The world has been for quite some time been shifting from agrarian societies and economies to industrial economies. Technology has been an important factor in this shift because it makes daily living easier.  For instance, living in a city with public services such as power, water, garbage pickup and sewerage disposal with food and transportation readily available, the public’s daily life and routine becomes easier.  The concentration of many people in a small geographical area makes it easier to provide healthcare.  In a simple agrarian society, much time and energy must be spent securing food and energy—usually wood—to cook and heat a shelter.  If nighttime lighting is desired, another form of energy may be needed.  Little time may be left for anything else.  Healthcare for the most part is minimal with high infant mortality and reduced adult lifespan.  As a result for thousands of years people have had many children so that when old age comes, someone will be there to take care of them.  It has been a free market environment which has facilitated the world’s climb out of poverty.

Modern technology has improved living conditions for millions of people, so as their standard of living has improved, demographics are showing that people are living longer. An improved standard of living has also affected a country’s fertility rate.  With improved living conditions and lower adult mortality, the need for many children has diminished.  As a result, a trend for fewer children has generated lower and lower country fertility rates.  A fertility rate of 2.1 has been used as the number of children each childbearing age woman must have to replace a country’s population.

Economies must have workers to generate goods and services. Better economic conditions exist when an expanding economy creates more jobs which in turn generate more tax revenues for government.  Implicit in an economic expansion definition is a demographic that requires more workers.  The fertility rate for many countries in Europe is below replacement.  In an attempt to have more workers, some European countries have created a serious problem by admitting foreign refugees who cannot and may not want to speak the native language.  In addition, since many of the refugees do not speak the native language, unless they are capable of working, they have to be a financial burden on that country’s taxpayers.

Japan’s population has been below replacement for years and they cannot induce the people to have more children. Since Japan is more or less a closed society, they have not imported foreign workers into their country.  China recently changed their one child policy to grant a permit to those couples who want to have a second child.  At last report, the demand did not meet government expectations for a second child and applications were still available.  Of the 190 countries surveyed by the World Bank in 2014[1], 187 of them reported a fertility rate lower in 2014 than it was in 1960.  In general, the lower the standard of living is, the higher the fertility rate.  The writing is on the wall:  if the 2014 trend continues, the world may soon be experiencing a fertility rate that is below replacement.

The economists must now start to consider how an economy can expand with fewer workers. This means that higher worker productivity must compensate for fewer workers.  This burden will be placed on the shoulders of the young.  To accomplish this task, it would be expected that more automation and robotics must be used and new economic models may have to be developed.

With more automation and robotics required, the future job market would favor those persons who can design, develop, build, repair and maintain advanced information technology (IT) systems. It would seem that to prevent intellectual property theft by others, that outsourcing of any technology must be limited.  To spend millions of dollars developing a product and then turn much of the technology over to someone in another country is insanity and should get any CEO who does it fired.  For too long, it is suspected that the not too smart CEOs have been making new technology available to other countries in search of higher profits.  It would appear that short term this tactic could be very profitable but long term it could spell disaster.  Why give away technology that has taken possibly years of research and millions of dollars to develop.  Not too smart.

The investment newsletters have recently been touting what they are describing as a newly invented way to recover much of the energy from the sun. Numbers like enough energy for the whole world for 32000 years and costs of five cents a kilowatt-hr have been mentioned.  This new technology was invented by a small company and it has been reported that countries and companies are spending billions of dollars to license this technology.  Since new technologies usually require years to fully implement, current oil, gas and coal energy will continue to be used.

The EPA is supposed to protect us–not abuse us with stupid rules and regulations intended to shut down existing companies in the best big government way. Yes, they are acting like dictators hurting instead of helping millions of our citizens.  They are only interested in political control using government force and don’t give a damn about us.  One of the stupidest EPA political objectives is a carbon tax.  This tax is touted as one way to save the world, but it is really a way for all governments to tax their citizens to pay for stupid government programs.  Everyone seems to forget that plants need carbon dioxide to survive in order to produce the oxygen we breathe.  Trees as part of photosynthesis convert carbon dioxide into a carbon molecule and store it, so why are massive numbers of trees being cut down around the world?

During this election, the Democrats are trying to buy votes by promising free college at public institutions. They have not offered to forgive college debt yet but I suspect it will be done in the last week or two of this election.  Too many young people are going to college to get degrees they may never use or the job they can get using their degree does not pay enough to live on and pay back the loan.  Not too smart, but the colleges apparently do not care as long as they get their money.  In the past, some people have worked full time and gone to night school to get a degree.  It takes longer to get a degree, but you can graduate without college loan debt.  Internet college courses have made this type of program easier by eliminating or decreasing any commute.

