"... or that maybe its effects won’t be so bad. It’s also alike in that solutions can require a long time to take effect and that many politicians are staunchly opposed to most of them, especially conservatives.... The problem isn’t all on one side of the aisle, though. Enough centrist Democrats oppose growth-friendly policies to thwart ongoing efforts to put them in place...."
Writes Jeff Wise in "America’s Population Could Use a Boom/Failing to address population decline may exact a heavy toll" (NY Magazine).
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54 comments:
If the writer can summon the global warming mantra so easily and facilely, I am confident I can afford to skip him.
Entropy is the natural state of the universe. The input cost of organizing a system and maintaining that system against its propensity to break down is always more difficult, and therefore more valuable.
Think for a moment of all the things that had to occur in science, medicine, technology, politics, and most importantly time for there to be 8 billion people on planet earth. Then ask yourself if those things were difficult or easy to accomplish. Is population growth easier or harder than population decline? Is it like flipping a switch when you really really need those people in 2100 or not? How easy can the incubation parameters that created useful/functional people for your society (which takes at least 16 years) be to ramp up...
You tell me?
Per Peter Zeihan we're probably still better off (youtube video) than most of the rest of the world. As he points out, the US Baby Boomers actually had kids (the Millennials) so the decline as Gen X ages out is hopefully only temporary.
People easily recognize dysfunctional overcrowding (e.g., slums in megacities India, Brazil, Africa) and bad lifestyles (e.g., expensive housing and long commutes in Japan, US, and Europe). So, they breed less. It's quite logical and more sensible than swarming a la lemmings and dying in sea.
Some countries are far down the 'fewer is better' path, to include Japan, Italy, China, Korea, and most of Europe. Africa, no. They have energy and agriculture technologies and are growing.
Word is that Europe experienced higher standards of living after the black death of the middle ages. That was involuntary. Not having children and not having someone to take care of you in old age is voluntary. State support for old age pay and healthcare stands to suffer, but on balance it was their choice.
"especially conservatives"
Let's compare conservative and progressive birth rates.
Don't the global warmists want population decline?
At least among US citizens.
"Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things… The fact that a chaotic and ill-educated time cannot clearly grasp that truth does not alter the fact that it always will be the truth. Our generation, in a dirty, pessimistic period, has blasphemously underrated the beauty of life and cravenly overrated its dangers. As for our own society, if it proceeds at its present rate of progress and improvement, no trace or memory of it will be left at all."
- G.K. Chesterton
We're headed for Idiocracy. Plenty of warm bodies, not so much IQ.
i'm So Old;
that i remember back when 60 Minutes had Paul Ehrlich on, still harping about: "The Population Explosion!"
When Was That? Oh gee, that was A Long Time Ago! 42, maybe 44 hours ago!!!
What needs to be accepted and studied is the reality that the 20th century was an anomaly in human history. A time when more and more of the global population entered modernity, especially after 1950 when it exploded all over the earth. With lower infant mortality, better survival of disease, people have fewer children since they have better prospects of reaching adulthood, which permits avoidance of poverty due to to many mouths to feed.
But take heart, Leftists, by advancing pestilence and natural disaster threats through misguided policies against modern technology and energy, people will start having more children in hopes of at least few surviving in the socialist hellscape.
=========
"IN MOST CIVILIZATIONS in history, the major check on population is mortality. Here there are two main variants. Either perennial diseases and high infant mortality keeps population more or less in balance – or, in another variant, the population is moderately healthy, numbers build up quite rapidly, and then periodic crises caused by war, famine and epidemic disease occur. In these two cases, humans have experienced the threat of high mortality in one form or another and tend to be anxious to have many children in order to combat the dangers. This is the pattern observed through much of Chinese, Indian or European history.
"The ‘modern’ pattern is one where it is lowered fertility which keeps population in check, rather than high mortality. Different mechanisms are used, late marriage and high rates of non-marriage, various forms of controls on the numbers born alive through infanticide and abortion, and nowadays high levels of contraception. These are what Wrigley calls ‘low pressure’ regimes. Until quite recently it was widely believed that this ‘low pressure’ regime is the product of some ‘demographic revolution’, perhaps caused by improvements in contraceptive technology in the nineteenth century.
"It is now quite clear from the work of Tony Wrigley and other that in England a combination of late age at first marriage (often over twenty-five for women), plus selective marriage (with up to a quarter of women never marrying) was enough to keep population more or less static for some centuries.
[...]
"A low-pressure demography means that a society avoids the situation where extra resources are automatically absorbed by population expansion. As Malthus argued, the only force strong enough to stand against the biological desire to mate and have children, was the even stronger social desire to live comfortably and avoid poverty. This is exactly what seems to have happened in England from at least the late medieval period."
