ANOTHER “NO BABIES” ARTICLE
ANOTHER “NO BABIES” ARTICLE
Post by rule62 on Jan 22, 2006, 8:25am
I seem to be seeing a lot more of these articles. Funny enough, they always seem to appear next to an article that denigrates men, or an article that talks about the great strides of feminism, or how oppressive society is towards women. These nitwits can’t make the simplest linear connections. Astounding.
Date: 2006-01-21
Time to Defuse a Demographic Bomb
Concern Is Now About Population Decline
SOFIA, Bulgaria, JAN. 21, 2006 (Zenit.org).- A number of countries have published data revealing a serious deficiency in the number of children being born. On Jan. 9 a report by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences predicted that the country’s population will fall from 8 million in 2001 to 7 million in 2020, according to Agence France-Presse.
If the current number of children being born per woman, 1.2 to 1.3, were to continue in coming decades the population could even drop to 4.5 million by 2050. Some European countries have seen birthrates increase. But others, such as Spain and Italy, are at the same level as Bulgaria.
Italy has seen a slight rise in its birthrate in the last couple of years, but the situation is still grave. According to official data, reported in the newspaper Corriere della Sera last Oct. 21, the average age of men when their first child is born is now 33. The average age for first-time fathers in Spain and France is 30 to 31.
Moreover, 40% of Italian men ages 30 to 34 still live at home with mom; the comparable figure for women is 20%.
The effects on the age structure of Italy’s population are becoming ever more evident. On Nov. 4 Reuters reported that the ratio of those 65 years of age and over to those under 15 reached 137.7 to 100 in 2004. Other European countries — Germany, Spain, Portugal and Greece — also have more over-65’s than under-15’s, but the disequilibrium is not as severe.
Russia also has serious problems. The British newspaper Guardian reported Dec. 29 that a combination of high mortality (especially for men), lots of abortions and few births has led to an almost 7% drop in Russia’s population in the last 15 years. Now at 143 million, it is predicted to drop by up to 20 million in the next two decades.
The Guardian cited a report by a business lobby group, Delovaya Rossiya, warning that the country will lose up to $400 billion in the next 20 years if it fails to tackle the population implosion.
“The deficit of labor is already being noticed,” said Andrei Korovkin, a labor resources expert. “Even with a pessimistic view of economic growth, by 2010 it will become the most serious fact limiting the development of Russian industry.”
Japan shrinking
Just before Christmas Japan announced that for the first time on record its population dropped. A Health Ministry survey showed deaths outnumbering births in 2005 by 10,000, the Associated Press reported Dec. 21. The current average number of children per woman, 1.29, is also at a record low.
Just prior to the publication of the statistics a government report warned that Japan’s population could shrink by half by the end of the century, Reuters reported Dec. 16.
“Compared with nations that have recently boosted their birthrates, such as France and Sweden, we cannot say that our nation’s policies are really sufficient,” the report said.
In South Korea, government officials are also worried about the lack of children. In fact, after decades of promoting birth control South Korea and other Asian countries are now trying to persuade parents to have more children, the New York Times reported Aug. 21.
“In the next two or three years, we won’t be able to increase the birthrate,” said Park Ha Jeong, a director general in the Health Ministry. “But we have to stop the decline, or it will be too late.”
The average number of children per woman in South Korea has plummeted to 1.19. Taiwan is not much better, at 1.22.
Not until last year did the South Korean government commit itself to raising the birthrate. “We should have started these policies in the late 1990s,” Park said, “but we had been focused on decreasing the birthrate for 40 years and it was hard to change directions.” It remains to be seen how much success the government will have in reversing fertility trends.
Aging trends
The population is also aging rapidly in Canada, announced the official body Statistics Canada. The number of people aged 65 and over will overtake those under 15 by 2015, the Globe and Mail newspaper reported Dec. 15.
By 2031, the number of seniors is expected to be 8.9 million to 9.4 million, almost 25% of the population compared with 13% now. The number of children, by contrast, is projected to be 4.8 million to 6.6 million. At the same time, the number of people of working age (15 to 64) will decline from the current 70% to about 60% in the years after 2030.
