Letter: Feeling good with fewer people

Sir: Why should a falling population after the year 2020 give the chancellor of the day a "feel-bad problem?" ("Feel-bad factor predicted as population falls", 22 March). A slowly falling population would naturally lead to a disappearing housing shortage and falling costs, together with falling unemployment, reduced congestion, reduced pollution, and a falling import bill. The pressures of intensive farming on food quality and wildlife could more easily be reduced. It would become possible to stop gobbling up countryside in urban "development", and much more.

Most of these are benefits in any terms. Some appear as negatives only in the false accounting of conventional economics, which measures all exchange of money as a "good", even if the "good" is the medical care of road accident victims, or scraping oil off beaches.

Christopher Padley

Green Party Population

Policy Working Group

Market Rasen, Lincolnshire