News Analysis by Kip Hansen – 25 May 2021
The headlines are stark and worrisome and the rhetoric even more so:
“Long Slide Looms for World Population, With Sweeping Ramifications“
“Fewer babies’ cries. More abandoned homes. Toward the middle of this century, as deaths start to exceed births, changes will come that are hard to fathom.” “All over the world, countries are confronting population stagnation and a fertility bust, a dizzying reversal unmatched in recorded history that will make first-birthday parties a rarer sight than funerals, and empty homes a common eyesore.
Maternity wards are already shutting down in Italy. Ghost cities are appearing in northeastern China. Universities in South Korea can’t find enough students, and in Germany, hundreds of thousands of properties have been razed, with the land turned into parks.”
So begins a recent article in the New York Times written by Damien Cave, Emma Bubola and Choe Sang-Hun.
The article goes on to state “Demographers now predict that by the latter half of the century or possibly earlier, the global population will enter a sustained decline for the first time.”
Wow! It’s only been fifty years since:
“The Population Bomb … a best-selling book written by Stanford University Professor Paul R. Ehrlich and his wife, Anne Ehrlich (who was uncredited), in 1968. It predicted worldwide famine in the 1970s and 1980s due to overpopulation, as well as other major societal upheavals, and advocated immediate action to limit population growth. Fears of a “population explosion” existed in the 1950s and 1960s, but the book and its author brought the idea to an even wider audience.”
Most of us lived through the 1970s and the 1980s and there was no worldwide famine. Instead, the world prospered and the West and most of Asia grew rich and human life expectancy continued to rise:
The longest record is from the UK, the world trace (brown) has been highlighted. It is this trend that has the demographers worried. People are living longer everywhere.
And people worldwide are having fewer children:
In the map below, in many places — all the countries that are shown as light yellow — are below what is known as the “replacement rate” of 2.1 children per family. Yet, there are still parts of the world with rapid population growth:
Those countries colored the first shade of orange (2-2.5) have very slightly more births than deaths, which would include most of Latin America and southern Asia (including India, Bangladesh, Burma/Myanmar, and much of Southeast Asia). The Middle East is a hot spot for population growth and almost all of Africa still has high to very high birth rates.
Here is the chart once more, with those countries with VERY LOW birth rates re-colored blue:
That one country with very low birth rates in SE Asia is Thailand.
So what’s the big deal? We’ve had censuses in both the United States and China – both “world powers”. Here’s China:
While China’s population is still growing – having reached nearly 1.5 Billion – the growth rate has been dropping and is now less than 0.5% per year. At the same time, its population is aging. “A decline in the birth rate and an increase in life expectancy means there will soon be too few workers able to support an enormous and aging population, the academy [Chinese Academy of Social Sciences] warned.” [ source ]
And in the United States:
“U.S. Population Over Last Decade Grew at Slowest Rate Since 1930s
With immigration leveling off and a declining birthrate, the United States may be entering an era of substantially lower population growth, demographers said. . . . . a remarkable slackening that was driven by a slowdown in immigration and a declining birthrate.”
Why are demographers worried? It is because they are making the same mistake that Paul and Anne Ehrlich made in the 1968:
“The change may take decades, but once it starts, decline (just like growth) spirals exponentially. With fewer births, fewer girls grow up to have children, and if they have smaller families than their parents did — which is happening in dozens of countries — the drop starts to look like a rock thrown off a cliff.” [ source – repeating the NY Times link ]
Funnily enough, the link in the article shows no such exponential spiral:
[ for larger image in a new window click here ]
The different colors refer to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals – and how population projections will change as these goals are met – or not. Regardless of the SDGs, there was no spiral of exponential growth and no spiral decline, just a steady increase or decrease. The thicker blue trace is the expected population path if we continue as we are going now – “business as usual” — with improvements in female education and contraception needs being met – again, with no exponential decrease – no death spiral of decline.
The NY Times journalists exhibit a decided lack of mathematical understanding when they use the term “decline … spirals exponentially”.
Exponential growth (or decline – flip vertically) looks like the green trace below:
The repeated mis-use of the fear-inducing “exponential” – which has been attached to every possible future disaster scenario — has led to a very loose popular definition which just seems to mean “big” — both with increases and decreases.
Yet, in the United States, there is this: The Federal government will pay people to have babies – sort of.
Looking back at the NY Times article, the authors state:
“The strain of longer lives and low fertility, leading to fewer workers and more retirees, threatens to upend how societies are organized — around the notion that a surplus of young people will drive economies and help pay for the old. It may also require a reconceptualization of family and nation. Imagine entire regions where everyone is 70 or older. Imagine governments laying out huge bonuses for immigrants and mothers with lots of children. Imagine a gig economy filled with grandparents and Super Bowl ads promoting procreation.”
Why a decline in population might require a “reconceptualization of family” escapes me — and I am used to these kinds of crazy rhetorical whims of fancy — and I can not even imagine what he authors might mean by that.
Let me point out that the use of the term “fertility” in all of this does not refer to the ability of any one man to impregnate any one woman – or the ability of any one woman to bear a child. That’s how we use the word “fertility” in everyday English – when we use the term “Fertility Clinic” – a medical establishment which helps men and women who are having trouble conceiving a child to do so. In demographics, fertility means the number of children actually being born to each woman of child-bearing age (statistically). It has nothing whatever to do with the women’s individual ability to conceive children. Fertility thus can be altered by the increasing the availability of contraceptives in a society in which women would prefer to have fewer children or increasing access to abortion. Fertility has been shown over time to be related to Standard of Living – as a nation’s Standard of Living improves, birth rate (fertility) falls.
The well-developed nations of the world have less-than-replacement-level birth rates. The still-developing nations have high birth-rates. Hidden (or, maybe not-so-hidden) in this story of concern is the specter of racism – not just white-black-brown racism, but anti-immigrant racism both in the East and in the West. As the home-grown population ages and declines in the US, Europe, Korea and Japan, the need for young workers to take the entry-level jobs needed to keep society running often requires that “foreign workers” be imported – and those workers are not “us” but rather “them”.
In the United States, for example, thousands upon thousands of immigrant laborers — both those arriving through approved, legal, channels and those illegally entering the country across porous borders — cook, clean, do yard care and landscaping, build houses, butcher chickens and pigs in slaughter-houses and harvest America’s crops – in every part of the country. Managers in almost all industries now need to speak Spanish if they are in positions which supervise laborers. I have shopped in a WalMart in which I had trouble finding a floor employee that spoke English. Over time, if our society resolves its identity-politics stance, these Spanish-language speakers will become just “my next-door neighbors, the Sanchez’s”. (I grew up in such a neighborhood in 1950’s Los Angeles – and could swear in Spanish before I could do so in English.)
It is odd to hear misanthropic progressive voices now begin to complain about low birth-rates after decades of denigrating the nuclear family and pushing contraception and abortion to fight “runaway population growth”.
