Just a couple of quotes:
Governments the world over are discovering that the river of money is not endless. That seemingly-inexhaustable mountain of wealth has been turned into an ocean of debt that will take decades to pay off. The spendthrift habits of the Western nations will put burdens on our children, and other generations not yet born, that should outrage us as a people. We are investing in the old rather than the young, and are punishing risk-taking and entrepreneurship rather than rewarding it. Our tax regimes seem to be deliberately crafted to kill innovation and long-term thinking. (What does "legacy" mean if the wealth I have accumulated in my life cannot be passed on to my children or heirs, but is instead eaten by the all-consuming government?) Young people -- young families -- are the foundation upon which Western Civilization is built. Neglect them, overburden them, cheat them, and you are committing societal suicide.and
One measure of how self-destructive Europe has become can be seen in the birthrate. In developed countries like France, the birthrate among natives has plummeted to below the replacement rate (though some dispute this). Among immigrants who share little cultural affinity with the French (or are actively hostile to it), the birthrate has soared. What this means in 20 or 30 years is that what is "French" (or "English" or "American") will be determined by those same children. The same goes for Spain, for Portugal, for Germany, for England -- indeed, for the entire continent. (America at least has a positive population growth, albeit not by much. And our immigrants are also outbreeding the natives by a wide margin.) Demographics is a game of last man standing: the people who make the laws 20 or 30 years from now are the babies being born today. If you don't produce children, you have no voice in the future.Not very cheery. But seeing the problem is a start in fighting it.
This a good article especially with all of the protest going on in France at the moment. The philosophy/system of Communism will have won its victory of conquering the West--it infiltrated its culture and education system, although it will not be a victory as it will collapse under its own weight. From what I have read, a global-economic collapse will happen in the future, probably in my life, and this will force this system that is spoken of in the article upon system all of us. Although things could turn out differently.
ReplyDeleteI think the article's description of England and France's welfare state describe America also, "We see our future playing out in England and France right now. Only our upheavals are going to be much larger and more violent than theirs. Our population is larger, more diverse, and more polarized; our politics more fraught; our debts and obligations massively larger. Our passions are harder to rouse, but once aflame, take a long time to burn out."
The article also describes the problem of cultural rot, Entire generations of citizens have been born and grew to adulthood in a land of a debased civil society, outlandish political promises and a hidebound, near-moribund private sector. A country with "free" healthcare, a generous welfare system where it was often more remunerative not to work, and a private sector so sclerotic and union-infested that a structural unemployment rate of 8-10% was accepted as perfectly normal. Young people pursue endless, meaningless degrees (using state-provided funds more often than not) and have basically given up on the antiquated notions of marriage and family, to say nothing of religion. (No building in England is so empty as a Christian church nowadays.)
Also the simple fact that the status quo can not last, "An increasing number will draw public-sector pensions, Social Security, and medical insurance (Medicare/Medicaid) in amounts that far exceed what they contributed to those plans. Half of the US population, in short, lives not by the fruits of their own toil but by the (coerced) charity of others, as filtered and distilled through the hand of the government. This can not -- it can not, by the laws of economics and simple physics -- continue. The mathematics of the problem trump even philosophical issues of fairness, of governance, of ethics or law. The mathematics simply will not allow it."
Communism/socialism /the welfare state is its own worst enemy and always leads to collapse. The sad thing is that this is a global problem that is not confined to national boundaries. The question is what will this collapse lead to and what will happen in the transition phase?
Where will this lead? "Which brings us to America. Do we have the will to climb out of the gargantuan hole we have dug ourselves into? It remains an open question. I find encouragement in the rise of the Tea Party, but discouragement in the sweeping victory of Barack Obama. Half of my fellow citizens would prefer to bleed the body politic until it dies; as long as they do not outlast the flow of money, they care nothing for what comes after. But I care about legacy, about culture, and about the whole idea of America as a place where you can go as far as talent and ambition can take you. The unfortunate fact, though, is that much talent and ambition will have to be expended in simply paying off our massive debt, and in reforming our nonsensical entitlement programs. (I've said it many times, but it bears repeating: if you're not going to reform Social Security and Medicare, then don't bother doing anything, because it won't matter anyway.)We are poised on the edge of a knife. On one side: bankruptcy, insolvency, and dissolution. On the other: a reinvigorated individualism, a sense of the government as servant of the people, not the master."
