The global population is set to peak around the year 2064 at a whopping 9.7 billion people, but that number isn’t going to last forever. Studies show that by the time the 21^st century is almost over, the numbers will be as low as 8.8 billion. It might sound like a huge number, but the possible negative impact on the planet is quite worrisome.

In an interview with BBC News, Professor Christopher Murray said, “That’s a pretty big thing; most of the world is transitioning into natural population decline. I think it’s incredibly hard to think this through and recognize how big a thing this is.”

“It’s extraordinary, we’ll have to reorganize societies,” he added.

Although most people have talked about how the growing population is doing the planet more harm than good, research has shown that the lower numbers will eventually cause ‘profound social changes’ in a number of countries all around the world. In fact, if governments don’t issue some new policies when it comes to reproductive health, their economies are going to suffer in the long run.

Researchers from the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics conducted a new study which was published in the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet. It showed that fertility rates are dropping, and expected to continue to fall at quicker rates as the years pass.

Unlike the 1950s, where women were recorded giving birth to an average of at least 4.7 children, by 2017, the birth rate has decreased by almost half at 2.4. But the new research suggests that by 2100, that number will collapse even further to a staggering 1.7.

Professor Murray exclaimed about these projections, “That is jaw-dropping.”

These studies have also shown that there are 23 countries, including Spain, Portugal, Japan and Thailand, that may possibly find their populations decrease by more than half by century’s end.

Meanwhile in China, which is well-known to have the highest number in population all across the globe, is expected to grow to at least 1.4 billion people in the next four years. But research also shows that this number will reduce to 732 million by 2100. When this happens, India will take its place as ‘the most populous nation.’

And perhaps the decline in Japan’s numbers is one of the most alarming of all. While the country’s population peaked in 2017 at 128 million people, it’s expected to fall to a troubling 53 million by the end of the century as well. That’s over half of the current population today. Italy follows closely afterwards, thought to fall massively from 61 to 28 million.

Many might be wondering why these studies are so worrisome, especially because smaller populations tend to be better for the environment. But it’s the other issues that people don’t think about when it comes to a lowered population rate. According to Murray, “That would be true expect for the inverted age structure 9more old people than young people) and all the uniformly negative consequences of an inverted age structure.”

“It will create enormous social change. It makes me worried because I have an eight-year-old daughter and I wonder what the world will be like,” he also said.

Smaller populations mean that governments will have higher healthcare costs but less people to care for the elderly. It will also create more pressure for the elderly to work longer and retire later on when they should already be enjoying their lives. Poorer countries whose governments are strapped for cash will also have a ‘shrinking tax revenue base,’ making it harder to fund the country’s needs like infrastructure, education and better retirement packages for their citizens.

Japan is the perfect example of a nation that has ‘struggled to remain competitive’ since their population lacks people in the workforce and has more senior citizens that need caring for. Because of this, their government has had no choice but to raise the retirement age from 60 to a worrisome 65 to 71.

Many wonder why there has been such a large decline in fertility and population growth, but studies show that one main reason is because women not only know so much more when it comes to reproductive health, but because they also have easy access to contraceptives.

Another Professor, Stein Emil Vollset, explained “Responding to population decline is likely to become an overriding policy concern in many nations, but must not compromise efforts to enhance women’s reproductive  health or progress on women’s rights.”

Because of this, researchers suggest that countries dealing with population declines should come up with new policies to not only help improve reproductive health, but to also find ways to boost fertility rates. Professor Murray iterated, “We need a soft landing.”

Some countries have chosen to deal with their dropping population by allowing people to legally immigrate to their shores. But Professor Murray shared, “We will go from the period where it’s a choice to open borders, or not, to frank competition for migrants, as there won’t be enough.”

But if numbers continue to drop, then finding people to migrate might not even be an option. Professor Ibrahim of the Abubakar of University College London (UCL) went on to say, “If these predictions are even half accurate, migration will become a necessity for all nations and not an option. To be successful we need a fundamental rethink of global politics.”