Bottom Line:
There are reasonable concerns about populations falling below the replacement rate, just as there were (and still are) reasonable concerns about populations with unsustainable population growth in nations without the resources to support such large populations. .
Neither population growth nor decline, however, is a looming disaster.
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Author’s Comment:
My wife and I have four children, all long grown-up and out on their own. We consider children both as an integral part of our 50-year relationship and a blessing – to us and the world. We have two grandchildren so far and are ever so grateful for them – and hope for more.
Societies instituting anti-family policies are mis-guided in so many ways and will reap the eventual consequences.
What the world does not need is another hopped up scare – though maybe the de-population meme will encourage couples to bring children into the world.
Address comments to “Kip. . .” if speaking to me.
Thanks for reading.
# # # # #
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All 7.6 E9 people on earth today could stack easily, if somewhat uncomfortably, within half of the Grand Canyon. (Do the math.)
That’s NOT ttooo mmmannny people!!!
And that 7.6 E9 was not reached from too many bornings but too few dyings.
So, what’s the real issue?
I figure it’s a cabal of first world liberal, progressives who figure they got theirs and don’t care to share with the rising third world losers (black) who don’t add value and the violence, poverty, disease and famines of energy poverty is as effective as a bullet in the head and mass graves without leaving progressive fingerprints.
Another more potent virus from Wuhan and the overpopulation problem sorted.
The US saw a decline in the number of pregnancies during the pandemic.
MarkW ==> Yes, that’s what I understood as well — I’m not sure the stats are all in yet though.
Do stop trying to imply that funding for Wuhan research didn’t come from US sources too. It really makes me sick the way Americans lie about it all the time.
Paranoid much, or is it that your brain is just consumed by hatred.
Where did Vuk imply that none of the funding came from the US sources?
BTW, you are aware that the level of funding was small compared to the overall budget?
Why do you feel the need to imply that the US’s role was bigger than it actually was?
If it wasn’t for COVID, the extremely strong economy would given Trump a landslide win and a majority in both sides of Congress. Trump was a huge threat to both Communist China and the US bureaucracy (the “swamp”). COVID served the purposes of both the country where the research was conducted and and the US interests that funded it.
Unlikely – the Democrats would have just had to work harder to steal the election than they did.
What exactly is “unlikely?” And why?
The election wasn’t stolen. It was almost stolen by the capital riots, but fortunately congress was able to do its duty. Us conservatives will try again. Hopefully with someone a little more honest.
He did have a landslide win.
Nick Schroeder ==> The poor and underprivileged have always out-bred the rich — having far many more children, in hopes that some survive.
In the US, this is the thing that worries some people – as well as the issue of Social Security funds running out.
Social Security has indexed outlays.
Medicare/Medicaid/Obamacares have floating outlays proportional to prices, specifically progressive prices. The social meme “fat is beautiful” is a past, present, and progressive comorbidity doesn’t help.
He’s talking about there not being enough money coming in from the people working and paying for social security (or Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security here in Canada) to pay out to the ever increasing amount of retirees. The programs used to be run like a Ponzi scheme until demographics chimed in and now the pension board is actually investing the money. Hopefully the money lasts and economy survives liberal idiocy.
There is a complex relationship between social class and fertility. Birth rates for both were high before the industrial revolution. At that time birth rates of the upper class were higher than working class eg, Queen Victoria’s 9. The current situation evolved in the late 19th C.
This video is using uncommon surnames to trace social class mobility. It might be in one of his earlier talks that he goes into family size.
Kip: “Over time, if our society resolves its identity-politics stance”.
Kip, while most of your perspectives and observations here are pretty cogent, the idea that the demographic vacuum created by low fertility rates will (or could) be solved by drawing in persons from other cultures, races and nationalities will, I fear, be dashed on the rock of human nature. In fact, the concept that multiculturalism and multi-ethic societies are stable models for a nations state is still in the “experimental” phase, and it seems to me that this experiment is not going too well, anywhere.
One could reasonably argue that the concept of the Nation State itself should be re-examined – and this is happening in many spheres as I type these words – but if history teaches anything it is that the hierarchies needed to organise human affairs are only stable over time under high levels of cultural, social and political trust. To reject this notion as anachronistic, one must also “stand ready to view almost all of human history as a mistake”.
Demographic changes are now inevitable but it seems to me that, if one of the core objectives remains how to prevent serious conflagrations and suffering in the nuclear age, it is reckless to oversimplify the conditions under which future prosperity and peace are to be achieved. It seems far more likely that automation, robotics and AI can and should be put to use to maintain living standards as populations shrink rather than seeking to maintain tired, disproven economic models that place the blunt pursuit of “GDP growth at any cost” at the center of the discussion. In fact, perhaps that’s also all A.I. and automation will ultimately prove truly useful for.
Best
Peter Buchan
Paul ==> The America we see today is the melting pot — we have absorbed and integrated generation after generation of “foreigners” — not always smoothly, but we did. My maternal great-grandparents, and all of their neighbors, spoke German dialects at home on their Wisconsin dairy farms. My grandparents — their children — spoke English and the boys fought in WWI and WWII on our side. No one thinks of them as anything other than dyed-in-the-wool Americans today. It just takes time.
But it requires a society that is willing to shout down the mad identity-politics that is so popular today.
Kip – You are of course correct that, at least up until recently, the history of the US has shown a pattern of accepting immigrants from all corners – and rather peacefully and productively so. But it strikes me as inductive to extrapolate outward from this particular example. For many reasons, but here’s just one: people tend to get along when they consider themselves safe – physically, culturally, existentially, politically, strategically (consider the Pax Romana) – but history teaches that cohesion is always and everywhere contingent on at least the perception that those conditions can be maintained ad infinitum.
This is no longer the case. Less discussed is that US “peace and prosperity” was, at least in the last century, largely based on a) US dollar and geo-strategic hegemony and b) the greatest private and governmental debt-expansion in human history. In other words, lifestyle and status had very significant “artificial and imported” components. But the money is running out – fast – and the world is going (no, has gone) multipolar. Predictions that US society will fracture when that happens are proving true – at least so far.
The proposition that “all peoples will assimilate across the world because some did so in the US over 200 (extraordinary) years” seems rather ahistorical to me, if not unscientific. Unless of course some new emergent phenomenon has taken place in the human psyche that has escaped detection or description.
I fear we are in a cul de sac with overly idealistic and ideologically driven theories on capacity for unbounded cultural and ethnic assimilation. An opinion I must say I feel somewhat uncomfortable holding, let alone sharing these days, but at the end of the day I prefer making my decisions in a framework that represents the teachings of history.
Best and thanks for all the input on WUWT. Like and respect your work.
Peter
Peter B ==> These social problems are hard and complicated — maybe also complex and maybe chaotic.
