Home | this thread is not to single out germany but every country which democracy has taken place and where human rights are more pre-dominant, the birth rate falls.
the abuse of power from women rights to gay and lesbian couples, health care, rising gas prices, technology and the freedom to choose and abort a baby has led to an internal slow extincition of the human race.
would you agree?
here is the linky to the german fall in birthrates.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060123/...opulation_dc_1
For about the last 300 years we called that the Wealth Effect. Middle class societies have smaller families because it's more expensive and you don't need all the extra farmhands, plus fewer children die off anyhow.
true to a certain aspect. you should look at the long run.
thats why the countries are taking in so many immigrants because of the local population can't sustain itself and the locals are more busy fighting for human rights than procreation.
an human extinction from within other than osama bin laden and terrorists.
It plays to thoughts and feelings about immigration, aging, pensions, social welfare, the whole lot. My parents generation, the so called 'Greatest Generation' voted themselves the biggest bag of free goodies in the history of planet Earth. They instituted the social welfare state to some extent - ushering in the age of early retirement stocked with even a better lifestyle than when they worked including extensive and expensive travel. They are the first generation to take of neither their own parents nor - in some very important ways, their own children either. They annointed themselves with a high income high return low tax inflationary economy that saw them gain 1000% on their real estate coupled with earned income tax breaks. They saw the explosion of SSI and Medicare so that that the government now spends 10x per capita on senior citizens health care compared to children and where 85% of all health care dollars spent in the average person's entire life are spent in the last year of life.
These are the things they are not willing to give up - being the Greatest Generation and all that. Nor is AARP their lobbying arm, the largest richest lobby in the United States going to let the government whittle away at that gigantic bag of free stuff either. So you have to ask your question in generational terms. Senior citizens don't care how many people they trod on if it means they keep their lifestyle. But people like me are in a death battle with the global economy just to make it old age. And what an old age it will be. If you're not working well into old age you will have 3 options: outlive your money, outlive your healthcare or die early.
True.Originally Posted by atricnorth
No. Those are side-effects and collateral damage at best.
WTF! Erik Kirschbaum, the editor of that linked article, seems to be quite preoccupied with "German=Nazi" prejudices. What a moron.
1972 was the boom-year of contraception pills. That is not news. He didn't even mention.
The sudden drop in birthrates has even produced a new word: "Pillenknick-Generation" referring to the creased line in a graphic displaying the birthrate.
Since then young women could decide to postpone or avert pregnancy in favour of a job. Once a first-time pregnancy at the age of +35 was "exceptional" and "dangerous" - the threshold has moved to 45! Abortion had only a marginal influence. The mediaeval equation "More children = more wealth" (Hello islamic world!) has turned 180°.
The social/economical system favours the DINK (double income, no kids) and put mothers - let alone mothers of more than two children - at a serious financial disadvantage, while marriages tend to holding only for some time. Pregnant? Your career is over. Divorced and mother? And unemployed? Queue up! Today, you can't buy pampers on a honorary medal.
IMO it is just the end of the population-explosion and extinction is a wild and pointless exaggeration.
Gay and lesbian rights are of minor importance. I think the main reason is that people in today's modern world think of themselves, they put more emphasis on leisure time, travel, and easy life in general.
The abundance of birth control methods is more widespread than in our youth and even still today, if compared between wealthier families and poor families.
I think this guy would agree with you (or you with him):
http://p203.ezboard.com/ftruechristi...picID=73.topic
I don't think a falling population will neccesarily turn out to be a bad thing. Obviously if it happens too fast it causes demographic problems, with few young people supporting many old people, the retirement age will have to go up in Britain. But a lower population will make it easier to live in a sustainable way without damaging the climate and environment.
The falling birth rate is actually a HUGE problem:
1) The flip side of the lower birth rate is that in the western / liberal / industrialized world birth rates are going down and the average age is going up.
2) Since, as Medio has pointed out, the older generation has institutionalized the largest single transfer of resources from the young to them via SSI or Pensions or Medicare or Free Medical or what ever you call it.
3) Since basically we can't pay for the baby boomers TRILLIONS of dollars worth of medicare, medicaid, ssi, etc. we need more workers to pay for the added cashflow.
4) These workers have to come from other societies and since 1/2 of all Muslims are under the age of 25 :
"What worries me now is that the Muslim world to the south and east of Europe has too many young men and not enough to feed them on, or keep them busy with. Only four of the 19 countries with predominantly Muslim populations between Morocco and Iran—Morocco itself, Tunisia, Yemen and Turkey—have economies growing faster than the number of mouths they have to feed. In the other 15, people are getting steadily poorer. In four of those 15, more than half the population is under the age of 25, in nine more than 60%. "
http://www.economist.com/displaystor...tory_id=812943
5) This isn't to say that the problem is per se Muslims, but more that Muslim ideology and culture are opposed to western / liberal / pluralistic ideology. It is just that when millions of young muslims who come to western countries, and in fact are encouraged to do so by economies that can't support them at their home countries, come to the west and experience liberalism and it's imperfections problems and pain which are in direct opposition to Islam's ideals and standards, conflict ensues. Terrorism and violent acts are the natural outcome of this conflicted dependency of the west on Muslims for labor and resources and Muslims on the West for economic expansion, cash and intellectual capital.
I'm reminded of your fellow Brit P.D. James' brilliant work of fiction, "The Children of Men", one of the greatest works of SF from one of the unlikeliest sources.
The Muslim-Arab has precisely the opposite problem. Too many young people to feed not enough people to work. The Arab world will have to produce a half billion viable jobs in the next 40 years just to keep pace. It won't simply be an issue of importing enough employees to fund the retirements of biddies. It will be a much darker Malthusian outcome.
I agree with you, that given scarily high birth rates compared to food and industrial production, Muslim countries are only able to make up for the people to viable resources by:
1) Exporting excess population to the West
2) Importing food and goods necessary for life by selling off their natural resources, mainly oil and gas.
And this is the BIG problem the Islamic world has, namely what happens when the oil runs out? If they don't have the petro dollars running in, what does the Muslim world produce? They have one of the lowest rates of post doctoral degrees (an indication of human capital), the lowest rate of literature translation (an indication of trade of ideas), some of the lowest rates of industrial output in the world.
With a population beyond sustainable food production / industrial production, very little in terms of human capital development, wealth creation or any other kinds of economic output, what happens in 2 or 3 generations when the oil runs out?
Europe went through many significant decreases in population via war, famine, invaders, and the plague, and it certainly is possible for areas of this planet to go through the same.
Yeah, let us worry that the number of the descendents of the Nazis is shrinking.
so that means the overpopulation of muslims, if they were members of jihadists groups that were bend on annihilating the west and israel, that would be one of us would have to fight 5 or 10 of them, in the end?
ratio of 1:5 or 1:10 , who knows even more?
man, i need to get a bigger gun for that matter. a BFG perhaps. lol.
As atricnorth said in the first post Germany was only an example of a much wider issue.Yeah, let us worry that the number of the descendents of the Nazis is shrinking.
I've never read it but it looks interesting. If my library has it I might give it a go.I'm reminded of your fellow Brit P.D. James' brilliant work of fiction, "The Children of Men", one of the greatest works of SF from one of the unlikeliest sources.
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