we cannot really force someone to have only 1 child or 2. Since anyone wants a happy big family. But we can do something to help that certain family not to struggle because there income is quite a bit short. We can inform and teach them or advice them about the consequences about having a large family. We can also suggest about a child penalty were in a family is allowed for like 1-2 kids and the rest would be paid by taxes or anything that the family can also benefit from the government.

The Baby Boom Bust Cycle

As people have aged , a ‘baby-boomer bulge’ has formed in most developed nations . Check out this ABS population pyramid. It isn’t looking very pyramid like…


You can play around with the metrics HERE if you’re interested in how things will look in the future. But be careful. The Australian population pyramid begins to take on a very suggestive shape around 2030.

Anyway, as the boomers have grown older, they have had some rather interesting side effects on asset markets. Namely, as this group has gone through its wealth building, investing and liquefying cycle, it has left a trail of destruction. The weight of their money flooding into whichever asset class is popular has created bubbles. Then, when it’s time to leave those asset classes, the bubbles burst spectacularly.

When the boomers were middle aged, the craze was the internet and its infinite possibilities. Brokers piled their clients’ money into tech stocks, heralding the age of computers and virtual companies. The whole thing collapsed in on itself when the tech boom turned out to be a tech bubble. The companies that were funded by the boomers’ hard- won savings turned out to be worth very little, if they even got off the ground. Of course, the whole thing went contagious and stock markets around the world were dragged down too.

People learned from their mistakes and moved on… into housing.

Supposedly much safer than stocks, this asset offered several advantages over imaginary technology companies. ‘Bricks and mortar’, ‘house prices always go up’ and ‘just take out the equity on your house’ became the investment mantras of the day. Governments, keen to secure votes, supported homeownership policies and thereby prices. Each time things looked shaky, the central banks would lower interest rates, directly impacting the asset class of the day – leveraged property. The boom in finance was one pleasant side effect of this for the whipper snappers of the day.

In the countries where policies to support homeownership were most drastic, prices increased the most. From setting up government- sponsored entities to buy mortgages, to creating tax benefits for increased leverage, the politicians came up with it all in an attempt to stay in political favour.

And just when things were looking good, the housing bubble popped. The asset class that investors had been piling into crashed – and continues to crash. Just when the lessons from the tech bubble were considered learned, the same fear, destruction of wealth and chaos ensued. It may seem like Australia and a select few have escaped this fate, but that’s unravelling as we write.

Now that savings have been wiped out a second time, or are in the process of being wiped out, what do all those people looking at retirement do? Most likely, they will go to the most liquid and safe assets they can find. That is, cash and sovereign bonds. As a Daily Reckoning reader, you might recognise that they are setting themselves up for a third disaster. Inflation and sovereign defaults are on the horizon.

There are several aspects to this. First (and most obvious) is supply and demand. The cycle begins with a sudden increase in demand when Boomers discover their new favourite asset class. Because of the weight of money they represent, Boomers inflate an asset bubble with their buying power. But as the boomers moved from asset class to asset class during their lives, they had to sell up each time. Because of the bulge in demographics, the buying pressure wasn’t there to support the asset markets that were being abandoned. The bubble burst each time.

The obvious Australian version of this will be when baby boomers sell the stocks accumulated in their super funds. Who will provide the buying power to prop up prices? The whole system is set to be under severe strain, simply due to supply and demand.

But that is only part of the story. As we alluded to above, politicians and civil servants love to get in on the action too. In the US, this took the form of making the ‘American Dream’ an American reality. What they got was a nightmare. Massive mortgage companies were set up and backed by the government to create artificial demand for mortgages. Banks were required to lend to sub-prime borrowers by legislation. Central banks kept interest rates low. And homebuilders had a field day.

It all ended badly. Homeowners were left without homes, banks with bailouts and taxpayers footed the bill. Those still in the stock market relearned the lessons of the tech bubble.

The Australian experience with a housing bubble is still playing out, but carries many similarities. Negative gearing laws are an example of how politicians got involved.

Without government attempting to create prosperity for its biggest voting block, things would not have swung as wildly from boom to bust in the past two decades. The baby boomers would have retirement savings to fall back on. Instead though, it looks like the perfect storm is forming for a third time.

Link -
http://www.thepropagandist.org/2011/06/the-baby-boom-bust-cycle/
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Good luck & watch the Debt!

Maybe if wealth would be more equally distributed, the population explosion would slow significantly.

Take Europe; 100 years ago most people had large families, now most countries have negative population growth.
Also the idea of "Populate or perish" should be discouraged.

Bomb? Tick-tick-ticking? Or economic bubble? Population growth is a basic assumption hard-wired in traditional economic theory. Unquestioned. Yes, population is our core economic problem. Not a military problem. But the bigger this economic bubble grows, the more we all sink into denial, the closer the point of no return where bubble becomes bomb, where war is the only alternative.