“The distribution of working-age populations will be crucial to whether humanity prospers or withers,” he also shared.

People shouldn’t conclude that a lower population also means that those that are on the planet will have ‘more material prosperity.’ Professor Murray warns, “I find people laugh it off; they can’t imagine it could be true, they think women will just decide to have more kids.”

He added, “If you can’t [find a solution] then eventually the species disappears, but that’s a few centuries away.”

What are your thoughts? Please comment below and share this news!

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Feeds last April have had an overwhelming amount of food supply chain disruptions because of companies shutting down due to the coronavirus pandemic. About a third of meatpacking facilities in the US in change of hogs made a shift offline, and other plants processing cows and chickens have also stopped operating – forcing farmers to end up culling herds and flocks.

For every plant’s closure, farmers have a difficult time selling animals at the market, which leaves them with an overcapacity leading to similar issues that the oil industry is also facing at present. Unlike oil, where after it is pumped can be stored costing the producers more expense; food producers choose a simpler method: killing off their livestock.

The imbalance this has created has been previously explained: Live cattle prices crash, while finished meat prices soar. This doesn’t just affect the farmers, but the consumers as well because it will eventually lead to a shortage of meat available in the grocery stores.

In a warning that could keep the food prices high for a long time, Tyson Foods posted in a full-age ad in the New York Times last month that the “food supply chain is breaking.”

John Tyson, chairman of Tyson Foods and patriarch of the company’s founding family wrote on their website, as well as several newspapers:

“As pork, beef and chicken plants are being forced to close, even for short periods of time, millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the supply chain.”

“The food supply chain is breaking.”

This confirms the fears of consumers of meat as the company was forced to close their plants. The federal, state and local government all need to work together to allow plants to operate safely, “without fear, panic or worry” among their employees.

He also added that shortages of meat will be felt in grocery stores because of at least a dozen meatpacking plants’ closure.

The president of Global AgriTrends, a Denver-based consulting firm, Brett Stuart comments on this situation as “absolutely unprecedented.”

 “It’s a lose-lose situation where we have producers at the risk of losing everything and consumers at the risk of paying higher prices,” he said.

Also last month, one of the top pork producers in the world Smithfield Foods also closed an operation in Illinois. This was after Hormel Foods closed two Jennie-O turkey plants located in Minnesota. Other poultry plants in Maryland, Virginia and Delaware have all reduced hours because of a shortage in their employees due to Covid-19 sicknesses.

Smithfield released a statement saying:

“During this pandemic, our entire industry is faced with an impossible choice: continue to operate to sustain our nation’s food supply or shutter in an attempt to entirely insulate our employees from risk. It’s an awful choice; it’s not one we wish on anyone.”

Here are the latest closures of meatpacking plants across the country, according to Bloomberg:

What are your thoughts? Please comment below and share this news!

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Many of us think we couldn’t live without money but Irishman Mark Boyle has a different belief about the best things in life. Here’s how he finds life without spending, with no income and zero bank balance.

“If someone told me seven years ago, in my final year of a business and economics degree, that I’d now be living without money, I’d have probably choked on my microwaved ready meal.”

According to Boyle, the plan back then was to ‘get a good job’, make as much money as possible, and buy the stuff that would show society he was successful.

Like most individuals raised in a consumer-driven society, he never second guessed those goals. For a while he had a fantastic job managing a big organic food company and even had a yacht in the harbor. If it hadn’t have been for the chance purchase of a video called Gandhi, he’d still be pursuing the same life.

“I’d still be doing it today. Instead, for the last fifteen months, I haven’t spent or received a single penny. Zilch”.

The change in life path came one evening on the yacht while philosophizing with a friend over a glass of Merlot. “Whilst I had been significantly influenced by Mahatma’s quote “be the change you want to see in the world”, I had no idea what that change was up until then.”

The two friends began talking about all the major issues in the world – environmental destruction, resource wars, factory farms, sweatshop labor – and wondered which of the issues they could best devote their time to. Mark didn’t feel he could really make any difference, however “being two small drops in a highly polluted ocean”.

