The 'Population Bomb' Backfires!

[amicus]

Broadcast on PBS June 14, 2005, on Nova, the program, ‘World in the Balance, The People Paradox.

The social manipulation by governments and private lobbying groups to limit and decrease world population has apparently backfired, according to this Public Broadcasting special event documentary.

After 40 years of Liberal left wing attempts to insist that ‘over-population’ would lead to ultimate disaster, it now seems the declining birth rate among western industrial nations in both Europe and Asia is limiting growth and has created both a labor shortage and insufficient young people to fund social welfare programs in most countries.

While there are many aspects of this issue worthy of discussion, the saddest thing to me, are those millions of women, seduced by politics, who chose not to bear children as a ‘social obligation’ who have now passed the age of reproduction.

Another important aspect is that these nations, with birthrates below replacement levels, are now forced to import young people from other nations as workers. This may shed light on the US immigration dilemma on the southern border as Hispanics have now risen to 14 percent of the population and their birthrate is practically the only means by which USD birthrates remain slightly about replacement level.

The same holds true for Canada, Great Britain, Germany, France and Japan.

The so called benevolent, benign efforts by government and left wing groups to limit growth have in fact worked to destroy the lives and futures of many.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb

The Population Bomb
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Population Bomb (1968) is a book written by Paul R. Ehrlich. A best-selling work, it predicts disaster for humanity due to overpopulation and the "population explosion". The book predicted that "in the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death." This prediction did not come true. Although the book is primarily a repetition of the Malthusian catastrophe argument, that population growth will outpace agricultural growth unless controlled, it expressed the possibility of disaster in broader terms.

A "population bomb," as defined in the book, requires only three things:
• A rapid rate of change
• A limit of some sort
• Delays in perceiving the limit
As an example, consider a limit on cheap fossil fuel energy. A seemingly endless fossil fuel supply exists, but the amount of effort required for energy production varies with the quality of the raw materials. Once the light, sweet, crude oil which can be produced and processed quickly and cheaply is drained, the rate of oil production will decline. Therefore, processed fuel products such as gasoline, diesel and heating oil will become more scarce. Because demand is increasing as the human population expands and the outsourcing of U.S. industry creates new relatively wealthy consumers in Third World nations, the amount of per-capita energy from fossil fuels will decline, decreasing the quality of life.

This example clearly meets the first criterion, rapid rate of change, because there are multiple factors on a global scale, resource depletion and demand expansion.

It meets the second if you accept mainstream ideas about fossil fuels being non-renewable. It meets the third critera because the issue has been reported on for over thirty years.

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/world/9529145.htm

Low birthrates will keep world numbers down

By Donald G. McNeil Jr.

The New York Times

Remember the population bomb, the fertility explosion set to devour the world's food and suck up or pollute all its air and water? Its fuse has by no means been plucked. But over the last three decades, much of its Malthusian detonation power has leaked out.

Birthrates in developed countries from Italy to Korea have sunk below the levels needed for their populations to replace themselves; the typical age of marriage and pregnancy has risen, and the use of birth control has soared.

The threat is more regional than global, explosive only in places such as India and Pakistan. Ever since 1968, when the U.N. Population Division predicted that the world population, now 6.3 billion, would grow to at least 12 billion by 2050, the agency has regularly revised its estimates downward. Now it expects population to plateau at 9 billion.

Where did those billions go? Millions of babies have died, a fraction of them from AIDS, far more from malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia, even measles. More millions have been aborted, either to avoid birth or, as in China and India, to avoid giving birth to a girl.

But even AIDS and abortion are drops in the demographic bucket. The real missing billions are the babies who were simply never conceived. They weren't conceived because their would-be elder brothers and sisters survived, or because women's lives improved. In the rich West, Mom decided that putting three children through graduate school would be unaffordable. In the poor Eastern or Southern parts of the globe, Mom found a sweatshop job and didn't need a fourth or fifth child to fetch firewood.

"On a farm, children help with the pigs or chickens," said Joseph Chamie, director of the U.N. population division. Nearly half of the world's people live in cities, he said, "and when you move to a city, children are not as helpful."

Beyond that, simple public-health measures such as dams for clean water, vitamins for pregnant women, hand-washing for midwives, oral rehydration salts for babies, vaccines for youngsters and antibiotics for all helped double world life expectancy in the 20th century, to 60 years from 30.

More surviving children means less incentive to give birth as often. As late as 1970, the world's median fertility level was 5.4 births per woman; in 2000, it was 2.9. Barring war, famine, epidemic or disaster, a country needs a birthrate of 2.1 children per woman to hold steady.

