Without consumers there is not much of an economy. Work produces goods and services. Consumers buy goods and services. When more and more of the people’s jobs are being mechanized, more and more people will have trouble finding employment. That problem is aggravated through accelerated immigration from under-developed nations (instant consumers, rather than having to wait 20 to 25 years of waiting for the home-grown variety to come on-line). Without a lot of jobs and people filling them, there won’t be many consumers who can buy goods and services.
A collection of concerns, with links to articles in which they were expressed:
- Automation and mechanization have liberated many people from having to do onerous work. Much work and many more work processes will be done by machines in the years to come. The concern must be not so much that people doing work will be liberated from having to work, when machines do their work, but that those people will no longer have jobs. The people who are still working, will be working alongside or with machines and thereby increasingly ensure that there will be less need for humans who take sick-leave, go on strike or partake of doing shoddy work–especially on Blue Mondays. The work formerly done by people who are now unemployed is still being done, perhaps faster, cheaper and better, but the people now unemployed used to be heavy-duty consumers, and now they no longer have enough money to spend to consume as much as they did. The machines doing the work formerly done by people are not consumers of consumer goods.
More at: “Falling birth rates cause painful demographic changes” December 21, 2017
- Will the drive to import immigrants in unprecedented numbers from underdeveloped nations put an end to the downward trend in birth rates? That depends on what the immigrants have to say about it. Furthermore, they bolster the declining numbers of young consumers in the developed nations (the old and the elderly do not buy many consumer products anymore) which is surely one of the main reasons why the demand for immigrants is so high. They have far more money to spend than they did in their countries of origin, and they now have access to consumer goods they previously only dreamed of. One way or another, they will consume, they crave it, and they are eager to consume.
More at “Population control holocaust? Family courts participate” Posted on December 24, 2017 by Walter Schneider
- Energy is the life-blood of nations. What better way to raise tax revenues for governments than to drive up the cost of energy for end-consumers? Although there is some competition between sources of fuel that keeps energy costs somewhat in check, royalties and various other taxes comprise the vast majority of the price of energy to end consumers, at absolutely no penalties in terms of capital investment for governments. Add to that taxes on taxes, such as cap and trade, carbon taxes and value-added taxes. Energy from renewable sources is as a rule two to three times more expensive than from conventional sources, period! It cannot be made competitive. It cannot be made attractive to investors without paying enormous subsidies, which subsidies drive up the cost of energy to end consumers.
More at “Global-warming alarmism – is it dead yet?”
Posted on September 16, 2013 by Walter Schneider
- “In order to pay the wages and make a profit the media has learnt that their clients – readers, viewers, listeners, must be good consumers or else the advertisers will go elsewhere. The best consumers are overwhelmingly women – Maureen Gaffney of the National Economic and Social Forum estimates that at least 90% of financial decisions and purchases are now made by women – so to survive and be successful editors everywhere must fill the spaces between the ads with content (what in the old days used to be called “News”) labelled WAWMAA – stories that reinforce what women like to hear – ones that say “Women Are Wonderful, Men Are Awful.” It’s not that editors like women and dislike men, it’s just good for business. The mantra of big business is growth so their strategy has to be always to maximise profit through sales. For every cent they pay to a woman they know they will get it back immediately in sales. For them to hire women rather than men, wherever it is feasible, suits their purpose. It’s not that managers and company directors like women and dislike men, it’s just good for business. Since the seventies governments have acted exactly like big business. They now claim taxes from virtually every purchase made so, if they want to expand their empire, they have a vested interest in ensuring consumerism is maximised. That means it makes sense for government, like the media and big business, to have policies which use WAWMAA to justify the transfer of control of the Family income from the man to the woman. Hence, the built-in bias in the governments family Courts – both in Custody and Domestic Violence cases – and Child Support laws and decisions. It’s not that governments like women and dislike men, it’s just good for business.”
More at “Book about family breakdown in the making”
Posted on July 10, 2008 by Roger Eldridge, Ireland
- A declining population means declining numbers of consumers, declining numbers of consumers mean shrinking profits. Correcting that by encouraging people to have more children entails a 20 to 25 waiting period before children become full-fledged consumers. Producers can eliminate that waiting time, through importing ready-made consumers from underdeveloped nations. They’ll have vastly more money in their new host countries than they would have had in their home countries, and they are ready and eager to consume — instant, massive profits, people who need everything, with money to spend in a country where they can buy everything they can possibly dream of having, results in the best consumers of all one could ask for, instantly available, no waiting for 25 years involved. No country’s and no region’s culture will have the time to permit painless assimilation of a massive influx of – at a rate of as much as and more than six percent, annually, of its resident population – migrants from underdeveloped nations. The migrants – from nations in turmoil because of internal, ideological clashes – will not only continue the strife they wish to escape from but add to it in the countries that host them. That is an unavoidable, defensive reaction aimed at preserving their own cultural and national identities. It manifests itself in the migrant’s hostility against the resident population, language, and cultural traditions of the host country that is forced to accommodate them, whether it can or not.
More at »UN report on “Replacement Migration: Is it a Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations?”«
FaceBook, May 27, 2017, by Walter Schneider
- Falling birth rates cause painful demographic changes
- Population control holocaust? Family courts participate
- Alberta government’s costly electricity fiasco provides a national example of how not to deregulate electricity
- The Coolhunt and The Merchants of Cool
- Balancing work, family life and shrinking populations
- Renewable energy neither practical nor viable
- Does the world suffer from overpopulation?