Americans are slowly disappearing.

For fun, I like to look up different economic data and demographics for the United States. One number I was curious about is America's birth rate. A quick Google search gave the the answer of 1.88 babies per woman (according to the world bank). This figure suggests that the American population will eventually stagnate then start to decline (absent immigration).

I've heard any birth rate below 2.1 is unsustainable for a population. Each woman has to produce at least 2 children to replace herself and the man. The extra .1 is probably for unexpected deaths. Granted, at the birth rate of 1.88, it will take a long time to see the effects of the American population stagnating. In order to prevent this, I could see the government continue to loosen the restrictions for immigration.

A stagnation of the population doesn't really seem like such a big problem. After all, there are more than 300 million Americans. However, a big economic consequence that will result from a slowing, stagnating, or shrinking population will be the funding for social security and medicare. Recently, I've heard that the social security trust fund is facing more pressure. Previous estimates showed the trust fund exhausting by the year 2033, however the estimates were revised to put the date closer to 2020.

Young people work, and the government steals part of their life and labor to give it to pay for social security and medicare. With a slowing, stagnating, or shrinking population, less babies are being born and grow up to pay for the old. This will put pressure on government to print more money in order to pay for entitlements. An increase in the money supply indirectly leads to increased prices resulting to a higher cost of living. And a higher cost of living makes life much more difficult to live which will put even more pressure to prevent people from procreating.

What we see today is similar to a man who spends more than he makes year after year and needs to borrow money each year. Interest becomes a killer the longer the problem goes on. Of course, the first couple of years don't look bad. It looks like the very beginning of an exponential curve.