During an appearance on "Fox and Friends First", Jimmy Failla shares his thoughts on Vice President Kamala Harris jet-setting to an event in Buffalo, York which focused on the Biden administration's green agenda. A New York Times newsletter published an article by staff editor Spencer Bokat-Lindell arguing that declining fertility rates and a shrinking population could be a good thing to help the world combat climate change. The article, titled "U.S. Population Growth Has Nearly Flatlined. Is That So Bad?", speculated that population decline may "actually bring welcome changes." "For a population to replenish itself in the absence of immigration, demographers estimate that there must be, on average, about 2.1 births per woman," Bokat-Lindell noted while pointing out that in the United States, the fertility rate has been below that since 2007.

The workforce in 2040 is projected to be 20 percent smaller than in 2017 due to overall population decline if the economy sees no growth and women and the elderly continue to have difficulty landing jobs, according to government study released Tuesday. A study group of the labor ministry, releasing the first official projection for the size of Japan's workforce in 2040, called for additional policies to boost employment and promotion of artificial intelligence as measures to sustain productivity. The study did not take into consideration the expansion of the foreign workforce in 14 fields, including construction and nursing care, from April this year. The panel on employment policies set up by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry estimated that the number of workers in Japan will stand at 60.82 million in 2025 and 52.45 million in 2040, down from 65.3 million in 2017. The number of male workers in 2040 will fall by 7.11 million from 2017, while that of females will decrease by 5.75 million.

And back to our emerging coverage of Asia/Pacific… where people tend to focus on China, India and Australia. However, the Japanese IT services market is larger than these three markets combined – and is growing. So, let's have our Asia/Pacific research lead, Andrew Milroy, discuss some of the important – and unique – aspects of this lucrative market. Japan's ageing and shrinking population creates real skills shortages and very high labor costs Japan is currently the only major developed country that is experiencing a population decline. Unlike other developed economies, it is not offsetting population decline with immigration.

Governments across the world may be fretting over the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation on employment, but Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Sunday his government does not fear the technology. Japan is struggling with a declining and aging population, and sluggish growth. Abe said AI could actually help the country to grow. "Machines equipped with AI, or machines that are essentially robots no longer perform only narrow … functions … the machines of tomorrow will be tasked with solving … (a) multitude of challenges," Abe told an audience at the CeBIT technology trade show in Hannover, Germany, on Sunday. "Japan has no fear of AI. Machines will snatch away jobs? Such worries are not known to Japan. Japan aims to be the very first to prove that growth is possible through innovation, even when a population declines," the prime minister said.

The United Nations forecasts that the global population will rise from 7.3 billion to nearly 10 billion by 2050, a big number that often prompts warnings about overpopulation. Some have come from neo-Malthusians, who fear that population growth will outstrip the food supply, leaving a hungry planet. Others appear in the tirades of anti-immigrant populists, invoking the specter of a rising tide of humanity as cause to slam borders shut. Still others inspire a chorus of neo-Luddites, who fear that the "rise of the robots" is rapidly making human workers obsolete, a threat all the more alarming if the human population is exploding. They may be the one thing that can protect the global economy from the dangers that lie ahead.