In the United States, the population is also aging. A Washington Times report Dec. 26 noted that the first of 78.2 million baby boomers, defined as those born from 1946 to 1964, are about to turn 60. And over the next 25 years the whole country will start to have an age structure like that of Florida, where 20% of the population is 65 or older.
This change presents serious challenges for welfare programs and government finances. The number of people receiving Social Security or Medicare will grow by 27 million in the next two decades, while those working, and paying taxes to finance these benefits, will grow by only 18 million.
Economic impact
“On the path that we’re headed on today,” said David Walker, head of the Government Accountability Office, a federal agency, “either there have to be dramatic changes in entitlement programs and other federal spending, or dramatic tax increases to close the fiscal gap.”
In fact, over the next half-century health and welfare benefits could reach a combined level of around 24% of gross domestic product, which is about equivalent to the entire amount of federal government spending in all sectors currently.
Aging costs were also examined recently by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. An OECD study warned that global economic growth will decline to about 1.7% a year over the next three decades, the Financial Times reported Oct. 11. That growth rate would represent a fall of 30% compared with past decades, unless older people are encouraged to work longer to offset declining birthrates.
By 2050 there will be an average of more than seven older, inactive people supported by just 10 active workers in developed economies, compared with a ratio of four to 10 in 2000. In Europe the ratio will be one to one.
Faced with these facts some erstwhile supporters of family planning have recognized their errors. Adam Werbach, former national president of the Sierra Club in the United States, published an article Oct. 5 on the Web site American Prospect Online admitting that population control policies were a mistake.
In recent years a group within the Sierra Club attempted to adopt policies against immigration, a move successfully resisted by Werbach and others. “In the population-control frame, the number of people and their placement on the planet is the root problem that needs to be solved,” he explained.
But, Werbach continued, this is not the key problem. He called upon “population activists” to change course and concentrate instead on working for improvements in conditions for women, and better health care and education. Instead of worrying about population control we need to unleash human potential, Werbach explained. A lesson many countries are only starting to learn as they face population decline.
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Re: ANOTHER “NO BABIES” ARTICLE
Post by playerintraining on Jan 22, 2006, 10:35am
Jan 22, 2006, 8:25am, rule62 wrote:
In South Korea, government officials are also worried about the lack of children. In fact, after decades of promoting birth control South Korea and other Asian countries are now trying to persuade parents to have more children, the New York Times reported Aug. 21.
You have to love this. Just 30 years ago, know-it-all progressives were complaining about a “population explosion” and how this would put a severe strain on earth’s resources.
Thirty years later, know-it-all progressives are bemoaning the fact that people actually are having fewer children!
The entire tone of the article is one of is directed toward the statist technocrat, who thinks she can control and manage EVERYTHING.
Perhaps there are just some things that people can’t be poked and prodded to do.
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Re: ANOTHER “NO BABIES” ARTICLE
Post by mamonaku on Jan 22, 2006, 10:50am
Amazing how dense some people are.
Faced with a crushing collapse of this house of cards, some people want to continue with the same social engineering that got us here in the first place. If a government IS going to engineer, please do it for the betterment of the nation and the people!!
The first rule of government is “Do no harm”. If we pass laws that discourage marriage and family, then we have no right to complain when people stop getting married and having families.
If we have programs that entitle sloth and laziness, then that is exactly what we are going to get.
This is why I can’t be overly angry at women… however Government and Feminists get both barrels.
My position would be to repeal No Fault divorce, and make sure that Men are given Due Process and Equal Protection whenever they face Family or Criminal courts. This would enable Men to feel more confident in having families and children.
As for the women, the preferential treatment they receive should cease. Women are no better than Men. Stop all of these programs and funds. The above mentioned article obviously shows that Governments CANNOT continue to be “Big Daddy” to the women of the world.
Abortion should be banned, as aborted children cannot be contributing, tax paying members of society.
Government should return to sensible policies that ensure the well being of the nation, not just the irresponsible fantasies of the few.
