Twenty years from now, what might the world’s most precious, depleting, natural resource be?  Oil?  Steel?  Lumber?  How about working-age adults who are still contributing to a nation’s entitlement programs rather than receiving benefits from them? 

Want to know how short the future supply of such people is?  Well, across the globe, nations like Japan, Australia, and Singapore are actually begging their child rearing-age population to procreate.  For instance, according to the Tokyo correspondent for the BBC:

AAP reports a similar condition in Australia:

Finally, a recent Times of London article forecasts a similarly dire situation brewing in Europe:

Certainly, America is not immune to this global population crisis, as we are projected to experience a doubling of our own senior demographic in the next 30 years from the current 40 million to likely 80 million as our Baby Boomers retire.  Which begs the question:  What has the world done wrong to get into this predicament, and what can we do to solve this looming international catastrophe? 

To begin with, in 1968, Paul Ehrlich, Charles Remington, and Richard Bowers created a non-profit organization called “Zero Population Growth.”  Its primary goal at the time was to draw attention to the global problems associated with overpopulation, and to get American couples to start thinking about having families with two children or less.  Without question, this concept spread throughout the industrialized world.  However, the problem is that at roughly the same time as this restrictive procreation policy was being advocated, entitlement programs were being expanded, and the mathematics involved in most required a continually increasing number of workers to be paying into the system to support the ever-growing number of retirees that would draw from it.  As a result, the concepts of ZPG were running quite contrary to the expanding socialist structure of many governments.

Further complicating matters were the changing mores of a species that once felt that procreation was a requirement.  Paradoxically, this new ethos not only made it socially acceptable to not have children inasmuch as couples were helping the population “problem” by remaining childless, but also made such a condition practically a badge of honor.  As a result, people from all walks of life in an increasing number of areas around the world just intentionally stopped having babies.

Where does this leave us?  Well, fortunately, America appears to be better positioned for addressing this imminent disaster than most of our trading partners.  As discussed in the previously referenced London Times article:

Given this, the solution moving forward is clearly going to be job creation.  The nations that can employ people with the highest wages and the most desirable standards of living are going to attract skilled labor from all over the world, while enticing their own populations to not emigrate elsewhere.  As a result, contrary to the current arguments about American outsourcing, it is quite conceivable that the exact opposite needs to occur in our nation over the next several decades, and is already being fostered by a lower dollar and higher energy costs.

In fact, a recent Wall Street Journal editorial addressed this concept called “insourcing:”

To be sure, the notion of insourcing is so foreign to most Americans that Microsoft Word doesn’t identify it, and the definition at Dictionary.com is not applicable.  Regardless, Japanese and German car companies like Honda, Toyota, Nissan, and BMW for many years have been insourcing employees and manufacturing facilities in America to combat fluctuating exchange rates while significantly reducing transportation costs.  Even the just announced purchase of IBM’s PC unit by China’s Lenovo represents insourcing inasmuch as Lenovo will be retaining all of IBM’s employees, and moving its headquarters to New York.

The bottom line is that with the current value of the U.S. dollar, as well as the high cost of energy, we are likely going to see more foreign companies expanding in America to overcome such rising expenditures.  Moreover, these same variables will likely make it less attractive for American companies to move operations overseas, thereby reducing the trend of outsourcing that has been such a political hot potato.  In reality, it is quite likely that this ancillary benefit of the dollar devaluation that we have seen in the past three years is by no means accidental, and is probably a pivotal component of America’s global economic strategy to create jobs here at home.

In addition to continually expanding the number of high-paying jobs that are available in our nation, America is going to also have to quickly come to grips with its illegal alien problem, and realize that immigration is a strong component of our ability to grow our workforce.  As a result, the U.S. must not make the same errors that Europe appears to be heading towards with regard to its Muslim population.  As working age, productive members of the society will continue to command a high premium around the world, American immigration policy should be taking advantage of the apparent biases that are surfacing elsewhere to once again make our nation the preferred vocational destination of people from all parts of the globe.

Noel Sheppard is a business owner, economist, and writer residing in Northern California.

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