"How many individuals still live whose young lives were shaped by World War I?"

I asked, 14 years ago, in a blog post titled "Jacques Barzun has died... at the age of 104."

I landed there because I had the idea that people don't talk about decadence anymore, and Grok reminded me that Barzun had published "From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present" (commission earned) in 2000. 

That was a quarter century ago. How long past decadence do you need to get before decadence isn't even an issue? And then, what?

As for the question in the post title, pressured, Grok to came up with 300 to 500. There are super-centenarians in this world, though you never encounter them when you're just out and about. It would be cool if you did. 

Barzun was 9 and living in Paris in 1914, when the war broke out. He was one of the students who had to become teachers, teaching younger students when so many of the real teachers were drafted. He became deeply depressed, contemplated suicide, and — it seems like a solution — travelled to America. There he attended Columbia University, where he wrote a Ph.D. thesis in which he "attacked the popular notion of 'the French race.'"

"The summer I turned 39, my husband and I moved from Brooklyn to a darling little village in upstate New York. Our parents were thrilled..."

"... their unspoken hope that leaving the big city might be a sign that we were settling down—that as my fertility began to sunset, we’d turn one of our house’s three bedrooms into a nursery. And we were having that conversation, too. We owned a home with ample space and an affordable mortgage. I worked for myself and had maximal flexibility. He had good health insurance and a great if demanding job. Did we want to have a baby? As late summer melted into a vibrant fall and then into the cold of upstate winter, I knew my answer: No...."

Writes Jill Filipovic in "We Need More Good Men/Conservatives often lay the blame for declining fertility at women’s feet. They’re wrong" (Slate).

"Opening Japan’s doors more widely to foreigners could help offset the declines. But the government has long taken a cautious approach to immigration..."

"... and nationalist politicians and commentators have gained influence recently with a 'Japan First' agenda. 'Japan has now reached a level where this kind of decline is not reversible in the short- or medium-run' said James Raymo, a professor of sociology at Princeton University who studies Japan. 'It simply will not happen in the absence of mass immigration.'... Professor Raymo said the Japanese government’s efforts to promote fertility had 'not really moved the needle.' He said that ultimately Japan could provide lessons for other governments...."

From "How Japan Lost 3 Million People in Five Years" (NYT).

I'd like to hear something of what Japanese experts think about mass immigration as a solution. 

"Look, I'm 30 years old. Not one of my friends has children. Zero. No one. No one's having kids."

"Do you know how hard you need to abuse a mammal to make them not have children? Like, for real? Let's step back a moment, right?... Look, GDP goes up. People have enough food and whatever. No one's having kids. And this is across the world. This is across both the West, the East, everywhere it's happening. So why do I not have kids?... Do you know what dating app algorithms do?... They don't optimize for you to meet the love of your life. They optimize for you to keep coming back to the app.... We have treated technology as a wild west. Absolutely. Just everyone can do whatever they want. Oh, just sell all of our younger generations' dating lives to corporations for profit. And who pays the cost for this? Who has liability for every person who doesn't find the love of their life because the whole dating market is fucked up? Who pays for this? No one. There is no responsibility. It's completely worthless. And these dating companies, they're not even profitable...."

That's Connor Leahy, and I've got a problem with his abuse-a-mammal theory. Of course, he meant to say "Do you know how hard you need to abuse a non-human mammal to make them not have children?" But non-human mammals don't have access to birth control (and abortion).

"The New York Times... says a boom of older mothers is coming to reverse low fertility, but the math is against them."

Explains Maibritt Henkel, at The Argument, with some devastating graphs.

Dr. Paul Erlich, author of "The Population Bomb," has died, so let's go back to 1970 and watch him on "The Tonight Show."

Johnny Carson has had Erlich as a guest before, and this time he has him on in a debate with Ben Wattenburg, author of "The Nonsense Explosion." I've cued the video to start at that point, but if you like Buddy Hackett, there's an hour of Buddy before the Erlich/Wattenberg debate begins.

Here's the NYT obituary: "Paul R. Ehrlich, Who Alarmed the World With ‘The Population Bomb,’ Dies at 93/His best-selling 1968 book, which forecast global famines, made him a leader of the environmental movement. But he faced criticism when his predictions proved premature."

Premature? You mean wrong? How wrong was he? He was so wrong that [insert Johnny Carson joke]...