The best-known example of shrinkage is Italy, whose women were once symbols of fecundity partly because of the country's peasant traditions and partly because of its Roman Catholicism, which rejects birth control. By 2000, Italy's fertility rate was Western Europe's lowest, at 1.2 births per woman. Its population is expected to drop 20 percent by midcentury.

Even in North Africa, regarded as the great exception to the shrinking population trend, birthrates have dropped somewhat. Egypt's, for example, went from 5.4 births per woman in 1970 to 3.6 in 1999.

http://www2.gsb.columbia.edu/ipd/j_pensionreform_bk.html

http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/print_report.cfm?DR_ID=15666&dr_cat=2

ZPG Changes its Name! Zero Population Growth, (ZPG) perhaps realizing the immense damage done by this grass roots organization is now, ‘Population Connection’.

http://www.zpg.org/

http://pregnancy.about.com/gi/dynam...www.hhs.gov/news/press/2003pres/20030625.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


It is not really a ‘Liberal’ left wing conspiracy, rather it is an accumulation of ignorance and an accepted agenda to socially engineer and manipulate a population to desired means, such as the ‘one child policy’ in China.

The loose association of left wing groups act in concert to limit growth, limit mining, drilling and industry to ‘preserve’ the environment at the expense of human life and reproduction.

This control, regulation and restriction of human activity has greatly expanded the cost of housing, fuel, transportation, education, all essential necessities in the human quest to reproduce and establish families.

Well, congratulations, you assholes, you have eaten your offspring.

Amicus…

 

[McKenna]

This control, regulation and restriction of human activity has greatly expanded the cost of housing, fuel, transportation, education, all essential necessities in the human quest to reproduce and establish families.

I actually read all of it, because once in a while you copy/paste a few things that make a little sense, but I can't make hide nor hair out of this argument.

Are you saying we need to have more babies in order to solve the world's problems? Are you encouraging copulation to readers of a porn site?!

Isn't that redundant?

 

[BlackShanglan]

There's a flaw at the center of this premise. Your opening comments assume that a shortage of labor and difficulty in finding the numbers in the younger generation to support the larger older generation's retirement are signs that population size was never a problem. In fact, these two facts do not actually have anything to do with each other. Whether population is grossly undersized or grossly oversized for the available resources, at any point at which the working generation is smaller than the retiring generation, you will have those problems - i.e., at any point at which population is reducing, whether it needed to be reduced or not. The question is whether short-term problems with labor supply and retirement expectations and financing are more serious than long-term problems like critical resource shortages.

[And might I add that Amicus, our impassioned defender of the sanctity of individual property, is the last person I thought to find complaining about a lack of young people to pay for the retirement of the older generation via taxes? Are young chequebooks not so sacrosanct as aged ones?]

The chief thing that has changed is our perceptions. Suddenly we in the West are starting to get worried about statements like these:

Birthrates in developed countries from Italy to Korea have sunk below the levels needed for their populations to replace themselves ...

So? Has anyone really looked at Rome or Seoul recently and thought, "Wow, what a ghost town. We really need to get some more people in here"? Yes, populations will shrink. That was the whole idea of population control in the first place: reducing population gradually through individual choice rather than abruptly and unpleasantly through famine, war, or pestilence. I fail to see a cause of alarm in the phenomena of humans noticing that they, unlike other animals, have the native intelligence to stop reproducing short of the point at which they consume all resources and Nature cuts their numbers ruthlessly back down.

But really, Amicus ... this image of poor women weeping over the children that they sacrificed to a noble but misguided social ideal. Do you really believe that they are out there? I think it much more likely that more interest in careers and education and greater availability and understanding of birth control are behind the drop in birth rates. And, although this may shock you right down to your socks, possibly another contributing factor is that women are simply asking for more before they settle down to produce children. They have more options available to them, and so they're less willing to put up with spousal roles or behavior that they used to accept. Hurrah for that. I think we're finding what the excellent Mr. Mill predicted 150 years ago - incidentally, not long after Mr. Malthus was making his contributions. John Stuart Mill suggested the possibility that if men wished women to continue settling down to have families and produce children, men might just have to work at making marriage a more attractive option.

Shanglan

 

[gauchecritic]

I'm glad that somebody who could unravel this actually answered. (cheers Shang) The arguement to my mind is akin to the 'more boys are born after wars' myth and pyramid selling (or chain letters) benefit everybody.

This is simply mischevious reportage, taking various 'facts' with no actual linkage or causal chain to connect them. Then sneaking in that fossil fuels may be replaceable gives incredulous icing to the cake.

Next thread up will be "The great unwashed/uneducated are breeding too fast to support themselves" (and taking each other's jobs into the bargain)

 

[Edward Teach]

This is the same old regurgitated Christian Right propaganda.

