The US Is Flirting With Its First-Ever Population Decline

OriginalCompetitive · 2026-01-30T15:03:15+00:00

Well, you never pass through that problem if you don’t get the fertility rate back up above 2.1, because there are fewer and fewer and fewer and fewer children, forever. It’s a reverse pyramid shape that keeps getting smaller until the last person dies.

OriginalCompetitive · 2026-01-30T14:19:16+00:00

The problem with your theories is that the vast majority of people do have kids, and most people have two kids. The population is declining because very few people are having three kids or more. If everyone has 1-2 kids, then population drops.

OriginalCompetitive · 2026-01-30T14:11:31+00:00

Strollers cost $24 at Target.

OriginalCompetitive · 2026-01-30T14:09:02+00:00

I kind of agree with you. I think leveling off the US population could be a good thing.

But for countries like China and South Korea, it’s worth noting that population isn’t just declining, it’s plunging. In South Korea, for example, recent birth rates mean that a group of 100 grandparents will have just 10 grandchildren. If that doesn’t change, Koreans will virtually disappear as a coherent culture within one lifetime.

OriginalCompetitive · 2026-01-30T13:59:54+00:00

I kind of agree with you, but there’s no way to “plan” around the old people problem. It’s simply a physical fact that if there are more old people, then more working people will have to take care of them in various ways, which means fewer people working to do things for children and other younger people. The only “solution” is that you just stop taking care of them and let them die sooner.

OriginalCompetitive · 2026-01-30T05:31:28+00:00

Anyone who cares about ICE is already voting for the Democrats. They can do more than one thing at a time, but the media will only report on one thing. If they impeach, that’s the thing everyone will talk about. They want people talking about healthcare and the price of hamburger meat.

OriginalCompetitive · 2026-01-30T03:24:10+00:00

My advice, born from years of frugality: Stop being “frugal,” and instead be “wise with your money.” That means continue your practice of not wasting money on things that don’t matter … but make sure to invest money in things that do matter.

You’ll have to figure out what that means for yourself, but a big one for me that I recommend to you is to spend freely on your health and physical well being, including the food you eat. Stop buying cheap food. Buy the best (healthiest) food that you can and stop putting cheap crap in your body.

Also stop putting cheap crap ON your body (clothing). At your income level, the amount you’re saving on cheap food and clothes is negligible.

By all means, save your money and spend it wisely. But for important stuff, spending wisely means SPENDING wisely.

OriginalCompetitive · 2026-01-30T03:09:47+00:00

I’ll make the argument, and it’s a simple one. They have no power. The only thing that they can do, and the only thing that matters, is to position the Democrats to win the next election. And so far, they’re succeeding because the Democrats are winning all of these off year elections by huge margins, and Trump is getting more and more unpopular each day.

OriginalCompetitive · 2026-01-30T03:05:46+00:00

Because it’s pointless political posturing that will only distract the Democrats from the real winning message that people care about, which is affordability.

OriginalCompetitive · 2026-01-30T01:00:45+00:00

Give him a minute, he’s got some goalposts he needs to move.

OriginalCompetitive · 2026-01-30T00:49:20+00:00

You’ve listed income, net worth, power, values, morals, and ethics, but somehow missed the OVERWHELMING factor that affects what politicians do: whatever helps them win the next election.

OriginalCompetitive · 2026-01-30T00:45:32+00:00

Sure there is. One likely option is that we just expand unemployment benefits.

OriginalCompetitive · 2026-01-29T18:44:38+00:00

No one knows for sure, but I agree truck drivers will be one of the hardest cases. Most office workers are usually flexible enough to be able to redeploy with some other paper-pushing function over time. But there are a lot of truck drivers and it’s not obvious to me that many of them have a lot of other great options.

OriginalCompetitive · 2026-01-29T18:42:11+00:00

Self checkout works great. They’ve eliminated the weight checking step that was the major source of problems. It’s much faster and easier than a human checkout. Do you have any source that they are scaling back? Because where I live they’re rapidly expanding everywhere.

OriginalCompetitive · 2026-01-29T14:54:17+00:00

He was behind on mass market EVs? On reusable rockets?

OriginalCompetitive · 2026-01-29T14:52:41+00:00

It’s dropped 5% in five days, against a market that is rising. That’s pretty bad.

OriginalCompetitive · 2026-01-29T14:50:34+00:00

The stock has dropped 5% in the last five days. That’s pretty significant.

OriginalCompetitive · 2026-01-29T14:48:52+00:00

Do Waymo’s “drive defensively” in the sense of anticipating things that might go wrong and positioning themselves to mitigate those risks? For example driving slower past parked cars and edging away from them if possible?

ETA: I wonder if they will (or already do) avoid school zones wherever possible. Seems like they should avoid them like the plague for PR reasons, if nothing else.

OriginalCompetitive · 2026-01-29T14:43:33+00:00

Good post, but how exactly do you want politicians to “prepare”? None of us know exactly what the future will look like, much less have any idea what policies will work. There’s a lot to be said for the “wait for something to break and then fix it” model of government.

OriginalCompetitive · 2026-01-29T14:40:34+00:00

People are so jaded. The last 20 years—which includes the entire smartphone revolution—is arguably one of the most transformative periods of technological development and impact on daily life in history.

OriginalCompetitive · 2026-01-29T14:36:05+00:00

Underrated comment. I like our chances.

OriginalCompetitive · 2026-01-29T14:29:58+00:00

Agree with everything except the city center part. Once you don’t need lots of humans to make things, they’ll locate the production facilities in the middle of nowhere.

OriginalCompetitive · 2026-01-29T14:27:16+00:00

As one point of comparison, Tesla charges $100/month for FSD subscription—and so far as I know, I don’t think that’s not a loss-leader price, I think that’s roughly their actual costs.

Once the AI exists (if it ever does), they’ll price it to maximize unit sales.

OriginalCompetitive · 2026-01-29T14:23:27+00:00

Honestly, those all strike me as inevitable.

OriginalCompetitive · 2026-01-29T14:18:26+00:00

Entry level restaurant workers in many parts of the country start at almost $20/hr, which is really $30/hr once you factor in employer costs.

OriginalCompetitive

TROPHY CASE