What happens to poor people in future years, and why?
We are living through a complex changing time. One of the
biggest, but unheralded, changes is that a large base of citizens is no longer
a pre-requisite for power or influence. And, because of that, the need for the
powerful to support poor people (in many advanced countries) is falling
quickly.
Much of what we consider societal goods, things like
education, transportation infrastructure and medical support, arose through the
need of the government to have a healthy, educated population base for
war-making. You couldn’t fight a war with sickly men. And a basic education was
necessary for your population to support a modern war effort.
The first time that education was mandatory in England was
1880s, when the Empire was expanding. For the United States, national education
was not compulsory until 1918 – after the “Great War”. Public Health was first
widely available under Kaiser Wilhelm in Germany introduced public health care
to keep a war ready population. And the US Interstate system was undertaken by
Eisenhower not as a public infrastructure good, but a response to a poor
infrastructure for military transportation in World War II.
But now warfare doesn’t require a large population of
healthy, intelligent people. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing but respect and
admiration for our country’s military. However, we are moving forward with
drones, satellites and bombs that are so powerful they make armies irrelevant.
And so, the demand from the government to feed and educate
masses of people is reduced. And you see this in the voters of most stripes. We
are moving away from public schools and tinker with private schools. The idea
of publicly funded college is a joke. When I went to UCLA it was $700 a
quarter. But, as people doubt the purpose of public education past high school,
the price has increased to $7,000 per quarter, for in state. You see the slow
decline of public schools at all levels, because government don’t want to pay
for it.
In primary schools we see more and more private education
for those that can afford it.
In the United States the fight is over Affordable Health
Care. If the country doesn’t need healthy men to fight, then why try to keep
everyone healthy? We spend a lot to keep our soldiers and veterans healthy and
try to spend very little (of public funds) to keep the general population healthy.
Is the economic good of the country tied to population?
So, if the government doesn’t have to support poor people
for military reasons, how about for economic reasons? Is there a tie between
population and wealth?
I think there used to be. A large population was needed for
farming and manufacturing and a large population made that much more possible. Granted,
it helped to be the right type of population; once again, education played a
large role here. But now, globalization makes a large population less
important. Germany’s “power” didn’t grow when West Germany absorbed East
Germany in the 1990s. Singapore is one of the richest countries in the world
with a tiny population, almost no natural resources (albeit a great location).
Nigeria has a massive population and is poor. Brazil has a massive population
is reasonably well-off. Population doesn’t relate directly to power. And we see the ruling class in the United
States actively trying to reduce our population (we have grown for the last few
decades mainly by immigration).