Population, not wealth distribution, is the problem
Joulette Jowit of The Guardian says that an expanding world population isn't the problem, it's how we spend our "growing riches".
My question is: Whose riches, and what riches does she refer to? If she is referring to a US growth rate of less then 2 per cent since Obama took office, then I am afraid she misspoke. If she is referring to a European Union torn in strife ... guilty again! Political economist Thomas Malthus in his theory of population referred to a return to subsistence levels of human survival based on a burgeoning population level. The term is also commonly used in discussions of oil depletion. Basically it’s a numbers game – the survival of the fittest, and a quality-of-life issue – and not just a simple division of wealth.
The world’s expanding population is always the problem, but try explaining this to natives in Africa or the plains of Mongolia or to a couple that is subsidised by their government to have children.
Theodore Carl Soderberg
Bangkok