And you can read Wattenberg's original 1970 essay here, at the American Enterprise Institute website: "The Nonsense Explosion." Excerpt:

The strong position on population control ultimately comes around to some form of government permission, or licensing, for babies....

"The Birthrate Is Plunging. Why Some Say That’s a Good Thing. The political class is worried about the historic drop. But..."

"... the biggest change is among the youngest women, who are the least ready to have children."

Headline at the NYT.

I get the "good thing" interpretation, but it's also a bad thing, isn't it? The older women, with their greater emotional maturity and economic independence, are not only more able to care for children, they are also more able to think through the whole enterprise of child bearing and child care, to weigh the pros and cons and forgo it altogether. Isn't that what is happening?

"[Hungary] now spends 5 percent of its gross domestic product on family policies, a greater percentage than what the United States devotes to defense."

"It offers grandparental leave. It furnishes reduced mortgage rates to married couples planning families. It provides parents $30,000 loans — which don’t need to be repaid if they have three or more children. On Oct. 1, all women with three children gained lifetime personal income tax exemptions. Next year, mothers under 40 with two kids will become exempt as well. 'For the long-term survival of a nation, it is worthwhile,' said Hungary’s culture minister, Balazs Hanko...."

From "Can governments actually spark a baby boom? These countries are trying. Governments are testing whether a mix of perks, incentives and ideology might reverse shrinking population trends. Here’s what they’ve learned" (WaPo).

"Every one of these jurisdictions [that permit physician-assisted suicide] has a total fertility rate below the replacement threshold."

"I do not think this is a coincidence. About 30 years ago, P.D. James’s prescient novel 'The Children of Men' imagined that a birthrate crisis would induce governments to facilitate the suicides of the elderly in a ritual known as 'the Quietus.'... The population pyramid is increasingly inverted.... This poses an existential threat to welfare systems, which rely on young workers to fund entitlements and health care for older adults. Those who hope that liberal immigration policies will solve this problem forget that immigrants themselves get old, and their birthrates tend to converge with those of the greater population over time. If birthrates do not recover — and at present, they show no real signs of doing so — eventually we will be forced to revert to the system that prevailed for all of human history up until recently: Older people will be cared for privately, typically by their children and grandchildren, and those without families will have to rely on charities, such as they are. In the meantime, we are in a period of transition. Welfare states limp on, but in conditions of increasing stress...."

Writes Louise Perry, in "The Perverse Economics of Assisted Suicide" (NYT).

"The mayor of a city in southwest Russia encouraged men to 'sneak up on their women so that 10,000 children will be born in exactly nine months.'"

"Some regions are giving lump-sum bonuses to women who become mothers while they’re still in school, and a Russian version of MTV’s '16 and Pregnant,' which originally discouraged teen pregnancy, has been rebranded as 'Mom at 16,' in order to promote it. One politician encouraged women to wear miniskirts to increase births, while an official in the country’s Education Ministry advocated 'school discos' to foster 'romance for children.' A regional health minister has told Russians to have sex during work breaks. Now, a hodgepodge of religious conservatives and techno-futurists are leading the United States into the fray...."

From "A Bold Idea to Raise the Birthrate: Make Parenting Less Torturous" (NYT).

The article is by Anna Louie Sussman who says she's keeping "a running list of harebrained schemes various governments and officials have proposed to raise the birthrate in their aging countries."

"It’s possible that within the MAGA bubble, some aspiring tradwives might genuinely be motivated by the prospect of a medal, or perhaps a memecoin, from Mr. Trump (though whether they’ll get all the way to baby No. 6 by the time his term ends is an open question).... The ideas currently being floated... prompt mockery and horror, at least among my cohort of reproductive-age women. 'This is nuts,' said one friend.... 'God help us,' wrote another."

The incentives will just have to get better, but they probably won't until the decline becomes more obvious, and then, they still won't, because it will be too late, and who will want to pay for all that free childcare and so forth when it's easy to see there's no hope? But aren't those Russians crazy?

"In 2023, California saw a net loss of 268,000 residents in New York, 179,000....they're going to... Texas, Florida, Arizona...."