That evening, though, a revelation came through: “These issues weren’t as unrelated as I had previously thought – they had a common root cause. I believe the fact that we no longer see the direct repercussions our purchases have on the people, environment, and animals they affect is the factor that unites these problems.”

Boyle believes that the degrees of separation between the consumer and the consumed have increased so much that it now means most people are completely unaware of the levels of destruction and suffering embodied in the ‘stuff’ they buy.

It can be agreed that few people actually want to cause suffering to others; most just don’t have any idea that they directly are. The tool that has enabled this separation is money, especially in its globalized format.

“If we grew our own food, we wouldn’t waste a third of it today” is one of Mark’s examples as to why it’s important a reconnection with natural/source living is established. “If we made our own tables and chairs, we wouldn’t throw them out the moment we changed the interior décor. If we had to clean our own water, we probably wouldn’t shit in it”.

The above arguments all honestly assess the undervalue most objects now have. With convenience at our fingertips, most don’t consider where their trash product or unwanted items go.

Deciding to be the change, this then spurred Mark to fully dive into his new viewpoint and give up money, which he only planned on doing for a year. “I made a list of the basics I’d need to survive. I adore food, so it was at the top. There are four legs to the food-for-free table: foraging wild food, growing your own, bartering and using waste grub, of which there are far more”.

On his first day, he fed 150 people a three-course meal with waste and foraged food. For himself, however, he ate his own crops and waste only made up about 5% of his diet. “I cooked outside – rain or shine – on a rocket stove”.

The next concern was shelter. He found himself a caravan from Freecycle, parked it on an organic farm he volunteered with, and renovated it out to be off the electricity grid. I’d use wood I either coppiced or scavenged to heat my humble abode in a wood burner made from an old gas bottle, and I had a compost loo to make ‘humanure’ for my veggies”. Up front and to the point, Boyle clearly understood the necessity of using every available resource to be most sustainable.

“I bathed in a river, and for toothpaste I used washed up cuttlefish bone with wild fennel seeds, an oddity for a vegan. For loo I’d relieve the local newsagent of its papers (Once I wiped my arse with a story about myself); it wasn’t double quilted but it quickly became normal”. For transportation, Mark used his bike and trailer, using the 55 km commute to the city as an alternative solution for the gym. Beeswax candles served as his lighting.

Humorously inspiring to some, deluded and anti-capitalist to others, Mark had this to say about his radical lifestyle: “Many people label me as anti-capitalist. Whilst I do believe capitalism is fundamentally flawed, requiring infinite growth on a finite planet, I am not anti anything.” More than anything, Boyle claims to be pro-nature, pro-community, and pro-happiness. How often is that a city dweller’s life philosophy?

“And that’s the thing I don’t get – if all this consumerism and environmental destruction brought happiness, it would make some sense. But all the key indicators of unhappiness – depression, crime, mental illness, obesity, suicide and so on are on the increase.” More money, it seems, does not equate to more happiness. (See Documentary: Happy)

Another positive effect of Mark’s unique lifestyle is the joy he has created for himself. “Ironically, I have found this year to be the happiest of my life. I’ve more friends in my community than ever, I haven’t been ill since I began, and I’ve never been fitter. I’ve found that friendship, not money, is real security. That most western poverty is spiritual, and that independence is really interdependent.”

Mark’s example certainly stands as inspiration for those seeking freedom from the fast-paced modern age; most alternative media sources would agree that the more one reconnects to nature, the better their mental, physical, and spiritual health is. However, could everyone live like this? According to Mark, no.

“It would be a catastrophe, we are too addicted to both it and cheap energy, and have managed to build an entire global infrastructure around the abundance of both.”

The prospect of gradually transitioning to re-localized, small communities is a possibility, though. With greener energy sources and healthier communities being implemented at a growing rate, natural living is already a reality, but may be made much more mainstream in the future to come.

“For over 90 percent of our time on the planet, a period when we lived much more ecologically, we lived without money. Now we are the only species to use it, probably because we are the species most out of touch with nature.”

