The flip side is not having enough young people to help support the old people.

Yes. Looking at things mostly from an economic viewpoint. But that's why we are digging deeper into the hole we are in. Short term thinking. Little thought to long term sustainability and quality of life.

The year I was born (1950) world population was about 2.5 billion. US population was a little over 151 million.

Today... world: almost 8 billion, US: 332 million.

Such growth is NOT sustainable. And, yes, I understand the trends are expected to slow, but even these current levels may not be long term sustainable. They will almost certainly contribute to a degradation in quality of life for most people. Malthus was not wrong. Ehrlich was not wrong. They just didn't appreciate how amazingly good humanity would be at coming up with short term fixes and responding to crises. But we're not good at long term planning. Regardless of what economists seem to think, the earth's resources are finite.

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