What they are really saying to the flock is that if you don't get busy the colored folks, heathens and homosexuals are gonna out number you.

If you collect the taxes on the workers, it doesn't matter from whence they come or what color they are. What they produce is still green.


Ed

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Hopefully my liberal slip isn't showing, but...

It would seem to me the problems today's young are having supporting those retirement age is that Companies are ruthlessly transfering jobs overseas, creating a shortage of positions for the younger generation to fill, lowering the taxable income generated and, incidnetally no doubt, maximizing their profits. No?

 

[amicus]

Hello McKenna, nice to see you again.

Sorry my post made little sense to you and I suspect members of this site copulate copiously, however, if a survey were held, I suspect Lit members do not reproduce at replacement level, an average of two children per woman.

But then, I could be wrong.

Shanglan...you provide interesting opposition, as always.

First off, on a general level, as a society becomes modern and industrialized, the birthrate declines. It does so for perhaps more than one reason, but my point is, it does it naturally.

I too, do not wish to witness natures solutions to overpopulation, as they are often harsh.

But I cannot relate to you the number of times, hundreds, in discussions like this and otherwise, where young women of child bearing age have stated: "Who would want to being a child into this polluted, over populated, dog eat dog world and terror and violence..." I paraphase, of course, as it was said in many different ways.

If you equate the innate desires of women to be as mens, pursuit of an identification through a career or profession; the desire to be 'independent' and self sufficient; then I suppose your argument makes some sense.

But just as men have innate needs, to compete, to conquer, et cetera; women also have innate needs, maternal needs, the need to reproduce, to nurture, to give and yes, even a desire and a need to become part of a family and be dependent upon a spouse to provide for her...and her children...

During the PBS program I referenced, the Japanese have a name for women of child bearing age who have no children and want none. They are independent and self sufficient, educated and intelligent, pay taxes are are great consumers of all things. 'Female parasites', is what the Japanese call them, if I remember correctly, but I could be mistaken as I only saw the broadcast the one time and did not search the text.

As I have said before, hunkering down under broadsides from the intinerant females here...I am not certain the emancipation of women has been altogether a good thing.



"...But really, Amicus ... this image of poor women weeping over the children that they sacrificed to a noble but misguided social ideal. Do you really believe that they are out there? I think it much more likely that more interest in careers and education and greater availability and understanding of birth control are behind the drop in birth rates. And, although this may shock you right down to your socks, possibly another contributing factor is that women are simply asking for more before they settle down to produce children. They have more options available to them, and so they're less willing to put up with spousal roles or behavior that they used to accept..."


What I see is female led single parent families, increasing costs of child care and other social services funded by general taxation, a sky high divorce rate, singles clubs full of lonely people, male and female, the income tax, as it applies to men and women alike, doubling the amount of taxation over a single provider in a family.

Again, I am not so certain that women have the same goals as men, nor am I certain they are, in general, happy and content in the circumstances they find themselves in.

Less willing to put up with...as if that were just a one sided argument, after several wives and other such associations, I am no longer willing to tolerate a woman in close proximity for more than a few hours at a time.

Well, that should provide enough fresh meat.

amicus...

 

[amicus]

Perhaps your slip is showing Colleen, but it is a lovely one and I don't mind a bit.

"...Hopefully my liberal slip isn't showing, but...

It would seem to me the problems today's young are having supporting those retirement age is that Companies are ruthlessly transfering jobs overseas, creating a shortage of positions for the younger generation to fill, lowering the taxable income generated and, incidnetally no doubt, maximizing their profits. No?..."


Colly, Imagine for just a moment that you are the CEO of a clothing manufacturing plant somewhere in the good ole USA. Notice that your company is failing to compete in the market place and that your research analysts have given you numbers showing why.

The first cause of the difficulty would be high priced union labor. Labor that demands medical insurance, retirement plans, daycare facilities, shorter work hours, flexible work times, longer paid vacations. All the things that the left wing considers a necessary part of a 'fair wage'.

Add to that the increasingly higher taxes, environmental requirements and restrictions, higher transportaton and distribution costs due to trucking and rail rates, that incidentally are under the same pressures listed above.

Imagine now that those self same analysts gave you a method by which your company could become profitable once again, be competitive in the market place and keep the company in existence for the benefit of the investors and stockholders.

The solution is to move the factory overseas, to 'outsource' to Mexico, or India or Venezuela. Now is that company really being 'ruthless, heartless and uncaring?"

Now, many companies just close their doors and go under, or merge with another in an attempt to compete in an unfriendly environment. That went on for many years until 'outsourcing' became a possible alternative.

And although I doubt I can convince you, the US economy, even with the outsourcing, has created more jobs than ever before, and they are not jobs flipping burgers as so many imply.

