[clairity]

that's why i included the bit about the skew built into the gdp itself, but the larger point is that the correlation is so macro-broad that it's loaded with all sorts of confounding factors.

if we want both high (and growing) gdp and fertility over replacement, we need more economic fairness, particularly around wealth and income, which has all sorts of unintuitive distorting effects. that requires capital to be loosed from captive greed and spread more broadly and deeply into the economy.

immigration in place of high reproduction is fine too for growth, which is one of the points of the article.

you can't get prosperity and choke off sources of activity and innovation, which is what the US (and similar) is doing. those in power, along with the lower classes clinging to the scraps of privilege trickled down to them, want neither economic fairness nor immigration because it potentially dilutes their power and influence, others be damned.

they'd rather have most of a smaller pie (the current situation) than a proportionally-smaller but absolutely-bigger piece of a bigger pie (the zero-sum thinking). that's the conundrum in a nutshell.

[Jommi]

You've been provided data that wealthy, equal societies have low birth rates, yet still you hold on to not only that "there are other confounding factors" but that actually the effect is the opposite?

I'm having a hard time grasping what evidence you have that even tried to suggest this.