We’re on suicide watch and yet population control, the world’s No. 1 economic issue in “off the table.” Why? Last year Mother Jones made it abundantly clear why. In “The Last Taboo,” columnist Julia Whitty asked: “What unites the Vatican, lefties, conservatives and scientists in a conspiracy of silence? Population.” That hot-button issue ignites so many powerful reactions. Politicians won’t touch this third rail.

Our denial is a massive “conspiracy of silence.” Yes, we’re all in this global self-destructive conspiracy. Families love making babies. Economists obsess about their population-growth assumption.

Stockholders demand earnings growth. Wall Street is insatiable. The global Super Rich see population growth as opportunities to increase their wealth, widening the wealth gap. We’re all in this rat race together, in a “conspiracy of silence.”

Population is the key economic power driving all economic issues
Yes, you can forget “Peak Oil.” Forget global warming. Forget debt, deficits, defaults. Forget commodities, scarce resource depletion. Forget all other economic, political, military problems. Yes, forget all of them. None of them matter … if our leaders fail to deal with the world’s out-of-control population bomb. Nothing else matters. Nothing.

Still, the silence is defining. We’re trapped in this deafening “conspiracy of silence.” Neutered. Blind to this suicidal path, incapable and unwilling to face the greatest single economic challenge in history. Won’t wake up till it’s too late.

Why? Deep in our hearts we see no acceptable universal solution. So we wait … until this economic bomb stops tick-tick-ticking. Explodes in our faces. Till the wake-up call, a total economic collapse. Till then, the silence is deafening. We stay in denial. Waiting.

The United Nations predicts there will be nine billion or more humans on Earth by 2050. And while demographers want us to believe total population will level off, they’re just guessing.

How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed,” “is not the number of people alone, but their impact on the environment,” the “per-capita impact.” First World citizens “consume 32 times more resources such as fossil fuels, and put out 32 times more waste, than do the inhabitants of the Third World.”

So the race to 2050 rages on: “Low impact people are becoming high-impact people” demanding “First World living standards.” But unfortunately, if all nations in the world consumed resources at the same rate as Americans, we’d need six Earths just to survive. Today.

Pentagon warns of ‘desperate all-out wars for food, water, energy’
What a “conspiracy of silence.” Seems everybody’s on the “economic growth” bandwagon. And with population growth comes chaos, anger, war.

WWIII is no fiction. We’re in the buildup now. During the Bush era, Fortune analyzed a classified Pentagon report predicting that “climate could change radically and fast. That would be the mother of all national security issues.” Population unrest would then create “massive droughts, turning farmland into dust bowls and forests to ashes.” Soon “there is little doubt that something drastic is happening ... as the planet’s carrying capacity shrinks, an ancient pattern reemerges: the eruption of desperate all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies” with “warfare defining human life.”

Forget “Peak Oil.” The real economic force behind “Peak Oil” is “Peak Population.” Fail to defuse the population bomb and experts on sites like LifeAftertheOilCrash.com make clear the inevitable consequences of our denial, silence and inaction: “Civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon. This is not the wacky proclamation of a doomsday cult … it is the scientific conclusion of the best paid, most widely respected geologists, physicists, bankers and investors in the world.”

We are at the tipping point: Failing to defuse the population bomb guarantees global economic collapse.

Throughout history, myopic leaders never act … till it’s too late
Will our leaders rise to the occasion? History says no. “One of the disturbing facts of history is that so many civilizations collapse. Fewer still appreciate that many of those civilizations share a sharp curve of decline. Indeed, a society’s demise may begin only a decade or two after it reaches its peak population, wealth and power.” Tick, tick, tick ….

So what is this one common flaw that drives nations to collapse worldwide and over the centuries?

Diamond says leaders “focused only on issues likely to blow up in the next 90 days,” lacking the will “to make bold, courageous, anticipatory decisions.” Their short-term thinking, unfortunately, sets the stage for a rapid “sharp curve of decline.”

The bomb just keeps tick-tick-ticking. Sshh, quiet, you’ll wake the babies.

Link -
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/population-bomb-9-billion-march-to-wwiii-2011-0...
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Seems close to reality, in many areas.

perceptions_now
You amaze me, by how much effort you put in to make this posts, but maybe if we all would send our posts to our politicians, we would be more effective.

WA'S economic growth will be under intense pressure as a slowing population growth, increased retirement numbers and huge business investment look set to clash, a new report warns.

The quarterly Deloitte Access Economics report, released today, reaffirmed WA as one of the engines – along with Queensland – of the national economy, with almost a quarter of a trillion dollars of investment projects in the state’s pipeline, mainly led by resource operations.