Asked what was missing from his old world of lucre and business, Mark replied “Stress. Traffic-jams. Bank statements. Utility bills. Oh yeah, and the odd pint of organic ale with my mates down at the local”.

It just goes to show, if you are passionate about anything, you can be that change you’d like to see in the world.

Sources:

World Observer

The Guardian

This article (The Man Who Lives Without Money) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and TrueActivist.com.

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Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “We are not makers of history. We are made by history.” And these words couldn’t ring more true after understanding the history of the world and the immense number of events that have brought us to where we are today. Although the number of historic events the human race has experienced are great in number, there are some that stand out much more than others. Here are 35 that have made the biggest impact on our current lives, and will continue to do so for future generations.

See which defining moments have made the world the place that it is today.

The Wright Brother’s First Flight

At a time when technology was just beginning to take form, the Wright Brothers from Dayton, Ohio were busy attempting to make a machine that could fly in the air. On December 17, 1903, Orville Wright managed to get the first powered glider, hence the first airplane, 20-feet above the ground, spanning the distance of 120 feet, lasting 12 seconds in total. This momentous day would mark the true beginning of aviation history.

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By: Tyler Durden / Zero Hedge   One out of every six American retirees is a millionaire, according to a new report by investment manager United Income, which notes that the average retiree’s wealth has risen over 100% since 1989, to $752,000  – while the share of millionaires has doubled.

“Retirees are healthier and wealthier than any previous generation,” reads the report.

While income inequality has remained about the same since 1989, a rising stock market has resulted in a 42% rise in wealth inequality among American retirees.

“People have held incomes and spending constant over time,” said Matt Fellowes, United Income’s founder and chief executive officer. “The wealthiest retirees are wealthier but are not spending more, relative to previous generations.”

The gap between the wealthy and the ultra-wealthy has also widened. The wealth of the median millionaire rose by about 12 percent from 1989 to 2016, while the median millionaire’s equity position was swelling from 27 percent of financial accounts to 55 percent. The wealth of the top 1 percent of millionaires, meanwhile, more than doubled, from $14.9 million to $31.3 million, in 2016 dollars, as their equity positions jumped from 30 percent to 69 percent, according to the report. –Bloomberg

“It’s clear that the dividends from being an investor are paying off for retirees fortunate enough to have savings and investments,” said Fellowes. “What’s discouraging is that those who are not saving or investing are just getting left progressively farther and farther behind as each successive generation enters retirement.” In other words, if you want to retire wealthy, you better be rich to begin with.

The analysis uses data from various sources including the Federal Reserve Board, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Centers for Disease Control, for their in-depth analysis of the changing lives of retirees in the US.

“Credit card use has also grown broadly, but more as a cash management tool than a lifestyle-enhancing product. In particular, since 1989, the share of retirees with credit card debt grew from 18 percent to 33 percent. But the average balance among all retirees is just $1,504, or four percent of the average income among retirees. That number may be lower than what is optimal, if retirees are instead withdrawing money from investment accounts to fund spending volatility due to unexpected expenses, which grow in frequency as households age.” (United Income)

The study also reveals that 62% of retirees enjoy their sunset years without physical or cognitive problems – up from just 49% in 1963 when such data was first taken.

Perhaps that has something to do with the reduced financial stress retirees are under compared to three decades ago. While around the same number of people are dependent on Social Security for 50%+ of their income, nearly half of retirees are living on minimum wage or less, and those living below the poverty line has decreased from 14% to 12%.

“As retirees have become increasingly healthier and wealthier, they are staying put, choosing instead to live in urbanized communities close to amenities they have known as workers. In fact, there is no relationship between where retirees live and the state’s tax rate, crime rate, or weather. In addition, even though the cost of living is more expensive for growing shares of retirees who remain in high-cost areas of the country, the propensity of serious consumer finance challenges among retirees has also declined.”

And here’s some additional trivia: retired Americans love their TV!