Immigrants to the US over the last 200 years did not have an easy time of it, nor were they happily allowed to integrate. “No Irish need apply” — “Go home Krauts” — a million Polish jokes. But their kids and grandkids are now “us”.
It would be interesting to see a metric that rather than births, showed “reached reproductive age”. Not sure which African country it is that looks like 9 kids per family, but how many of those 9 kids survives to maturity?
Jeff –> There are metrics of percentage of population under 16 etc. Most of Africa has populations with very large % of young people.
Back in the Ehrlich period when exponential was still understood correctly, someone calculated what human birth rate resultant the earth could hold space-wise. Probably could still be found, recall that it was huge, but of course naive.
H.D. -== The whole Ehrlich period was naive — and did irreparable harm.
Yes, planned population schemes are Green in the short-term, but ultimately green. Normalizing dysfunctional orientations and voluntary “choice” was a stroke of genuine genius. Keep women appointed, available, and taxable. We have now entered The Twilight Fringe.
Hasn’t Ehrlich been incorrect on pretty much everything he predicted?
Jeff in Mesa ==> Yes, that is correct — he wasn’t — correct, that is.
I just reread population bomb last month. He extrapolated the then-decreasing population doubling rate to fill all of earth body-to-body in not many decades.
He simultaneously predicted:
1) exponential (really exponential) population growth
2) zero technological advance
3) zero political change
Did you catch the racism, and the logic flaw, right at the very beginning?
It begins with a visit to a crowded city in India. Ehrlich implies that this crowded, poorly living mass of humanity is where we all are headed.
At least Margaret Sanger built her myth on white women being pressured to have too many babies. Ehrlich scared his white audience with the spectre of brown babies overpopulating the world.
Also, India is vast, and an astounding amount is sparsely populated. He gave the impression that India was literally overflowing with people.
I attended a pro baseball game. We also were jammed together, hungry, and teeming all over the place.
Why?
The parking lot right by the stadium was nearly deserted. Only a few attendants in the same acreage.
What gives?
The ballpark was the desirable place to be.
Mumbai was and is crowded partly because it is the desirable place to be, even if poor.
You could walk, or hop a train, and get out to the rural areas. But your job prospects, and prospects of charity, and of having other resources nearby, are far better in the crowded city.
This is why we live in cities.
i have visited family, and friends in New York City. All lived in what I would say were SMALL places. Especially given the rent!
None of them live there anymore. They were there by choice, and have moved away by choice.
Aide from prison or a concentration camp, none of us id forced to be crowded into a city. We can be just as poor out in the countryside.
Can we be just as rich? That is a much greater challenge.
This is the logical flaw Ehrlich makes in his opening anecdote about “Population Bomb.”
You call it a logical flaw. That would imply Ehrlich uses logic. His recent comments clearly show he has no capacity or desire to use logic.
Logic does not play into any of the “thinking” of liberals, if it did, they would be conservatives.
“If You Are Not a Liberal at 25, You Have No Heart. If You Are Not a Conservative at 35 You Have No Brain”
I do not completely agree with that adage. I think it came from the voices of “haves” those that were well to do. I started working at 15 and became a conservative far earlier than 35, I THINK due to coming from a lower middle class family where losing a shoe in the river one spring made for problems the rest of the summer one year. I wore out a pair for flip/flops and went bare foot a lot that summer!
One year, when my parents bought a new house and we moved, the TV broke. We didn’t get a new one for more than 6 months. That was a really good thing for me personally. I spent that time reading and playing chess, etc. and developed the ability to think logically. It was at the “right” time for me, 5th grade, 10-11 years old, I went from a B-C student to A student. Amazing what a little thing like not watching the boob tube for 6 months could do.
Some would have called us poor but we had a house with AC and food. We just didn’t waste things and were expected to take care of what we had. When you think of what those on welfare have today, they have much more than we had. They must, look at the clothes, shoes, tattoos, piercings with jewelry hanging from them, cell phones, cars, TVs, smoking, vaping, drinking, drugs, etc.
I never smoked, even though my father did, because I, from the time I started working, always “costed” anything I bought by the number of hours I had to work to pay for it, after taxes. The first real job I had at a sheet metal shop, we would all go out to eat lunch on Fridays and realized lunch cost me 2 1/2 hours of work. I continued to go for social reasons, but in general I took my lunch for the rest of my working life, at least 4 of 5 days a week. That is one of the reasons we are “well off” today. Now that I am retired I still can’t seem to shake the pattern, even though investments and rental property bring in more than my pensions and social security, and I make more retired than I did while working.
I think many people that post here have much the same type of story, conservative before they were out of college, always thought what spending would cost them in the long run, etc. You know, reasonable logical people. Of course the usual disclaimer: Loydo, griff, Simon and others excepted.
I think I would change that to
If You Are Not a Liberal as a child, You Have No Heart. If You Are Not a Conservative as an adult You Have No Brain.
It seems to me the world is experiencing one giant temper tantrum.
Ehrlich merely repeated the mistakes Malthus made. Malthus lived in a city at a time when there was a movement from rural populations to urban populations for work. Malthus saw overpopulation because no-one had compensated for this movement – he failed to consider the implications for the rural areas and made too many wrong assumptions about the balance between food producing areas and residential/industrial areas. Ehrlich and others should have done some further work and corrected these mistakes but ‘bad news sells’ – he put wealth and career above all else. It’s all based on biased perceptions and false assumptions.
Folks ==> One could not overstate the misery of the slums of London — and there were and are worse places in the world today.
Well unless you include racism, we will of course all follow they Indian example: Why should we be any different?
Bit blunt and brutal Nick, but basically true.
Cheers
Mike
I had the same thought. If the average person on earth were 50Kg and roughly equivalent to the density of water… then put everyone in a blender, we would will a fish tank 724m cubed. lol. Barely a drop in the bucket. I think there would be lots of room in the grand canyon to fit everyone comfortably which is probably a better idea than mine 😉
**please do not try this at home or write a book about it**
Personally, I think we need to find a way to generate more CO2 come the day when it begins to decline and we see a massive de-greening of the biosphere. Although it is likely our geo-engineering efforts will be in vain. Every other way to make CO2 is more difficult than burning fuels.
I’m thinking one of these marine life park’s such as sea world might work as a series of tanks that size. Finding a blender big enough is the only real problem I can see. sarc (no, really!)
Knowing that plants would starve at around 150ppm and thrive at 1500ppm, you can guess how I feel about burning fossil fuels (in efficient modern plants with scrubbers on, of course!)
I have had several very slim girlfriends, and I do not think any of them were as light as 50kg.
That is 110 lbs.
A girl would have to be skinny and short and no muscles to be that light.
A man would be a skeleton with some skin hanging off.
You’re right. I thought 50Kg was a fair round-about guess. I looked this up and someone else says:
“The average body mass, globally, was 136 pounds (62 kilograms.) In North America, which has the highest average body mass of any continent, the number was 178 pounds (80.7 kg).”
