To the Editor:
Re “The Population Forecasts Aren’t Grim Enough,” by Lyman Stone (Opinion guest essay, July 13):
Dr. Stone is correct in describing the trend in the United States and the rest of the world of rapidly falling fertility rates.
But a key point he misses is that rising productivity can more than offset a shrinking labor force. Furthermore, rising productivity is associated with rising incomes, while adding workers without any increase in productivity does not make the average worker better off.
My biggest problem with Dr. Stone’s essay is that he does not discuss the benefits of having a smaller population, which is one of the best ways of mitigating the misery expected by climate scientists as the world gets hotter and more polluted and there is further loss of biodiversity.
Finally, Dr. Stone forecasts a future of net-zero immigration for the United States and treats it as a fact instead of a policy choice. What is missing in his discussion is a view of the optimum population size for the United States. Some notion of this number is necessary to have a sensible immigration policy.
Let’s not underestimate the capacity of the human race to adapt to changing circumstances. We have adapted brilliantly to the near quadrupling of the global population in the past 80 years. It is possible to adapt just as well over the next 80 years to create a world where fertility returns to the 2.1 replacement level and the global population stabilizes at 10 billion or eight billion or some lower number, with no loss in prosperity because of increasing productivity.
Lex Rieffel Washington The writer was a Treasury Department economist and Brookings Institution scholar.
To the Editor:
Lyman Stone argues that population decline threatens economic vitality. History suggests a more complicated reality.
In the 19th century, New England was replete with small farms. As agriculture shifted westward, rural communities lost population as thousands of farms were abandoned. Yet New England did not collapse. As farming declined, the region’s economy shifted toward manufacturing, commerce, education and other pursuits, while abandoned farmland gradually returned to forest.
Demographic change creates challenges. But having fewer people does not automatically mean less prosperity or a weaker society. The crucial questions are productivity, technological progress and our ability to adapt while ensuring that transitions consider human needs.
Demographic decline can be followed not by collapse but by renewal.
John Seager Washington The writer is the president of Population Connection.
To the Editor:
Lyman Stone’s guest essay equated birthrate with population growth. The piece harked back to 1775, when land was abundant and cheap. Family farming was the primary vocation and made having large families common sense. Population grew.
Immigration was also a major reason for America’s population growth. Doing a better job of accommodating migrants, refugees and asylum seekers would also be a way of increasing America’s population without increasing the birthrate.
I found fault with the idea that more workers paying into the Social Security system was necessary in order to support retired benefit recipients. It’s income that supports the Social Security system. There is a huge amount of income in the United States that is not subject to Social Security taxes. It should be.
Dave Gallagher Tucson, Ariz.
To the Editor:
It is the growing of the population for the sake of growing the economy that is leading us to environmental apocalypse. We have so clearly overshot already, with 8.3 billion people, that other species are going extinct at an alarming rate.
We live on a planet of finite resources. To maintain the lifestyle that we lead in the United States, we think we deserve more of those resources than anyone else. And if another country has resources we think we need, we think it’s our right to go in and confiscate those resources. This is the cause of conflict as we compete with other countries, and the extraction of those resources is doing more and more environmental damage.
In the United States, we see a cultural war, as the wealthy demand many more of those resources, which causes supply to go down and prices to go up, hurting the poor. We cannot live on this planet sustainably if we increase our birthrate. We might be able to, but only if we (especially the wealthy) start consuming a lot less, which would affect the economy negatively.
Katherine Schwarz Nyack, N.Y.
To the Editor:
As someone who came to California when its population was 22 million, I don’t think it is better now with 40 million, and I doubt that an additional 10 million would improve things.
While a stable population would cause some issues with benefit programs and business plans based on population growth, it would help solve many issues that some are concerned are already at a crisis level — climate change, housing, water, food, energy, congestion, overfishing, waste disposal, general pollution and probably some others as well.
The world would not necessarily be a better place with two people in every line where there is one today.
Craig C. Taylor Palo Alto, Calif.
To the Editor:
If we are serious about the future of our country, we must make having, raising and educating children a significant priority. Perhaps if our leaders invested in free child care, parents could work full-time jobs that provide for the necessities of a good life. And if we provided public school educators with the preparation, resources, salaries and respect they deserved, it’s possible that the best and the brightest would prepare our children for a fulfilling existence.
Until we change our priorities, the future is hardly promising.
Alexis Gerard Finger Bala Cynwyd, Pa.
To the Editor:
Lyman Stone’s bizarre narrative treats other people’s wombs as instruments of fiscal policy. No one owes the state a child.
There are policy tools that can deal with the birthrate issue. None of them require telling people they’ve failed the nation if they don’t have more children.
Daryl Muenchau San Diego
The Ferrari Faithful Are Fuming
To the Editor:
Re “$640,000 Buys a Ferrari That Gearheads Hate,” by Carlo Ratti (Opinion guest essay, June 30):
Outsiders can be forgiven some assumptions, but Mr. Ratti fundamentally misunderstands the furor we witnessed as Ferrari — one of the pillars of our shared aesthetic culture — buckled before our eyes.
Inspiring aesthetic excellence was once the hallmark of cars designed in Italy. But the Luce speaks an unsophisticated design language from the 1980s — and is disruptive only in its bland and questionable execution, with the inert personality of a computer peripheral.
Car designers are different, but their culture and jobs are now in question, not the least because of the A.I. efficiency myth. Ferrari should carry the torch of great car design, and I should be the first to congratulate it for the courage to try something new, to lead design with its debut electric vehicle. Except there is no “new,” there is no “try,” and it didn’t lead; it abdicated.
When Ferrari sidelined its own creatives — a clear affront to its design chief, Flavio Manzoni — and then praised the resultant mediocrity, it symbolized the denigration of a proud culture, not its advancement.
Chris Bangle Clavesana, Italy The writer is the managing director of Chris Bangle and Associates and the former chief of design for BMW Group.
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