--The Invention of the Modern World, Alan Macfarlane.
social liberalism
progressive corruption
Diversity, Inequity, Exclusion (DIE)
transgender conversion therapy (e.g. political congruence)
labor and environmental arbitrage (e.g. Green New Deal)
progressive prices (e.g. Obamacares, Bidencares, redistributive change) a.k.a. "inflation"
[catastrophic] [anthropogenic] immigration reform
toxic sexism, toxic genderism
the wicked solution... close the abortion chambers
Demographics is destiny.
The only people who should be eligible for any kind of government benefits are people who raise and have raised children.
Global warming is abstract.
Global cooling is disaster.
"solutions can require a long time to take effect and that many politicians are staunchly opposed to most of them, especially conservatives."
Conservatives oppose the "solution", when it involves importing millions of 3rd world peasants. If it involves making it easier to form and support a family, we're totally on-board. For leftists, population decline is a desired outcome, not a problem to be solved.
Enigma was Very Puzzling, when he said...
Some countries are far down the 'fewer is better' path, to include Japan, Italy, China, Korea, and most of Europe. Africa, no. They have energy and agriculture technologies and are growing.
You're saying that Japan, Italy, China, Korea, and most of Europe are "growing"??
To paraphrase Iñigo Montoya: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
2.5+ illegal entrants. Unassimilated masses leaching on our strained public trough.
Governmental force is usually the answer these people come to. How will that work to reverse population decline? Ah, outlaw birth control pills and abortions. Is that what this person proposes? Handmaids locked in facilities until they give birth? The Left always has one toe dipped in the dystopian pool while pointing an accusing finger at the Right.
My state has more people that ever. Millions added since I was a child. Millions. The roads are the same.
The same is true in all sorts of places - from Vancouver BC to Phoenix Arizona.
The left complain there isn't enough water. No - the water is fine. There are 8 million people in AZ now, using that water. That's the change.
(I think - correct me if I am wrong on that 8 mil.)
Population decline is good news. (not for the globalist elite ponzi scheme)
The entire social-welfare democracy endeavour and its impetus was permitted by one thing, and one thing only -- a growing population which would permit the Ponzi scheme to continue. Leftists can imagine their way around a declining population for a while, but eventually arithmetic wins, as it always does.
The dénouement will not be at all neat or polite.
solutions can require a long time to take effect and that many politicians are staunchly opposed to most of them, especially conservatives
Uh huh. Show me where ANY government ANYWHERE has been able to reverse the (extremely long) long term problem of affluent societies having fewer children. Just one success story before you start with your partisan bullshit about how we **could** do it. In fact that futility factor may be the one thing about population decline very most "like" global warming.
My dad had seven brothers and sisters. I had two. My son had none, and none of those complex outcomes had the least bit to do with government policy. Similar trajectory on the Mrs. side of the family.
They laughed at Sarah Palin’s death panels, now we are seeing the beginnings of an effort to cull our herd. It’s ok because I won’t be on the list cause I know a guy who knows a guy who is in on it.
Grateful migrants will balance the population. Like in Europe...
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/01/germany-migrant-gangs-armed-with-fireworks-ambush-police-and-firefighters-on-new-years-eve/
Hard lessons unlearned.
And the snake begins to eat its tail...
"Population decline is a lot like global warming:"
No, population decline is real.
The welfare state cannot survive population decline but the collapse of the welfare state will cause social chaos - that's why we're starting to get these articles about population decline. They talk of social policies. Ridiculous. Europe has those policies - so does Russia, so does China. No social policy put in place by a secular, socialistic state has ever reversed population decline. Payments, credits, promotions - nothing.
A revival of religion and then the family as traditionally conceived in a given society might work since it can be shown that it is religious, traditional families in all the different societies who are holding up the birth rate as far as it is held up at all. But how can the secular, socialistic state revive what its own principles require it to stamp out? Just as an example, how can it support the schools hiding abortions and gender changes in children while at the same time the schools support family life?
No, the birth decline will continue everywhere until those supporting religion and the traditional family are in a majority and gain the laws they want.
Of course, in the US, illegal immigration will keep up our numbers, regardless of the birth decline, and the article doesn't mention this important fact. Moreover, most of those coming are Christians with a European (Hispanic) social background. They have the same sad history with respect to the indigenous people and the black community (though worse Cuba and Brazil kept the slave trade going for years after the US banned the one and then abolished the other). Th point is, they've got the same history to overcome. They are fairly well-educated, close to the high-school level of the majority of the present US population. They save money and set up small businesses. We should maintain our borders but we are getting the highest-quality most-compatible illegals of any country in the world.
Putin had to invade the Ukraine to try to get similar high quality additions to the Russian population and Putin, in fact, lost by war flight from Russia millions of the sort of people he was trying to gain while antagonized the entire population of the Ukraine as well. There won't be scenes showing hundreds of thousands sneaking across the border - not toward Russia anyhow.
Socialism and population decline are tied together. Population policy can't replace religion and family values.