This would put us at 778m cubed. Still fitting comfortably in the Grand Canyon or not so comfortably in a big fish tank.
Nicholas ==> Not from California then, huh? All of my girlfriends had trouble topping 110 (with one exception — who was “softer around the edges” than the others).
And yes, they were skinny (in some places) and short in stature (as was I) — but lovely (sigh. . . . )
My own wife was 98 lb when I met her. I have always liked petite women. But remember guys, no matter what she weighs, 1) it will change, and 2) it is NEVER a good idea to mention it!
Red94 ==> LOL and Good Advice
Running the math, everyone on the Earth could comfortably fit within Texas, at a density of the Greater NYC area (NOT Manhattan – the larger area including Long Island).
The rest of the US’ developed agricultural land would easily grow 3000+ calories per day, per person.
Using 1/3rd of the volumetric flow of the Columbia River (between WA and OR) would give everyone 100 liters of water a day.
We would need zero of the rest of the world – No Canada, Mexico, Africa, Asia, Europe, etc. Nothing on the oceans.
We’re really no over-populated, not by a long-shot. We’ve got issues with distribution of people and resources, but those are political – not scientific or engineering – constraints. And usually benefit those in power…
Rather than worry about overpopulation, we should worry about tyrants who treat their people as fodder, as simple resources to be consumed for their own gains.
I think it has been at least 50 years since I was last in Manhattan — and I hated it then! It is a dirty city, everyone seemed to be on the take. I was in military uniform and two guys attempted to relieve me of my duffel bag in broad daylight. It seems to me that cities of that density bring out the worst in people.
There are reasons that some people prefer rural living rather than crammed into high-density public housing. A world of what is possible is rarely what is desirable. A world of what is possible is a world of desperation.
While technology has provided us with gadgets, such as the computer I’m typing on, having lived during a period of time when the US population has more than doubled, I have experienced reduced personal freedoms with respect to where I can freely travel and what I can do. It is a tradeoff I’m not happy with.
Too bad Giuliani’s efforts to clean up NYC are being flushed down the drain.
John Calhoun’s experiment explains that phenomena.
I feel I must unpack that mixture of left- and right-wing positions somewhat.
In my view the #1 moral imperative is to preserve advanced civilization, while expanding it to (“developing”) as much of the world as are willing to accept it.
Economics tells us that when a country or an ethnic group gets richer, they spend more money and effort to raise the socioeconomic status of each of their kids. Thus they have fewer of them. This is happening now in most of the world, except places dominated by ideologies that oppose comfortable lives for ordinary people (Africa and south Asia).
These trends in themselves are good things, but they lead to two potential problems. One is that falling populations mean less economic growth and less tech progress (if you need this explained, read the works of Julian Simon). The second is that falling populations make rich countries vulnerable to overthrow by barbarian hordes (either from foreign countries or domestic bad-guy groups such as Antifa). A third, indirect result is that countries that have Social Security (a pyramid scheme to pay for pensions) are likely to have it go broke when the working-age population falls.
Both left- and right-wing political thinkers tend to fail to notice at least one of these threats, because they don’t think in economic systems.
My conclusion, though, is that our crisis now is in education more than in birth rate. We need a lot more people in our countries who understand the stakes they have in preserving civilization, and so will fight to do so for selfish reasons. That means, I think, subsidizing working Americans to adopt children if they won’t have them (instead of subsidizing only useless eaters to breed, as we do now). And we need to be willing to exile those with the opposite attitude, and keep them away.
jdgalt1
Precisely so. Though the article, like a supreme court case seems focused on one specific thing “exponential,” v. the general discussion about an inevitable decline for at least some decades in some geographies. America still attracts immigrants, Japan, China, Western Europe? Maybe not so much.
I wonder though about that first presumption, a moral imperative. Since “correct” morality is such a fluid construct across time and place, why worry about the future of a race once one has met up with (their own version) of their maker?
For me, it’s a more practical question for today’s people, do we build more highways, more dams, more houses we want but already refuse to pay the actual costs of, leaving more massive debt onto a declining population base that will need less of it all and will be stuck repairing it. It seems a far more likely future difficulty than the horrors of GW.
More than “somewhat uncomfortably!” An infrastructure is required to supply people with the food and water they need, and dispose of their waste products; factories are needed to supply them with the material goods they need to survive, and recreational space is necessary for them to retain their sanity. That is, the world as we know it! (One might argue that the population density of very large cities contribute to the high rates of homicide, suicide, drug use, and mental health issues.)
Such comparisons have been made by others and they all overlook that fact that people need more than just the physical volume that their bodies occupy.
An apartment complex made up of two story structures with 1000 square feet per story with walking and driving spaces between squares of structures, located in a space 500 miles by 500 miles would contain Earth’s entire population. With ONE person per 1000 square feet or single floor.
Ooh, I cannot wait to live there.
Right. Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.
“Thanks” to lockdowns, I see a lot of babies when looking around.
On the other hand we have COV-19 and the respective vaccs. Lets look, what the balance will show in a few years…..
When people are worried about their jobs, they stop having kids.
Unless the don’t have jobs, or maybe don’t have husbands. Lots of money to be had for the odd unmarried female, if she knows the system.
They also stop when they are concerned about having to go into a hospital to have children where they face exposure to the sick during the pandemic, and isolation due to “lockdowns” and the like doesn’t lead to much breeding among those not already in a stable relationship (“singles”).
well, they stop trying to have kids. However, those without a job to occupy a third of their day tend to find other activities to fill all that “free time”, which includes the activities that lead to pregnancy.
I’d say the bigger hurdle that the pandemic put in the way of people’s procreative activities wasn’t the loss of jobs but rather it was the loss of social contact. It’s kind of hard to make babies when you are afraid to leave your house and meet with the people with whom you’d otherwise engage in the intimate activities required to create babies.
Although it is politically incorrect to do so, if you compare IQ by Nation (www.nationmaster.com), you see almost an exact duplication of the figure “Children born per woman, 2019”. As a scientist I am curious what that means, maybe it is a statistical curiosity? Maybe it is a another view into population dynamics?
Ron Long ==> Modern IQ tests may not test what one thinks they do – and may simply reflect general education achievement or other wider societal features. For instance, I test very high, but have not been a huge success 🙂
“For instance, I test very high [on an IQ test], but have not been a huge success.”
I guess it depends on how you define “success.”
You have 4 children, and 2 grandchildren so far. Presumably, you raised your children to be reasonable, functional, and contributing members of society, and presumably they are. I’d call that success.
MM ==> Thank you — and I share your view.