However, the report warns of a volatile period for the state’s economy, as projections for “stellar” economic growth are tempered by a much slower growing population, where migrant numbers have dropped notably since 2009 and baby boomer retirement is about to accelerate sharply.

Deloitte forecasts WA’s total population to grow 2.2 per cent in the 2011 financial year, and for that to dip to 1.9 per cent in 2015-16.

Economic growth is tipped to grow 3.4 per cent in 2010-11 before surging to 6 per cent the following year, and then making its way down to 3.7 per cent in 2015-16.

“So the squeeze on Western Australia’s economy is about to be considerable,” the report says.

Link -
http://www.perthnow.com.au/business/business-old/population-issues-temper-wa-eco...
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Slowing population growth and increased retirement numbers will certainly impact on WA and OZ nationally, but the truth is there will also be the effects of another Global slowdown to contend with, as well!  

All over America tonight, millions of elderly Americans are wondering if their money is going to run out before it is time for them to die. Those that are now past retirement age are not going to be rioting in the streets, but that doesn't mean that large numbers of them are not deeply suffering. There are millions of elderly Americans that are leading lives of "quiet desperation" as they try to get by on meager fixed incomes.

As health care costs soar, millions of elderly Americans find themselves deep in debt and facing huge medical bills that they cannot possibly pay. A lot of older Americans would go back to work if they could, but jobs are scarce and very few companies seem to even want to consider hiring them. Right now caring for all of the Americans that have already retired is turning out to be an overwhelming challenge, and things are about to get a whole lot worse. On January 1st, 2011 the very first Baby Boomers turned 65.  A massive tsunami of retirees is coming, and America is not ready for it.

Sadly, most retirees have not adequately prepared for retirement. For many, the recent economic downturn absolutely devastated their retirement plans. Many were counting on the equity in their homes, but the recent housing crash crushed those dreams. Others had their 401ks shredded by the stock market.

Meanwhile, corporate pension plans all across America are vastly underfunded. Many state and local government pension programs are absolute disasters. The federal government has already begun to pay out significantly more in Social Security benefits than they are taking in, and the years ahead are projected to be downright apocalyptic for the Social Security program.

So needless to say, things do not look good for the Baby Boomers that are now approaching retirement age.

The following are 21 signs that the new reality for many Baby Boomers will be to work as wage slaves until they drop dead....

#1 According to a shocking AARP survey of Baby Boomers that are still in the workforce, 40 percent of them plan to work “until they drop.”

#2 A recent survey of American workers that included all age groups found that 54 percent of them planned to keep working when they retire and 39 percent of them plan to either work past age 70 or never retire at all.

#3 A poll conducted by CESI Debt Solutions found that 56 percent of American retirees still had outstanding debts when they retired.

#4 A recent study by a law professor from the University of Michigan found that Americans that are 55 years of age or older now account for 20 percent of all bankruptcies in the United States.

#5 Between 1991 and 2007 the number of Americans between the ages of 65 and 74 that filed for bankruptcy rose by a staggering 178 percent.

#6 Most of the bankruptcies among the elderly are caused by our deeply corrupt health care system. According to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine, medical bills are a major factor in more than 60 percent of the personal bankruptcies in the United States. Of those bankruptcies that were caused by medical bills, approximately 75 percent of them involved individuals that actually did have health insurance.

#7 The U.S. government now says that the Medicare trust fund will run dry five years faster than they were projecting just last year.



#9 Over 30 percent of all U.S. investors currently in their sixties have more than 80 percent of their 401k retirement plans invested in equities. So what happens if the stock market crashes again?

#10 All over the United States predatory lenders are coldly and cruelly foreclosing on elderly homeowners. You can read what one lender is doing to a 70-year-old woman and her terminally ill husband right here.

#11 Medical bills are absolutely devastating large number of elderly Americans right now. Many are going to great lengths to try to pay their bills. An elderly woman that lives in the Salem, Oregon area that is fighting terminal bone cancer tried to raise some money for her medical bills by holding a few garage sales on the weekends. However, a neighbor ratted her out, and so now the police are shutting her garage sales down.

#12 Social Security's disability program has already been pushed to the brink of insolvency and wave after wave of new applications continue to pour in.

#13 Approximately 3 out of every 4 Americans start claiming Social Security benefits the moment they are eligible at age 62. Most are doing this out of necessity. However, by claiming Social Security early they get locked in at a much lower amount than if they would have waited.

#14 According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security system paid out more in benefits than it received in payroll taxes in 2010. That was not supposed to happen until at least 2016.  Sadly, in the years ahead these "Social Security deficits" are scheduled to become absolutely nightmarish as hordes of Baby Boomers retire.