Trending Now
We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
{{ subpage.title }}
Why the world is facing a population crisis
How worried should we be about population collapse? Two-thirds of the people on Earth live in countries with fertility rates below replacement levels of 2.1 children per woman. Experts warn the global population will start falling within 60 years, dramatically impacting the future of work and social security. In the US, Vice President-Elect JD Vance has repeatedly expressed alarm over falling birth rates. Elon Musk has called population decline “a much bigger risk” to civilization than global warming. Places like Japan and Italy are already grappling with shrinking workforces, skyrocketing retirement costs, and healthcare systems stretched to their limits. So, we are heading toward demographic catastrophe, and can governments do anything about it? On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer sits with Jennifer Sciubba, president and CEO of the Population Reference Bureau, to discuss population decline, the global fertility crisis, and why now is the time to reorient our economic and social welfare systems for an aging future.
“The governments that do not adjust their systems to deal with what you actually have, which is an aging smaller population in the future,” Sciubba warns, “They will have a problem."
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔).
The global population is aging. Is the world prepared?
Listen: The world is on the brink of one of the most fundamental demographic shifts in modern human history: populations are getting older, and birth rates are plummeting. By 2050, one in six people on Earth will be over 65, which will have a huge impact on the future of work, healthcare, and social security. On the GZERO World Podcast, Ian Bremmer sits down with Jennifer Sciubba, President & CEO of the Population Reference Bureau, to discuss declining fertility, the aging crisis, and why government efforts all over the world to get people to have more babies don’t seem to be working. Is a slow-moving crisis inevitable? What does all this mean for the future of immigration, women's rights, and global power? Most importantly, is it even possible to turn back the demographic clock, or is it time to start adapting to support the populations we already have?
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.
- The Graphic Truth: US and China not making enough babies ›
- The Graphic Truth: Where populations are rising ... or falling ›
- Russia is losing Russians ›
- China has a big population problem ›
- Will Japan grow its population before it's too late? ›
- Scott Galloway on population decline and the secret sauce of US success ›
Audience members watch as Republican President Candidate Donald Trump and Democratic Candidate Kamala Harris debate on CNN on September 10, 2024 in Bloomington, Indiana.
Buckle up for presidential election madness
The US presidential election is just over three weeks away – and it’s a close race, which means the parties are throwing everything they have into the final weeks of the campaign. For Kamala Harris and the Democrats, that’s a lot. Harris and the Dems have raised over $1 billion dollars since she rose to the top of the ticket, an amount and pace observers say is likely record-breaking.
The cash won’t win the election on its own, but it will help the Harris campaign with its media blitz, including a series of interviews this week on “60 Minutes,” “The Howard Stern Show,” and the popular “Call Her Daddy” podcast as Democrats worry about campaign shortfalls and Donald Trump’s chances of retaking the White House.
Meanwhile, Trump’s campaignis busy cleaning up – or trying to clean up – a series of messes, including a new book by journalist Bob Woodward that claims Trump has kept in touch with Vladimir Putinsince leaving office and that he sent the Russian president COVID-19 testing equipment at the height of the pandemic. Trump and the campaign deny the claims.
Trump is also claiming, without evidence, that he has visited Gaza, and he’s using hurricanes Helene and Milton to make false claims about the Biden administration’s disaster response and Harris’ record.
Nonetheless, the Trump campaign is doing double-time in key states ahead of the November vote, outpacing by on his own Harris and Walz’s combined effort. When you add vice president contender JD Vance’s events, the Republicans come out way ahead. The Trump campaign is also deploying a new get-out-the-vote model that it’s betting big on, particularly in tight states that will likely determine the election. Trump is also working to mobilize its male voters, and has recently gained some support from Black men who are turning away from Harris.
According to the 538 election model, Harris is currently projected to win 53 out of 100 times in its simulations compared to Trump’s 47 victories – and in a tiny fraction of the simulations, there is no electoral college winner, the ultimate chaos scenario – and one to watch closely.Debate Bingo, VP edition: Tim Walz v. JD Vance
Tim Walz and JD Vance are set to face off in their first vice presidential debate of the 2024 US election campaign on Tuesday, October 1. You know what that means: it’s time for another round of DEBATE BINGO!
Tuesday's 90-minute debate will be broadcast live on CBS at 9 PM ET and will be moderated by CBS News anchors Norah O'Donnell and Margaret Garrett. It will take place at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York. As the running mates of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, Walz and Vance could inject fresh momentum into their respective campaigns, which have been in a lull following the Harris-Trump face-off on September 10. We'll soon see whose debate performance proves more effective in swaying voters.
