Something To Poinder

Ran across an interesting bit of information. That is the US Census Bureau
projections on US population trends. It shows that if you assume that
immigration level is at the replacement level, the population of the US is
predicted to start declining around 2020. Now think about what the
ramifications of that is on a whole series of issues/problems we discuss.
How does that impact things like a solution to our transportation problems
that we have today, to solutions to the fiscal crisis facing social
security, to people worried about the increasing population in cities, to
whether we will have enough food to feed the population of the United
States.



What is the impact of that national trend to the problems we talk about here
in Hawaii, if the population in Hawaii actually starts to decrease rather
than increase.

I think the population of Hawaii actually did drop for a while in the
nineties. It
certainly has at other times in the past.

The effect of decrease of population is going to vary according to how
great
and sudden the population changes, naturally. In the overall long run
big picture
at the end of the day, the bottom line.... A slight drop in population
would have
a slight effect on things. Lots of things will have changed before the
population
changes enough to notice.

If there was a sudden population drop of say, 100,000 on Oahu, there
would
be a lot of businesses close, putting people out of work. If those
people
are the ones who left, things would balance out.

I think things would be fine if an island had a population of say, a
few
hundred.

"Razzbar" <glakk@potatoradio.f2s.com> wrote in message
news:1117213205-sch@news.lava.net...
>
> I think the population of Hawaii actually did drop for a while in the
> nineties. It
> certainly has at other times in the past.
>
> The effect of decrease of population is going to vary according to how
> great
> and sudden the population changes, naturally. In the overall long run
> big picture
> at the end of the day, the bottom line.... A slight drop in population
> would have
> a slight effect on things. Lots of things will have changed before the
> population
> changes enough to notice.
>
> If there was a sudden population drop of say, 100,000 on Oahu, there
> would
> be a lot of businesses close, putting people out of work. If those
> people
> are the ones who left, things would balance out.
>
> I think things would be fine if an island had a population of say, a
> few
> hundred.
>

I would think it is not the short term that we should be concerned
about,
but what the long term effects would be, if that trend continued.