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Re: ANOTHER “NO BABIES” ARTICLE
Post by The Detached Lurker on Jan 22, 2006, 10:59am
Jan 22, 2006, 10:35am, playerintraining wrote:
You have to love this. Just 30 years ago, know-it-all progressives were complaining about a “population explosion” and how this would put a severe strain on earth’s resources.Thirty years later, know-it-all progressives are bemoaning the fact that people actually are having fewer children!
The entire tone of the article is one of is directed toward the statist technocrat, who thinks she can control and manage EVERYTHING.
Perhaps there are just some things that people can’t be poked and prodded to do.
“Progressivism” is basically a false, soulless pseudo-religion: a demagogic appeal to people’s self-centeredness and narrow materialism.
Progressives seek “good” results – without the effort of actually BEING good people.
It is an evil, insidious ruse responsible for the worst atrocities committed by mankind in modern history.
It led to feminism, among other things.
And it is now leading all of us towards civilizational suicide.
It is probably the greatest scourge western civilization ever spawned – and one that the world will spend many lifetimes trying to combat and contain.
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Re: ANOTHER “NO BABIES” ARTICLE
Post by antiriad on Jan 22, 2006, 1:52pm
Western countries are at this point based on a matriarchal paradigm (rather than promoting equality, women are inherently seen as more valuable to society than men). This is of course an evolutionary dead-end (as no matriarchy has ever existed for long precisely because women are biologically incapable of handling power/responsibility on a large scale). Too much time, effort, and too many resources have been invested in promoting this system at this point and those in power will never let go willingly as they were never interested in social stability and prosperity in the first place. Therefore the situation will have to deteriorate until the system collapses under its own weight; nothing else will solve the problem.
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Re: ANOTHER “NO BABIES” ARTICLE
Post by nemo on Jan 22, 2006, 3:05pm
This is actually a MUCH bigger problem than most people realize.
There are a number of demographic and political factors that must be computed to realize the scope of the problem.
1) Almost all industrialized countries have what a demographer calls an “inverted population pyramid”. In plain English, they have more old folks than young folks. To see what I am talking about, go to this site
http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idbpyr.html
and select any NATO country, Russia, or Japan. Canada and the US aren’t as bad as the other countries, but their populations are also aging rapidly.
Then choose any Islamic country, such as Pakistan. These countries have pyramid-shaped distributions, which are the norm for any growing society.
Pay close attention to the projections for 2025 and 2050. Our enemies will have many more young men to recruit as soldiers than we and our traditional allies will have.
For another viewpoint, see here
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/ageing/agewpop1.htm
2) Islamic countries have growing populations and Europe, Russia, and Japan have shrinking populations. North America is growing slowly.
3) Countries with aging populations and few young people have huge economic problems because they will have to tax their youngsters heavily to pay for the care of their elders. There will be little money and no political will to invest in defense or in scientific research to move society forward. These societies will resemble Florida retirement communities – the dynamism and fresh thinking of youth will be in scarce supply.
Here’s a quote from
http://www.junkscience.com/news/eberstad.html
Quote:Consider the possibilities for Italy, currently the country with the world’s lowest fertility level. If Italy’s current regimen is extended for two generations, almost three-fifths of the nation’s children will have no siblings, cousins, aunts or uncles; they will have only parents, grandparents, and perhaps great-grandparents. Under those same assumptions, less than 5% of such a future Italy’s children would have both siblings and cousins.
Will young people want to stay in these countries or will they emigrate?
4) The composition of the population of many countries in Europe and Russia is changing. The 23rd most common name for a boy born in the UK in 2005 was Mohammed. Germany has millions of Turkish residents.
France has a large Muslim population that rioted in 2005 and burned thousands of cars. About a quarter of the French army is Muslim. Can the French count on Muslim troops to suppress a Muslim revolt?
This problem will only get worse over time. The traditional European population has a birth rate substantially below replacement level. The Muslims in Europe have a birth rate substantially above replacement level. If current trends continue, sometime in the middle of this century there will be more Muslims in France than French citizens of European descent.
In democracies, the majority rules. France may become the first country under Islamic rule that has the H-bomb.
5) Most wars can be traced to population pressures. When a country with too many people for its resource base is next to a country with lots of resources and not as many people, they invade. Think about the Vikings a millennium ago or Japan in WWII.
