standards well above the crumbling infrastructure of a generation ago. Our governments of all persuasions both fed and state bow to the wishes of the corporations and we are a commodity whose affluence or lack thereof is decided by corporations.

Son of gloin,
The reason why we will not have increased expenditure is
now clear. We will actually be very had put to maintain our present
standard of living as will all those other countries in your list.

Growth is over. We will no longer be making use of the products of growth.
Growth is needed to pay interest and repay borrowings.
This why most European banks and countries are in trouble.
The US has only been able to starve off a financial default because it
is the international exchange currency and has been generating an
enormous amount of pixel money. They don't even have to buy paper now.

In the next few months the US will have to roll over much of their
bonds but the Congress looks like refusing them permission to increase
the amount of pixel money.
Either way a default looks very possible.
Now you know why the AU$ is going up, the US$ is going down as the
Chinese and others are trying to sneak out the back door after buying
gold and Euros with US$.
Look up Post Carbon Institute, Richard Heinberg has published extracts
of his new book The End of Growth. Provokes some thought.

More:
Pimco, so I read is the world's largest trader in bonds.
They have sold their entire holding of US Treasury bonds.

Here is an article written by their CEO.

http://tinyurl.com/3haahcn

If the Us defaults we migtht not be the air raid shelter we think we are.

Son of Gloin - Bazz has it absolutely right and has answered you already. The small surplus that our joint labour produces does NOT go to the "corporate section" as you put it. If only it did the benefit would return to us all through increased dividends sent to our Super Funds. Unfortunately the Govt syphons off ever increasing amounts and then spends them on things like the NBN (which may be nice but we can't afford it) or the irresponsible insulation scheme.

If, then, else.

>>However if the supply of oil starts decreasing then the supply of food must also start decreasing and it follows the number of people must start decreasing.<<

It's a bit more subtle than that.

As we know, the more prosperous the country, the lower the birthrate. This has yet to become quite the trend in Burkina Faso, for example

So let's take a guess. If Bazz is right, and life becomes even harder, will the gut reaction be to have more, or fewer children?

I suspect that in the developed/richer/better educated countries, the answer will be "fewer". Conserve our "standard of living" as best we can. Share the decreasing loot among a decreasing population.

But out in the Burkina Faso, the instinct might well be to surround yourself with as many sons and daughters as you can. Children in these places tend not to be regarded as cost-centres, as we have come to view them. They are workers. Labourers. Foragers. Carers.

The "global economic" answer would be to turn all these folk into prosperous wage-earners, so that they don't need to drop a sprog every year. But that would require a level of vision far broader than we are capable of.

Just so long as they don't jump on their little boats and pester us, eh? We're all right, Jack.

I just notice something else, Bazz.

>>Pimco, so I read is the world's largest trader in bonds. They have sold their entire holding of US Treasury bonds... If the Us defaults we migtht not be the air raid shelter we think we are<<

What is the logic path that takes you from Pimco selling US Treasury Bonds, to the US "defaulting"? On what?

Further, how might any such default by the US affect Australia, in its capacity as the "air-raid shelter"?

You presumably have some kind of cause-and-effect in mind for that circumstance, I'd be interested to hear how you envisage that the dots are joined.

Incidentally, two things about Pimco's actions.

When they sold, someone else bought. With cash.

And the amount Pimco sold in this tranche was $28.6 billion. China alone holds nearly fifty times this amount. It represents 0.6% of the total.

Sounds to me more like an investment manager doing a bit of "ain't we great" grandstanding to his clients, than the end of the world as we know it.

Dickybird:>> Son of Gloin - Bazz has it absolutely right and has answered you already.<<

Dicky, Bazz is stating the ramifications of globalisation and the resultant debt due to the dismantling of tariff barriers in the first world. The subsequent lack capital and balance of trade issues are overwhelmingly flowing in the second and third worlds favour and Bazz is discussing what to do about a rising debt and no prospects to service the debt other than to borrow, or just print more money. So he is right but what he has answered regarding my post puzzles me.

Dicky if you do not know of the history behind the breaking down of the first worlds manufacturing base, and the role the UN, IMF, World Bank directed by the "money" has brought about do some research, you will find a thirty year plan to strip the first world of self sufficiency and deeply indebted to the two percent that own 90% of the assets on this globe.

Bazz I read a book from the late 1970's called "The Debt Trap". It outlined the ramifications of The Lima Agreement concerning the breaking down of tariffs and the flight of production to cheaper climes. It also covered the impossibility of the first world servicing a growing consumer debt with no exports to balance the trade.