The educational system is not educating the right people to fill the jobs that are currently available. In years past, high schools large enough offered shop courses for those persons who liked to work with their hands and did not intend to go to college.   Now these people need to pay to attend a technical school or get company training to get the type of education needed.  Companies do not want to spend money training someone to do a job only to have them soon thereafter leave to go work for someone else for more money.  The more the federal government interferes with K-12 education, the less educated the students become.  It is time to return the responsibility for educating our children back to the local school boards and remove all federal government programs.  All federal monies collected for education must be returned to the local schools without any preconditions.  Return the tax dollars to the community instead of sending them to a bumbling and inept federal government to be wasted.

Many large companies are trying to develop and sell driverless cars. This creates jobs but not too many because IT does not employ a lot of people.  Who will fix those cars when they don’t function properly?  Are you going to send the vehicle back to the manufacturer?  No way.  It is anticipated that most driverless car jobs will come in the maintenance and repair areas and will be located in all parts of the country.

Anyone who thinks that in the future we will not need auto mechanics, electricians, plumbers, carpenters, steel workers, etc. is insane. Do we have the young people who will be up to the task or will they believe all the lies that you must have a college degree to survive?  Look at the mess this country’s legal system is in due to too many indoctrinated lawyers being produced.  The most prestigious colleges and universities are the biggest culprits producing big government communist wannabe graduates.  The big government communist wannabes want as many young people in college as possible so that they can be indoctrinated into believing that government solves problems. Ha, ha, ha.

Factory jobs will still likely to be necessary. This is where outsourcing has destroyed American jobs.  People are still needed to assemble the parts produced by automation and robots and then test the finished product.  Once again, assembly, repair and maintenance workers will be needed to keep the factories running.  Using cheap labor without American labor regulations together with foreign country currency manipulation, countries have subsidized their workforce to gain a financial competitive advantage over American workers.  This tactic is unacceptable and the use of import taxes should level the field.  Foreign country refusal to pay import taxes will mean that domestic industries will need to be built up to support domestic and possibly international demand.  While not recommended, historically the United States has survived reasonably well without foreign trade.

Machinists and tool and die makers will be needed to produce the parts needed by factories. Companies need these workers now.  In general, if someone likes to work with their hands and does not want to “fly” a desk, a college education might not be a good choice.  Many times people who work in the trade area start out working for a company and then decide they want to be the boss and start their own company.

The largest impediment to job production is an out of control federal, state and local government bureaucracies producing thousands and thousands of pages of stupid regulations. You can blame your Member of Congress (MOC) for the federal mess.  It is called Dereliction of Duty.  They use lawyers to write laws that no one can understand so that more lawyers can charge millions of dollars to adjudicate the law for years.  Instead of having a bevy of lawyers mess up the law, your MOC should personally write the bill and submit the proposed bill in simple English.  After the bill is passed and becomes law, that same MOC should write the regulations that may be needed to implement the new law instead of turning the law over to an executive branch bureaucrat.  Your MOC is not worth a flip if he or she does not institute this revised system.  Currently the federal executive bureaucracy both writes and enforces the regulations.  Here comes King Corruption!!!!!!!  Now your MOC sits on his or her butt in a meeting and tries to fix what he or she has allowed the bureaucracy to screw up.  On the other hand, if your MOC just sits on his or her butt and never proposes any legislation, why are they there?  Whose fault is it that non productive MOC’s are elected?  Look in the mirror.  This kind of politics must change.

Some of the dumbest government work impediment regulations and disputes are state and local. There appears to be the idea that leadership is using Gestapo tactics to enforce stupid and sometimes unlawful rules and regulations.  The American public must get off their collective political butts, go find the bad guys and put them in jail so that they are unable to intimidate the law abiding public.  Once again, look in the mirror to see who put those clowns in charge.

The economists must start to develop models to accommodate a shrinking world population to prevent economic chaos should this latest population trend continue. Maybe if Japan is used as a test country, some smart economist can figure out a way to have prosperity with a shrinking and aging population.  Gross Domestic Product is an economic marker to measure growth, but it is not as important as providing a country’s citizens with a way to work to provide for his family and loved ones.

And if my prediction of smaller world populations does not come to pass, we can still use the existing economic models.

[1] http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.SYN.TFRT.IN