Population is Destiny

Suppose a person can understand the source of the title, and it will be known easily as part of the inspiration and value of this writing. Most people always think that authors of economic history tend to use big words to describe new phenomena to distinguish past economic activity. Still, they ignore small perturbations in reality, when 3000 years ago Polaris was α Draconis, but now it is β Ursae Minoris. The lack of significant progress in microeconomics is not due to the backwardness of the theory itself or the lack of tools but the internal and external pressures from political and social groups.

Returning to the discussion of population, all real macroeconomics and economic history discourse, demographics and censuses have always been the most important thing. They have reminded people to keep sight of the quantity and quality of the population. Otherwise, the discussion will lose its firm cornerstone without these dates. Inflation will predicate when a considerable percentage of the young population enters society. Deflation begins when the number of retirees exceeds the number of people in the labour force. The quantity and quality of the population reflect the fluctuating cycles of the economy, and any neglect of the role of people is nothing more than speculation.

Some people may not understand such a problem, so that we can imagine a situation before. Just think about a young man's everyday life that he may consider buying a cemetery. However, most young prefer purchasing a new house and car. As long as the latter idea occupies most of society, the market will selectively increase production. At the same time, attracting enough money for effective investment will again become a big gear to pull up. Assuming that a politician in any democracy has to deal with social conflicts, he will find that these older people have more votes and influence than the younger people; how many of them can firmly side with the younger people in their governing philosophy? In authoritarian countries with a central intergenerational power transfer system, the status and power of the elderly will be more. Of course, the person who can understand the point of view of many young people nowadays thinks they can fight against this worse world through a kind of resistance, or non-resistance movement, similar to lying flat.

Do you know the standard of living for the average Italian in the fifty years before the Renaissance and the Black Death? If not, the history is that they lived with high prices and low wages because the population of Europe had overgrown over the previous two hundred years. Many unhappy and low-income people held the same "self-aware" and "self-selected" options as they do now. Fortunately, this period passed rapidly. The pandemic epidemic led to a massive loss of the working-age population, which undoubtedly contributed to income growth for the lower and middle classes throughout Western Europe. While the pandemic was not the only driver of the Renaissance, it reshaped Europe's spiritual norms by changing the population's size and age distribution throughout Western Europe. Cruelty or luck drove Europe down a different path than the rest of the world. If Japan had the same age distribution in the lost three decades, would it expand its economics worldwide? That is why I often say, "great changes often come from small advances."