ReplyDeleteMankind has been on this very same knife's edge over and over again all through out history and followed by a long trek back to freedom. What makes this new is that this is a global phenomenon.
Way depressing. Did you guys see what happened to Juan Williams?
ReplyDeleteWell the article may be depressing but it is fairly accurate and you might as be informed on what is happening in the world and what the future possibly holds so that you can be successful. And it is not depressing at all for me. It is exciting.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Williams got canned at NPR because he spoke the truth by saying that it makes him uncomfortable to be on an airplane with a devout Muslim. A felling that is shared by most Americans. Political correctness. I disagree with Williams a lot on the Fox News Panel, but I think he got unfairly fired.
This is a form of mind control like in the post I wrote http://robinsontalkingpoints.blogspot.com/2010/08/mind-control-is-it-possible.html
I just came back from the park. I was with patrick. There was a Russian couple sitting at a park bench near the play structure. They were watching their child (about patrick's age). They were chain smoking cigarettes and the smoke was drifting over the entire play area. I didn't have the balls to tell them to put them out. Then they got up and got in their car. They left behind about six butts on the ground and two Starbucks cups. I grabbed their trash including the cigarettes and walked over to their car and yelled at them. Then threw it away.
ReplyDeleteJust thought I'd share my good deed.
Nice job ToeJamm. They must have thought they were still in the Old Country where people don't give a shit.
ReplyDeleteWhat this article means is that the West has work to do. ToeJamm is doing a good job working on it right now. We grownups need to turn our laws and our government around to remove impediments, both cultural and legal, to entrepreneurship and child-rearing.
It's not just the West that has this problem. Japan has it, and China too. It's just that I only care about the West. I hope that isn't too culturally insensitive of me. Not worrying about that is part of turning the problem around!
I care about the whole world. The whole world is tied together economically. If one major player fails then we all will hurt and most likely fail. That is why any attempts at reform will have to be a global one. That is not likely though.
ReplyDeletethis frames the demographic issue pretty well I think. It's basically a summary of my Human Geography course (when it wasn't ranting bout free trade)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/10/11/think_again_global_aging?page=0,2
Those Asian, particlularly Chinese birthrates are why I claim that China is not the military threat others claim it to be. I also saw a chart somewhere that showed birthrate history, and it showed that China's birthrate was collapsing even before the '1-child policy' went into effect. So, an indicator that, just having the government say "OK, we're cancelling the one child policy" won't automatically turn things around for them.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if we really have free trade with the current global monentary/economic setup. No we have floating exchange rates that has been in the news recently with China devaluing its currency. http://mises.org/daily/4728
ReplyDeleteI liked the article especially the end.
There is a lot to be said about demographics. I read in "Modern Times" by Paul Johnson that as a nation's per capita income rises its birth rate naturally declines. Or the cycle known as the "demographic transition". "In the first phase, scientific medicine and public health reduce infant mortality and infectious diseases, thus cutting the death-rate, while the birth-rate remains high at its old replacement rate. So population rises fast. In the second phase, rising living standards cause the birth-rate to fall. The rate of population increase slows down and eventually comes into balance."
Of course in the case of China, the declining birth rate is due to its government's policy that attempted to prevent a population explosion or a population that is too large for its economy to provide substance for thus leading to social unrest. The problem of the lack of material wealth was caused by the inefficiencies of centrally-planned economies. If it were not for government intervention in this case population would have corrected itself on its own and there would not be this imbalance between the male-to-female ratio that has the potential to lead to social unrest. (I don't know the cause of India's male-to-female ratio problem mentioned in the above article.) And in the context of America and Japan, if it weren't for all of these social welfare programs such as social security and medicare etc., this natural decline in human population that is the result of rising incomes would not be leading to the "demographic time bomb" where there will not be enough of the younger population to support the older population. This is another illustration of how government involvement in the natural development of human affairs causes unintended consequences.
The question is how will the West and other developed nations handle this economic and demographic time bomb?
