Today, we're diving into some super important and maybe a bit sobering news: America is running out of young people. Yep, you heard that right! James A. Brown is here to slow down the news and help us unpack this hefty topic. We're not just talking about numbers; we’re peeking into how this demographic shift will affect everything from college enrollment to crime rates. You know, fewer young folks means fewer students in classrooms and fewer kids filling those college dorms, which is a big deal for our economy and culture. So grab your favorite snack and settle in, because we’re going to explore some predictions about where this is all heading and what it means for our future—spoiler alert: it might get a little wild!

Takeaways:

1. In this episode, we dive into why slowing down the news helps us ask better questions about America and its challenges.
2. James A. Brown discusses the alarming trend of America running out of young people, predicting significant societal changes as a result.
3. We explore the implications of fewer young people entering the workforce and how that will impact education, job markets, and cultural institutions.
4. The podcast reveals five predictions about America’s future, including the potential rise in elite college attendance and the fall of crime rates as demographics shift.
5. The discussion touches on the reality that many institutions are preparing for growth in a population that is actually shrinking, which could lead to economic instability.
6. Finally, we consider how governments might incentivize families to have more children, a strategy that’s already being tested in some countries, but may not be effective.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. jamesabrown.net
2. dailynote.net

Companies mentioned in this episode:

1. Goddard College
2. Wells College
3. University of Rochester

News moves pretty fast, and if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you'll miss it.

That's why James A.

Brown slows down the news, to ask better questions about America.

No bumper stickers, no teams, no masters.

It's the Weekly Note with James A.

Brown.

Oh, hello and welcome to the Weekly Note.

I'm James A.

Brown.

Thanks for joining me.

You can check out my work@jamesabrown.net that's jamesabrown.net.

You know, people often ask me why I talk about the population so much.

And there's a few reasons for this.

Number one, it's my show and I can talk about what I want to.

If you don't want to hear it, you can get your own show.

Everybody's doing it these days, number one.

Number two, that is, I don't know why everyone else isn't because of number three.

My goal here is to talk about those things that get lost in the news cycle.

And I can't think of anything more important that has than this.

I believe that how we handle what's happening with our population will shape our life.

Well, the second half of my life and the lives of our families and our children and our children's children.

And today, I'll share a few ways that I believe it will.

Now, these are predictions.

Now, every time you hear a prediction from anyone, I don't care whether it's me or, you know, your psychic, it's just a hunch, but in this case, it's an educated guess.

I'm no psychic.

I'm no medium.

I'm just a man trying to slow down the news and look around the corner and tell you what I see.

But here's the thing about these particular predictions.

They're not really about the future.

They're about what's already happened.

America is running out of young people.

There's no two ways about it.

It's the truth.

I know that sounds dramatic, but hear me out here.

The receipts are already in.

They're called birth certificates.

You can look them up.

The Census Bureau has them.

This is not a mystery.

It's something that we don't need to guess about.

We can just count them.

Nearly 3.9 million students graduated from American high schools.

That was the highest number ever recorded.

And it was the last peak that we're going to see of that nature for A very, very, very long time, maybe ever.

We're on the other side of it now and no one seems to care.

In fact, I don't think most people have even realized it, at least not yet.

That's 13% fewer.

Now, a 13% drop like that, I understand.

You know, some people may say that's not really a lot, but think about what that means.

That's a half million fewer caps thrown in the air every spring.

A half million fewer kids moving into dorms in the fall.

A half million fewer kids going into elementary school.

A half million fewer people filling entry level jobs, enlisting in the military, starting apprenticeships, buying their first cars, renting their first apartments.

That's a half million fewer kids that parents are spending money on.

Think about it.

Every institution in America that serves young people, every college, every employer, every branch of the military, every landlord, toy companies and entertainment venues, they're all competing for a piece of the pie that's getting smaller.

And most of them, they either don't know it or at least aren't admitting it aloud.

They're still planning for growth.

They're building for a world that's not coming.

And here's the thing that keeps me up at night.

You can't create 18 year olds out of nothing.

You can't manufacture them, you can't import them fast enough to fill that gap.

No matter what you think about immigration, you can't will them into existence with marketing campaigns or strategic plans or wishful thinking.