This society is evolving yet once again, as it has so many times before and will emerge even better. Have a little faith....


amicus...

 

[BlackShanglan]

Amicus, you're always interesting to wrangle with. Let's see what we have here, shall we?

First off, on a general level, as a society becomes modern and industrialized, the birthrate declines. It does so for perhaps more than one reason, but my point is, it does it naturally.

I agree. In fact, I think that's what's at work in the cases your articles cite.

But I cannot relate to you the number of times, hundreds, in discussions like this and otherwise, where young women of child bearing age have stated: "Who would want to being a child into this polluted, over populated, dog eat dog world and terror and violence..." I paraphase, of course, as it was said in many different ways.

Yes, but if you notice, "overpopulated" is only one of a number of complaints there. Personally, I don't think that that sort of statement is an indication that the speaker has been brainwashed by Mr. Malthus. It seems to me more likely that she is expressing concerns both general and personal - that is, both displaying trepidation at the state of modern society, and possibly also supplying a variety of reasons for a choice that may really be more of a personal issue. Interestingly, I think perspectives like your own a little further down - i.e., that the natural, normal female urge is for domesticity and child production - are part of why a young lady would offer the "state of the world today" explanation for her doubt. I imagine that that is socially rather easier to say than "I don't think I want to have children." "State of the world" also has a useful way to turning the conversation to less intrusively personal issues than one's reproductive choices.

If you equate the innate desires of women to be as mens, pursuit of an identification through a career or profession; the desire to be 'independent' and self sufficient; then I suppose your argument makes some sense.

But just as men have innate needs, to compete, to conquer, et cetera; women also have innate needs, maternal needs, the need to reproduce, to nurture, to give and yes, even a desire and a need to become part of a family and be dependent upon a spouse to provide for her...and her children...

I imagine that some do feel those needs. And I imagine that others do not. Speaking as a genderless horse, naturally it's difficult for me to bring personal experience to bear - but I've seen ample support in the literature that has come down to us from earlier generations, and from talk with my female friends. And really, let's think on this. Imagine all of the professions, lifestyles, hobbies and occupations that humans have created for themselves. There's a wonderful variety out there, all of which men may choose amongst to find those which best suit their individual talents, interests, and personalities. What are the odds that women, members of exactly the same species and with exactly the same intellectual capacity, will nearly all be happy with the one single option?

In fact, let's take it a step further. If women really all want essentially the same thing, why is that, when punitive economic and social restrictions are lifted, they don't all keep choosing to do just that?

During the PBS program I referenced, the Japanese have a name for women of child bearing age who have no children and want none. They are independent and self sufficient, educated and intelligent, pay taxes are are great consumers of all things. 'Female parasites', is what the Japanese call them, if I remember correctly, but I could be mistaken as I only saw the broadcast the one time and did not search the text.

*shrug* And Valerie Solanas refers to the male as "an incomplete female, a walking abortion, aborted at the chromosome stage." One hopes that the presence of people willing to use nasty language is not to be accepted as proof of their views? In fact, I'm baffled to see how someone who pays taxes to support schools, pre-school programs, orphanages, and food aid for children in poverty while producing no children who use these resources can really be described as a "parasite." It seems to me that the situation is quite the opposite.

What I see is female led single parent families, increasing costs of child care and other social services funded by general taxation, a sky high divorce rate, singles clubs full of lonely people, male and female, the income tax, as it applies to men and women alike, doubling the amount of taxation over a single provider in a family.

I'm curious why you think that forcing women back into their households will solve this, or if it will, why you think it's the only solution. Surely it would be just as simple to force men to do it?

I'll go back to Mr. Mill on this one. When no one wanted the job of picking cotton in the hot Mississippi sun for next to nothing, we tried enslaving people. When no one wanted to work on Her Majesty's ships due to the cruelty and deprivation thereon, we tried press gangs. Eventually, we rejected both of these institutions as deeply immoral. Why, then, when once more faced with a job that few people want to do - spend the rest of your life at home raising children and doing long hours of hard physical work in a marriage model that provides little respect or equality - do we try to pretend it's moral to force people to do it rather than make the institution more attractive and recompense people fairly for their pains and efforts?

I don't deny that the problems you list exist, and I will even go so far as to agree that they occurred because women gained rights and abilities they didn't have before. But that's simply evidence against your theory that women choose to be dependent and domestic by nature. Clearly, when not forced to do so, many of them don't - and complaining about the problems that their new choices create is like complaining that the Emancipation Proclamation reduced the supply of cheap farm hands. However useful it might be to force a group of people into servitude, it is not right - and if they stop serving when the force is removed, one might also argue that it was clearly not natural either.