“The largest change in activity is a near doubling of the amount of time retirees watch TV over the past 40 years,” the report notes.

The average retired 60-year-old now watches television almost three hours every day. The increases were largest in high-income, highly educated households, which experienced a 78 percent rise in couch time since 1975, versus 43 percent for lower-income households. –Bloomberg

In fact “for every 10 minutes of time added onto the life of a retiring 60-year-old, the share of time spent awake and in front of a TV every day among retirees increased by about one minute, compared to about a 20-second increase in the amount of time spent on exercise, outdoor activities, or sports,” reads the report.

That said, for all the TV retirees are watching, they may not be learning much from their viewing habits, suggests the report. Pew Research Center reveals that over 55% of households over the age of 65 watch cable new programs, while “one multi-country study found that public broadcast news (such as PBS) increased political knowledge, while cable news actually reduced knowledge that people have about actual events.”

And while American retirees may be a bunch of rich, TV watching, financially sound folks – they’re also living longer thanks to advances in diet and medicine, with the average 60-year-old living nearly 10 years longer than their TV-less ancestors in 1900.

This article America Has Never Had More Millionaire Retirees by Tyler Durden originally appeared on ZeroHedge.com

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By: John Vibes / The Mind Unleashed   In the past week, as the historic peace summit between the governments of North and South Korea have stunned the world, many of the top military stocks are in a free fall. The military-industrial complex is probably not losing any sleep though, as they have plenty of other wars to keep their portfolios afloat. However, for the rest of us, this is an important moment to take note of, because it shows the massive incentive that there is in the industry of war and it shows how closely these profits are correlated with geopolitics.

There is an unspeakable amount of money to be made by the people who sell weapons and ammunition to countries at war.  The arms dealers never take sides, but are always happy to take billions of dollars from opposing nations of every war so their customers can destroy each other.  To people in this industry, the idea of peace is bad for business, if there is peace then surely the weapons industry wouldn’t be the least bit successful.

This week we saw how even rumors of peace in a world filled with war can put a dent in the value of these companies. Below are the stock charts for some of the top defense corporations, each of them showing an identical fall around 4/24, about the same time when news of the peace summit really began to go viral. Boeing is the only defense contractor that did not see a massive decline similar to these companies, but they have a number of commercial products and are not entirely dependent on war for all of their revenue. These charts were gathered from Nasdaq.com.

Lockheed Martin (LMT)

Northrop Grumman (NOC)

Raytheon (RTN)

General Dynamics (GD)

L3 Technologies (LLL)

Harris Corporation (HRS)

Curtiss-Wright Corporation (CW)

As you can see, all of these companies have seen a sharp decline around the same time, and while correlation does not always equal causation, the fact that these drops coincide with the Korean peace talks do not appear to be a coincidence.

Back in 2015, executives from many of these companies were caught celebrating news of war because it would mean higher profits for them.

At a Credit Suisse conference in West Palm Beach, representatives from major defense contractors spoke to their investors about how well business was going in these times of global war. Representatives from top firms like Raytheon, Oshkosh, and Lockheed Martin were in attendance, in somewhat of a celebration of the escalating conflict in the middle east and Africa.

Lockheed Martin Executive Vice President Bruce Tanner gave a speech openly praising the “indirect” benefits that defense contractors would see as a result of the war in Syria. A portion of his speech was captured on audio by someone inside and shared widely on the internet hours after the conference.

In the audio that was captured, Tanner discussed the many recent troubles in the Middle East, with an escalation of conflict in Syria and Turkey. He pointed out how these conflicts would lead to increased sales for their company.

Tanner said that the increased conflict would cause “an intangible lift because of the dynamics of that environment and our products in theater.”

According to the Intercept, during another speech at the conference, Wilson Jones, the president of the defense manufacturer Oshkosh, said that “with the ISIS threat growing, there are more countries interested in buying Oshkosh-made M-ATV armored vehicles.”

Raytheon Chief Executive Tom Kennedy also joined in the informal celebration, saying that his company was seeing “a significant uptick for defense solutions across the board in multiple countries in the Middle East.”

