krakatau1

I have read it. I know what liquidity trap is. That's not the problem. It's incentives. Incentives matter and people in western countries are not incentivized to have children and money isn't all that matters.

People care about reputation, social standing, glory and their conscience. All of these can act as incentives. When we say that incentives matter non economists only hears that people respond to price signals but what economist really mean that, holding everything else constant and giving a price signal people will do it more or less of it.

Economists often focus on monetary incentives because they are observable and usually easier to change in a model. For example if we say that doctor salaries go up more people will want to be doctors. This is misunderstood that doctors are motivated by money rather than the non-monetary motives to be doctors but this really means that holding the non-monetary satisfaction of medicine constant, increasing the monetary satisfaction will make medicine more attractive relative to other professions. The clear example for this are doctors in USA and Cuba. The difference in monetary compensations is huge relative to other professions but non-monetary motives are still high enough for people in Cuba to want to endure ardous learning to be a doctor.

I fully realize it's a lost battle. The genie is out of the bottle. I'm just annoyed that it's happening. I live close to a city that 2000 years old and all that time population either managed to grew or stagnate but never this.

Of course it's a Ponzi scheme since it promotes freeloading.

People without children also expect to receive pension while escaping the effort and time to raise the next generation.

When you did this at family level the result was pretty evident, in your old age you were alone and vulnerable. Doing this on national level hides this effect.

It's hard to explain people in US but in Central Europe Java is like 70% of software jobs, the rest is Node and .Net and everything else is really niche outside of their domains.

This thread proves to me that every discussion on US/Europe comparison is the same.

There are people from USA who always bash on it (Reddit Bernie Sanders socialist brigades) and Europeans who never visited and feel they have to explain/rationalize widening gap between US and Europe.

I know it all anecdata, but my experience is completely different.

I am from Croatia, I lived there until my late twenties when I got a job in Munich. For the next 6 years I lived (with wife and three children) and worked in Germany, Austria and Netherlands until we moved to USA.

Almost everything is better here. Healthcare, while expensive, is much better. Houses are huge and luxurious, cars are cheaper and more comfortable. Eating out and groceries are also cheaper, even if you buy higher quality items.

And of course, salaries are higher even if you don't work in tech like my wife. If you are in tech difference is huge, in Germany i was paid 80k € and here in States my first job was 190k $ and to add insult to injury taxes are lowar so my take home is higher. And I'm not in Bay area, this was in Nebraska. Later we moved to Colorado.

People are very polite and always ready to help. I don't see if we would ever return to Europe.

Well not million but 500-600k sure.

I actually hate macos font rendering...Windows has way better fonts on 27" 2560x1440 or 24" 1920X1200 monitors

With work issued macbook pro I have 2 4k 24" monitors to get that retina clarity instead and they keep fans on all the time.

yes, but on mac it will make both apps in separate desktops and in windows is just simple window tiling

Just go back 50 years, they were 95% single ethnic states with remaining 5% european minorities.

Visual Studio Code is fast on startup and that's it. It chokes on million LOC project while Eclipse and Intellij work fine.

USA in 1945 was 91% white so it kinda makes sense that government did it. Homogeneous countries have no political issues with welfare because everyone is alike.

I work for a large bank, we are rewriting business logic from Cics to Java or SQL/Pl but Db2 zOS stays. It has a phenomenal performance and HA.

It also says a lot how relational database models outlive business logic api-s.

First comment is good:

Always appreciate your insights Patrick, but you are completely off base here. USA has far fewer working age combat veterans now than it did in the 1950s through 1980s, and violence isn't anywhere near the levels that pervaded American society from the late 1960s through early 1990s. Trump's harshly criticized immigration policy is quite tame - compare it to the mass deportations under Roosevelt and Eisenhower.

The scenes in Portland and elsewhere are completely understandable - organized black clad rioters are attacking federal buildings. Is the government supposed to let them storm the buildings? No government would allow such a thing to happen, though perhaps the USA will.

America is a dying country, her people destined to be a small & hated minority surrounded by masses of her former subjects. Your own state legislature even recently voted to legalize discrimination against people like you (Assembly Constitutional Amendment No. 5).

This kind of migrations were non preventable before but now we have enough resources and technology to build walls and surveillance to block them entirely.

Unfortunately, the only thing that is missing is will to do so.

Yes, English had crazy fertility rate. At the begining of the Hundred Years’ War France had population of 17 million and Britain(excluding Ireland) had 4 million. By the time of Napoleonic wars Britain(with Ireland) had 17 million people compared with 30 million in France. English also had much higher emigration rate to colonies.

When the First World War started UK had a larger population than France.

USA spends very little money on military as a percentage of GDP while being the most powerful force in history. I would argue that that money is very well spent.