The Missile Defense Agency and the Color of Money

The CSIS Missile Defense Project cordially invites you to the launch of the report The Missile Defense Agency and the Color of Money: Fewer Resources, More Responsibilities, and a Growing Budget Squeeze.

[emmanuelponce]

Thomas Robert Malthus FRS (/ˈmælθəs/; 13 February 1766 – 23 December 1834)[1] was an English cleric and scholar, influential in the fields of political economy and demography.[2]

Demography (from prefix demo- from Ancient Greek δῆμος dēmos meaning "the people", and -graphy from γράφω graphō, ies "writing, description or measurement"[1]) is the statistical study of populations, especially human beings.
Demography encompasses the study of the size, structure, and distribution of these populations, and spatial or temporal changes in them in response to birth,  migration,  aging, and death. As a very general science, it can analyze any kind of dynamic living population, i.e., one that changes over time or space (see population dynamics). Demographics are quantifiable characteristics of a given population.
Demographic analysis can cover whole societies or groups defined by criteria such as education,  nationality,  religion, and ethnicity. Educational institutions[2] usually treat demography as a field of sociology, though there are a number of independent demography departments.[3] Based on the demographic research of the earth, earth's population up to the year 2050 and 2100 can be estimated by demographers.
Formal demography limits its object of study to the measurement of population processes, while the broader field of social demography or population studies also analyses the relationships between economic, social, cultural, and biological processes influencing a population.[

Economics (/ɛkəˈnɒmɪks,  iːkə-/)[1][2][3] is the social science that studies the production,  distribution, and consumption of goods and services.[4]
Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and basic elements in the economy, including individual agents and markets, their interactions, and the outcomes of interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, households, firms, buyers, and the entire economy (meaning aggregated production, consumption, saving, and investment) and issues affecting it, including unemployment of resources (labour, capital, and land),  inflation,  economic growth, and the public policies that address these issues (monetary, fiscal, and other policies). See glossary of economics.
Other broad distinctions within economics include those between positive economics, describing "what is", and normative economics, advocating "what ought to be"; between economic theory and applied economics; economics; and between mainstream economics and heterodox economics.[5]
Economic analysis can be applied throughout society, in real estate[6],  business[7],  finance,  health care[8], and government[9]. Economic analysis is sometimes also applied to such diverse subjects as crime,  education, [10] the family,  law,  politics,  religion, [11] social institutions,  war, [12] science, [13] and the environment.[


Politics is a set of activities associated with the governance of a country or an area. It involves making decisions that apply to group of members.[1]
It refers to achieving and exercising positions of governance—organized control over a human community, particularly a state.[2] The academic study focusing on just politics, which is therefore more targeted than general political science, is sometimes referred to as politology (not to be confused with politicology, a synonym for political science).[3]
In modern nation-states, people often form political parties to represent their ideas. Members of a party agree to take the same position on many issues and agree to support the same changes to law and the same leaders.[4]
An election is usually a competition between different parties.[5] Some examples of political parties worldwide are: the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa, the Democratic Party (D) in the United States, the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Germany and the Indian National Congress in India. Politics is a multifaceted word. It has a set of fairly specific meanings that are descriptive and nonjudgmental (such as "the art or science of government" and "political principles"), but does often colloquially carry a negative connotation.[1][6][7] The word has been used negatively for many years: the British national anthem as published in 1745 calls on God to "Confound their politics", [8] and the phrase "play politics", for example, has been in use since at least 1853, when abolitionist Wendell Phillips declared: "We do not play politics; anti-slavery is no half-jest with us."[9]
A variety of methods are deployed in politics, which include promoting one's own political views among people,  negotiation with other political subjects, making laws, and exercising force, including warfare against is exercised on a wide range of social levels, from clans and tribes of traditional societies, through modern local governments,  companies and institutions up to sovereign states, to the international level.
A political system is a framework which defines acceptable political methods within a given society. The history of political thought can be traced back to early antiquity, with seminal works such as Plato's Republic,  Aristotle's Politics and the works of Confucius.

Back To Robert
In his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus observed that an increase in a nation's food production improved the well-being of the populace, but the improvement was temporary because it led to population growth, which in turn restored the original per capita production level. In other words, humans had a propensity to utilize abundance for population growth rather than for maintaining a high standard of living, a view that has become known as the "Malthusian trap" or the "Malthusian spectre". Populations had a tendency to grow until the lower class suffered hardship, want and greater susceptibility to famine and disease, a view that is sometimes referred to as a Malthusian catastrophe. Malthus wrote in opposition to the popular view in 18th-century Europe that saw society as improving and in principle as perfectible.[3] He saw population growth as being inevitable whenever conditions improved, thereby precluding real progress towards a utopian society: "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man".[4] As an Anglican cleric, Malthus saw this situation as divinely imposed to teach virtuous behaviour.[5] Malthus wrote:

That the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence,
That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase, and,
That the superior power of population is repressed by moral restraint, vice and misery.[6]

Malthus criticized the Poor Laws for leading to inflation rather than improving the well-being of the poor.[7] He supported taxes on grain imports (the Corn Laws), because food security was more important than maximizing wealth.[8] His views became influential, and controversial, across economic, political, social and scientific thought. Pioneers of evolutionary biology read him, notably Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.[9][10] He remains a much-debated writer.
In college and university, Malthus is documented as Robert only.[11]
Thomas Robert Malthus


FRS



Portrait by John Linnell

Born13/14 February 1766

Westcott, Surrey, England

Died23 December 1834 (aged 68)

Bath, Somerset, England

NationalityBritishFieldDemography,  macroeconomicsSchool or
traditionClassical economicsAlma materJesus College, CambridgeInfluencesDavid Ricardo,  Jean Charles Léonard de growth model