“It’s all the turmoil they have going on, whether the turmoil’s occurring in Yemen, whether it’s with the Houthis, whether it’s occurring in Syria or Iraq, with ISIS,” Kennedy added.

In addition to the growing wars, the contractors also celebrated the fact that the defense sector was recently granted a $607 billion budget by the government.

This article Top Military Stocks All See Huge Losses As Korea Peace Talks Succeed by John Vibes originally appeared on The Mind Unleashed.com

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Just because celebrities are rich and famous does not mean that life will always work in their favor no matter what. Many celebrities have had serious tax troubles. While these big personalities do not have a greater chance of breaking the law as compared to their fans, they do have a far greater chance of being audited.

Here are surprising 90 celebrities who got charged for tax evasion.

1. Lindsay Lohan

In 2012, the IRS seized all of Lindsay Lohan’s bank accounts in order to repay $233,904 in unpaid federal taxes.

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The Olympic Games are in full swing in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, but what few in the world know is that the majority of citizens in the lush country cannot even afford to attend the event which is costing taxpayers £3.8 billion. 

Indeed, the average Brazilian makes less than £400 a month, and cannot in good conscience spend the £23 for one ticket. In effect, many have been watching the Games from the rooftops of slums, and the photos captured by artists of them doing so paint an accurate picture of what blind consumerism has helped create in this world.

If you need more visual evidence to understand just how wasteful the Olympic Games are – and have been – in years past, the following photos do an excellent job of validating the fact that the money invested in the tradition could probably be better spent.

Though the Olympic Games have been taking place every four years in various locations around the world since 1896, many of the venues have been abandoned and/or forgotten by the public. From Beijing to Berlin, from Athens to Atlanta, there are a number of spaces which could have been reused or repurposed to hold the Games.

This inspires one to ask the question: “If the indigenous in Brazil are suffering through one of the worst crises in decades and millions still live in poverty, how can spending billions on the Games be justified?”

As you reach for an answer to this question, scroll through the following 30 photos, compiled and captioned by Bored Panda, which reveal what has become of venues in the past that once attracted millions for the Games.

#1 Bobsled Track, Sarajevo, 1984 Winter Olympics Venue

The disused bobsled track from the Sarajevo 1984 Winter Olympics is seen on Mount Trebevic, near Sarajevo, September 19, 2013. Abandoned and left to crumble into oblivion, most of the 1984 Winter Olympic venues in Bosnia’s capital Sarajevo have been reduced to rubble by neglect as much as the 1990s conflict that tore apart the former Yugoslavia.
Credit: Dado Ruvic

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This photo shows North Koreans mourning the death of their leader, Kim Jong-Il. It caused a lot of misunderstanding around the world, with some unpleasant reactions such as “Are their tears genuine?” Anthony Daniels, a member of the British Delegation to the International Festival Youth and Students, said in an interview with BBC News, “It is a terrible mixture of fear, terror, and apprehension” and rumors have spread that if they are seen to be wailing louder than their co-workers, they “might get promoted.”

2) Sobbing female soldiers falling to their knees with full-strength grief

“The official version released by the state-run news agency showing sobbing soldiers and children is the only glimpse we get”, The Guardian reported. North Korea is infamous for its uncanny civic restrictions and overpowering poverty, making it almost impossible to measure how genuine their tears are.  In addition, the North Korean TV only showed black and white photographs from Kim’s youth, and all the other photos only showed the obvious grief of the nation without any public commentary.

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Russia is located in Eurasia, the combined continental landmass of Europe and Asia, and their official language is Russian though there are 27 other co-official languages in the country. To understand Russian culture there are many interesting facts that are worth knowing. Russia is constantly in the headlines and because it’s one of the most powerful economies in the world none of the country’s decisions or involvement in international affairs can go unnoticed.

1. Russia’s Homicide rate is crazy high.

The homicide rate in Russia reaches 9.70 per 100,000 and doubling Americas’ 4.7 per 100,000.

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