Kip, you said,
Your unstated assumption is that there should be a relationship between ‘success’ and IQ. It has been my experience that luck plays a large role in ‘success’ — being in the right place at the right time or offering a product or service at the right time in history. I also feel that a not too overt tendency towards fraud or larceny provides an advantage in business. And then what does success mean? Bill Gates is younger than me. However, he looks older. Does his money compensate him for that? It doesn’t matter because his money doesn’t buy him the ability to age gracefully.
There is an old joke aimed at Mensans:
Q: If you are so smart, how come you aren’t rich?
A: Because I’m smart enough to know that there are things in life more important than money.
Clyde ==> Measuring success, like many other things, depends on the yardstick.
Venn diagrams are much more useful than “averages” when comparing normally-distributed characteristics of populations. The amount of overlap in physical and mental characteristics by country (and race) is quite enlightening.
hiskorr ==> Share links to illustrate?
In my years of observing people, I have come to the conclusion that drive is more important than intelligence when it comes to determining who is the most successful.
MarkW ==> Are you getting personal? (lol)
There will always be those who’s first priority is not advancing their careers.
Some of these people end up making the world a better place for their having been in it.
Jonas Salk
Indeed. I have a friend, who has a degree in I think engineering, who made a career out of software till IBM laid him off and he found himself unemployable. Yes he lives a comfortable middle class existence…but his brother who left school without any qualifications. started playing golf, and worked in a car showroom as a salesman. Pretty soon he was running a business hiring out prestige cars to snobs, is on his 3rd trophy wife and is a multi millionaire.
You just have to want ‘success’ enough
IQ measures one specific thing. The ability to do abstract inductive reasoning – to find and recognise patterns. It is a rare and useful skill, but its not the only one one can have…
Leo ==> Quite right. I knew a side-walk mechanic in the Dominican Republic that could intuitively fix any machine as long as it was mechanical. (Not electronic). squatting on the sidewalk wearing a white dress shirt and never getting a drop of oil on his clothing. Less than sixth-grade education.
In fact, that almost exactly fits the description of dyslexics. And oftentimes they can’t even read, but if they can’t fix a mechanical device, it can’t be fixed period!
Red94 ==> And he was a great guy too….
In America, IQ is well correlated with success. There is also an IQ (I think it’s 80) below which the army won’t accept a recruit because that person won’t be able to do anything useful. Remember McNamara’s morons?
So, it’s interesting that there are countries in Africa where the average IQ is 59. The thing is they are functional countries. Pictures of those places aren’t full of drooling knuckle draggers. People work and earn livings. (Americans with an IQ of less than 59 are unemployable because it takes so long to train them to do anything and if the job changes even slightly they have to be retrained.)
It’s pretty obvious that there are societies where IQ tests are not a valid measure of mental ability.
Not sure how you define success but the link between income and iq is not that strong’, e. g., (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070424204519.htm). Just look at Bill Gates. And just to head off snarky remarks, I am neither low iq and rich nor high iq and poor.
I think “work ETHIC” is more important than pure intelligence. But if you combine both, you get more success when measured in $ per hour of effort.
You Yanks measure everything in terms of money.
IQ is a facility for understanding and solving abstract problems. Making money is only one such abstract problem. As a child I was told I had a massively high IQ but it was only when I applied myself to the boring problem of making money, that I did. Make money.
And it was extremely boring and hard work I can assure you
Leo ==> I spent my youth first chasing a Cause, then raising a family while homesteading in the foothills of the Adirondacks. Late in life I lucked on to a high paying job with IBM for which I was decidedly not “qualified” but was very very good at — doing work I loved. Retired for the last time at 54.
Then I had the assets to run off to the Caribbean and do humanitarian work for a dozen years, paying our own way.
Its been a good life and I am thankful everyday for everday.
What do you mean, not a success? For most of your life you have been able to do pretty much what you want, sounds like a rip-roaring success to me!
Red94 ==> Ask my (now passed) Mother-In_Law . . . .
If you consider just the effects of iron deficiency aenemia in childhood on later IQ, you can explain a great deal of the relationship between health and IQ. Add to this various paracites and inadequate nutrition, the lower IQ’s in Africa are at least partly explained.
Modern IQ tests are either EEG in-phase Alpha Waves, based on watching a spotlight on a wall, or functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, which shows how coordinated brain activity and communication is, and they correlate perfectly with historic test methods. I was in Basic Training in the Army in January, 1968, with McNamara’s Ten Thousand (see McNamara’s Morons, above), and I am certain that the low IQ (measured by standard military GT tests, which results are accepted by MENSA) conscripts are not able to deal with modern technology-based cultures.
Interesting. I had not heard anything about these Modern IQ tests. I looked them up and could find nothing about them. Where did you hear about these and could you post a link? Thanks
StevenF, I found 2,210,000 results in 0.59 seconds. Here are a few:
Every trendy philosophy of the day includes a directive to undue family and relationships, and to break down society to individuals. Gramsci, when trying to figure out why Marxism was dead in its tracks, proposed among other things that the family essentially needed to be redefined. And of course recent aberrations of Marxian/Gramscian social philosophy– namely BLM, Antifa, the “anti-racist” cadre, and the multitude Far Leftists– have taken it further by declaring that the family unit itself needs to be taken apart (because it’s racist). Consider that in early 2020 and prior, the BLM website stated that the family unit needed to be deconstructed.
We live in a world where unless parents basically raise their children cut off from the world, young girls grow up and into a society where families are viewed as undesirable. And young boys grow up and into a society where they are told they are the enemy for having held back women forever and that they can only by lazy, drunk, abusive human beings.
leowaj ==> The attacks on and the attempts to destroy the family through legislation will bring untold misery.
“Gramsci, when trying to figure out why Marxism was dead in its tracks…”
You’re on the right track, but are following a red herring.
Gramsci was a nobody, with no influence or effect on anything, anywhere. He was a regional (Italy) communist Comintern flunky. He attended one Comintern conference in the USSR, returned to Italy, was promptly arrested and imprisoned. In prison, he jotted down what he’d learned from the actual master operator and planner of Comintern covert influence, Willi Muenzenberg, and others. Gramsci died in prison. Someone discovered his jottings, and published them. The secret plans to subvert the cultures of the opponents of the Comintern were not Gramsci’s. The fact that he wrote down what he’d learned at the feet of the masters does not make the plans/strategies/tactics “Gramscian.”
If you’re interested in making connections between the anti-Normal belief systems in the USA today and Comintern covert operations against the USA, you would want to explore Muenzenberg, not Gramsci.
Full details: http://www.willingaccomplices.com
Excellent, thank you. There’s a load of agonizing history I’m slowly making my way through. Gramsci is in the list but well down the road. I’ll make a course correction.
I had friends who supported BLM without bothering to read their mission statement. Once made aware, they quietly removed their yard signs.
KevinM at least you have friends with some sense of integrity. Most people I’ve encountered simply ignore it or excuse it.
Modern Family with “benefits “.
