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Should government's control population sizes?

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Should government's control population sizes?
Answer: 

Both opinion from you and your friends make sense but there are some important factors missing. The decision of having one more child or not depends on how parents weigh benefit versus the cost associated with that child. The cost of having a child mainly consists of goods and time cost.

Could star NBA players some day command and receive salaries above $1 billon a year?

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Could star NBA players some day command and receive salaries above $1 billon a year?
Answer: 

Some of the highest paid pro athletes today are paid $30-40 million per year. For example, Lebron James (NBA) just signed a two-year extension with the Lakers at over $40 million/year. Just based on the 'time value of money' concept alone, if one assumes a salary of $30 million/year increases at 5.25% annually for 100 years, its equivalent value 100 years from today is over $5 billion. Even at a 3.25% annual increase rate, the future value is over $2 billion in 100 years. So, yes, it is possible star pro athletes can be making $1 billion/year, 100 years from now.

Could temporary worker visas reduce entry level employment?

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Could temporary worker visas reduce entry level employment?
Answer: 

I think the basic mechanism you describe could well be part of the complex story of how the H1-B visa affects domestic workers in IT. The H1-B visa program does expand the supply of workers for certain kinds of jobs, potentially reducing the incentive for firms to train those workers domestically, all else equal. Meanwhile, because H1-B workers are tied to their employer, employers may well prefer to train them rather than domestic workers.

Composition of the American workforce

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Composition of the American workforce
Answer: 

I found a policy report that might be a little dated (2013) but I think is probably still relevant. You can find the report here: <https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41897.pdf>

The report states that in 2013, public sector jobs accounted for 16.0% of total employment. They also have the percentages of employment at different levels of the government.

The BLS estimates employment to be ~14% in 2018 for state, local and federal government.

How does income Inequality impact growth?

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How does income Inequality impact growth?
Answer: 

1) According to page 16 item #23 "The empirical results show that inequality has a negative impact on economic growth. The baseline results are reported in columns 1 to 4 of Table 1" and then goes on to explain its reasoning why inequality negative impacts growth and says "Based on the estimated coefficients in column 1, for example, lowering inequality by 1 Gini point would translate in an increase in cumulative growth of 0.8 percentage points in the following 5 years".

Is a maximum wage viable?

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Is a maximum wage viable?
Answer: 

I am not sure there is any deep reason why a government would want to set a cap on wages. What purpose would it serve, other than to curb income inequality by lopping off the top rungs of the ladder? If that is desirable, then there may be other ways of achieving the same goal such as taxation. And who is to say that what athletes or entertainers earn is "fair" but what a CEO earns is not?

Do only wage earners count?

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Do only wage earners count?
Answer: 

The answer is no. It is not correct to conclude that Bukina Faso’s economy is supported by only 15% of the population. It is a common challenge in developing countries to appropriately account for employment and the economic contributions of a large informal sector of the economy. For example, many subsistence farmers are productive contributors to the economy but are not registered as formal employees and therefore are not properly reflected in many government statistics.

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