Planned Parenthood Victorious?

Planned Parenthood sought to reduce population and promoted and provided abortion to do that. Through just abortion, from 1 to 1.3 million children each year since 1973 have died.

This has contributed to a serious future economic situation. The situation is described by Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. The following come from his remarks at the 35th Annual Conference on Bank Structure and Competition of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago on May 6, 1999.  He commented on our current well-being before adding the bad news.

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"Of most concern is how long this remarkable period of prosperity can be extended. As I have said on previous occasions, there are imbalances in our expansion that, unless redressed, will bring this long run of strong growth and low inflation to a close.   …

The worker depletion continues a critical upside risk to the inflation outlook because it presumably cannot continue without eventually putting increasing pressure on labor markets and on costs.

The number of people willing to work can be usefully defined as the unemployed component of the labor force plus those not actively seeking work, and thus not counted in the labor force, but who nonetheless say they would like a job if they could get one. This pool of potential workers aged 16 to 64 currently numbers about 10,000,000, or just 5-3/4% of the corresponding population. This is the lowest such percentage on record -which begins in 1970-and is 2-1/2 points below its average over that period.

The rapid rise in aggregate demand has generated growth of employment in excess of the growth in population, causing the number of potential workers to fall, since the mid-1990s , at a rate of a bit under 1,000,000 annually.

We cannot judge with precision how far this level can decline without sparking upward pressures on wages and prices. Accelerating productivity may have appeared to break the link between labor market conditions and wage gains in recent years, but it cannot have changed the law of supply and demand."

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The Wall Street Journal and New York Times 5/7/99 editions carried excerpts from the Greenspan speech. The above sections were excluded. The full speech, "The American economy in a world context," can be obtained from the internet: www.bog.frb.fed.us/boarddocs/speeches/1999/19990506.htm

Peter Drucker echoes and expands Greenspan's cautionary note.

The Greenspan caution is echoed in more specific terms by Peter F. Drucker in his book "Management Challenges for the 21st century."  His contention is that the birthrate is declining worldwide much faster than anyone would have predicted and that it will be one of the main challenges the developed world will have to face.  For instance, the birthrate (less than 2) in the US is only as high as it is because of large numbers of recent immigrants, many of whom retain the birthrates in their native countries (such as Mexico).  In the U.S. the number of young people will increase up to the year 2015, after which it is likely to go down very rapidly.  All of our assumptions in business and our expectations of economic growth are based on an expanding population.   He says, "There is nothing - except unprecedentedly massive immigration - that can prevent the sharp drop in the labor force of traditional age (i.e., below sixty or sixty-five) in the developed world  -  in the United States after 2025 or so, in the rest of the developed world much earlier."

So we think, "Well, that's the developed world.  The third world countries are still a time bomb in terms of population."  Drucker says that's not true.   He says the population growth in most of the Third World is slowing so fast that it's a "near certainty" that the growth will level off before crisis level is reached.  (He counts India as the possible exception.)  And presumably those countries may then have to cope with the same results of a population drop as the rest of the world.

Drucker lists fascinating consequences of the coming drop in population.  There will be tremendous political turbulence and many things will change in our daily lives, such as the definition of "retirement," how we work, who our neighbors are, and a greatly increased emphasis on productivity. 

Perhaps the "Zero Population" leaders are fighting a war that's already won.  

(Comments based on information in "Management Challenges for the 21st Century" by Peter F. Drucker.  Listed online as Hardcover - 207 pages, 1 Ed edition (May 1999),  Harperbusiness; ISBN: 0887309984.)