Some tips on DEBATE BINGO: you can make it a competition with your fellow politics nerd pals by printing out GZERO Media's debate bingo cards. Or just screenshot them and share with your friends to compare online. There are four different cards so that each player can have a unique board. Every time one of the candidates says one of these words or terms, X it on your card. The first player to get five across wins. And if you really want to jazz it up, you can mark each of your words by taking a swig of your favorite beverage, doing five burpees, or donating to your favorite charity or political candidate.
Enjoy! Follow our coverage of the debate with us on social media too - we'll be on X @gzeromedia.
Walz Vance Debate Bingo Card 1
Walz Vance Debate Bingo Card 2
Walz Vance Debate Bingo Card 3
Walz Vance Debate Bingo Card 4
Remember, there's more going on in the world than just the US election, so subscribe to GZERO Daily, our newsletter on global politics, and watch our weekly show GZERO World with Ian Bremmer right here and on public television.
- Debate Bingo: Welcome to the 2024 Biden-Trump showdown ›
- Debate Bingo: Kamala Harris v. Donald Trump ›
- Harris wins debate ›
- Harris chooses Walz, Canada makes things 'weird' ›
- What Tim Walz adds to Kamala Harris' campaign ›
- Bloc by bloc: Can Dems win back the working class? ›
- Elon Musk and the Political Power of Young Men ›
Harris wins debate
And it's not that Trump didn't have points to make, but he largely didn't make them. The only significant time that I saw a misstep that Trump was able to hit against Kamala was when she was complaining about his tariffs against China and more broadly. And, of course, these were policies that Trump put in place, which Biden stuck with and claims he's succeeded in China, and they were Trump policies and said, well, if you want to change them, why didn't you? And through the debate, his message was, well, if there are all these great things you wanted to do, you've been vice president, why haven't you done them over the last 3.5 years? But on balance, what Trump did was lose message, lose discipline, and attack Kamala Harris in ways that seemed incoherent and all over the map from the opening question when he was asked about the economy and couldn't stay on target on the economy instead immediately started talking about immigration when he threw in this nonsensical and false claim that immigrants, Haitian immigrants in Ohio are eating household pets. When he was asked about foreign policy and said I'm loved around the world and used Hungary's Viktor Orban as his respected character witness on and on, he seemed defensive and angry and not on message and not disciplined and was rattled by the fact that Kamala Harris was landing punches against him.
I don't think she was fantastic, but she was good. And good is a significant accomplishment given the fact that coming into this, she was not taking interviews, one exception over the last six weeks with the media. Certainly, nothing that was confrontational or hostile, that she's frequently spoken in abstractions and generalities, and not shown policy chops on a range of issues with depth and detail, that she frequently laughs a lot, you know, sort of out of timing and in ways that seems not to make sense, and out of defensiveness. None of that happened this evening. Today, Harris was responding coherently, not always with every fact at her fingertips, but certainly seemed to be a normal politician with a message to put across. Was particularly strong on issues like abortion, where she has that capacity, and on pieces of economic policy. Also, in being able to land blows against Trump and his unfitness, inconsistency, lack of support for democracy, other related issues.
Now, ABC is going to come into the crosshairs here because certainly the questions that they asked, and the follow-ups, were more hostile towards Trump than they were towards Harris. Would you say that they were biased against Trump? Well, I would say that they were more focused on fact-finding, and Trump, more frequently than Harris and more frequently than any politician at that level, is making up his own facts. And they were doing a fair amount of fact-checking in real time. I would say there was a little bit of bias in the sense that there were a couple of places they could have been fact-checking Kamala Harris, and they didn't. And I think they could have done a better job of that. I also think that they gave Trump much more time to follow up when he wanted to, and they typically cut off Harris at the end of her time. You could say that that's bias in favor of Trump, except it didn't help Trump. It actually hurt Trump because the longer he was speaking, the more rattled and unhinged he appeared to be.
So, I'd certainly say if you were looking at this debate, in terms of who you thought actually came across as a winner, and you had uncertainty as a potential voter, in the way that Biden/Trump would have been 95%, Trump, Harris/Trump would be 80% Harris. Now, if you're a partisan on the Harris or Trump side, it didn't matter what was going to happen, and you're going to say that your side won, no matter what. If you're trying to defend Trump tomorrow on air, you're going to say, “This was three-on-one. This was an ABC dogpile. They're the fake news. They should be shut down.” And I suspect Trump will be saying that, both directly and with his proxies tomorrow.
