“This is a trend that we have to get on top of now. If we stop growing we will have a smaller economy. If we stop growing, we’ll be less important in the world, as the rest of the world grows around us.”
Well, Canada is a vast country with only 40 million people in it. Honestly pretty much everything said in the article is pretty reasonable. If you read through he points out the economic benefits of a growing population, but cautions that there needs to be a coordinated build-out of housing, transit, and social infrastructure like childcare. It’s not really anything crazy. The article was put out in 2019 and states a population of 37 million, it’s 2024 and we’ve ticked past 41 million. It’s more or less on track, except for all that infrastructure of course.
It’s more or less on track, except for all that infrastructure of course.
Infrastructure is the key part. Our lives are worse since 2019, as shown by our record low fertility rate. I don’t think the population growth of the last five years was the cause of our polycrisis, but it certainly exacerbated it.
Sounds reasonable if you think of the country as big. Attracting migrants is necessary as the birth rate in most educated countries is negative so the population, if left to itself, is declining. Migrants will mostly want to live in cities and probably the bigger ones with more opportunities. The infrastructure will mostly be needed to expand the big cities which will make them a lot less inviting. That might be less of an issue as everything electrified on the way to a low carbon economy, the smog will reduce as will some of the noise.
Well, Canada is a vast country with only 40 million people in it. Honestly pretty much everything said in the article is pretty reasonable. If you read through he points out the economic benefits of a growing population, but cautions that there needs to be a coordinated build-out of housing, transit, and social infrastructure like childcare. It’s not really anything crazy. The article was put out in 2019 and states a population of 37 million, it’s 2024 and we’ve ticked past 41 million. It’s more or less on track, except for all that infrastructure of course.
Infrastructure is the key part. Our lives are worse since 2019, as shown by our record low fertility rate. I don’t think the population growth of the last five years was the cause of our polycrisis, but it certainly exacerbated it.
Sounds reasonable if you think of the country as big. Attracting migrants is necessary as the birth rate in most educated countries is negative so the population, if left to itself, is declining. Migrants will mostly want to live in cities and probably the bigger ones with more opportunities. The infrastructure will mostly be needed to expand the big cities which will make them a lot less inviting. That might be less of an issue as everything electrified on the way to a low carbon economy, the smog will reduce as will some of the noise.