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You kind of hint at this with points 2 & 3, but I think you could add:

(5) There are way more people than there used to be



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The population is also larger than it was 50 years ago

I'm sure it's a consequence of having more people. That's what's interesting: it's a visible indicator of the increased population around here.

I don't disagree with most of what you said but (and I might be misremembering) but the "grew way to quickly" doesn't hold up.

When I was in school I learned the number "1.3m people" and that was the early/mid 90s, now it's 1.5m. So unless you start counting a more widespread urbanization of the adjacent towns.. the math doesn't seem to work out.

I do agree that it feels a lot worse than 20 years ago.


There are 130 million more people in the US today than there were 50 years. What changed? 130 million people is what changed.

That describes an increasing portion of the population.

On an adjusted basis, sure. I was speaking in absolute terms. What's happening is that people are leaving the second quintile. About 1/3 move down, 2/3 move up.

The sort of thing people in the second quintile used to do has evaporated.


> in the last 20 years > in that time > a population that's doubled

Are you sure the US population has doubled in 20 years?


Changing demographics has a big impact as well, there are many more single occupiers now.

>The proportion of the population under 20 years old has changed from about 19% to about 12%.

That's easily disprovable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...


Probably reflects demographic changes within the US over the past several years.

> first assertion is incorrect (monotonic increase)

Huh, someone should fix that. Do you have a good source?

That said, I was observing over long timelines. Decade over decade, participation goes up.

> second assertion (near a historic high) can be attributed to population increase

That increases the denominator. Participation is measured as a fraction. We’re about flat for the last two decades on the tail of broad increases.


Population then compared to now?

Also need to discuss demographic trends. I'm not sure of the exact stats and too many spammy content farms to find the numbers, but I believe there's fewer teens and more baby boomer "folks" category people.

Agreed. I was just offering my perspective that the numbers have increased substantially over the last few years (not that I'm mad about at all hah)

> I am seeing number in range of 500 for population of 10M.

Over what time period?


Not sure why you left this part out.

> This small decline was largely the result of changes to the criteria for defining urban areas implemented by the Census Bureau, including raising the minimum population threshold for qualification from 2,500 to 5,000.


> the population increased by about 50%

> (or if better care was exactly offset by increased vulnerability due to aging population)

Why are you counting the old people twice?


this is relative to the size of population. The numbers are right, you should also be able to reason how much better weve become at living places that used to be impossible.

Source please and maybe population increase would explain that.
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