Some enlightening charts here. More people means more ideas, more innovation, and more labor, key components of economic growth. This is especially true at the city level where, as I will discuss in an upcoming Risk & Progress essay, innovation and GDP grow superlinearly to population growth.
It also presents a stark warning for those who seek to “close” the borders to immigrants on the right, and those on the left that celebrate shrinking populations. Neither outcome will bring the utopian future they promise.
This is a weird article. Population has a large impact on total GDP, but much less of an impact on GDP per capita, yet it's the latter that this article is focusing on. GDP per capita is mostly a measure of productivity, which itself is mostly a function of a society's technological progress. Tech progress has been slowing quite a lot since the 1950s in nearly all areas except for computers. Forecasting GDP per capita into the future would need to almost entirely focus on which effect would dominate, either science continues slowing to a crawl such that productivity remains nearly constant, or computers (perhaps through AI) become so great that it leads to another era of rapid growth similar to the 19th century.
Total population levels would have almost nothing to do with it, outside of black swan events (e.g. total population crash) or something that impacts productivity/science like older people working less.
Your analysis in "Extrapolating GDP per capita growth" makes no sense. You assume an increase in GDP/capita of 2%/year. Independent of population. So we could 10x the population or reduce the population to one American and the GDP/capita in wouldn't change based on your methodology. You're assuming the link between population and GDP growth rate, then using that to predict increases in GDP/capita as population increases, and then using that result to support the connection. Circular.
> I would like to see someone more qualified answer this question. If these numbers are even remotely true, then simply staying the course and growing the American economy over the next century would create radical abundance.
This is assuming a fairly steady rate of economic growth. Personally I suspect this won't happen.
Personally I suspect that when AI gets smarter than us, it self improves very fast. The AI then get's nanobots which can double every hour until they cover earth, and then build a dyson sphere in a month.
This is Much faster than the 2% economic growth. This is economic growth that can easily double every day (for a few weeks).
This may be very good or very bad for the humans, depending on how the AI is programmed.
I think you are assuming a strong causal link between population and GDP per Capita.
I don't think that link is very strong in reality.
Pick any tiny place, like Liechtenstein, they have a GDP of $98k /Capita and a population of 40k.
That's Way off your trend lines for the USA.
Alternative model.
Population started growing when people had reliable access to enough food and basic hygiene. Population can stop growing if people use lots of contraception.
GDP/capita is all about economic efficiency. Think robots. If your ploughing fields by hand, it's impossible to be rich. If you have robots that can manufacture anything, it's really hard to be poor.
For some averagely paid who works at a car factory to be able to afford a car with a weeks wages, it is necessary for the factory to produce more than one car for every week of labor. If cars are manufactured by a long and arduous process and every part is filed into shape by hand, this is not the case. If cars are made by robots, this can be the case.
There are a few subtleties. But basically, average wealth per hour depends on what people can produce with an hours work. Which grows as we automate.
Some enlightening charts here. More people means more ideas, more innovation, and more labor, key components of economic growth. This is especially true at the city level where, as I will discuss in an upcoming Risk & Progress essay, innovation and GDP grow superlinearly to population growth.
It also presents a stark warning for those who seek to “close” the borders to immigrants on the right, and those on the left that celebrate shrinking populations. Neither outcome will bring the utopian future they promise.
This is a weird article. Population has a large impact on total GDP, but much less of an impact on GDP per capita, yet it's the latter that this article is focusing on. GDP per capita is mostly a measure of productivity, which itself is mostly a function of a society's technological progress. Tech progress has been slowing quite a lot since the 1950s in nearly all areas except for computers. Forecasting GDP per capita into the future would need to almost entirely focus on which effect would dominate, either science continues slowing to a crawl such that productivity remains nearly constant, or computers (perhaps through AI) become so great that it leads to another era of rapid growth similar to the 19th century.
Total population levels would have almost nothing to do with it, outside of black swan events (e.g. total population crash) or something that impacts productivity/science like older people working less.
Your analysis in "Extrapolating GDP per capita growth" makes no sense. You assume an increase in GDP/capita of 2%/year. Independent of population. So we could 10x the population or reduce the population to one American and the GDP/capita in wouldn't change based on your methodology. You're assuming the link between population and GDP growth rate, then using that to predict increases in GDP/capita as population increases, and then using that result to support the connection. Circular.
> I would like to see someone more qualified answer this question. If these numbers are even remotely true, then simply staying the course and growing the American economy over the next century would create radical abundance.
This is assuming a fairly steady rate of economic growth. Personally I suspect this won't happen.
Personally I suspect that when AI gets smarter than us, it self improves very fast. The AI then get's nanobots which can double every hour until they cover earth, and then build a dyson sphere in a month.
This is Much faster than the 2% economic growth. This is economic growth that can easily double every day (for a few weeks).
This may be very good or very bad for the humans, depending on how the AI is programmed.
I think you are assuming a strong causal link between population and GDP per Capita.
I don't think that link is very strong in reality.
Pick any tiny place, like Liechtenstein, they have a GDP of $98k /Capita and a population of 40k.
That's Way off your trend lines for the USA.
Alternative model.
Population started growing when people had reliable access to enough food and basic hygiene. Population can stop growing if people use lots of contraception.
GDP/capita is all about economic efficiency. Think robots. If your ploughing fields by hand, it's impossible to be rich. If you have robots that can manufacture anything, it's really hard to be poor.
For some averagely paid who works at a car factory to be able to afford a car with a weeks wages, it is necessary for the factory to produce more than one car for every week of labor. If cars are manufactured by a long and arduous process and every part is filed into shape by hand, this is not the case. If cars are made by robots, this can be the case.
There are a few subtleties. But basically, average wealth per hour depends on what people can produce with an hours work. Which grows as we automate.