Even though I do think all of that is coming, it's around the corner.

There's no third option.

So what happens to America?

Well, a lot.

Some of it we've seen overseas.

I've got five predictions and I'll rattle them off now and we'll go into it a little bit deeper.

One, going to college is going to become an elite activity.

This has already happened somewhat.

I don't think they'll disappear.

I think that it will be elite.

The schools that are closing right now aren't Harvard and Yale and Brown and Temple, even Stanford.

They're the colleges that serve the margins.

The small privates, the regional publics, the places that gave first generation students like me a chance.

Wells College in New York, Goddard College in Vermont, the College of St. Rose in Albany.

Names that meant something to people who went there in the towns that lived off of them.

Literally.

Number two I think murder and crime rates are going to plummet.

Now this one is going to make some people angry.

But the age crime curve is one of the most reliable findings that you'll in all study a crime peak offenders are between 15 and 24.

Young men commit most of the violent crime.

That's not a stereotype.

That's demography.

That's not racism.

It's the truth.

Fewer young men, especially fewer black and Hispanic young men mean fewer crime, fewer violent crimes.

It's the truth.

We've already started to see this.

Three, our government budget crisis is just beginning.

You know, nationally we can't agree on a budget.

Soon we're going to see this in states, in cities, towns.

The Social Security trust fund depletes right around the corner.

Medicare is going to run dry soon too.

Four, the music of your youth in my youth is going to remain dominant.

Well, if you have fewer young people filling stadiums and celebrating young artists, you're going to end up with a lot more of the same.

The staying power of acts that appeal to people in their 40s and up will extend.

And number five, I think our government is going to pay people to have kids.

That may sound crazy, but I don't think it's crazy at all.

We're already starting to see this around the world.

I don't think it will work, but I, I, you know, I don't think politicians will take this laying down.

This is the Weekly Note.

I'm James A.

Brown.

This is the Weekly Note.

I'm James A.

Brown.

Thanks for joining me.

You can check out my work@jamesabrown.net if you got an opinion on what I got to say, you can leave me a comment on jamesabrown.net you can email me at james the dailynote.net or send me a text or leave me a voicemail.

We might have you on the show.

Now.

I want to start with a prediction that may make some people angry or uncomfortable.

I think crime is going to fall and fall dramatically and I think we're going to credit all the wrong things and all the wrong people because that's what we do.

Now I can already hear some of the people who, who are going to object to this.

Crime is out of control.

The cities are burning.

Have you seen the news?

Now, I'm not here to argue about perception.

Perception is a lot different than reality.

I don't think perception has anything to do with it.

I'm here to talk about some math because it tells a story that a lot of people are missing.

There's a concept known as the crime age curve.

The same pattern happens every single time.

Criminal behavior increases in adolescence.

It peaks in teenage years, roughly 15 to 19.

Then it declines into your early 20s and keeps on declining for the rest of our lives.

Think about it.

Teenagers are idiots.

I was an idiot.

Every teenager you know is dumb.

They don't know much.

They are just making it up as they go along.

They're trying to keep up with their friends and the Joneses.

And when, if they're in the wrong place, if they're surrounded with not enough care, if their incentives are wrong, if there's no one to set them straight, they veer off and they do stupid stuff.

And that includes crime, drugs, gangs.

It's not about race or class or culture or parenting or video games or whatever else people want to blame.

This is biology.

We're dumb, especially young men.

We take more risks, we're more impulsive.

We respond more intensely to peer pressure.

We have less impulse control.

Our brains as teenagers, you know, the part of our brain that handles judgment, I think it's the prefrontal cortex.

And, you know, the thought about consequences, It doesn't develop for a long, long time.

Not fully.

But the good thing about it is that it's not a permanent condition.

People age out of it.

We get jobs, we get.

We have families, we meet people, we have kids, we have responsibility and we stop.

And if you look at other types of crime, it's true, too.

Property crime, you know, things like theft, those.

Those peak even sooner.

Younger kids do that.

The age crime curve is reliable across culture.

You can argue about why it happens, but you can't argue about.

You can't argue that it exists.

And we're already starting to see this drop in some places, California, in.

In particular, the violent felony arrest rate for young adults ages 18 to 22 dropped dramatically.

