RE: Ohio Mileage fee -(VMT) Tax news article.
I forgot to mention one other item on previous post (where I was not logged in evidently – course comments should identify me by now).
But there is probably a much more important question that was not raised in the VMT article and that is:
Should we be replacing road infrastructure where they have been & past population densities or shouldn’t we be planning to build them where they are likely to be needed in the future around the faster growing cities/states? (This should also be important planning question for refineries/cokers and all new plants/expansions as well). We retiring baby boomers are unlikely to remain in high tax states, large cities/surburbs with high crime rates or weather threats and seek higher quality of life in retirement.
The baby boomers (circ 1946-1960) have impacted every phase of they have moved thru and as they move (currently word would be shoved) into retirement and out of the peak consumer spending group (~40-50) ….. the echo boomers that replace them are a great deal fewer – in fact they have lot to do just meet population expectations on family size.
Additionally the whole world is just waking up to fact that most of larger nations populations in the world are not replacing themselves. The TFR (Total Fertility Rate = number children woman bear in lifetime) has fallen below 2.1 level it must be to replace existing people/workers.
<See: Demographics of Depopulation and Real America; Birth Dearth – Ben Wattenberg and/or Empty Cradle; Falling Birthrates threaten World Prosperity – Philip Longman (see: http://www.amazon.com/Fewer-Demography-Depopulation-Shape-Future/dp/1566636736 )
Demographics & Economy/ Demographic trends – Is the future already in place? ( see: http://partners4prosperity.com/demographics-economics ) >
Here are some comments around Wattenberg’s Demographics of Depopulation & Birth Dearth from above links:
The biggest news is that in sheer numbers the human race is now likely to peak at 8.5 billion people instead of the United Nations projection of 11.5 billion. Even the U.N. demographers now agree that the population explosion will never reach the numbers they had once projected.
The biggest reason for this dramatic decline was captured in an earlier book by Mr. Wattenberg, “The Birth Dearth.” Women are simply having fewer children and the result is that in some countries population is already starting to go down.
And in order to sustain the current population, the average woman would have to have 2.33 children. Falling below that average will result in a population decline. Today some 40 countries are already below the replacement rate and Mr. Wattenberg expects virtually every country to be below the replacement rate by the end of our lifetime.
The unique role of the United States as the one industrial country that will keep growing. American population growth is a combination of the highest birthrate of any industrial country (2.01 children per female) and our willingness to accept immigration. Mr. Wattenberg projects that the United States will continue to grow in economic and other forms of power, while Europe and Japan decline dramatically. Indeed, in the Wattenberg vision of the future, there are only three large nations by 2050: China, India and the United States.
Fascinatingly, after all the focus on Chinese compulsory population control, it is not China that has had the most rapid change in birthrates among Asian countries. That honor goes to South Korea, where women now average only 1.17 children (even lower than Japan). China has dropped to 1.825 and is still declining.
Europe is going to lose population dramatically by mid-century and therefore become significantly older. This will almost certainly entail a significant shift in power and in economic competitiveness away from an aging and shrinking European Union.
Mexico is on the verge of dropping below the replacement rate; over the next generation this will almost certainly slow the rate of migration to the United States. Russia is facing a demographic crisis, with the shortest lifespan for males of any industrial country and a catastrophic decline in women willing to bear children.
Mr. Wattenberg highlights the intellectual dishonesty of the Paul Ehrlich, left-wing environmentalists and their factual mistakes over the last generation. Mr. Ehrlich had predicted famines beginning in the 1970s. They simply haven’t happened. The global warming projections all assumed a population of 11.5 billion. If the human race peaks at only 8.5 billion people – 3 billion fewer than predicted – and then starts a long-term decline, how that changes all those gloom-and-doom predictions.