Again, I am not so certain that women have the same goals as men, nor am I certain they are, in general, happy and content in the circumstances they find themselves in.

Then it's very peculiar, the manner in which they continue to educate themselves, seek employment, and choose not to marry until later in life. Why would you suggest they do that?

Less willing to put up with...as if that were just a one sided argument, after several wives and other such associations, I am no longer willing to tolerate a woman in close proximity for more than a few hours at a time.

Then surely you, of all men, should rejoice. One of the great complaints of staid old bachelors of earlier days was the frantic way in which mothers persisted in attempting to foist their daughters on them. When males were the only source of income, naturally young ladies of a certain age became a bit wild-eyed. And indeed, society did have its judgement to make on bachelors, as well. Will it surprise you to learn that in Victorian England, the term "parasites" was at times applied to those gentlemen of means who chose not to marry and support a family?

Shanglan

 

[Couture]

With gains in productivity, why can't one young person support several older people? If he/she had to go out and hunt and gather, this wouldn't be the case. But most jobs - even agriculture - have become mechanized. The actual amount of work expended to support those that can't work is much less than it would have been in earlier times.

Most of the countries listed don't limit couples to one child. Hell, in the US, we will pay you to have them. Do you suppose that maybe, just maybe, the markets are operating efficiently? That couples could be self-limiting to increase the future opportunities for their child?

But really, this whole argument is silly. What does the author propose? Unlimited population? Even if it were possible, who would want to live in a world with THAT many dumbasses?

 

[McKenna]

Hello McKenna, nice to see you again.

Sorry my post made little sense to you and I suspect members of this site copulate copiously, however, if a survey were held, I suspect Lit members do not reproduce at replacement level, an average of two children per woman.

<snip>

Would that I could, Ami, would that I could.

 

[amicus]

Shanglan...Couture...

"...But really, this whole argument is silly. What does the author propose? Unlimited population? Even if it were possible, who would want to live in a world with THAT many dumbasses?..."

"Unlimited poplulation" said another way is perhaps more telling. "The freedom to reproduce as one chooses..."

I am opposed to the use of force such as the Chinese, in limiting population.

I am opposed to the use of force in the form of mandatory taxation to affect social change to fullfil the dreams of some starry eyed left winger who wants to save the world.

Shanglan, you said so many things, I am not sure where to begin.

Along with the above comment about the use of force, I might also re emphasize my love affair with the concept of human freedom. I do not begrudge women the access to all the possible avenues of human liberty that we have made available in this nation.

And if those who read do not choose to acknowledge the political influence that has guided and molded change over the past half century, then that is your prerogative.

It is perhaps cruel irony for many, who have expressed and lived a particular political agenda for most or all of their lives, to find that it was all in error.

It is an illusive grasp I see to portray of how the 'activists' of the past half century have changed the way we live.

The modern liberal left wing is an umbrella for many disparate groups that 'seem' mind you, 'seem' to have a fundamental point of agreement.

And I truly think it pre dates Marxism and even the Malthusian period. As I said, it is difficult to pin down and often eludes me and I get carry off into minutia as each fragment of the left presents a myopic view of one aspect.

The future is an unknown land; but not quite, as things we do, certainly do affect the coming years and decades.

The declining birthrate of causcasian females, whatever the reason, is and will continue to have an effect on society.

The destruction of the old paternal family structure, for better or worse, is also having and will have effect on future generations.

Many pretend chagrin at the treatment of women in the Muslim world, but that has been a way of life forever. Will it change? Should it change? Should western democracies nuture that change, should we openly foment change? Should we express horror that another culture treats women in a manner of which we do not approve? Why?

I am loathe to use personal examples as each time I do, someone decides to hit below the belt and make an obscene comment. But rest assured, I am knowledgeable about the problems young families have in this very changed world.

I do not fully understand how a married couple can both work a full time job, usually more than 10 hours a day with all things considered, and nurture three or more children at the same time.

I see them doing it, with the assistance of child care each working day, I see them expend a rather large portion of that joint income for that child care and I see them tired and frustrated at both the beginning and end of each working day.

Is this what they really want? Or have circumstances driven them to this life style? Can it continue? Should it continue?

Everyone loves Social Security and other government programs for retired people, and surely there are some good things about it. But has it not indeed removed grandparents from the scene? They now live in 'sun city' wherever that may be and are not available to assist in child care or even provide the experience and wisdom of the previous generation as they have always done in the past.

Do I have a solution? No, I do not; but saying that does not mean I don't see the problems generated.

We cannot go back to the past, we face an uncertain future and seem to be disappointed in the present.

Perhaps y'all have better solutions?


amicus...

