[andrewwharton]

It's not the gross population that's the problem, it the rate of growth in population and the infrastructure that's required to support it.

The basic problem is that if infrastructure last 50 years, you have to replace 2% of it every year. Now, for every 1% of population growth, you also have to (on average) also build 1% more infrastructure, so you need to build 3% in total, or 50% more than if you had no population growth. But you only have 1% more revenue to build it with, so inevitably only a fraction of what you need gets built, hence the problems. And the higher the population growth, the worse the problems.

[e12e]

Indeed, reminds me of this lecture series:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL76483D7434812A0D

At some point there's a (not entirely) rethorical question about what's a "good" growth rate for a town, and a politician indicate 5% is good. 1.05^15 ~ 2. So that's a doubling in the period between someone enters kindergarten and leaves high school.

[ulfw]

What a really odd logic. So then let's bring immigration down to 0%. Woohoo! Now you still got to "replace 2% of infrastructure every year" with 0% more revenue. How's that working out for you?

You argue 0 immigration -> 2% infra costs You argue 1% immigration -> 3% infra costs but also 1% more revenue to use for infra costs

I fail to see your issue

[sb8244]

Where is immigration brought up? Poster is taking about rate of population growth which includes all sources of population.

[taneq]

Population growth in Australia is largely immigration-driven.