I stated clearly that the population effect reverses itself once a nation ends up with too many people and too few natural resources. All those nations you listed aren't there yet.

Now as far as productivity, of course it has an effect but not over long periods of time like the time span I'm watching. There's an average productivity you can get out of a nation and that slow line of upward progress clearly has a component of that which is multiplied by the growth in population.

Now in the short term you'll see the blips of changes in productivity but our nation has certainly not been more productive lately. Our manufacturing capability has decreased dramatically over my lifetime. Much of what you're seeing on the financial trends is instead this evolution to an outsourced labor force which isn't exactly a positive trend for US workers.

You know as well as anyone that economists cannot be trusted to give accurate forecasts of trends because they are intimately aware of how their forecasts can actually cause or exaggerate the very conditions they're reporting on. If you throw in a government tie to those economists they also have a huge credibility gap because any bad news from them will erode their political fortunes.

My opinions here are not based on anything I read from either side of the political spectrum. You get all the information you need just from riding down the street looking at the for sale signs and watching the daily market reports. You should try that.

Art