 

[BlackShanglan]

Hmmm. Interesting ideas in some of that, Amicus. Am I right in thinking that ... no, perhaps not. Surely you are not saying that the worship of personal independence and self-fulfillment is causing problems? That is, that seems to be the thread connecting two-income families struggling to raise kids with grandparents moving out of the picture to retire in Sun City. But I can't seem to reconcile that with your dedication to the Randian absolute.

Care to guide me? I'd like to understand your position better.

Many pretend chagrin at the treatment of women in the Muslim world, but that has been a way of life forever. Will it change? Should it change? Should western democracies nuture that change, should we openly foment change? Should we express horror that another culture treats women in a manner of which we do not approve? Why?

"Pretend." What an interesting choice of word.

I can't speak for others, but I can speak for myself. I object to their treatment for the same reason that I object to all forms of slavery - and incidentally, for the same reason why I can't comprehend your acceptance of this when you are so dedicated to individual liberties. It is an offense to humanity and human liberty to hold a group of people in servitude when they have committed no crime.

Do I think that people who wish to observe Muslim restrictions of their own free will should be allowed to? Absolutely. I don't care how unusual anyone's restrictions on his or her own behavior are, so long as they are freely chosen, the person is of sound mental state, and there's some sort of revocability involved. When, however, the government of a country denies half of the population the right to vote, hold office, own property, drive a car, attend school, appear in public without a male relative, appear in public in any clothing other than that of the government's choosing, leave the country without their assigned male "guardian," choose a sexual partner, or prosecute attackers for rape unless the attack was witnessed and verified by several other males, then we're not talking about choice. We're talking about slavery.

Shanglan

 

[Couture]

Perhaps y'all have better solutions?


amicus...

Feed every one over age 65 to the Morlocks.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I don't understand how you reconcile a love of personal liberty with a desire to rob women of that liberty by relegating them to the kitchen and nursery.

 

[Seattle Zack]

Bill Adair is a columnist for the St. Petersburg Times. A few weeks ago, I read this column, and couldn't decide if he was serious or not. Most of his columns are such pablum, I came to the conclusion that it was his clumsy attempt at parody. Apparently, though, there are enough gullible nitwits out there ... the stupidity of the American public never fails to amaze me.
----------------------
A Social Security Solution that's Easy to Conceive
May 29, 2005

Here's an easy remedy for the Social Security crisis: Let's make more babies.

The challenge for Social Security is a simple math problem - too many old people, not enough young ones. We can solve it with some easy addition, by creating a bunch of babies.

President Bush should give a televised address and urge all willing and able mothers to have an additional child.

"I want you to go to bed tonight," he could say, "and conceive a child. Even if you already have one or two, please have one more. Our fiscal future depends on it." And then he could give us a mischievous wink.

It would be the ultimate pro-family policy. The White House could give the program a catchy name (YESSS! - Youthful Exuberance to Save Social Security!) and give away buttons. No how-to guides would be necessary.

Heck, everybody loves kids! They're fun to have around, with the possible exception of potty training, adolescence and when they need to be driven to soccer practice.

We must breed quickly. With projections showing Social Security will start spending more than it receives in 2017, we need to conceive the kids immediately so they can start working - and paying Social Security taxes - as soon as possible. If we do our part tonight, we could probably have millions of additional teenagers working in fast-food restaurants and shopping malls in 16 or 17 years.

The problem is very real. The dark cloud looming for Social Security - like the one facing Medicare - is the big surge of baby boomers retiring over the next 25 years. Today, there are 3.3 workers for every retiree. By 2030, there will be only 2.2.

The problem is amplified because people are living longer and we're having fewer babies. A typical woman averaged 3.7 children in 1957, but that number is down to 2.0 today.

Demographers and economists have been aware of the birth rate problems for years. Some countries have been encouraging more births. Peter Costello, Australia's treasurer, last year urged couples to "go home and do your patriotic duty tonight."

In Europe, countries have offered a slew of incentives ranging from subsidized child care to cash payments. But the countries have not significantly increased the birth rates.

"The Europeans have tried a hundred different schemes, and they don't work," said Ben Wattenberg, author of Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future.

In the United States, a program to spur more baby-making has some early support. Scripps Howard columnist Dale McFeatters has suggested a Department of Homeland Fertility. Phillip Longman, author of The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What to Do About It, has proposed that families with more children pay lower Social Security taxes.

But to get a big boost in baby production, I think the White House needs to make an all-out effort and use a full range of campaign tactics - speeches, advertising and independent groups (Swift Boat Veterans for Procreation?). Bush managed to persuade the nation to re-elect him. He surely could persuade us to have sex once or twice.

Economists and demographers say the YESSS! plan would improve the fiscal health of Social Security, although they're skeptical we can make enough babies in time. The birth rate needs to increase dramatically to make up for all the people who will be living longer (and drawing more Social Security benefits).