It's cut in half in 25 years.

We've got a half century of data showing young men, especially black and Hispanic young men in our cities as the leading victims and perpetrators of violent crime.

It's true.

And before you start hurling things at me like, oh, James, that's racist.

That's wrong.

Look, I'm a black man.

I'm talking about where I come from.

I'm talking about people grew up like I grew up.

And we are overwhelmingly the victims and perpetrators of violence in numbers that shocked.

Should have shocked us long ago.

And what I believe is that in the years to come, as we see fewer black men, fewer kids, period.

We're going to see violent crime drop.

Not because we solved anything, not because we address root causes.

It's just going to happen.

And here's what I think.

I think that politicians will take credit whatever policy that was in place at the time, you know, whether you're tough on crime or what have you, and they're going to claim that that did it.

But I think the truth is what's happening has nothing to do with them.

It's all about our population and how quickly everything is changing.

This is the Weekly Note.

I'm James A.

Brown.

Foreign.

Hello and welcome back.

We talked about crime.

Now let's talk about three more things I see coming.

They all follow the same logic, the same, you know, math.

It's the same dominoes that are all falling over.

You know, I'm not claiming to have a crystal ball.

I'm just telling you what, what, what's pretty obvious over the next 10 to 20 years.

For decades, higher education was built on growth.

More students every year, more everything.

Entire towns were organized around young people in their early 20s, late teens flocking to them.

Including my hometown here in Rochester.

We are surrounded with colleges.

The University of Rochester is literally our biggest employer.

And I want you to think about what a college means to a place like Rochester.

It's not just about education.

It's the professors who buy houses.

It's the people who send their kids to local schools.

It's the students that fill out apartments and houses.

It's restaurants that they that survive on those kids, bookstores, coffee shops, bars.

It's the local economy that depends on thousands of 18 year olds showing up every September with their parents, credit cards and with a boatload of debt.

It was all built on the assumption that September brings a boatload of new faces, that this was going to continue.

But I argue that it's not.

And we know it's not.

According to an economic analysis from a firm named Implan, each college closure eliminates an average of 265 jobs and $67 million a year in economic impact.

Now think about that.

In a place like Rochester, where I'm from, it's not just losing higher education.

That's an economic amputation.

That's a tax base evaporating.

In a place like Rochester, our biggest employer is our college, the University of Rochester.

Our biggest hospital is the University of Rochester.

And it all hinges on this cohort of young people coming and spending an exorbitant amount of money on going to this place.

We've built this entire era of.

Economic development around our gigantic college and all that is swallowed around it now.

The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education warned about this nearly 15 years ago.

The data was clear then.

Birth rates dropped during the Great Recessions.

Back when I was just out of college and my cohort, we didn't have as many kids.

There was no baby bounce that followed when the economy recovered.

Yet these institutions, colleges, universities, kept building, kept borrowing, they kept assuming that next year will be different because that's what people do.

They plan for what they know, not the world that's coming.

And the regional breakdown is it's rough.

In the Northeast where I live, 17% of high school graduates will be gone in the next 15 years.

In the Midwest it's 16%.

In the west they're expecting 17% declines.

In the south, we'll see a bit of a bounce as we reshuffle ourselves.

They'll be up about 3%.

Five states will account for 75% of the entire national decline of 18 year olds.

California, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania and my home state where I sit right now, New York, these are our economic engines.

Full of flagship universities in major industries that depend on them, in cities that depend on them.

They're about to have a lot fewer people to fuel it.

Despite the GI Bill, despite standardized testing, despite financial aid, despite Pell grants.

The way these schools, the makeup of these schools are, are the same.

The bottom 20% of income owners consistently make up about 5% of elite institutions for the last hundred years.

And I think that's going to get even lower.

I believe that unless you are wealthy in the years to come, your kids are not going to go to college.

There will be an education system for them to go into.

I think there will be training, I think there will be apprenticeships.

But I don't think we're going to end up with the classic college system.

We're going to have to remake it, we're going to have to rethink it.

Now let's apply the same logic.

The government.

I'm 41 and I shudder to think about concepts like Social Security.

There are 16 workers paying in for every one person, taking out.

The whole Design certainly looks like a pyramid scheme to me.