The US may need to defend Europe against internal revolt and external invasion because the Europeans will be too weak to defend themselves, and the US can’t allow al-Qaeda to get its hands on an entire continent with modern factories and research facilities.
The industrialized world is heading for trouble because our women aren’t having enough kids.
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Re: ANOTHER “NO BABIES” ARTICLE
Post by Sepp on Jan 23, 2006, 7:02am
Right on nemo. You should see all the muslims in Munich and all of Bavaria now. Scary.
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Re: ANOTHER “NO BABIES” ARTICLE
Post by virginiabob on Jan 23, 2006, 7:46am
I noticed that too in Bavaria, which is kind of strange since the Germans pride themselves for this region having no change due to it’s history.
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Re: ANOTHER “NO BABIES” ARTICLE
Post by antiriad on Jan 23, 2006, 10:37am
Nemo – just one correction: the US population is growing due to (illegal) immigration, not because of internal growth. That is to say, the segment growing fastest is mostly latin americans who for the most part don’t even speak english, don’t pay taxes, and don’t spend the money that they earn here.
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Re: ANOTHER “NO BABIES” ARTICLE
Post by nemo on Jan 23, 2006, 4:26pm
I recognize that there are significant problems with our Mexican border. Last year we had more illegal immigrants into this country than legal immigrants. The “Zeta” Mexican anti-drug commandos switched sides and are now shipping drugs into the US.
But I’m not worried about Latin Americans blowing up our skyscrapers, assassinating our writers, or forming a fifth column for an invasion force. Most Mexicans and other Latinos are good people who can easily assimilate into the US. Muslims in Europe appear to be a different kettle of fish.
In the long run, if the Latinos settle here and have kids here, then by 2025 we will have a bunch of young adults who went to American schools, have US citizenship (because they were born here), and speak the same sub-dialect of MTV-inspired broken English that every other American teen speaks. This is a minor problem when compared to al-Qaeda.
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Re: ANOTHER “NO BABIES” ARTICLE
Post by antiriad on Jan 23, 2006, 4:39pm
The issue is, they don’t settle here. They don’t pay taxes, they don’t learn english, and they tend to send all their money back home. In other words, they do not contribute to the infrastructure of this country – and once they’ve made enough, they leave. These are not the people you can count on for sustaining this country. They’re the ones who were too unskilled/uneducated to get a decent job in their home countries.
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Re: ANOTHER “NO BABIES” ARTICLE
Post by antiriad on Jan 23, 2006, 4:41pm
Here’s an article by Fred Reed:
The Flow Across The Rhine-Danube Line
Seeptember 10, 2004
When I write that I like Mexico, that it enjoys much that we have lost, that Latin societies are more livable if less prosperous than ours, dismissive letters arrive. They amount to the same letter: “If Mexico is so great, how come they all want to come to the United States?” The writers invariably believe that they have made a telling point.
Mexico is not so great, of course. It has plenty of problems. But why do Mexicans swim the river? Money. Period. If asked, an immigrant will usually say that he seeks “una vida mejor,” a better life. He means “Money.”
Mexicans and gringos have distinctly different views of the United States. An American explaining the attractiveness of his country will usually say, “I have a big house in the suburbs, three cars, a home theater, and 300 channels on the cable. I can drink the water, and in the mall I can buy anything, absolutely anything.” He may talk of freedom and democracy, often having only the vaguest idea of whether he actually has them or what conditions might be in other countries.
A Mexican is more likely to say, “They are such a cold people. They don’t know their neighbors. They don’t know their children. They have no fiestas. Rules and being on time are more important to them than other people. They have no religion.” (To a robust Catholic, bland agnostic Protestantism isn’t detectibly a religion.) Democracy means little to an illegal with a second-grade education; in any event, Mexico is probably as democratic as the United States. He knows the government left him alone in Mexico, which is his definition of freedom. And mine.
But money counts when you don’t have any. It counts a lot. And so they come whether they like the country or not. Very often they do not. This is going to matter.
Now, do the “all Mexicans” of my mail want to emigrate, to attach themselves to the northern nanny’s promiscuous dugs? No. Few do. Who then are the emigrants?
