I haven't run the math either. It's plausible but probably depends on how many people the Spanish Flu actually killed. Low end estimates are it killed 2% of the global population, high end estimates at 5%. If on the high end, that might have been enough with wars for a one year drop in pop growth

But I haven't actually run the math. It's possible the combination of conflicts like the US Civil War and Taiping Rebellion (and others) might have led to an annual decline in human population here or there. That kind of contender could include Spanish Flu plus the various wars of 1918 and 1919

By 1800 the global population had hit 1 billion which meant as a species our populations were large enough (with growth rates high enough) that a sudden loss of a few million in one year on one continent would be made up for by births somewhere else.

As bad as it was, the American Civil War was nowhere near bloody enough to flip global pop growth. That conflict had a death toll of about 750,000 in 4 years. The Taiping Rebellion in China (1850-1864) had a death toll of 20-30 million and even that might not have been enough to backslide pop growth

On the later I don't know if their brutality was sufficient to actually cause a decline in the global human population (I haven't looked into the data) but I would consider it possible

Agreed, that would make sense. The other two sufficiently large mass death on at least a continental level that I can think of as potential candidates would be the mid 500's (combination of plague and famine similar to Black Death) and maybe 1200's with Mongol conquests.

Wouldn't be the first time since Toba. Global populations definitely fell during the mid 1300's because of the Black Death. Of course some parts of the world weren't impacted at all (ex. Americas, Australia) but the areas that were impacted were hit so bad it pulled the whole global population down.

I know they aren't related, but Trumps economic policies are already tanking the rest of the economy so when the AI bubble bursts there won't be other parts of the economy that can partially absorb the damage. Instead the AI bubble is hiding how much trouble the US economy is already in.

India is deceptively large (7th largest country in the world, though still only a third the size of China). But the biggest factors are India has, by some measures, the largest total amount of arable land in the world and China's One Child policy put a massive cap on that countries population growth

I hadn't given it much thought before, but those ten nations have roughly 56% of all people on Earth

I'm happy to hear that! Thank you for shinning a light on this

Any kind of job can be a good paying job with more worker bargaining power and less corporate power. Those should be the focus. Not "what kind" of job it is. All jobs worth doing are worth a living wage.