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I'm starting to think that Andrew Binstock doesn't understand the basic concepts of journalism - he writes articles, but he never, ever bothers to research any of his assertions. Take this week's gem in SD Times, for instance - he goes through a long discussion of population trends, and then quotes the following:

Consequently, Siegel predicts that offshoring will accelerate and our trade deficits with the developing world will increase dramatically. The end result, he feels, is that by 2050, the U.S. will no longer be the center of economic activity worldwide. That center will consist of China and India, with the then-older U.S. occupying the same declining role in the world economy as Europe does today.

Now, population trends are not an area of expertise for me. However, unlike Andrew Binstock, I've at least heard of Google. A quick scan of Google for China, India, and population trends brought me these links:

• China's aging population
• "China faces social problems caused by a sharp increase in its aging population, and the number of people aged over 60 in China exceeded 90 million at the end of 2001, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) warned in a recent report on the issue."
• Chinese economy not keeping pace with aging population
• "Within a few decades, China may be the world's largest economy. But barring a radical shift in social policy, China is on course to age faster than any major country in history, as its median age soars from about 32 today to at least 44 in 2040. Put another way, China will get old before it gets rich."

And what about India? Well, their population is not aging as fast as China's - but they are entering the same trendline. The UN reports that this is a global phenomenon. Finally, take a look at this paper:

Certainly, rapidly shrinking populations should alter the geo-political landscape. However, an article in the August 24th -30th edition of The Economist, has called into question some fundamental assumptions regarding the balance of power in the 21st century spurred by new U.S. population forecasts.

For 50 years, the U.S., Western Europe and more recently Japan have all been lumped together as rich countries, with low and declining fertility, and increasing numbers of old people, facing the same demographic problems. However, recent statistics found something unusual in the U.S. This trend between the U.S. and other industrialized countries began to diverge in the mid-1980s. Recent census statistics have found that the population has risen faster than it was previously thought in the 1990 census in the U.S. (281 million vs. 275 million) and the fertility rate is rising.

Someone hand this clown the url for Google, and show him how to use it before he writes again...