I recall thinking at the time that our politicians would never let us become totally dependent on imports, but I was a kid and I was wrong, we were doomed to a service and mining based economy from the moment the Liberal coalition signed the filthy treacherous document in 1973, and I might add with the full parliamentary support of the Australian Labor Party

I would imagine that DS has emitted enough carbon through all his flying to equate to the amount that dozens of large muslim families would emit. He along with Gore, Flannery and others should stop preaching their unscientific dogmas and stop being such hypocrites.

Sonofgloin,you are right we should be the most prosperous country on the planet but alas we have lost the plot.When I bought my first house in Sydney in 1981,it cost 4 times my annual salary.In 1980 I came back from OS with nothing.Within 12 mths and hard work my wife and I had a 25% deposit for a house.That same house is now 18 times my annual salary and my children have little hope owning a house here.

This is all due to Govt policy of profiteering from land and selling off of Govt banks like the Commonwealth.Paul Keating has a lot to answer for.

Spn of Gloin said;
So he is right but what he has answered regarding my post puzzles me.

I think what I was commenting on was your concern on GDP.
Growth is ending so worrying about GDP is pretty much irrelevant.

To you all I recommend at least two books;
"Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller" by Jeff Rubin
and
"Blackout" by Richard Heinberg.
You can get them from Amazon for very cheap prices and usually a 2nd
one is discounted.
They can tell the story much better than I can.
Go to Utube and search on those authors and there are videos there
where they were addressing conferences.

Jeff Rubin is a well known Canadian economist and his story is that
globalisation is finishing up now.
The cost of shipping containers across the Pacific has been eating
into the wage advantage of China to the extent that steel bar
production has returned to the US as has furniture manufacture.
I presume this is because shipping charges are per box and those
goods have a low dollar/volume ratio.

Richard Heinberg believes that as peak oil has occurred and peak coal
is not all that far away, that we are at the limits of growth.
Growth is needed to produce the extra income to repay the loans and
interest on the plant that produced the growth.
Without the extra energy or the ability to pay the increasing cost of
energy then growth is impossible.

The big problem we face is that our intense farming is placing an
increasing demand on our energy supplies at the same time as
governments are giving incentives to produce biofuels usually from
grains.
We face the certainty of having to priortise the supply of fuel to
food production and ration fuel elsewhere.

Yes Jack, we might be alright if we can torpedo the hungry hordes
ships fast enough.

Arjay:>>This is all due to Govt policy of profiteering from land and selling off of Govt banks like the Commonwealth.Paul Keating has a lot to answer for.<<

Arjay you and I are on the same page, as usual, but sadly most of our peers believe the stripping of wealth and self sufficiency from the first world is a natural chain of events being played out in a vibrant global economy, not so. Corporations directed by the handful of people who own everything have planned and implemented our demise.

I have always felt secure in the thought that a global New World Order of tyranny would not endure, how could they police the four corners of the globe, so if it came, it would eventually fall, right now I am not certain of that. Arjay have a look at HAARP a technology that can do astoundingly destructive things, and from the other side of the globe, no troops no missiles, and the ability to control a population’s future by remote control. Also look into chemtrails, another frightening but played down secret project.

This is all comic book conspiracy and super weapon stuff, but after I watched the American people stand by while their government killed thousands of their own citizens in 9/11 simply to create a new boogie man to scare the plebs, I knew we were doomed, under their control and doomed to servitude.

TBC

Regarding Keating, it was a Labor who sold the peoples bank, it was with Labor support that the Liberal coalition signed away the future of workers in this country with the Lima Declaration, and it is to be Labor who implements a kill off jobs tax with the introduction of Bob Browns carbon bullscheiser tax.

Arjay a couple of old old communists that I used to talk to down at the Domain on a Sunday (it was like London’s speakers corner, just bring your own soap box and preach to the crowds) told me that the “money” will infiltrate the Labor movement and that the likely vehicle will be the Fabians, and exactly that has come to pass with the advent of the Chardonnay Socialist of the 1980’s. Just consider the three betrayals that I exampled. Labor sold the peoples bank, they sold the peoples jobs and they sold the peoples future, not bad for a party of the plebs.

Labor party my well shaped masculine ass, Favor party more like it, they stay in power by favouring minority interest groups.

Spn of Bazz I hear what you say and I understand globalisation is on its last legs and that the earth is a resource quickly being sucked dry, and that is why there is a plan in place to re model humanity and that is the New World Order. That plan does not consider the individual or the nation; it considers the ongoing gene pool of the few that run the earth and the chosen that embrace their philosophy, along with the compliancy of what is left of humanity after they re model us. Technology is making this global tyranny possible, and just like the poor Jews in the ghettos they will strip us of assets and make us totally reliant on them for food, then they can do what they want with us.