"You cannot be the party of working families when the places you govern are places working families cannot afford to live. You are not the party of working families when the places you govern are places working families cannot afford to live. In the American political system, to lose people is to lose power. If these trends hold, the 2030 census will shift the Electoral College sharply to the right. The states that Kamala Harris won in 2024 — they'll lose about 11 House seats and Electoral College votes. The states of Trump won would gain them. So in that Electoral College, a Democrat could win every single state Harris won in 2024 and also win Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and still lose the presidency."

Says Ezra Klein, in "There Is a Liberal Answer to Elon Musk," the new episode of his NYT podcast, audio and transcript at Podscribe.

The quoted part is from the beginning, where Klein effectively stirs up fears of future disaster for Democrats. The answer to the question asked in the episode title is: "If liberals don't make government work, zealots like Elon Musk are going to come in and burn it down." And: "If liberals do not want Americans to turn to the false promises of strong men, they need to offer them the fruits of effective government in the long run."

Yeah, just do that.

CORRECTION: I misread the headline as a question — Is There a Liberal Answer to Elon Musk? I hallucinated the humility that plainly belongs there!

"We pay hundreds of Billions of Dollars to SUBSIDIZE Canada. Why? There is no reason. We don’t need anything they have."

"We have unlimited Energy, should make our own Cars, and have more Lumber than we can ever use. Without this massive subsidy, Canada ceases to exist as a viable Country. Harsh but true! Therefore, Canada should become our Cherished 51st State. Much lower taxes, and far better military protection for the people of Canada — AND NO TARIFFS!"

Writes President Trump, at Truth Social.

I like how he capitalized all the C words — Canada, Cars, Country, Cherished.

AND: There's one question — and I've raised it before — which is why would Canada be only one state? Why not 2... or 10... or more? The answer is:

"Because of collapsing fertility elsewhere, Africa will make up an increasing share of the world’s population."

"Africa accounted for less than 10 percent of the world’s population until the early 1970s, but a demographic forecast in The Lancet suggests that by 2100, 54 percent of the world’s babies will be born in sub-Saharan Africa. Include North Africa, and the share is even higher. If that forecast is right (and always be skeptical of long-term demographic forecasts), at some point in the 22nd century a majority of the world’s population will be African.... In an aging and perhaps enfeebled world, Africa will also be a continent of youth — arguably making it comparatively vigorous and more of a hotbed for entrepreneurship and for music and popular culture...."

Writes Nicholas Kristof, in "In an Aging World, a Youthful Africa Steps Up" (NYT).

"South Korea’s birth rate is the lowest on the planet, at 0.7 per woman. The population officially began shrinking four years ago..."

"... and is projected to halve by 2100.... President Yoon Suk-yeol has described the population decline as a 'national emergency.' He and his wife Kim Keon-Hee are dog owners but do not have children. Experts say this reflects a broader societal shift, with pets filling emotional needs among a cohort of young people who are increasingly individualistic.... The shift in attitudes towards dogs in South Korea is perhaps most starkly illustrated by the fact that it only recently banned the consumption of dog meat.... Dog meat stew, known locally as boshintang, is eaten mainly by older Koreans in the summer.... The practice, often defended as cultural tradition, has faced growing opposition from... from younger Koreans who increasingly view dogs as companions rather than livestock...."

From "Raise children? No, South Koreans just want to pamper their pups/In the country with the lowest birth rate in the world, young people cite financial constraints and intense working conditions as reasons to choose pets instead" (London Times).

"Like Dr. Frankenstein, we are neglecting the monster’s point of view. What will our possible children think of their existence?"

"Will they be glad they’ve been born, or curse us for ushering them into being? Having children, [the philosopher Mara] van der Lugt argues, might be best seen as 'a cosmic intervention, something great, and wondrous—and terrible.' We are deciding 'that life is worth living on behalf of a person who cannot be consulted,' and we 'must be prepared, at any point, to be held accountable for their creation.'..."

Writes Joshua Rothman, in "Should We Think of Our Children as Strangers? A new line of inquiry asks us to imagine them as random individuals who just happen to live in our homes" (The New Yorker).

Based on the title alone, I presumed I was about to read some anti-natalist material. Who would commit to accepting a random stranger into one's home — with no option to kick him out? To ask the question in that form is to undercut the pro-natalist propaganda that is — unless women are coerced — needed to keep humanity from becoming extinct. 

And, indeed, Rothman gives short shrift to the pro-natalists (though he does say a little more than that they include Trump and Vance, which, I suspect, would be enough to put off most New Yorker readers):

"China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has diminished the role of women at work and in public office. There are no female members of Mr. Xi’s inner circle..."