"The numbers would have to be pretty large," said Bruce Bartlett, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative think tank. "Given the time frame, it's already too late. We needed to have had those kids in the '80s and '90s."

Consider the math. There are about 51-million women between the ages of 20 and 44. If we could get half of them to have one additional child, we would have a surge of more than 25-million workers.

Add those kids to the workforce by 2025 and the Social Security numbers would improve. Instead of 2.3 workers per retiree, we would bump it up to 2.7. That wouldn't quite be enough to make the system solvent, but it would reduce the need for less-desirable options such as raising the retirement age or cutting benefits.

Thomas Saving, an economics professor at Texas A&M University and a former Social Security trustee, said the nation should try to maintain the current 3.3 workers per retiree. But that means we would have to create about 70-million more people - an additional 1.4 children for each woman of child-bearing age.

"We've got to get a lot of babies!" he said.

Still, he and other experts say the YESSS! program has promise.

"There's no doubt that an increasing population, in terms of the economy and the tax base, is a good thing," said Michael Tanner, who heads the Social Security program for the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. "Strictly from a financial accounting point of view, the more the merrier."

He's even willing to help. "I'm going to have to go home and do my part."

---------
What a moron. More single moms, more welfare moms, more breeders squirting out kids they can't afford, that's the solution? Ah well, we can always execute them when they end up in prison at age 17.

--Zack
(who has no kids, thank God)

 

[amicus]

Seattle Zack...thanks for the article...interesting if a bit tongue in cheek.

Morlocks? egads the time traveler...

And no where do I recall suggesting that women be repressed, oppressed or sentenced to childbearing and the kitchen or sent to Ryyaad (sp).

What I have done and continue to do, is question the results of the glorious emancipation that has loosed upon us the wrath of women scorned.

I have another novel working, concerned with the 2 million runaway children each year in the US and Canada, latchkey, unwanted, fatherless children, starved, deprived, hopeless and selling their bodies for food.

Not that it matters, but most of my liberal cohorts here seem to see no problems outside the economic system we live under. I rather think it is more complex than saving the environment in pristine condition.

Hmmm...as a matter of fact, that is a thought...how many of the left wing do gooders are single entities without children? Without obligations and responsibilities, they devote their lives to saving the planet instead of being fruitful and multiplying....hmmm...have to give that some thought...

Geez, I can't wait to get back on radio and tv and chew on some christians and liberals....

amicus the immaculate...

 

[BlackShanglan]

And no where do I recall suggesting that women be repressed, oppressed or sentenced to childbearing and the kitchen or sent to Ryyaad (sp).

What I have done and continue to do, is question the results of the glorious emancipation that has loosed upon us the wrath of women scorned.

I'm sorry to have mis-read you. Did you have some other solution in mind rather than the removal of said emancipation?

The wrath of women scorned, by the way, is an interesting turn of phrase that I would question. It seems to me that most of the issues you're concerned about are the results of women scorning men, now that that is a financially viable option.

I have another novel working, concerned with the 2 million runaway children each year in the US and Canada, latchkey, unwanted, fatherless children, starved, deprived, hopeless and selling their bodies for food.

It's intriguing how we rarely hear about hordes of motherless children. Why might that be, do you suppose?

 

[amicus]

I suppose I deserve the sarcasm for my flippant attitude toward the left.

And I can not imagine those of the Roosevelt ilk to ever concede that after a half century of left wing accendance that it is now in decline.

Ayn Rand pointed it out 40 years ago and it was not nearly as blatantly obvious as it is today.

Many continually whine for an answer, details, plans, models, theories about the future; I have failed thus far to realize that you really do not trust human nature, or the ability of a free market with free people solving problems without Uncle Sam looking over the shoulders of all.

Europe is a mess. Largely as a result of failed social welfare programs and government micro managing the economy; that should be sufficient evidence.

Apparently not.


amicus...

 

[BlackShanglan]

I apologize, Amicus. I was playing flippant for flippant, but there was no sting intended. I meant more to be playful, but please forgive me if I stepped over the line.

Hmmm. As for Rand and liberal economic policies, you're losing me a bit here. Wouldn't traditional liberal social platforms like income support for single parents and children living in poverty tend to make more children rather than less? That seems at least a concern of many traditionalist conservatives - that we are "paying" people to have children on the welfare system. It's possibly a failure of my own knowledge and imagination, but I can't think of any liberal-driven reforms that tended to reduce the population other than access to birth control and abortion - both of which seem to me to fit more into your own philosophy of elevating personal choice and independence than into any sort of nanny state. What sorts of programs did you have in mind?

