Is China's One Child policy eugenic?

[Heraclitus]

It could be claimed that currently in the developed world there is strong selection going for an instincitve desire for a family and love of children while the selection for a strong sex drive has stopped.

Off course there is also selection for earlier maturity and a late menpoause since a few births are still produced by horny teens too dumb to use contraception and if menopause comes a just a few years later than average a carrer woman could get an extra kid.

[Heraclitus]

If the party doesn't, China (and maybe the whole world) will suffer the fate of Easter Island.

I suppose it is true, but shouldn't China start loosening it slowly? Maybe the standard of living and the cultural inertia of decades of single children will be high enough that lets say in 2020 the Chinese won't on average have more than 2.2 kids even with no goverment coercion.

[Kitschum]

They disappear and those with a greater urge to procreate replace them.

What's the minimum size of a population if not 0? No, this is silly and getting us nowhere.

What if "those with a greater urge" lose the urge? Are there always going to be those with a greater urge? Who? Why? What process immunizes a people from the 'malaise' of low fertility? De-urbanization? De-modernization? Religious awakening? Intercommunal conflict?

[VetLegion]

There is no "malaise" of low fertility. The average fertility rates you read about
are just mathematics. The average consists of people having few children and people
having many children. The former are in the process of being replaced by the latter.
It happens within every society all the time. I am unaware of a society ever disappearing
because all its members stopped having babies.

[Blaupanzer]

The coming problem will be distribution of the population. How many Palestinians will be allowed to move to Sweden or Bulgaria to make up for worker shortages in those societies? Overall, population is still going up. Look at the numbers already mentioned.

[VetLegion]

What is "worker shortage"?

[Blaupanzer]

Not enough workers to do the tasks in a given economic unit. Drives up the price of labor and the cost per worker for retired costs. If entry into the economic unit is restricted, then some work simply gets brushed over or not done. A lot of work gets shoddy. A lot of European states don't want to let Middle Easterners, North Africans, and Turks into their borders to do the more marginal work. In America, we try to exclude Latin Americans, even though the work is here for them. Then, when they sneak in we make them pay social security taxes until we catch and deport them, calling them "illegals." In both cases, the local nationals refuse to allow the international labor market to do its job, then worry about too few workers.

[KrazyHorse]

Not enough workers to do the tasks in a given economic unit.

Are you smoking crack?

[Maniac]

Given European unemployment figures, I don't think there are worker shortages just yet.

[Blaupanzer]

So called "local labor shortages" were common in boom times up until the crash related to the Great Depression. More recently major corporations move people to the jobs as requirements change. Not all societies have that luxury. People resist moving any distance in places like Rumania, Hungary and such. There is also work people in more developed societies are very, very reluctant to do.

Currently in the US, we have shortages now with fruit that genuinely does not get picked and nuts that were left to rot because the pickers were not there. (Don't have a citation for you, but this was reported on TV this fall in California.) These are marginal jobs most Americans on unemployment are unwilling to do, so occasionally they do not get done at all even though lots of Latin Americans would do them if they could.

Do you really think dozens of American workers were standing in line at the rendering plants (stinky, bloody work) when the ICE raided them and sent all the illegals home. At least one of those Tennessee plants closed, as it had no alternate source for staff.

In places where the replacement rate goes down, jobs will be hard to fill because the worker has to shoulder a heavy burden of retirees. Over the long haul this has multiple solutions, but in the short run where politicians live the question of importing workers, companies closing plants, etc, will matter.

[Kidlicious]

Currently in the US, we have shortages now with fruit that genuinely does not get picked and nuts that were left to rot because the pickers were not there. (Don't have a citation for you, but this was reported on TV this fall in California.) These are marginal jobs most Americans on unemployment are unwilling to do, so occasionally they do not get done at all even though lots of Latin Americans would do them if they could.

That's interesting. I recently seen something about the farm labor in California, I think it was Frontline, that said there was a surplus of farm labour in California. They should footage of farm labourers waiting in line for charity.

[KrazyHorse]

Currently in the US, we have shortages now with fruit that genuinely does not get picked and nuts that were left to rot because the pickers were not there. (Don't have a citation for you, but this was reported on TV this fall in California.) These are marginal jobs most Americans on unemployment are unwilling to do, so occasionally they do not get done at all even though lots of Latin Americans would do them if they could.

How the **** is this a "labor shortage"?

There will always be jobs which aren't done because it's not worth paying somebody how much it would cost to hire them. Is there a gold shortage because I don't want to pay 10 000$ a roll to have gold leaf toilet paper?

Good God, just stop talking before you embarrass yourself any further.

[Kidlicious]

"Worker shortage" is commonly over estimated for profit sake.

[Heraclitus]

Currently in the US, we have shortages now with fruit that genuinely does not get picked and nuts that were left to rot because the pickers were not there. (Don't have a citation for you, but this was reported on TV this fall in California.) These are marginal jobs most Americans on unemployment are unwilling to do, so occasionally they do not get done at all even though lots of Latin Americans would do them if they could.

How the **** is this a "labor shortage"?

There will always be jobs which aren't done because it's not worth paying somebody how much it would cost to hire them. Is there a gold shortage because I don't want to pay 10 000$ a roll to have gold leaf toilet paper?

Good God, just stop talking before you embarrass yourself any further.

QFT

[Kitschum]

There is no "malaise" of low fertility. The average fertility rates you read about
are just mathematics. The average consists of people having few children and people
having many children. The former are in the process of being replaced by the latter.
It happens within every society all the time. I am unaware of a society ever disappearing
because all its members stopped having babies.

No, it's not "just mathematics" which happens "all the time". The decline in total fertility is lasting, global and unprecedented.

Your (non-)response implies that you think that there are two distinct groups: those who have many children and those who have less, where one can be "replaced" by the other. But a couple replacing themselves does not mean that their children will. In some places it's 16 people having 12 kids who have 8 kids who have 6 kids who have 4 kids. What's the minimum possible population size again?

From a typically one-sided Economist article: http://www.economist.com/opinion/dis...ry_id=14743589