"... or the Politburo, the executive policymaking body. He has invoked more traditional roles for women, as caretakers and mothers, in planning a new 'childbearing culture' to address a shrinking population. But groups of women around China are quietly reclaiming their own identities. Many are from a generation that grew up with more freedom than their mothers. Women in Shanghai, profoundly shaken by a two-month Covid lockdown in 2022, are being driven by a need to build community. 'I think everyone living in this city seems to have reached this stage that they want to explore more about the power of women,' said Du Wen, the founder of Her, a bar that hosts salon discussions.... At quietly advertised events, women question misogynistic tropes in Chinese culture. 'Why are lonely ghosts always female?' one woman recently asked, referring to Chinese literature’s depiction of homeless women after death...."

From "In China, Ruled by Men, Women Quietly Find a Powerful Voice/Women in Shanghai gather in bars, salons and bookstores to reclaim their identities as the country’s leader calls for China to adopt a 'childbearing culture'" (NYT).

"Look, think about it. Why is China stalling so badly economically? Why is Japan having trouble? Why is Russia? Why is India? Because they're xenophobic. They don't want immigrants."

Said Joe Biden, quoted in "Japan disappointed by Biden's 'xenophobic' comments" (Kyodo News).

Did he just blurt that out or is there political wisdom in saying that? It appeals to certain Americans and it might be a deliberate nudge to China and Japan.

"Over and over throughout the conference, anxieties over the drop in birth rates — the issue that brought the speakers and audience together..."

"... gave way to fears that certain populations were out-breeding their betters.... I talk with Malcolm and Simone Collins, the husband-and-wife founder of Pronatalist.org.... [They] present themselves as rationalists, techies trying to solve the looming depopulation crisis by any means necessary.... The couple is committed to fighting the 'urban monoculture' that they claim has tricked a generation of young Americans into spending their most fertile years chasing professional achievements and personal fulfillment at the expense of building a family. 'The monoculture is not an evil thing,' Malcolm... but, he continues, it’s built on false promises. 'It promises people, if you join us, you can do whatever makes you happy, so long as it doesn’t interfere with other people’s quality of life, and you can be affirmed for whoever you want to be.' In reality, though, they become casualties of an elitist scam. The urban monoculture, Malcolm explains, breeds childlessness and therefore must poach other people’s children to survive. It lures them out of small towns and into large cities, encourages them to eschew their religious upbringings in favor of hedonistic secularism, and then leaves them to die alone...."

From "The Far Right’s Campaign to Explode the Population/Behind the scenes at the first Natal Conference, where a motley alliance is throwing out the idea of winning converts to their cause and trying to make their own instead" (Politico).

"In 2023, the United States experienced its lowest birth rate since 1979, with a total fertility rate of 1.62 births per woman..."

"... well below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman. This decline, attributed to factors such as financial concerns, unstable work hours, and lack of paid leave, has resulted in approximately 3.6 million births, marking a 2 percent decrease from the previous year. Experts and public figures, including Elon Musk, have expressed concern over the long-term implications of this trend on the country's demographic and economic future."

A Grok news summary at X (that comes with the warning "Grok can make mistakes, verify its outputs").

Elon Musk, not content to be mentioned by his robot Grok, adds a tweet of his own (responding to a video from a woman propounding the "Great Replacement Theory"). Musk writes:

"I can't believe I'm understanding this correctly. Ukraine's minimum age of conscription is currently 27 and they're THINKING of dropping it to 25?"

"THIS is the country that claims to be facing an existential threat from Russia? The minimum draft age in the US during the Vietnam War was 18 (although I've read that no one under 18 1/2 was actually drafted). It seems possible that the Ukrainian legislature isn't as enthusiastic about driving out the Russians as their president. On the other hand, these people being drafted are just more people who are going to die before a settlement is reached or Ukraine disappears from the map...."

That's a comment, at the NYT, to the news article "Zelensky Lowers Draft Age to Shore Up Ukraine’s Depleted Army/The idea of requiring more men to join the fight against Russia’s invasion has become toxic politically, but Russia is not relenting in its assault."

I read that headline and imagined they were going as low as maybe 15, so I was extremely puzzled to read that they were only going "as low" as 25.

What's going on? From the article: