Tedeschi said that a two-income family today earns less than the same family earned 30 years ago with only one income. This, he explained, is the consequence of growing taxes on the GDP in developed countries,
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What does growing taxes on the Gross National Product have to do with less income being paid by the big businesses? Corporations are making some of their biggest profits ever. Why not raise taxes on the rich as it was before they were lowered?**
The ultimate resource maybe human being but they need clean water, space to raise a family, landfills to discharge toxic waste, trees and wild life to eat. If you do the math at three children soon their will be constant over population like that in Easter Island. What is the church’s answer to limits on resources?
Business profits do not constitute all that large a portion of the GDP. Nor do the earnings of the truly “rich”.
Human beings are what makes the world habitable, and Tedeschi is absolutely right about the need for population growth at least in the First World, and in most of the Second World.
We tend to think of infrastructure and resource problems in terms of growth. What we do not normally realize is that infrastructure is at least as big a problem when its use declines.
About a year or so ago, the sewer system in a town in my state broke down entirely. The reason: The town had been losing population and there was no longer enough water flowing through the system to make it work anymore. Europe is going to have a massive population crash in about 30 years, because its birth rate is well below replacement rate. The only thing that will perhaps save the U.S. from that fate is immigration. In Japan it will be even more catastrophic than in Europe.
Mankind has seen that sort of thing before. When the population of Rome fell drastically between the 3rd century and the 9th, the infrastructure could no longer be maintained. Aqueducts fell into disrepair because there were not enough people to maintain them, and it was dangerous to go out into the countryside to do so anyway. So, the water supply became tainted and water borne diseases became rampant. The cleanliness of our own water supplies depends on the flow of water through them. If the water just sits there, it very quickly becomes full of bacteria. Ask any municipal engineer. The Roman roads became dangerous. Harbors silted up. Rome shrank to a village where life was nasty, brutish and short, and all because the population collapsed.
Following the Black Death, the same thing occurred. The countryside filled up with bandits and predatory animals. People were afraid to travel. Huge sections of Europe went back to wilderness. There were not enough peacekeepers to supress banditry.
Keep in mind that the projected population reductions in some parts of Europe will be greater than those caused by the Black Death. What will it be like when the population of cities shrinks to 3/4 or even 1/2 of their former size? Does anybody really think, electricity, gas, water and sewer will be maintained in such places? Will streets? Unless they tear them down, whole sections of cities will become havens for criminals, the insane, and wild animals. Will there really be enough police to patrol what remains? Will there be enough maintenance people to ensure utilities to the remnant population of a city like Rome? Will there be enough taxpayers to maintain infrastructure? I think the answer to that is clearly “no”.
And will the countryside fail to turn into a temperate zone jungle? Will a flat tire in the countryside at night spell your death? Probably will. The U.S. is served by thousands of miles of gas, petroleum and even liquid fertilizer pipelines as well as thousands of miles of electrical lines. With half or so of the available maintenance workers, will all that be maintained? It’s pipe dreaming to think it will, particularly if prospective maintenance workers fear mountain lion attack as soon as they get out of their trucks, and when a breakdown in the countryside would almost guarantee attack by bandits or predatory animals.
This is not some “Mad Max” imaginary movie. It’s what WILL ABSOLUTELY happen to countries with birth rates like Europe’s. It’s only a matter of time.
And as to taxation, we have to realize that back when birth rates were higher, tax rates were indeed higher, but few paid those rates. If the child tax credit was the same, adjusted for inflation, that it was when Truman was president, it would now be over $20,000per child. And now it’s a fraction of that. While taxes in real terms crept up on us, it took more and more earnings to support fewer and fewer children. And those in government in the U.S. want to tax even more. We are presently on an absolutely insane path. Tedeschi is right.
And politicians go on about “taxing the rich” and “taxing big corporations”, all the while making us think somehow we’re going to get that money. Well, we won’t. Corporations collect those taxes from us…the people who buy food and laundry detergeant and cars and television sets. We pay it. And the rich have the money to buy the politicians, so they have nothing to worry about. And there aren’t enough truly rich to put more than a drop in the bucket if we hanged them all and took everything they have. And we limit the number of children upon whom we are going to depend in our old age without ever thinking that a shrinking younger generation can’t support us and themselves both, let alone children of their own.
No, it’s the government that buys votes with our money by promising, falsely, that somehow we’re going to get something out of the big corporations and the big rich. And then it takes even more money from us. And we’re stupid enough to believe them.
Tedeschi is right. He’s one of the few people on this earth who is.