If you think this line of thought is alarmist consider what the Obama administrations political geostrategist Brzezinski had to say about a year ago "Before it was easier to control a million people than kill them, now it is easier to kill a million than control them" that is the mind set giving council to government. Bazz as I said to Dicky, if you do not know what is going on in a holistic fashion, do some study. The global economy that we have been discussing is a tool but the issue is world domination and to find who is running the agenda just follow the money trail and that leads to the Rothschild’s consortium of banks. This consortium is the 2% who own the 90+% of world assets.

OMG !
Hmmm, what can I say ?
Anyone who thinks there will be a world wide plot run for the few does
not understand the longer term implications of energy depletion.
We will have enough problems keeping a basic telephone system running.
Here is a talk given by Richard Heinberg at a Transition Town
conference in the UK on the end of growth.

http://transitionculture.org/2011/03/11/something-for-the-weekend-richard-heinberg-in-totnes/

It covers some of the things I mentioned on finance and money 29 mins.
I would be interested in your comments on Richards talk.
BTW had a few words with him when he gave a talk here in Sydney.

Pericles asked;
What is the logic path that takes you from Pimco selling US Treasury
Bonds, to the US "defaulting"? On what?

Defaulting on paying capital and interest on its debts !

I'll bet quids a lot of our local councils have some of their funds
invested in US Treasury Bonds. They are used world wide as a "safe
haven" by governments and banks as the US$ is the world reserve currency.
The dogs are barking it in the street that the US debt is bigger than
can be repaid. Now the Republican controlled congress is threatening
to refuse an increase in US debt. However the US govenment needs that
permission to issue more pixel money so they can pay the interest bill.

Why do you think the Arabs and Chinese are making noises about an
international reserve currency. Some major Reserve banks met recently
without the US Reserve bank to discuss it.
They even gave it a name, something like Banko I think.
The repercussions if the US defaults will make the GFC look like a
very minor event.
The AU$ would probably go to US$2 or US$3.

Look, if you don't know, Bazz, it is perfectly ok to say so.

>>Defaulting on paying capital and interest on its debts !<<

That's the theory, obviously.

But which American government would choose to default? What might the IMF have to say about it? Why would the major victims of any default - China has about a trillion dollars tied up in US Treasuries - be prepared to allow it to happen?

It is important to "follow the bouncing ball" when discussing complex financial matters, Bazz. Think in terms of real life, day-to-day consequences, rather than placard slogans.

Yes, I know pericles, it seems impossible to comprehend.
>But which American government would choose to default?
From what I have read, the government does not get a say in the
matter. The same as here, the parliament grants supply.

Even the US government does not believe the Republicans will take to the end.

However one senator over there said, "They would be mad to refuse"
They are not mad are they ? Are they ?

What they seem to be worrying about is that the Republicans vowed in
the election they would stop further increases in the debt.

From what I read it is down to the wire about now.

Bazz:>>OMG !
Hmmm, what can I say ?
Anyone who thinks there will be a world wide plot run for the few does not understand the longer term implications of energy depletion.<<

OMG, anyone who believes the few who control everything will sit around and allow humanity as it is now to further plunder limited resources do not understand human nature. These people talk in terms of human husbandry and if you believe they will not do it, I can only say I hope you are correct and I am wrong.

Here is an item in the NY Times about the US debt limit.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/business/economy/07debt.html

They seem to think the problem is real.

That's all just political point-scoring and opposition grandstanding, Bazz. It's what they do.

>>Here is an item in the NY Times about the US debt limit... They seem to think the problem is real.<<

Of course the problem is "real", as you put it, no-one is suggesting that there isn't a problem. Certainly not me.

But there is a zero chance that the opposition would force the US into debt default. Zero.

As the article points out, "A failure to increase the limit in time would force the Treasury to default on legal obligations and payments to bondholders here and abroad... causing catastrophic damage to the economy... threatening the dollar and stopping payments for a range of federal benefits, including military salaries, Social Security and Medicare."

Any political party that caused that to happen would be unelectable for decades.

This, on the other hand, is what the fuss is all about:

"Republicans have said that they will try to force President Obama to accept deep cuts in domestic spending as the price for enough Republican votes to lift the limit."

A bit of chest-beating, a bit of brinkmanship, a bit of shooting from the lip - move along, nothing to see here.

Bazz, I watched the Richard Heinberg seminar and found it a factual retelling of the drivers to economic growth and the reasons that the debt trap has engulfed the first world. Nothing insightful for me, but certainly succinct and factual.

The only comment I would make is that the transition philosophy is in the most part a consideration of how to manage the existing resources given the existing draw on them, therefore the existing system of capital and debt and it's movements in a future with no growth is at the base. But as I said I believe there is a movement to control and manage humanity globally and I believe one of their solutions is de population and a New World Order where the embedded chip is the only currency.

The solution to globaisation is bring back protectionists policies, if we consume it we make it in house, but that is contrary to the master plan of making first world nations impotent, that is why we have international tariff free trade.

