There are reports indicating that we are at 30 year lows for birth rates. This scares me significantly for the future of our economy.
I have a friend who is a middle school teacher and she wasn't 100% sure about her job security for two reasons. First, the school district is looking at school populations moving forward and with 1998 and 2006 being the high conception years, my friend will expect a decrease in population moving forward if children conceived in 2006 are now 11 or 12. Second, she isn't tenured yet and is subject to being on the chopping block over teachers that are tenured. I understand the need to provide our teachers with job security, but sometimes she tells me stories of her colleagues and the effort from them versus her and it absolutely floors me.
The other aspect of low birth rates that scares me is the current president's policy preference for a border wall. Let me preface this with saying that I am not a fan of politics nor political parties, but I recognize the significance of legislation and policy and focus my efforts there. Back to the reason for my fear here, economies are typically successful when there is growth. My favorite example is the Roaring 20's. We had a huge growth in population due to migration to the United States and the development of Ellis Island. I hate to say that there was a cause and effect relationship, but concurrently, there was economic growth with the benefits of coming out of a war (also adding to population), and mass development and innovation. Of course we had the stock market crash and a growth in a nativist perspective not long after the Roaring 20's. However, we had our longest and steadiest growth not long after that gave rise to suburbanization with the accessibility and affordability of cars for the average American family.
Couple points here. One growth in population can correlate with economic growth. By no means am I arguing for an open border policy, but I am a proponent for legislation that is in our best interest as a capitalist society. Two, in conjunction with not being specifically for an open border policy, we do need some control/legislation to control the flow. I will say that being in the Americas as opposed to Europe certainly creates some inherent mobility challenges for immigrants, but it's still a wise idea.
If we're not going to be more accepting of immigrants, we've got to figure out how to become more attractive to foreign money. By that I mean we need capture a larger market share for foreign money. It's the same concept of making your money work harder. For example, I know of one investor who has a very simple assessment of requirements for purchasing property because it's a volume based model, like CarMax. Contrary to that, I know of another that squeezes every last drop out of that lemon. I don't have a cheeky parallel for that one. The first investor can afford to be a little more careless because there is a larger volume of money working to generate some arbitrary number and the margin of error is far greater. The second investor, is cautious, detail oriented and hands on because to generate that same arbitrary number as the first investor, each dollar needs to produce proportionately more money.
My dad tried to comfort me that the US is in possession of a significant amount of intellectual property, but my concern is that if the intellectual property isn't squeezing enough juice out of the lemon or intellectual property isn't attracting enough of the market share of funds out there, I worry about the repercussions. I think about the modernization and the changes in lifestyle over the last 10-15 years. The market is cyclical. Although recessions are painful, there is nowhere to go, but up. We produced unbelievable technology and super powerhouses as a result: apple, Lululemon, Netflix, Whole Foods, Google, Amazon, Tesla, Facebook and more. I understand that some of those were around pre-recession, but the exponential growth that these companies have seen post recession is astronomical.
Bottom line is that I'm skeptical, but I'm comforted by the knowledge that markets are cyclical.
I have a friend who is a middle school teacher and she wasn't 100% sure about her job security for two reasons. First, the school district is looking at school populations moving forward and with 1998 and 2006 being the high conception years, my friend will expect a decrease in population moving forward if children conceived in 2006 are now 11 or 12. Second, she isn't tenured yet and is subject to being on the chopping block over teachers that are tenured. I understand the need to provide our teachers with job security, but sometimes she tells me stories of her colleagues and the effort from them versus her and it absolutely floors me.
The other aspect of low birth rates that scares me is the current president's policy preference for a border wall. Let me preface this with saying that I am not a fan of politics nor political parties, but I recognize the significance of legislation and policy and focus my efforts there. Back to the reason for my fear here, economies are typically successful when there is growth. My favorite example is the Roaring 20's. We had a huge growth in population due to migration to the United States and the development of Ellis Island. I hate to say that there was a cause and effect relationship, but concurrently, there was economic growth with the benefits of coming out of a war (also adding to population), and mass development and innovation. Of course we had the stock market crash and a growth in a nativist perspective not long after the Roaring 20's. However, we had our longest and steadiest growth not long after that gave rise to suburbanization with the accessibility and affordability of cars for the average American family.
Couple points here. One growth in population can correlate with economic growth. By no means am I arguing for an open border policy, but I am a proponent for legislation that is in our best interest as a capitalist society. Two, in conjunction with not being specifically for an open border policy, we do need some control/legislation to control the flow. I will say that being in the Americas as opposed to Europe certainly creates some inherent mobility challenges for immigrants, but it's still a wise idea.
If we're not going to be more accepting of immigrants, we've got to figure out how to become more attractive to foreign money. By that I mean we need capture a larger market share for foreign money. It's the same concept of making your money work harder. For example, I know of one investor who has a very simple assessment of requirements for purchasing property because it's a volume based model, like CarMax. Contrary to that, I know of another that squeezes every last drop out of that lemon. I don't have a cheeky parallel for that one. The first investor can afford to be a little more careless because there is a larger volume of money working to generate some arbitrary number and the margin of error is far greater. The second investor, is cautious, detail oriented and hands on because to generate that same arbitrary number as the first investor, each dollar needs to produce proportionately more money.
My dad tried to comfort me that the US is in possession of a significant amount of intellectual property, but my concern is that if the intellectual property isn't squeezing enough juice out of the lemon or intellectual property isn't attracting enough of the market share of funds out there, I worry about the repercussions. I think about the modernization and the changes in lifestyle over the last 10-15 years. The market is cyclical. Although recessions are painful, there is nowhere to go, but up. We produced unbelievable technology and super powerhouses as a result: apple, Lululemon, Netflix, Whole Foods, Google, Amazon, Tesla, Facebook and more. I understand that some of those were around pre-recession, but the exponential growth that these companies have seen post recession is astronomical.
Bottom line is that I'm skeptical, but I'm comforted by the knowledge that markets are cyclical.
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