But the fact is, he did not perform, and he is a 78-year-old man. He has not been particularly on point or on message in lots of his rallies recently, if you've watched them, or at the Economics Club in New York last week, if you watch that speech, he has vulnerabilities. And Kamala Harris, who had not been tested at this level before, this is, you know, a presidential debate, she's the nominee., it's the biggest spot of her life, and she gave the best performance of her vice presidency, in my view. Was she, you know, Obama in terms of masterful and soaring rhetoric? No. was she Reagan? Same, no. But was she capable of sounding presidential, sounding like a leader, and thumping Trump pretty hard? Absolutely, yes. I think this is an incredibly tight race. It's essentially a coin flip. I think this will probably give Harris a little bit more momentum that had tapped out after the convention. But it's probably not going to move her 2 or 3 points. It might move her half a point or a point.
It's very, very tight. And I still think this election is very much open over the next couple months. But Harris did herself significant favors, Trump did himself none, over the last couple of hours, and that's the news going into tomorrow. That's my view. Best I can do. You can disagree with it, but you know, I at least try to tell you what I think is going on honestly, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
- How Harris and Trump plan to tackle America’s housing crisis ›
- Trump vs. Harris: A high-stakes election and its risks to democracy ›
- GZERO presidential debate scorecard: Rate the debate! ›
- Trump-Harris debate: What to expect ›
- Muted mics, amplified impact: Harris and Trump debate for razor-thin margins ›
- Debate Bingo, VP edition: Tim Walz v. JD Vance - GZERO Media ›
Democratic presidential nominee and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris reacts as she attends a Labor Day campaign event, at IBEW Local Union #5 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S., September 2, 2024.
Can Harris hold onto her lead?
With just one week before the first debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, polling averages show Harris slightly ahead but statistically tied due to the nature of the electoral college. That means Harris needs voters where they count most — in her case, the vaunted Blue Wall of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
Harris hammered home her pro-worker message on campaign stops in Pittsburgh and Detroit for Labor Day on Monday, arguably the cities most identified with industrialization and the organized labor movement. She cast her rivals as anti-union scabs (those who cross picket lines) and promised not to return to the “failed policies” of tax breaks for the 1% or to repeal of social services like Obamacare.
Trump and his vice presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance, didn’t clap back — the campaign scheduled no events for either candidate on the Monday holiday. However, Trump had an … eventful rally in Johnstown, PA, on Friday, where he labeled the media “the enemy of the people” and praised a supporter who allegedly tried to attack the press. He also praised his supporters for “allowing” their wives to attend his rallies without their husbands — notably at a time when Harris is leading among women by 13 percentage points — and called Florida Rep. Bryon Donalds, arguably his most prominent Black supporter, one of the “smart ones” without clarifying what he meant.
Harris, Trump and the hypocrisy in US politics
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take to kick off your week. Today the Democratic National Convention kicks off. The second of the big party conventions. We are waist deep, neck deep in the US electoral cycle at this point, and, you know, the funny thing is how both of these parties have coalesced with such extraordinary enthusiasm around candidates that most of the leaders, and when I say the leaders I mean the party elites, I mean the leaders in Congress, I mean the donors, and I mean the media, had been saying privately, and some publicly, that they strongly opposed.
So the hypocrisy in the system at the high levels is very apparent. And you know I think it's worth talking about both of these because it doesn't reflect the way the people think about the candidates but it does help to explain why so many American citizens are fed up and think the political system is broken. On the GOP side, of course, the Republican Party has lost three electoral cycles with Trump on top. They have privately said that they wanted anyone else but Trump. They'd back anyone else that was big, big money behind DeSantis and behind Nikki Haley and anyone else they could find. And you had J.D. Vance, who was saying that Trump was an opioid for the masses until he got addicted himself.
You had Nikki Haley saying that they'll definitely lose if Trump is the nominee. And now, of course, she's a full-throated endorser, supporter of his. Fox News refused to put Trump on their news. Rupert Murdoch basically banned him from interviews, and now, of course, they're fully behind him again. And it is, of course, a reflection of the fact that not only is he the nominee for the party, but he is the person that the vast majority of the Republican electorate not only wants but wants strongly. They're not interested in listening to the so-called leadership of their party telling them what they want.
The Democrats have gone through a similar process. We've heard for a couple of years now from the Democratic leaders, from the elite, from the media how Joe Biden was great and he was the only person that could be the nominee. And everyone needed to get behind him no matter what. And that Kamala Harris would be a disaster and the country wouldn't vote for her. They wouldn't support her. That she couldn't beat Trump, that her popularity ratings were too low. She was unpopular. Her staff turned over too much. The whispering campaign against Kamala Harris was extraordinary not just from Biden insiders but from leadership of the Democratic Party. From Democratic donors, and of course from the media. And now that Biden, under a lot of pressure after that disastrous debate performance and lots of other missteps, showing that he was way too old to run.