Sonofgloin,I urge you to see http://secretofoz.com/ You can download a free version but send something to Bill Still for this brilliant doco that has won the International Biff Award for best documentary in 2010.

'The Wizard of Oz' by L Frank Baum,was written during the height of another great depression of the 1890's.There was a hidden economic meaning there,which we have all missed.In the book, Dorothy had silver slippers,not Ruby in the 1930,s movie with Judy Garland being the star.The US economy was booming with the freely available silver currency,but the elites in England made gold the currency and sent the US people on the yellow brick road of debt slavery.The elites had all the gold and reduced the amount of money in the economy by 80%.In the 1930's the monetary supply was reduced by 30%.In this contrived depression it was reduced by 40%.That is why the US Fed is creating unpresidented amounts of cyber money which will eventually destroy our economies.

There is no doubt in my mind what was the real intent of L Frank Baum in 'The Wizard of Oz'.So make the effort,view it and spread the word.

Arjay, thanks for the link I will look at it. At the risk of sounding like a broken record the English connection you mentioned was again the Rothchilds consortium of money lenders manipulating the "new world" of which they are the founding fathers not the schmucks who sailed in on the Mayflower.

Arjay just as a side bar did you know 1492 and not 1776 is the most important aniversary year for America it marked both it's birth and eventual demise. Isabellas expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain and the confiscation of their wealth enabled her successful patronage of Christopher Columbus in that same year. One of the usery houses that were expelled was the ancestors of the American Rockefeller family, they soon got it back though.

Sonofgloin,it was the Great King Henry 1st, who instigated the Magna Carta,the basis of the US Constitution.He also invented the tally stick,a debt free monetary system which enabled the Renaissance and people like William Shakespear to be a beacon of enlightenment.

For over 700 years the tally stick provided debt free money and made Britian the most powerful country on the planet.However by the late 1700's, the Rothschilds inaugurated the Bank of England and modern debt slavery began even amidst the industrial revolution of plenty.People of this era should have lived a life of plenty,instead it was a life of misery for many who were sent to the colonies as convicts as cheap labour.

And so it goes today,amidst and era of high technology and plenty, we have massive poverty and ignorance.

You can see all this and more at http://secretofoz.com/

Why does Dick Smith promote 70,000 immigrants per year, while telling Australians to have fewer children?
Because he, like all the others, cannot just bite the bullet and *stop* immigration.
Even Smith, who is aware of the potential problems, just can't get past this "addiction" to immigration, as if it's somehow an essential necessity that cannot never, ever, ever stop.

At the last Census there were 5,219,165 families in Australia.
70,000 extra babies is just 1 baby per 74 families.
That's not much.

But Dick will tell these *Australian* families they can't have that baby, while telling 70,000 people with no existing allegiance to Australia "Come on in!".

Absurd.
But that's all you can expect with this issue.

Shockadelic here are a few lines I posted on another forum regarding the first worlds immigration policy dictated to us by thr UN.

"Then our despotic first world governments began signing away the sovereignty of our society to choose the makeup and internally evolving direction of our peoples, every humanistic UN mandate we signed has seen the right of the many abolished in favour of the rights of the few. This multicultural engineering has employed as their vanguard cultures that are alien to the existing society and as a consequence cultures within a culture form. Most European nations are now fractured along cultural lines and a new world nation such as America that now exhibits cultural strain unlike the traditional white and black divide, and this outcome in spite of the culture having evolved from many other cultures, a nation of immigrants rejecting immigrants. Nothing but division has come from immigration into the first world over the past thirty years. Why import unskilled labour into an economy that has a constantly declining manufacturing base, and that is exactly what has taken place. I can only see it as a divide and conquer strategy, throw a few 6th columns in."

What do you think?

Arjay, is this in fact satire...?

>>King Henry 1st invented the tally stick,a debt free monetary system... For over 700 years the tally stick provided debt free money<<

The tally stick was used primarily as a means to record debt.

How does that make it "a debt free monetary system", in any sense of the phrase?

sonofgloin, I think non-discriminatory immigration is irresponsible and disrespectful.
Whether these policies were created by naive idealists or for more sinister purposes is almost irrelevant.
What matters is the *end result*, whatever the intentions.

The end result is a society or community that cannot even be a 'society' or 'community'.

The only reason it's held together so far has been the remnant original populations and the momentum of past achievements.
This 'coasting' can only last a short time.

What is going to propel us further when there's no sense of connection between people anymore?
Kinship has a psychosocial power that is totally ignored or underestimated today.

If immigration had been restricted to related peoples, the 'diversity' may have been beneficial (like hybrid vigour).
Unrelated peoples together just create chaos, meaninglessness.

Community is impossible in the short term and extremely difficult in the long term.
Utterly reckless and unnecessary, whatever the intentions were.