economic growth

[sonya123]

I agree, but who am I to decide such things.
Good people can fall on hard times.

I have an answer for you on that too: DARWIN

 

[SLADE]

I have an answer for you on that too: DARWIN

How silly.

 

[Magpie]

Just on my little dead end road in the country (six homes), three families in their 20's and thirties all have 4-7 kids!! The couple that just moved from the end of the road had 11 kids, oldest in high school! Come to Texas, you'll be SURPRISED!! We went to some garage sales last weekend, one young woman had her five little kids with her! These are all white people!

That's incredibly surprising. I only know of one American family with 5 children (all grown up) and they are of Irish/Italian descent so maybe religion has something to do with that. Two is the most otherwise. I note numbers falling here and in the UK, due to costs- its too expensive to have the third. Although it appears sperm counts are on the decline also, and in general people seem to be having children later.
As for Sonya's original post. Greed- I attribute most problems to the greed of a certain few; the rest of us just get caught up in the current.

 

[teeceetx]

It's a good question.

Growth normally defines a healthy business. The goal of most business owners is the expand and grow the business.

Population growth and inflation pretty much dictates that a business must grow in order to survive, otherwise a competitor will move in and start chipping away at your base.

But there are always periods of no growth or loss of business, along with positive growth. It's a cycle.

 

[sonya123]

You can't convince me! I don't trust the published numbers!

when my kids were little, a friend who had a kid same age as my daughter and me would go to Toys R us to let the kids play with the toys. They let you do this back then ( early 90s). It was a huge store near us in Orlando. There were actually 2 of them, one further away. They also had a huge baby store. Now all those stores are gone, this before covid. I know some of it is because online sales, but a lot of it is because there was just not enough demand because there aren't as many kids

I looked something up recently just to see. My old high school in Germany now has about 1\3 of the kids that were there when I was going there . And a lot are immigrants . I looked because the grocery store is near there and we saw a lot of foreign kids walk by getting out of school. The people IN the grocery store that had kids with them were all foreigners ( language and not German looking, you can definitely tell, it's not like in the US)

It makes sense too, who can afford to have 4 kids nowadays? Not too many unless they are on welfare. Very few can afford to live on one income and daycare is outrageous now. I personally know only 4 people my age or younger with more than 2 kids. Seriously (their own kids, not remarried and counting steps) . I have met a lot of people over the years

 

[elkhound]

the high school i went to is about a third of what it was. my graduating class at that time was largest to graduate at that time...i think it went up 4 years later.

 

[Pearl]

My old HS (in NJ) has built THREE additions!! I see nothing but over population!!

 

[Amish Heart]

Alot more people are homeschooling. Especially after seeing what their kids were actually learning on line during covid.

 

[Morgan101]

If your economy/business is not growing it is stagnating and even going backwards. Your expenses will go up every year. If you don't have growth to account for that you are going backwards. There will be attrition in your customer base. If you don't have new customers to replace the ones you lose you are going backwards.

Businesses are generally dynamic. They change all the time. You have to be able to change with the times, and only growth will allow you to do that. How would you fund or finance new equipment? How would you be able to take advantage of new technology? If you sat on your laurels and didn't upgrade and improve, your competitors would leave you in the dust. Again, you would be going backwards.

I have seen it happen to many people over the course of my career. They sat on their laurels, and a once successful business was gone. Growth is a critical key to success.

 

[sonya123]

My old HS (in NJ) has built THREE additions!! I see nothing but over population!!

I think I might have an explanation for that. LOTS of people are moving to Texas from other States, plus lots of immigrants, even if they are now US citizens, they might have started out as illegals from Mexico. So while your schools are still growing, and maybe the ones in Florida too, there are most likely States up north that are not filling up their schools unless they let the illegals in
You have to think of this also. Many now citizens were immigrants. I am one. If you stopped all immigration and illegals now, totally and removed all the illegals already here, the population would most definitely shrink. Think about it , they didn't call it "baby boomers" for nothing. That is when they had the most kids. It's been going down since then, except maybe the millennials who are the kids of the baby boomers ( so more people ) but still less than it used to be

I can't believe we are actually arguing this.

 

[sonya123]

If your economy/business is not growing it is stagnating and even going backwards. Your expenses will go up every year. If you don't have growth to account for that you are going backwards. There will be attrition in your customer base. If you don't have new customers to replace the ones you lose you are going backwards.

that doesn't make sense to me. If you have a bakery for example and say 200 regular customers. You sell 200 loaves of bread a week ( I am just making up these numbers to make my point) why do you need to try and "grow" your business? If you can make a profit of these 200 people and 200 loaves, why do you need 300 people and 300 loaves next year ??
If the cost of ingredients goes up, you just raise your prices.
The amount of customers is not determined by how much you grow, but by how many people in your area will buy your bread. If people are moving to your area, and wanting to buy your bread, yes, your customer numbers increase, and you could bake more bread and sell more ( growth) . But, you could also just raise your price ( supply and demand). Or you could just stay the same and some people would be annoyed to not have gotten a loaf of bread
Othe other hand, if your area is having less people ( because they died, or moved next door to Pearl in Texas) , you will sell less bread, and no amount of trying to grow your business will make that happen because there is just less people to buy bread.....