The Economist: “Eating Broccoli Might not be Fatal After All”
Link to article on Canadians for a Sustainable Society website: available here.
Staring the reality of population stabilization/decline in the face, The Economist has grudgingly acknowledged it might not be that bad. Not because of any social health reasons mind you, but because its prescribed growth-forever diet of ever higher consumption and mass immigration (effectively 3 meals a day of cheeseburgers, fries and Cokes) which they have promoted for the past 50 years, may no longer be on the menu.
The predictable resultant morbid obesity of big growth generated the intractable structural problems of low productivity increase, housing unaffordability and massive transfer of wealth from productive people to the unproductive finance cult. These problems have proven immune to the “power of markets” ability to solve them despite the hopium spun by Century Initiative supporter Mark Carney.
What does solve these issues though is a healthy diet of shifting the menu from growth junk food of more housing/infrastructure and endless cheap labour to investing in people, their training and the tools they use. P-R-O-D-U-C-T-I-V-T-Y is the basis of social, fiscal and health.
Housing becomes affordable, productivity and wages go up and the beltsize of ballooning deficits shrinks. All key improvements for social health but a disaster for the finance cult. So much for those juicy directorships, Mark.
The now corpulent nations which followed the Economist’s advice are beset by massive debt, narrow house-of-cards economic bases, declining living standards and social unrest. How bad has it gotten? Most of the elites and their media now recognize there are severe structural problems which the traditional cure-all of more growth may not solve.
The Dawn of Accountable Public Policy?
It may be unrealistic to talk about imminent salvation but a change of goals and metrics is now clearly in the cards after the shocker that The Economist has let up on its criticism of population stabilization. The Economist in this piece changes metrics and goals.
“Don’t panic about the global fertility crash – A world with fewer people would not be all bad” Sep 11th 2025 https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/09/11/dont-panic-about-the-global-fertility-crash
Not only is a bigger economy shoved somewhat to the side, they also mention social outcomes. Say what?!
But the critical part of managing change is the recognition of problems and the possibility of new options entering the national conversation. That is starting to happen and The Economist article is a good example of entrenched elites grudgingly bending to the wind. Maybe they finally peered over their stacks of quarterly reports and realized the train was no longer in the station but 40 years down the track.
“Countries that waste human capital may find ways to waste less of it, by feeding and educating young minds better, and removing barriers to women working. In sum, a declining population need not mean a poorer one. Japan has been shrinking for nearly two decades, yet living standards have risen markedly.”
“Shrinking, and thus ageing, populations will eventually require big economic and social adjustments.”
(Investing in your people – what a concept!)
“Adapting to an emptier planet will not be easy, but it will be doable”.
(And, to be clear, acceptance of population stabilization is the only path forward. Yes, this is happening.)
Backing Off Grow-or-Die
Why the 180? Denying the existence and the origin of our complex problems now is clearly strategically foolish. There are simply too many people along the parade route yelling that the Emperor has no clothes. As well, the country once held up as a posterchild of the evils of population “stagnation and collapse”, Japan, is doing very well in terms of social health and economic stability. Much better in fact than the high growth economies which danced to the growth lobby’s tune for so many decades.
It is becoming evident to most that population stabilization and, yes, even decline may actually be the equivalent of social, economic and environmental broccoli. In fact, population stabilization is a social and environmental superfood which will stop, if not reverse, the damage done by mindless growth.
What is this new superfood capable of delivering? Stabilization changes the pattern of investment from expansion to improvement. Instead of bigger infrastructure and keeping labour costs down via cheap labour imports and off-shoring, investment shifts to making young people valuable instead of mere economic canon fodder. Population stabilization can deliver the following:
Social impacts
Higher equality
Higher productivity
Lower deficits
Young people are valued
Lower housing costs
Ghg emissions reduced
Farmland conserved
Reduced the inflationary impacts of resource depletion
Repatriation of manufacturing and research – a social and economic necessity
Given the huge shift in investment patterns as infrastructure stops expanding and intensifying a huge amount of money can then be allocated from growth to progress driving innovation.
A change of metrics means a change goals, strategies and outcomes and looking through the lens of well-being and environmental balance will shift the course dramatically from the one currently charted by the finance cult.
Japan Emissions 1970 - 2023 (Statista)
Given a stabilizing and possibly declining population, the full benefits of Japan’s CO2 reduction policies are being realized.
Canadian Emissions 1970 - 2023 (Statista)
Population growth in Canada (+ 12 million since 2000) and Western nations, primarily driven by mass immigration, has negated CO2 emissions reduction efforts. Given balanced immigration policy yielding a stable population about now, Canada’s 700 mega tons of emissions should by now have fallen below the 450mt level even including the oil sands. Which party or government now really believes they can legislate meaningful reductions in the emissions in the face of 40 years of data on a working model to the contrary? Can anyone make the case that any social or environmental progress is possible given our current Century Initiative lobby group driven immigration policy of tripling Canada’s population?
But population stabilization is not a guarantee of success. Any nation assuming growth will continue and fails to restructure will find themselves trying to push a rope. All results will be negative, perhaps with the exception of the predictable accumulation of wealth by an increasingly small elite.
Metrics – Describing Two Different Worlds
“The massive transfer of wealth to unproductive elites, exemplified by the $50 trillion steal decried in Bernie Sanders “Fighting Oligarchy” campaign does indeed constitute “looting, pillaging and plundering”.
By the GDP barometer, the Canadian economy is even more successful than that of the US. Given the decline in equality and housing affordability, perhaps Canada should be the posterchild of success for The Economist economics.
The Sheer Insanity of Fighting Ageing
Ageing populations, which is to say populations in decline or approaching stability, were always inevitable and are becoming a fact of life. Despite the power of the mass immigration lobby, which gave a final 40-year spurt to growth in western countries, the end of growth is nigh for all.
Attention must now be paid to how to transition from growth oriented economies to ones which are both sustainable and progressive. The answer is as it has always been “invest in your people”. Stop building bigger and start building better. Get ready for the other massive transitions which are starting to play out – climate change, depletion, adoption of renewable energy.
Want to learn more?
Read the full article: available here.
Learning the Hard Way But, Hopefully, Learning
Yes, we are doing this 50 years late and yes, our current elites can’t offer any useful leadership because they made their money and gained power by implementing globalism, increasing consumption, resource plundering and printing money. These will not solve our problems and were largely the cause of them. New challenges demand new leaders prying the cold fingers of the intellectually dead and morally bankrupt finance cult growthists off the levers of national policy.
The Economist has finally opened the door to the conclusions that every economic model for the past 60 years has predicted, which is that population growth, whether native or immigration-based, lowers per capita income potential, inflates deficits and drives housing costs higher.
The trope of the primacy of endless population growth is standing naked on its parade float shivering in the cold breeze. Yes, the finance cult will have to find another means of generating inflation and debt besides mass immigration but shed no tears for this parasitic overhead which have so severely damaged western democracies.
Is late better than never? Humanity is in for some very large impacts but with a biophysical, rather than a money market outlook, we will be much better able to understand what is happening to us. We can’t undo the damage we’ve done or erase totally the corruption which drove our recklessness. However, we can make some of our levers work and get back to learning about the planet we live on and the societies we say we are trying to build.
Population stabilization; fatal to the growth lobby but possible salvation for the rest of us.
Broccoli is here to stay. Learn to love it.