Now that Kamala Harris is the nominee, you could not find more loyalty, more engagement, more promotion of how Kamala Harris is a godsend, is the savior of the party, is going to be the next president no matter what. And you know, it's kind of painful to see that we have a group of people that have delegitimized themselves by being willing to say whatever is necessary to get in line behind the leadership. But I don't think that reflects the parties as a whole. Certainly not the rank and file.
I think that Kamala Harris is young. She's smart. She's charismatic. And she's much more popular among a lot of people. Among women. Among Hispanics. Among Blacks. Among young people in the country. She's much more personally in tune with what they want in terms of the economy. In terms of the world. In terms of Israel-Palestine, for example. I think you can say the same thing for Trump.
Also, on abortion for Kamala Harris. I think you can say the same thing on Trump. Different populations, different priorities, but same sort of sick of the party leadership and sick of the media telling them what to do. And much more in line with what he says about immigration. What he says about bringing jobs home. About tariffs internationally. Anti-trade message. Much more nativist. Much more promotes the rank and file American. Now, did that reflect what Trump actually did when he was in office? Not that much. Would that reflect what Kamala Harris would do as president or what she has done as vice president? Not that much. But nonetheless we are talking about, in my view, two candidates that frankly are now much more in step with the populations in the United States.
And I say populations. I wish I could say one population, but it's not. It's two very different groups of people that are being divided and made more and more separate every day by the media landscape. By the algorithms in particular and by the politics. But I don't think that there is much of an enthusiasm gap now. I do think you have an awful lot of people that are very excited about Trump being their president. You have an awful lot of people that are very excited about Kamala Harris being their president, and it's going to be a close race. And it's going to turn out on the basis of a small number of states. A small number of districts that could go either way. But it's going to be really interesting as a consequence.
The thing that worries me the most, and I've said this for a long time but I will restate it, is that I think there's one candidate here of the two that is not prepared to accept a peaceful transition or a loss, and that is Donald Trump. We saw that in 2020. And I fear that if he loses in November, that we're going to see it again in 2024. And I think that's dangerous. I think it's dangerous to have someone say that it's rigged if he loses and calls for his supporters to do everything they can to overturn it. That is not where we want to be as a democracy. It is a sign of a democracy in crisis. I worry specifically that the most powerful individual in the United States, Elon Musk, is fully on board with that message. Is talking a lot about illegal immigrants that are voting in large numbers, even though that's not true. Is talking a lot about the election in the US being rigged. Is promoting and enhancing that message. And on the basis of what we just saw in the UK, was promoting disinformation that led to a lot of violence and riots and saying that civil war in the UK is inevitable.
And if we see that in the United States, we're going to see the most dangerous political environment in generations. So I am very concerned about the state of US politics, about the state of American political elites, the media landscape, the social media landscape. I am less concerned about the state of the average American citizen and how they engage with politics in the country. But of course, the potential for this outcome to be manipulated and the potential for it to lead to more division, I think, is something we all should be paying a great deal of attention to. So that's it for me, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Republican U.S. vice presidential nominee JD Vance speaks at VFW Post 92 in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, U.S. August 15, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Veep debate date set, Taliban marks Afghan anniversary, North Korea reopens to tourism, Russia sentences American ballerina
3: It’s been exactly three years since the Taliban retook power in Afghanistan following the chaotic US withdrawal from the country. The Islamic fundamentalist group’s leader hailed progress in establishing strict Islamic law. Systematic human rights abuses of women and girls have led to huge cuts in foreign aid, plunging the country into a humanitarian crisis worsened by a series of natural disasters.
5: Good news for GZERO Daily readers who were forced to put their North Korean vacation plans on hold during the pandemic! The isolated autocracy is reopening to tourism for the first time in five years. The regime is starting by allowing visits to the mountainous northern city of Samjiyon — located near Mount Paektu, a volcano that is sacred in both the Korean and Chinese cultures. As ever, there is a Puppet Regime for this — see you soon on those North Korean beaches!
51.80: A Russian court has sentenced Russian-American amateur ballerina Ksenia Karelina to 12 years in prison for high treason. Her crime? Donating $51.80 to a Ukrainian charity — from her phone in Los Angeles — on the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Karelina, who became a US citizen in 2021, was arrested while visiting family in Russia last year.