What about you?

A lot of young people at the bottom and fewer people on the.

Today, as you might have guessed, that pyramid is collapsing.

That ratio, 16 to 1, will soon be less than 3 to 1.

You can't tax two people enough to support one person's retirement and healthcare without breaking something.

I'll say that one more time.

You can't tax two people enough to support one person's retirement and health care without breaking something.

Social Security and Medicare together account for about half of what the federal government spends half.

You know, it's that line from that Eddie Murphy said back in the day, if you had a dollar and somebody took 50 cents, you'd be upset.

Both these programs are expected to grow dramatically as our population shifts as our as older people live longer.

And we're expecting it just within the next five to 10 years to exceed GDP gross domestic.

We're going to spend more on Social Security and Medicare than the entire gross domestic product.

That's why I talk about population so much because of things like this, because I believe that our entire world is going to be shaped by this massive change we're undergoing right now.

And I don't understand how we can go through our culture, go through our day to day and not even consider this, not have real discussions about how the hell are we going to take care of all of these older folks and what's the effect on the rest of us culturally?

What's the effect on our pocketbooks?

What's the effect on the working age population?

As I said, I'm in my early 40s.

The idea of retirement in this circumstance, It's shocking.

It's, it's not going to happen, at least not in the way that we see it now.

So why do I talk about, why do I talk about this, this impending doom?

Well, because it's kind of hard to, it's hard to ignore, at least for me.

I wonder why everybody else is ignoring this.

It's like this, it's this doom that we're, that we can all see over the horizon but nobody wants to look over there.

It's, it's truly horrifying.

This is the Weekly Note.

What do you think?

Let me know in three ways.

Hello and welcome to the Weekly Note.

I'm James A.

Brown.

Thanks for joining me.

You can check out my work@jamesabrown.net that's jamesabrown.net Let me know what you think about all this.

We might have you on the show.

So I wanted to get to my other two predictions about where we're headed.

And these are a little more light heart.

With a population that is much, much older, a population with a lot more fewer younger people, the music industry isn't going to chase teenagers anymore.

I mean, that's a whole hour about where that's going.

Maybe we'll do that a little bit down the line.

But young pop stars are not going to have throngs of teenagers chasing them anymore.

There's going to be a lot fewer, fewer of them.

I think what we're going to see as things persist as time goes on is that strangely enough, and to say this about myself, but I believe that us 40 somethings, us 50 somethings, 60 somethings in the next couple of decades are going to be the ones who are going to be catered to music wise.

I think we're already seeing this with there's the When We Were Young tour.

I don't know if you heard about that one.

With all these acts from around the turn of the century, I think we're going to see more things like this.

I think that we're going, that we're going to see sort of the evaporation of the teeny bopper catering of entertainment.

And as that cohort shrinks, it's not that there will be no entertainment aimed at these folks.

There's going to be less and less because there's fewer of them.

And when you accept the idea that there's just going to be fewer kids, I think in these mounting problems, whether it's, whether it's budget issues, whether it's cultural rot, I think our government will spring into action.

I believe that our government, our government, the United States government and others are gonna try to bribe us into having kids.

I don't think it'll work, but I think they're gonna try to bribe us into this.

It's being experimented around the world, but I do think it's, I do think it's coming.

It's gonna be a big, big driver in the years to come.

It's happening in Hungary right now.

They're spending about 4% of their entire GDP on family support, 4% of everything they produce on convincing people to have kids.

They're having a $30,000 baby loan that couples could apply for after getting married.

One third of it is forgiven once you have two kids and the entire loan gets forgiven after you have three.

Women with four or more kids are exempt from income tax for the rest of their lives.

Subsidies on seven seat vehicles, for home purchases, for renovations, for education.

The government is basically saying, have kids or it will make your life easier.

But the reality of it is, and this is the sad part, the sad part is that it hasn't moved the needle at all.

Because it's.

I said earlier, you can't.

You can't make these kids appear.

It's a decision that we had to have made 18 years ago.

We'll see where this goes over the next few decades.

This is the Weekly Note.

I'm James A.

Brown.

Thanks for joining me.

I'm stuck in an endless intermission.

Story stopped all of a sudden.

I can't see all.