Aging global population

The aging of the global population is due to the proliferation of baby boomers after WW2.

With respect, my view on the global demographics is quite different from most. Judge it for yourself.

·         India will suffer from the population explosion despite the abundance of younger citizens.

They will eat up all the limited food and consume most of its limited natural resources. They will run out of water in 100 years which is also controlled by China as more water will be directed it to the north of Tibet. There are too many problems that cannot be resolved easily. There is no bright future for India. I wish I were wrong as a poor India would affect the rest of the world.

They classify themselves literate if they can write their name in any language compared to 1,500 Chinese characters. Chinese has nine years of compulsory education. These statistics are just being manipulated. Source: Ted Talk.

The brain drain is alarming as the most privileged / educated do not want to wait for India’s infrastructure, its economy and its governance to be fixed.  

I hope rich countries like the U.S. will not take too many doctors / nurses from poor countries like India as we’re doing now. This is the worse disservice to a poor country. We deprive thousands from medical care for each doctor we import. Why do we send our doctors to help the poor while we take their doctors? It just does not make sense. There should be more foreign aids specially allocated for medical training to poor countries.

Just compare the sub way system and the number of high-rises in India to any Tier 3 city in China. The top Indian city just built its sub way recently in 2011 while Hong Kong is developed as a modern metropolitan. As of 2012, more than half of India’s population lives in less than $2.50 a day (the UN definition of poverty is $2.50 / day).

India has to understand its problems first before they can fix them. It has to fight inefficiency, corruption (partly due to inefficiency) and protectionism (to improve quality and encourage foreign investment). Copying the China’s model is a good idea. China’s model is to create specific economical zones close to a port with the essential infrastructure for that area. You need to build infrastructure like highway, electricity… for that area first. It should target its products first to the foreign market and then include the home market.

The 2011 Indian Kolkata airport has limited road access while the 1980 Hong Kong airport is supported by extensive suspension bridge. Without the road access support, any airport would not be world-class as demonstrated by all major airports in the world. Documentaries on both projects are available from Netflix.

Some told me it could be the old family controls India's economy and they do not want changes. I argue the opposite is true. Expensive projects usually allow the corrupt rich and the local governments to steal money from public projects.

·         China still has plenty of cheap labor.

Cheap labor will be minor but education will be important as they need to move up to the next level of industrialization with higher-value products.  China is already there and India is not there.

China has its own problems, and plenty of them, but the demographics is not the major one. Gender imbalance, pollution and corruption are many among others.

Click this link http://bit.ly/ybAnoW   to compare India and China.

·         Russia and Brazil still thrive on commodities and oil as long as global economy grows. Russians fit my Coconut Theory. They become lazier (and more intoxicated with Vodka J) as the economy continually grows from its wealth of natural resources including oil. As long as the global economy is humming, there are demands for these resources, and vice versa.

·         Africa and some S. American countries. 

The explosive population will bring miseries to their worlds. There will be more wars for food and the life expectancies are already lowered. The citizens will migrate legally and illegally to richer countries like the U.S. for a better living. If the farming technology to produce more food with less farm land did not improve drastically over the last 50 years, the world's supply of food now would not meet the demand. As 2012 closes, there are higher food prices due to the floods and droughts all over the world, it will continually be rougher for the poor countries that cannot afford to pay for it.

·         The U.S.

In 2023, the U.S. may look like Japan is today as most developed countries whose populations shrunk to below zero growth. However, the U.S.'s black and Hispanics have a higher fertility rate and the U.S. has more immigrants than the nations of the world combined. The U.S. will have its different problems / advantages as below.

The U.S. welcomes immigrants (as opposed to Japan). Most qualified Indians are welcome and so are Chinese (who come for economic reasons, to escape from pollutions, or because of corruption prosecutions).

In the U.S., today's minorities (black and Hispanics) will become the majority. If you look at the high school dropout rate (40% dropout vs. 25% for all), social welfare recipient percent, prisoner percent, etc., we do not have a bright future. There will be more political leaders from these groups as we usually vote for politicians that belong to the same race as ours. These are facts and it might be offensive to you if you're black or Hispanic. 

When we do not have jobs for everyone, a large population is a big burden. We have recent college graduates begging for any job for years, lines for the unemployment and welfare offices are getting busier. Why we encourage illegal aliens to come here for jobs and welfare is beyond my comprehension. Buying votes would cause us.

When our middle class is growing and the economy is improving, it would mean more iPads sold for Apple, and we   would start another housing boom. It does not happen now, but hopefully better times are coming soon.

The brightest future for us is agriculture and its demand from many countries grows by leaps and bounds. The other is American culture, like movies and music since English is, and will be, the most popular language. The recent discoveries in gas and oil trapped and the methods to extract them are very promising. It could lead us to be a major energy exporter in the next 50 years.

Starting in 2012, the baby boomers are retiring (those who were born after the WW2). Hence, we will have about 20 years of increased entitlements considering the average life expectancy of about 82 years.

·         Japan.

Japan does not have a lot of natural resources, and the educated citizen is their most important resource. Japan will suffer the most due to the aging population. However, most of us will still drive a car from a Japanese company, play video game from Wii or Playstation… Its competitors (now Korea and later China) will share their market. Japan will continue its lost decades to another decade.

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