Population growth

Apparently the ONC tells us that the population will increase by 10 million by 2035 as the direct and indirect results of immigration. The report on the BBC website distorts the facts in several important ways. If the matter makes to the broadcast BBC news please let me know. I suspect that if it does it will be minimised.

Just seen it on Sky News. Quite a good report.

Bill

Reply to
Bill Wright
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You mean, I guess, Office of National Statistics (ONS). I read the Guardian report, we really need the link to ONS.

What struck me from the Guardian report is how the growth rate has come down from some of the 1960's forecasts.

Reply to
newshound

This coverage of the story, I presume?

(Apparently untrustworthy) native British broadcaster...

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(Apparently more trustworthy) immigrant Australian-American broadcaster...

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Given that you say "apparently", can we take it that you're comparing the BBC and Sky reports, and assuming that the Sky report _must_ be accurate and the BBC report _must_ be "distorting the facts"?

After all, if you'd actually checked back to the source ONC (Who? Do you mean the ONS?) report, you wouldn't say "apparently".

I'm intrigued to know how there can be such certainty two decades in advance, though...

So let's have a look, shall we?

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The most likely report on the ONS's own website, dated today, doesn't even contain a mention of the year 2035 on the precis page...? But it does give a figure of 6.6m over a "zero-net migration" estimate, over 25 years (to 2039, since it's on 2014 figures)?

No mention of demographics there, though, and I think we all know which way the average age is going... Rapidly.

Woo. With zero migration, we could be looking at the world's biggest retirement home just off the northern shore of France... But at least there won't be brown people working, earning, growing our economy, paying taxes to cover our pensions.

Reply to
Adrian

Especially Enoch Powell's?

Reply to
Adrian

How does this constant expansion of the young, paying for the elderly, work indefinitely? Is there never to be a cap on the world's population? The real answer has to be working for longer, better spreading of available resources or a drop in the expected standard of living. There's no doubt the present generation have done very well but it's not exactly their fault. Personally, I don't really care if my house is worth £50,000 or £500,000!

Andy C

Reply to
Andy Cap

It was on BBC radio before I went to work this morning, and it's a headline item on the BBC 6pm news just now ...

Reply to
Andy Burns

Its been on the BBC too. Its nothing new anyway and its a prediction that has a large error margin too.

Reply to
dennis

Yes, quite a long report of Radio 4. I'm pleased. However they absolutely minimised any mention of immigration being the cause.

Bill

Reply to
Bill Wright

OK, here's a thought for you...

You've paid into a "real pension fund", by which I presume you mean some kind of defined-benefit scheme, maybe even final-salary. Congratulations. Now, what do you think the money you've paid into that "real pension fund" does...? Does it get put into a big piggybank with your name on it, and somehow miraculously grow?

Or does it get invested...?

What happens if those investments don't go according to plan, and a shortfall accrues - and grows? Even if they work out, how do those investments pay back?

There is no such thing as an investment for the future - of ANY kind - which doesn't rely on the future economy, and no such thing as a pension of any kind where payments in don't "pay for the current retired folk". It's all a matter of juggling investments.

The _only_ difference is whether you've been told way in advance what pension you expect to get - and that's where things can go very wrong.

Reply to
Adrian

That is not a real pension scheme. That's a scam. All such should be banned.

Companies should not be providing schemes for their own workers; it's hardly their core business after all. The only sustainable type of pension scheme is a personal one. You pay into a pot, and that pot is invested for you. When you come to retire, the pot has a value that relates to the economic situation at the time. If that is dire, then your pension isn't worth much. But it'll be up to you what you do and how/when you cash it in.

I don't know whether the state pension is properly funded in this way or not, but I suspect it's just another Ponzi scheme, like the defined benefit/final salary ones. Certainly this triple lock business is a bad idea.

Reply to
Tim Streater

What makes you think a final salary pension isn't funded in the same way as a personal pension?

Reply to
dennis

Andy Cap wrote in news:65ednccdZegB1a snipped-for-privacy@brightview.co.uk:

The population doesn't need to grow to support the elderly. There just needs to be a certain ratio between non-working and working people, and that is defined by productivity. If productivity increases (as it does), the number of non-working in relation to working can even increase without anyone losing out.

No, that line of thinking is called malthusianism, and it's wrong.

Reply to
Wolfgang Schwanke

*ding*

If he really thinks that every single personal pension has a dedicated fund manager who personally reviews it...

Reply to
Adrian

The phrase I remember on the TV news was along the lines of "including immigrants, and the children those immigrants will have" ...

Reply to
Andy Burns

Malthus wasn't wrong, except in his timing.

Tell me how many people the world can possibly feed. Is it infinite?

If it's not infinite, how long will it be before the world population, which is increasing exponentially, exceeds the number you come up with?

Reply to
Norman Wells

Wolfgang is a Cornucopian, and a believer in perpetual growth, despite the fact that nothing in the known universe lasts, or grows, forever.

See my .sig below..Wolfgang is almost certainly a socialist.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

The Natural Philosopher wrote in news:n0vds6$9lh$ snipped-for-privacy@news.albasani.net:

No that is a strawman. You don't need to assume perpetual growth or infinite resources to know that malthusian predictions can't be right.

[..]

No, but I'm fairly liberal and pro welfare. :)

Reply to
Wolfgang Schwanke

Funnily enough I heard it on LBC and a shorter version on their other stations news. Sounds like the indigenous population had better get their fingers out, or maybe something else out....:-)

The facts are obvious from history of course. When infant mortality was high, and there were no social services, people had to have more children to maintain the population and to help as the older members got older.

It normally takes a couple of generations for the practice to slow down. Unfortunately, many of the people in most developed countries are not having enough children to maintain the population of tax payers to supprt the next generation in tax paying. the solution is to import from cultures and countries where the birth rate is still high. I believe all this stuff from the Catholic Church about no birth control was a thinly veiled attempt to get people with their views in the majority.

Nothing new really. Brian

Reply to
Brian-Gaff

It's like those pyramid schemes that can out years ago that have all been banned. The few at the to make a fortune the rest lose.

Reply to
whisky-dave

In this morning's LBC Nick Ferrari phone-in, a phoner-inner made a very good point.

He pointed out that encouraging the immigration of young workers, so that their taxes could provide funding for the increasing number long-living old folks, was actually a ponzi pyramid scheme.

Even if the immigrants can find homes and work, they themselves will eventually join the ranks of long-living old folks - thus requiring more immigrants to come and work to pay taxes etc etc, ad infinitum.

Reply to
Ian Jackson

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