Isn’t it interesting as societies reach a certain level of affluence, that forces fundamental to who we are as creatures work to our benefit as individuals and as societies, without the need for government limitation on our freedom as individuals?
It’s a shame we not only suffer, but continually promote, people who believe “doing something good for the world” means forcing people through government action to behave the way THEY think is best when such people are demonstrably proven wrong again and again.
As the Founders of the US understood, government — and very specifically limited government — is needed for healthy societies. Their ideas on what government should be limited to doing and why those limitations are needed still have the force of a deep understanding of human nature. Sad it seems all-too-easy to lose that understanding even while the data demonstrating it continually stares us in the face.
Meisha ==> I taught a group lesson on the US Constitution recently, based in the idea that it is intended to require and protect individual moral agency.
Ehrlich in population bomb proposed a Bureau of Population and Environment (BPE) to develop anti-child tax policy plus federal economic incentives for abortion and sterilization. This was in the 1970s.
I see from a quick web search that he still had a child. Hypocrite.
I believe global peak child, under 15yo, was reached around 2005.
Hans Rosling made some entertaining videos on population and he was around to see peak child.
Female education is the best contraceptive. I guess they learn how to avoid pregnancy or, more importantly, are no longer dependent on males.
RickWill ==> As with all things “global”, global may not be the most important way to look at it. There are many countries that are aging out and other countries in which the population under 18 is a majority.
And there has been a growing backlash against immigration from one to the other. The global free market view was that employers and jobs would attract immigrants with the right skills and the whole system would balance out. This failed to account for the employers who preferred to move to where the workers were (cheap labour) or for societal concerns about immigration.
The big problem isn’t the number of people, or even the aging population per se.
It’s the aging population who are living off of social programs and not working any more.
All of the finances for things like Social Security are based off of people dying at fairly predictable ages, overall. The problem is that a lot more people are living past their financial expiration dates.
The actual “population bomb” would be if someone comes up with a good anti-aging treatment, causing a much larger number of people to live healthy lives past 90 or even 100 instead of dying. If the over-90 population goes from the 2% or so it is now to 10% or even 20%, Social Security can’t work as currently structured.
cirby ==> Yes, in the US and Europe, the retired living on SS are a concern. However, many of the retired in the US do not depend on SS for their maintenance. For instance, my wife and I consider our SS income as “pin money“.
From what I have read, SS was never intended to be someone’s sole income on retirement. It was intended a supplement to personal savings and pensions.
My personal plans do not include anything from SS as I’m pretty sure that when the trust fund goes bust in another decade or two, the first thing the socialists will do is exclude from SS anyone who has any form of private retirement income.
The phrase I read years ago was “To help make your golden years golden”.
As I hope many of you know, the “retirement” age of 65 was based on life expectancy analysis that 1/2 of all who paid into the system would be DEAD by 65. If they adjusted the retirement age continuously from the inception of the system, there would be no problem with the “fund” now. But that continuous moving of the goal posts would have cost Democrats way too many votes.
Indeed, not only was it not intended to be someone’s sole income, it was not intended for today’s life expectancies, let alone tomorrows.
Wealth is concentrated in the hands of an elderly minority. It is invested in stocks and bonds. If you believe in capitalist market economy, the minority of them more than makes up for the majority.
The children of upper-middle boomers eagerly awaits the asset transfer… most will reach retirement age first.
Revving up for the next scare to keep humanity in line when the climate scare collapses around their ears.
It’s worth arming our kids with this information though. However, judging by the German example, investing in houses as a long term investment still shouldn’t be a bad decision as excess, old housing stock will just be bulldozed.
However, what we are being warned of in the UK is that if we don’t upgrade our homes with insulation, HeatPumps instead of Gas Boilers, and (what they don’t tell you) whole house ventilation which will cost the owners of modest homes up to £100,000, it will be made illegal to sell your home!
Imagine that. A government telling people who have spent their hard earned cash on buying a house they are subject to government interference as to what they do with their property!!!!!
Hot Scot ==> I’d like to hear from readers in Germany about the “bulldozed towns to make parks” idea — is it true or are there a lot of other factors — not population — involved.
The Green Madness on heating etc is going to play havoc with the market for those old thatched-roofed cottages.
I show my kids doom news from respected publications whenever I can. I tell them remember what they see, watch the definition of words evolve and watch goalposts move. They were smart enough to laugh at the Times Square countdown clock.
I was upset when An Inconvenient Truth found its way into High School classrooms. Now I wish it were required watching. Greenland was expected to be bare by now. That man was a few thousand votes from being the president of the United States.
Real question is, would that idiot have been any worse than the one we’ve currently got?!
The first chart looks scary, but it’s almost entirely due to people living longer. As the second chart shows, the decrease in fertility started over half a century ago.
The increase in longevity is slowing down as modern medicine has started to reach even the most remote places on the planet.
I’ve been saying that peak people will occur during the 2030’s for years now, and I’ll stick with that prediction.
MarkW ==> Well, Demographers generally agree with you — at least for “total population”. 2030-2050 or so. Africa and the Middle East however are still popping ’em out like mad.
For the most part, those places that have high birth rates, are also areas with low population density.
I’m not sure that’s entirely correct. There should be a way to normalize this… places with higher birthrates are also the less developed areas, consequently their healthcare can’t be as good so this reduces their average life expectancy, ergo they would have to have a higher birthrate just to stay even with the rest of the world. So count a birthrate, times the life expectancy of that infant? and call it a production of person-years? I mean, the flat number given as “replacement rate” is not exactly the same the world over, is it?
Biden’s new health advisor has already thought about this issue … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jqm9-zd-pFk
So John just how stupid are you? You sound like an eight year old.
I share Biden’s medical advisors view on personal health decisions. In fact my wife and I both provided our wishes in a legal document. We did this based on ill advised medical treatment for her mother. It nearly killed my wife.
at a
There is a problem of old people taking care of even older people.
I am 71. My quality of life took a decided down turn when I started CPR on my wife.
I am blessed with children and grandchildren who care about me. I just bought a new sail for my boat and drive a convertible. I get regular exercise and routine checkups. I do my best to enjoy the time I have left.
However, I am not doing cancer treatment to get a few more months if that is my fate. Not a bad one either because I can say goodbye.
My view of Covid-19 sweeping through nursing homes is that it was a blessing. Keeping family out and allowing the old to die alone was cruel and unusual punishment.
I did bedtime stories and hugs. If I am really lucky, the grandkids will get back to school and bring home the flu many years from now.
I just love the way some people associate any concern regarding illegal immigration with racism.
MarkW ==> Racism is the word of the decade and few people have any real understanding of the social and psychological underpinnings.
No one likes to see their comfortable culture disrupted by a massive influx of people “not like us”. Never have.
No one has a right to take from you what is rightfully yours and give it to anyone else — especially those who “are not like you,” do not like you, and are brought in to replace you.