So, let's let 6 million illegal aliens into the country in the past two years and let in another 10 million next year? Why not?
The Dems are insane about global warming. Temps have been flat for years. The Dems have been wrong for DECADES about global warming! Won't they ever learn?
Hunter Biden's tax payer funded Hooker said...
"2.5+ illegal entrants. Unassimilated masses leaching on our strained public trough."
Sounds like this:
"Cloward and Piven focused primarily on redistribution of income, stating that full enrollment in welfare programs:
"would produce bureaucratic disruption in welfare agencies and fiscal disruption in local and state governments" that would: "...deepen existing divisions among elements in the big-city Democratic coalition: the remaining white middle class, the working-class ethnic groups and the growing minority poor. To avoid a further weakening of that historic coalition, a national Democratic administration would be constrained to advance a federal solution to poverty that would override local welfare failures, local class and racial conflicts and local revenue dilemmas."...
The ultimate objective of this strategy—to wipe out poverty by establishing a guaranteed annual income—will be questioned by some. Because the ideal of individual social and economic mobility has deep roots, even activists seem reluctant to call for national programs to eliminate poverty by the outright redistribution of income."
I'm sorry, Republicans are "anti-growth"?
In what world? Sure, many Republicans are anti-fake-growth in the sense that they'd rather have the growth occur through birth and not unsanctioned immigration. But name me a Republican who is for smaller families.
Oh, for fuck's sake- this is just latest push to fully remove the borders of the US and allow anyone who wants to come to enter the country. Sure, you will get your population boom, but we will end up with a billion people turning the US into a third world shithole.
Is Wise an American? Where in The Constitution does it prohibit or abort viability? Immigration by choice, not compulsion? How about organic/reliable/renewable green-friendly energy? Economic development? Affordable, available medical care without shared/progressive prices? Affordable/available education without shifted/misaligned debt? Where in The Constitution does it endorse diversity [dogma] (e.g. racism, sexism, ageism, class-disordered ideologies)?
#HateLovesAbortion
They laughed at Sarah Palin’s death panels, now we are seeing the beginnings of an effort to cull our herd
Planned Parenthood, planned parent/hood, social dysfunction, mandates with forward-looking collateral damage, shared responsibility through progressive prices and availability.
global cooling... warming... change is undeniable, unfalsifiable... except, the hypothesis does not conform with observation past and present. The earth is green and growing, and humans reuse, recycle only a minority of the life-affirming carbon dioxide. Meanwhile, a Green blight spreads upon land and sea.
No one mentioned lower birth rate due to COVID immunization.
The answer must be cultural, not political. We need more people to want children.
Demographics will result in a change in the person creation mindset into a manufacturing problem. I expect the Chinese to start manufacturing race compliant people in artifical wombs within 30 years.
Think globally. Act locally.
We have 3 kids.
A. There are 300,000,000 people in America. We put men on the moon with half that.
B. Per the opening scene of “Idiocracy”, it’s not population decline that will be a problem.
Yancey Ward: "this is just latest push to fully remove the borders of the US and allow anyone who wants to come to enter the country."
The perfect meeting of neocon and neoliberal: a blank slatism that assumes all human beings are fungible, easily educated to become First World citizens, workers and consumers. Borders are retrograde, a human rights violation. But only for the USA.
We had four. it was a side benefit.
Love the comments over there. They really put the lie to Wise’s asinine claim that conservatives are the problem.
Jane Goodall, (remember her?) says we can solve climate change by killing off 7.5 billion people. Do you think she could set an example for us all and go first? No, of course not. Elites and experts always want other people to make the sacrifice they insist on.
The US is full of people like Howard and Inga. Hell, it's governed by people like Howard and Inga.
It isn't worth saving.
@Yancey - Oh, for fuck's sake- this is just latest push to fully remove the borders of the US and allow anyone who wants to come to enter the country. Sure, you will get your population boom, but we will end up with a billion people turning the US into a third world shithole.
this.
Many large and med size US cities are turning into 3rd world shitholes circa now.
This is pretty far down my list of things to worry about. Until a few minutes ago it wasn't even on the list.
Well ... something has to be last.
Population decline is a hell of a lot more realistic than climate "change." No excuse for allowing 5 million illiterates to violate the border.
Babylon Bee has the scoop!
US Baby Boomers actually had kids (the Millennials) so the decline as Gen X ages out is hopefully only temporary.
Chastity is not hereditary. (I mean, if your parents didn't have any kids, chances are you won't, either!")
US Baby Boomers actually had kids (the Millennials) so the decline as Gen X ages out is hopefully only temporary.
Chastity is not hereditary. (I mean, if your parents didn't have any kids, chances are you won't, either!")
US Baby Boomers actually had kids (the Millennials) so the decline as Gen X ages out is hopefully only temporary.
Chastity is not hereditary. (I mean, if your parents didn't have any kids, chances are you won't, either!")
No matter what Let's Panic!!!
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