Many continually whine for an answer, details, plans, models, theories about the future; I have failed thus far to realize that you really do not trust human nature, or the ability of a free market with free people solving problems without Uncle Sam looking over the shoulders of all.

You are quite right there. I don't think that the vast majority of people make especially good choices when left to their own devices, and I would be happy to provide you with any number of cases in point to support that theory. That doesn't mean that I think that we should all live in a fascist nanny state that attempts to smother us in cotton wool for the entirety of our lives, but at times I do think it wise for the matches to be taken away and placed safely out of reach, metaphorically speaking.

As for the free market, I think my perspective is swayed by the amount of time I spend in Victorian England. They were great believers in the free market and the untrammeled progress of industry. They also faced literally deadly pollution - some of the heavy, toxic-smoke-ridden fogs could kill dozens of people in a single night in London - staggering want and poverty, mass adulteration of their food and drink, common use of arsenic in dyes for clothing, wallpaper, and even food wrappers, and working conditions so harsh and so dangerous that in some trades two generations of workers were dying in the space of one generation of middle class citizens. You might expect that of the coal miners - and the young children employed in the mines before the government put an end to that - but the dressmakers? Yes, the dressmakers. Doctors and parliamentary inquiry panelists interviewing young women in the trade found that it was common for them to work 14 hours a day, and in the crush of the fashion season many were working 18 hours a day for a week at time. Others never left the workroom for days at a time, but only snatched an hour's sleep on heaps of scraps when the supervisor was "kind." And that was far from the only industry like it. You might try Annie Besant's "The White Slavery of London Match Workers" for a glimpse inside another workhouse untrammeled by the limits of an interfering government.

I do believe in freedom, in competition, and in a marketplace that operates under those principles. But I also have seen too much of what happens under total lack of regulation to believe that it is a good thing. I would very much like humans to evolve to the point at which even without government regulation, they will decline to crush their fellow beings ruthlessly into the dust in the hopes of snatching a few pence from their bodies. At the moment, however, enough of us are not at the stage that I think it best to have some regulation and enforcing of basic standards.

Shanglan

 

[Seattle Zack]

I have another novel working, concerned with the 2 million runaway children each year in the US and Canada, latchkey, unwanted, fatherless children, starved, deprived, hopeless and selling their bodies for food.

Blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Dude, do you even realize what an idiot you sound like? "I have another novel working ..." Have you ever been to a youth center? How many hours a week do you spend there? Have you spent any time at all furthering this cause that you so fervently espouse? Are you a foster parent? Big Brothers, educational tutor perhaps?

Maybe it's best just to cower in your suburban wi-fi equipped neighborhood and scribble incoherent screeds culled from liberatarian message boards that make as much sense as a Mentos commercial.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

It's intriguing how we rarely hear about hordes of motherless children. Why might that be, do you suppose?

Liberals have eaten them all.

 

[ozymandiask]

I do not know but I will give big odds that Amicus :-

1 is Caucasian
2 has a larger than average family.

It might be worth observing that the population has fallen before and significantly but recovered each time. It is generally accepted by historians that the population of Europe fell between 45 and 60% between AD1 and AD 1000. It had recovered significantly by 1346 but then fell again by some 25 to 30 % in the next 6 years (Black Death).

Amicus fails to make the distinction between what is a personal tragedy for the individual and what is significant for the whole population, but then I guess that we live in an age obsessed with sefish values.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I
It might be worth observing that the population has fallen before and significantly but recovered each time. It is generally accepted by historians that the population of Europe fell between 45 and 60% between AD1 and AD 1000. It had recovered significantly by 1346 but then fell again by some 25 to 30 % in the next 6 years (Black Death).

Interesting thing about how the Black Death led to the strengthening of the Trade Guilds and brought about the end of the Middle Ages.

With skilled workers and even peasant farmers in such short supply after the devastation of the Black Death, wages went sky high. The landowners (in England and France, at least) reacted by passing wage-cap laws and compelling the farmers to work for them at pre-plague rates at the same time as they raised rents and taxes. This led to peasant revolts like Wat Tyler's in England and the Jacquerie in France, in which 20,000 peasants were massacred. To keep their prices high, the Trade Quilds banded together throughout Europe, which in turn provoked bloody retaliation by the nobility backed by the merchant classes, and supported by the Church, which upheld the status quo ante as having been decreed by God.

The peasant revolts and the trade guilds were instrumental in bringing down the old social order of the Medieval world - the rigid tripartate social order of peasant, priest, and noble - and giving rise to the modern middle class.

See Barbara Tuchman's "A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century" for details.

Also this: http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture30b.html

 

[BlackShanglan]

Liberals have eaten them all.

It's about time *someone* put Mr. Swift's fine proposal into effect.