And in reality, their definition of “not like us” is not really all that restrictive! What they’re hoping for is someone who is willing to work, thus contributing to this society they have moved into, and not someone who expects this society they have moved into to take care of them. An offshoot of that would be, people are looking for immigrants who would vote-like-us also! Other than that, the rest is negotiable, even if their cooking smells funny.
Quote:””It is odd to hear misanthropic progressive voices now begin to complain about low birth-rates after decades of denigrating the nuclear family and pushing contraception and abortion to fight “runaway population growth”“”
What’s described there is ‘The Modern Way’
What are effectively people who have ‘switched off brains’
Folks who are so chock full of Good Intentions.
Folks who ‘worry’ for the sake of ‘worrying’
Folks who find comfort in ‘worrying’
Folks who cannot think for themselves any more and don’t want to think
(Yes, I’ve just described the entire readership and editorial boards of both the Grauniad and the BBC)
Folks who panic and frighten easily
But also, they find some bizarre happiness from denigrating everyone else.
Do we see now how the Make America Great Again came unstuck.
This grotesque Puritanical monster reared up and flattened it before America could get very.
Trufax:
In the village near me and since moving here 5 years ago, I’ve become vaguely acquainted with 6 children at ages less than 11 years.
(My house is over half-a-mile from the village, I keep myself to myself as I always have done)
I only know these kids as those of my farmer-neighbour (we have sooooo much Agriculture in common) and folks who use the lane past my garden as a dog/kiddy/pram/exercise walking track
Of those 6 kids, 5 (five) are mentally disabled. Four with Autism to varying degrees and one, the farmer’s eldest son, is a perfect classic case of Down’s Syndrome
I really do seem to have landed in a Cuckoo’s nest.
I’d suggest that young girls, the intelligent ones who were breast-fed babies and fed saturated fat up to age 12, are also seeing that.
They are scared shitless of delivering babies like that.
They are scared of the stigma and grief they’d get by breast-feeding and thereafter making meals using butter, lard and offal for their growing children.
Because, and what was The Very Basis of Romance, the girls know that for them to be healthy and for them to thus deliver healthy babies, they need to eat Saturated fat and Animal Protein. NOT especially ‘meat’ either.
Yet those things are perfectly and completely demonised by the Puritans
The turkeys vote for Christmas
That, I would assert is where The Babies have gone
So, why don’t the girls eat fat?
The Cause?
‘We’ were just talking about that recently – all it takes is one belligerent self important ‘creature’ (a-la Lysenko and usually male) to dominate the science.
As Ancel Keys did in the 50’s
It’s interesting how the depopulation bomb is used as an excuse for allowing more illegal immigration. Politicians on both sides of the aisle often claim we need more workers coming in to fund the Social Security benefits of our ever increasing number of retired and soon-to-be-retired boomers.
I think the better answer is reform. Reform our social safety nets. Reform immigration so it benefits ordinary Americans. Reform the “Schiffhole” countries illegal immigrants are fleeing.
Jeffery P ==> There are a lot of opinions on immigration — both as to need and solutions.
The US has always welcomed those willing to jump through the hoops to immigrate here legally. And in the Southwest, turned a blind eye to immigrant season farm workers.
Ehrlich deserves a citation in the Guinness book for holding the record in getting most things wrong in one life time.
dmanfred ==> Collectively, CliSci is challenging that record.
In all fairness, Ehrlich achieved this goal pretty much by himself. (He did have some unacknowledged help from his wife) CliSci on the other hand is a group effort.
I don’t know – how does he rank against Krugman?
“Children per woman”
Oh, Kip, no no no. Didn’t you get the memo? It’s now “Birthing Person”.
Jeff ==> I have been in a ‘birthing room” and seen “women birthing” –Unfortunately, I have seen a female child birthing a child. I have yet to see a man birthing a child.
Banned for life!
careful, that kind of talk will get you labeled a transphobe and then cancelled.
John ==> Labelling people is one of the BIG problems of the day. Of course, I am grown-up now, and can speak my mind without fear and trembling at what the “other kids” might say.
I very much agree. My comment was a potshot at the labelling left and their cancel culture, not a shot at you. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
John ==> Yes, I understood that . . . and have been labeled almost every bad thing by the slandering anti-skeptic crowd, so a little more wouldn’t hurt me.
I don’t mind being labeled something I truly am — but dislike the “very woke” practice of labeling everyone who doesn’t agree with every aspect of their new intellectual order as racist or a denier (f whatever), or an insurrectionist.
I believe the correct term du jour is “birthing parent”.
Feminists cried. Masculinists cheered. Democrats brayed. Planned Parent/hood will relieve our “burden “. Social progress… one step forward, two steps backward.
Solution for depopulation…. rev-up to massive propaganda machine that we are currently so familiar with, to sell the narrative: ‘marriage is great and babies are so nice and envy worthy’. ‘look how lonely and behind the times you are over there playing with your phone,(how good does a phone feel BTW?).. when you could be happy with this guy or girl and a delightful bundle full of bambinos?’. Frankly, this narrative would be a true narrative because, marriage is great and so are babies. My wife is cute and so are my teenage children. LOL. Just plaster us with Images of lot’s of beautiful young and not so young couples having beautiful babies in a utopian world. This would rocket our our deplorable birth rate to the moon. What could bring more joy than a monster post pandemic babyboom. It is just what America needs, (hey we still are the USA,… America….wow!). Hey Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and all you Billionaire Tech Oligarchs… cash is far more compelling than climate dystopia….. a giant big baby boom would just makes you bigger! If the dystopia propaganda worked so well, a utopian approach will work even better. It’s all about images and music. But instead they will sell us the opposite, dystopian over populated world and open boarders and the end of the world anthropomorphic climate apocalypses Hey bring on the pandemics, we are going to have babies!! Geez do some fun brainwashing for a change! LOL I talk to people who are convinced the world is over populated. These are the same people who heralded Roe vs Wade, and warned of a American population of over 300,000,000 by 2020. well we are at 320,000,000 not because of indigenous procreation but due to immigration anarchy. Immigration is a good solution to depopulation but even the immigrants when they arrive, stop having babies at a replacement level. Smartphones are part of the reason…they just feel soooo good because the action is the distraction and no one really acts like they want brain power. But in reality the virtual life is far more boring than life in the 1950’s and 1960, 1980’s and pre-cell/internet 1990’s.. Virtual life is boring life but babies are never boring. LOL
My eldest was approaching 8 years old when it gradually began to dawn on me, when it comes to leaving my mark on the world, I probably couldn’t have done anything more impactful than fathering children, my DNA will live on in them and their progeny long after I have gone! Anything else, even if I wrote a best-selling novel… can you name anyone who wrote a massively successful book 200 years ago? In the arts, the oldest know sculptures may be thousands of years old, but can anyone tell you the name of the actual artist that carved that statue from the block of granite? And paintings last only a few hundred years at most (unless they’re cave drawings) and I always heard that an artist is neither famous nor commands high prices until after he dies. In the sciences, even Isaac Newton is frequently questioned, and frequently found wanting. But my DNA will live on through my children, for all eternity!
Red94 ==> Parenthood is part of our purpose and destiny, for most of us. You can;t do anything more important than be a good husband and parent.
Why are they reporting this as a bad thing? Isn’t this exactly what they’ve wanted?
Or they either never knew what they wanted, or (more likely) they just want a way to create more panic.
No. It’s about pushing “immigration” to replace the current undesirable population.
Ok
So the NYT is fully on board with climate alarmism/advocacy, crazy train left the station long ago.
Reducing the human population is the OnLY way there is going to be a real drop in CO2 emissions.
So why are they complaining?
Why not instead advocate cheap reliable energy for Africa so they too can get rich and switch from red to yellow to blue in the population growth charts?
Maybe the right hand should be aware of what the left is doing?
Their “problem” is the building anti-immigration sentiment. Since WWII, the push has been to bring in “immigrants” to replace the declining native population, and to “take care of” the elderly dying off.
And that produces “numbers” for the rulers, but destruction for the original, rightful population.
Just ask a Swede living near Malmo, or anyone in Europe having unrestrained experiences with the unrestrained “immigrants” destroying their countries.
Just ask why Poland and Hungary, for example, have chosen not to continue on with that policy of “immigrants” to replace and “care for” their aging population. And Hungary is rewarding her people for having children to re-populate their country, and make it stronger and better.
The lie of “diversity is our strength” is obvious if you choose to actually see it.
Aspirational society young adults will not clean toilets, sweep the floor or empty bins. Your narrative is somewhat one sided and incomplete – it does not account for the immigrants doing the work that the young adults think is beneath them.
When you use an incomplete narrative and cherry-pick the information you want to convey you can understand how this could be misconstrued as racist or anti-immigrant, can’t you? And yes there is a clear difference between being anti-immigration and anti-immigrants.
Richard ==> Yes, and most people are all for controlled, legal immigration — support those following the rules who come here wanting to join American society and become Americans inspirit and in fact. Particularly, they want their children be to Americans in that sense.
That’s what my great-grandparents did.
And who taught those “aspirational society” young adults that cleaning toilets, sweeping floors, or emptying the trash is “beneath” them? Who among those “aspirational society” young adults thinks ANY job other than a top managerial job, complete with yacht, isn’t “beneath” them?
Who in a Starbucks cleans the toilets and empties the trash? The baristas. Who in a MacDonald’s cleans the toilets and empties the trash? The everyday and everynight staff. Often even the general managers.
Because even “immigrants” won’t do those jobs, but find other ways to finance their lives via the very-generous U.S. government, MacDonald’s and others are investing in automated order-takers and hamburger flippers and bag-stuffers.
And have you happened to see any of the surveillance videos of “the knock-out game,” or those compassionate care-takers in nursing homes? Are you looking forward to getting so old your maybe-willing family members won’t be able to personally take care of you, and their only option is to put you in a care facility?
What happens if you lose your income, dominoing into losing your home, your other property, except maybe some clothes and a blanket, and if you have the presence of mind, grabbing that old camping tent, so you can set up housekeeping on a sidewalk or in a public park, or under the proverbial freeway overpass?
None of those “immigrants” is going to rush to your salvation. They’re not going to clean up your toilet on the sidewalk. They’re not going to fix you hot meals, bring you a cup of water or coffee. They’re not going to try to get you off drugs that they may even be supplying.
But they will and do compete for every government hand-out. And are far more likely to get it than you, a white westerner born and raised in the U.S.
Whatever race an immigrant might be, chances are they’re not of White European extraction. They aren’t going to identify with White European beliefs and culture; they bring their own, which they put above the host culture’s.
Few non-White European “immigrants” assimilate; they gravitate to their own enclaves, where the host culture’s laws, mores, and customs and practices are rejected.
“Cherry-picking” just the most recent examples from Europe and places in the U.S., it is plain to anyone honest that this program of “diversity immigration” is meant for anything BUT cleaning toilets and emptying trash in the host culture.
Yes, I am against “immigration” of any sort now. And if and when “immigration” again becomes something with probable benefits over risks to the host culture, then reason and facts indicate that immigration should only be of people like the host culture.
Oh, wah if that is not “nice” or “inclusive.” It’s truth, and it’s reality. No cherries to pick.
If non-White European peoples are so wonderful and equal to White Europeans, then they can best serve their own people by actually being as good, and make their own cultures and countries as good as White Western civilization — or BETTER!
BE the country and culture others want to go to, instead of trying to invade and destroy the ones better than theirs. And let every country with its own peoples and culture(s) respect every one else’s.
And more power to them.
No one, especially under color of “government,” has a right to take from you what is not theirs and give it to someone else, no matter how “deserving.” Every immigrant should be allowed into the host country only by personal invitation of a personal sponsor who will provide for them and help them get successfully and productively integrated into their host culture, and who will take responsibility for their invitee in cases of failure to integrate successfully, and/or commission of a crime.
If such personal responsibility and expectations on both sides were the criteria, things would be a lot better for all concerned.
This is not directly related to your excellent article but I found the list intriguing. It shows the number of people from 1-6 per household by country. About 40% of the households in Finland and Norway have a single individual. Afghanistan leads the way (76%) for greatest % of households with 6+ individuals. There are all sorts of correlations and fascinating aspects about demographics and income and culture that can be explored with your data and similar data to that in this list.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_households
cerescokid ==> Interesting link — Thanks.
One take-away from the concern about declining birth rates is that if it comes to pass, then there is another argument for the RCP 8.5 scenario being improbable.
SARS-CoV-2, almost certainly developed in Wuhan, China, removes primarily the elderly from the population. Conveniently, COVID19 takes the burden off socialist governments that won’t be able to fulfill their promises given a shrinking population. It was always a Ponzi scheme.
“Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline” by Darrell Bricker & John Ibbitson | February 2019
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1984823213
From the Amazon.com webpage:
Funny, that sounds just like an advertisement for uncontrolled immigration, open up the borders and let everyone in! There have been others in this thread who have much better made the point, but let me try it again this way: If we don’t maintain our national identity, we won’t have a nation either!
The Progressive’s dilemma:
The population “explosion” is the primary fuel for their panic about global warming, carbon “pollution”, actual pollution, deforestation, water scarcity, resource scarcity, economic “inequality”, species extinction (“the sixth mass extinction!”), world hunger, and so on.
To fund all their Big Government “solutions” for their mythical problems, they need more taxpayers, but with the predicted decline in taxpayers, how are they going to fix those problems?
Will it occur to them that as the population declines their “world problems” solve themselves…without the benefit of their erudition and enlightened policies?