For starters, they are not doctors, chemists, and airline pilots. Successful Mexicans do not want to go to the United States. Mexicans who are merely comfortable do not want to go to the United States. They like Mexico. This is very difficult to explain to most Americans, who know beyond doubt that Mexico has lesser malls. But it is a fact.
The Mexicans who go north are the losers, the failures, the barely if at all literate, those with little to offer. They go because the Mexican economy is wretched, because the jobs that left the United States for Mexico are now leaving Mexico for China. Money. The United States can run a first-world economy. Mexico cannot. Why is debatable. The fact isn’t.
While Mexicans are good people, their dregs often are not. On average the immigrants are uncultivated, uneducated, and of low intelligence. One may not mention the matter of intelligence, but it is well known among people who pay attention to such things, and has implications for the future. America is getting those Mexicans least worth getting, the least assimilable, and getting them in circumstances that do not encourage assimilation. Unlikely to prosper, they show signs of becoming another unsalvageable underclass.
Being Latins, they are not comfortable in an impersonal, technological northern European culture that values performance, competition, efficiency and punctuality. It isn’t their way. Often they plan to make money and return to Mexico; many then develop ties and remain. Yet even then they stay among their own. Their numbers as they swarm across the border are such that they can do it. If they don’t want to assimilate, don’t have to assimilate, and don’t have the wherewithal to assimilate—don’t expect assimilation.
Further, Latin Americans resent the United States for its great wealth and for their own poverty, which they tend to blame on exploitation by American corporations. Whether this characterization is correct (it isn’t) doesn’t matter. The resentment does.
Mexicans know that much of the American southwest was once part of Mexico, taken from them by force of arms. Americans, having been the victors and in any case being historically illiterate, know little of this. Mexicans do. Few know the dates or the politics, yet they have a sense of grievance, a sense that these states are really theirs. They are getting them back. They know it. They view the reconquista with the relish with which they watch a Mexican soccer team beat the US.
Their envy, their sense of inferiority and of failure, breeds hostility in the southwestern barrios. This is far less true of Mexicans in Mexico. In a couple of years in the interior, I have found people to be friendly and courteous. The only exceptions, apart from my experiences during a couple of unwise forays into seriously low bars, have involved males who clearly had spent time in the US.
Comparisons are made between Mexican immigrants and, say, Italians, a Latin people who melded well into American society. A word of caution here: Assimilation is proportional to contact. When a minority population is sufficiently large, and sufficiently concentrated, the consequence is not assimilation, but the establishment of a sort of country within a country. There are for example countless huge black regions of the cities where one can go for days without seeing a white face. Whites barely know that these places exist. The inmates are not assimilating. The same appears to be happening with the Mexicans.
Perhaps as important, past immigrants have cut their ties with their native countries, and have arrived with the conscious desire of becoming Americans. Mexicans, very often, do not want to be Americans, and the mother country is right across the border. The phrase “trans-border de facto semi-sovereignty” is not Milton. It merits thought.
Worse for America, much worse, is that far too many of them perform terribly in school. Dropout rates are very high, auguring ill for the future. Mexicans are not an academic people (as, increasingly, neither are Americans). In the barrios, their Spanish is barbarous. So is their English. Crime is high. The press will not talk much about crime, but the police know.
And—here I am on statistically shaky ground, as there are no statistics—the young too often seem to be assimilating to the black underclass rather than to the central white current. Mexican machismo and the ghetto strut of the black underclass have much in common. Rap is popular among low-class Mexican males. It is the music of defiant losers, of macho swagger and rejection of white America.
Black and Mexican won’t unite. They don’t like each other. Anger will come when the growing and better organized Mexicans take the southwestern cities from the blacks. One country, three nations, little compatibility, and no love lost.
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Re: ANOTHER “NO BABIES” ARTICLE
Post by uszername on Jan 24, 2006, 5:29am
Storm in a teacup.
Easily solved.
Follow the script that has been employed since the New World was populated.
Immigrate.
Any racial, religious, cultural or similarly specious qualifications are evidence of hidden agenda in the form of red herrings. The ‘problem’ is easy fixed. Methinks this is one of those solutions looking for a question.
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