And on Bud-d's point, I don't think anyone nation is the main threat to watch out for. I think this will be the trend of the future: individual nations will become less of a force on the international scene. The real threat, if their is any, will come from supra-national organizations or international governing bodies.
I disagree with your last paragraph Jeff, also this line earlier "In the second phase, rising living standards cause the birth-rate to fall.", which you may have quoted from someone else. Rising standards of living do not -cause- birthrates to fall. It's not the rising standard in and of itself that is doing the causing. It's technology and it's political choices. England's high standard of living in the 1800s did not cause its population to slow down. Birth control, a product of an advanced civilization never before seen, gave people the technology to quit having babies - without easy birth control, nothing else would matter, in fact, a higher standard of living should naturally mean more babies, as people are healthier and less stressed, and so women are more able to bring healthy babies to term. Having first gotten the technological means to control pregnancy, the advanced civilizations then provided women and couples as a whole an incentive not to have babies: if the woman could go out of the house and work, then the couple would be richer. The woman can do this more easily if she is not tied down with young ones. These two dynamics had to both happen for the birthrates to fall. It's true that high standard of living set up the conditons to make it happen, but it is not a natural law that a prosperous society doesn't have babies. In the '60's, for the first time ever in the history of humanity, conditions were set for birthrates to fall. We are now seeing the consequences. Another casualty of the advent of easy birth control is the collapse of traditional morality. This was mostly in place to control unwanted pregnancies. Fear of teen pregnancy (now at all time historical lows) or fear of a pregancy in an affair put heavy moral pressure on people to behave.
ReplyDeleteRegarding your final paragraph, look at the economic mess this article is about! It's about pension/welfare systems collapsing because of economic conditions that the supranationals are completely impotent to control. It's about ponzi schemes set up pre-birth control era falling apart because there is no longer a population base to support them.
ReplyDeleteMantra-Demographics is destiny-Mantra
not Supranational Organizations is Destiny
(My mind is not all here at the moment.)
ReplyDeleteBud-D, ""In the second phase, rising living standards cause the birth-rate to fall.", which you may have quoted from someone else. Rising standards of living do not -cause- birthrates to fall." I did get that from Paul Johnson as I mentioned in the comment and I thought I made clear to avoid plagiarism or to avoid one to think it was my original thought. I don't claim to know the full scope of this subject. I am just quoting something that I thought was pertinent. But the fact is that as living standards in nations have risen the birth rate has decline. I don't know if there is a correlation between the two. It just so happens to be. I got that from his book and I can't verify it with independent information or I might have it out of context. And another thing causing birth rates to decline at the current moment, which is the lowest since the Great Depression, is the economic conditions. If you don't have a job or if your job security is not very high, then it becomes hard to have a family, I can tell you that from personal experience.
I think birth control that prevents the sperm from making contact with the egg which thus starts life is a good thing. A lot of young people today need to not have so many babies. This is the main problem: young people, mostly teenagers having kids that they can not afford and that they are not mentally competent or mature enough to handle.
This is a broad topic. I do think that people hundreds of years ago had many more kids due to the fact that they infant mortality was so high or that they needed the hands to work the fields. And in general to ensure that the seed will carry on. But as technology has advanced, there is not such a need to have as many kids to ensure the carrying on of the human race or one's genes. And technology will ensure that fewer kids can achieve or serve the purpose of what having many kids did in the past. So maybe having fewer kids is the result of the advance in technology that gives a better chance for fewer offspring to carry on the human race. I could be wrong
And on the supranational orgainzations comment being the main threat that I made due to your comment, "Those Asian, particlularly Chinese birthrates are why I claim that China is not the military threat others claim it to be.". I am stating that I don't think any single nation is the real threat to the West or freedom in general, to make an oversimpification of the object that is under threat or the object to be perserved in our eyes. I do agree that demographics are leading to the collapse of the status quo or the existing global structure. I think that thinking in terms of individual nations as the main actors on the world stage is rapidly becoming a thing of the past as globalization continues to progress and I think that the biggest threat to freedom, summing up a general concept, will come from supranational organizations as they will become the entity of real concern. Although that is still in the far distant future short of any major change of course in the development of things, which could very well happen. How individual nations react to the coming global economic downturn will determine if the world groups around individual nations and ethnic groups or unite around a global entity or governing body.