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| Europe |
| Europe's demographic crisis |
| 2005-07-13 |
| Nothing new here, except that I love short, to-the-point piece, and that I delight in posting how Europe is going to die, I revel in self-defeating Doom & Gloom I guess... Chuck Colson In a well-known urban legend, college students simultaneously flush all the toilets on campus and break down the townâs sewage system. While this story about overtaxing a sanitation system may be a myth, real-world Germans have learned what happens when you donât tax the system enough. Itâs a vivid example of the damage caused by the âbirth dearth.â The âbirth dearthâ is what demographers call plummeting birth rates in most of the industrialized world. Throughout Western Europe and East Asia, the birth rate is well below 2.1 births per womanâwhich is the minimum needed to maintain a stable population. Environmentalist dogma argues that plummeting birth rates are a good thing: People cause pollution, weâre told. Well, officials in countries like Japan, Korea, and Germany now know better. In these and other so-called âadvancedâ societies, shrinking populations threaten their way of life and their cultural identity. In Japan, for example, a birth rate that is barely half of âreplacement levelâ has forced the closure of more than two thousand schools in the past ten years, with hundreds more closures to come. Itâs left the government wondering who will support Japanâs aging population. These and other concerns, like the possible extinction of the Japanese people, have prompted older Japanese to call their childless children âparasite singles.â In Germany, the population of some villages has shrunk so much that âthere are now too few people flushing for the sewage to properly flow.â As a result, the government has had to spend scarce resources on retrofitting sewage systems. Elsewhere in Germany and the rest of Europe, the emptying landscape provides an opening for an unlikely immigrant: the wolf. German biologists expect the growing packs to head soon toward Berlin. Now, wolves in Berlin sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but itâs a science fact. Whatâs incredible is the response of the average European or East Asian. They literally shrug their shoulders; they canât imagine changing their lifestyle to accommodate having two or more children instead of one or none. They believe against all evidence in a technological or political solution to this problem. But, as columnist Mark Steyn writes, âthereâs simply no precedent for managed decline in societies as advanced as Europeâsââor Japan, for that matter. Throughout history, societies in demographic decline, usually as a result of disease, have faced two unattractive options: a decline in their standard of living or the replacement of their native population with a more fertile immigrant one. Europe has, essentially by default, chosen the latter. But as last weekâs bombings in London illustrate, turning millions of Islamic immigrants into âEuropeans,â however you define the term, is a dubious proposition. And in Japan, where racial purity is a primary cultural value, the population faces eventual extinction. Itâs hard to imagine a better example of the importance of worldviews, and specifically in this case, the Christian one. Steyn is right when he says that Europeâs decline is directly linked to its hostility towards Christianity. Its rejection of what Christianity teaches about the family has made the continent safe for another kind of family: four-legged ones who howl at the moon. |
| Posted by:anonymous5089 |
| #16 Europe isn't going to die. It's just going to change, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. They will struggle to discover how they will assimilate immigrants and hopefully discover that skin-color isn't a boundary to hating George Bush. With common ground established they brainstorm how to stimulate their collective economy while taking as many vacations and retiring as soon as feasible. Whatever becomes the predominant language and skincolor in the US I am hopeful that the next generation will learn to pull up their pants. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2005-07-13 23:32 |
| #15 Mrs D., China is facing the same demographic changes as Japan, except the absolute and relative increase in the elderly is much greater. Between 1995 and 2050, the number of elderly (aged 50 +) will increase by 422 million, while at the same time the number of people below the age of 50 will decline by more than 165 million. Link |
| Posted by: phil_b 2005-07-13 23:10 |
| #14 If people don't want kids then don't have them I sez. My wife and I have one kid, two dogs and live paycheck to paycheck due to college loans and getting over "getting established." Heck, and I'm an officer. We live frugal now so in the next couple years everything's paid off minus a car payment and of course the house. We plan on having more kids next year when I get back from the sand box. |
| Posted by: Jarhead 2005-07-13 22:52 |
| #13 Disagree, stongly, Phil. By not even maintaining population stasis, a society is committing suicide. The ultimate example is Russia. That country is disappearing and I should not be surprised to see the Chinese overrun half of it within 25 years plunging Asia into chaos for decades. No generation of any nation is the same as those preceeding it, but when people think so much of the present and so little of the future that they don't even reproduce themselves, they've got a problem. For ultimately, it is through out children that we live on. |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2005-07-13 20:07 |
| #12 I get tired of reading this drivel (not the comments). The only real problem with a declining birthrate is where retirement incomes are funded from the taxes of workers. Japan has largely solved this problem because workers continue to work well past the age of retirement in other Western countries. There are a number of reasons for this including the status afforded to those who work (and I could make a good case this is an important reason why Japanese live longer than anyone else). The reality is that by not allowing immigration, a Japan populated by only a 100 million or even 50 million will still be Japan. Just more affluent and with fewer population pressures. Will the same be true of Europe? |
| Posted by: phil_b 2005-07-13 18:07 |
| #11 We could solve several problems by diverting latin american emmigration from North America to Europe. Latin America has too many people. The U.S. benefits from immigration, but Europe definitely needs the people more than we do. Latins would be much easier to assimilate than North Africans in that they already speak at least one European language and their culture is more European. They also don't blow people up. |
| Posted by: DD 2005-07-13 16:09 |
| #10 My greatest joy is not only raising a future generation of rantburgers but in raising, moral, ethical and realistic children who will have a grasp of the world around them and watching them develop in this manner Now that's a good reason to have kids! But forgive me if this whole idea of impregnating the women for the good of mankind makes me shiver. |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-07-13 15:18 |
| #9 While Euros enjoy 6 week vacations and 35 hour work weeks, Islamic immigrants have families of 8-10, overburdening the social support systems while (in most cases) neither assimilating nor producing children who adopt western skills and values. Which is where the problem is - not in the fact that the Euro's have too few kids. There are lots of good reasons to tighten your belt and have a family - but for the good of the Democracy seems a bit over the top to me. Complex problems do not have simple solutions - like outbreed your neighbor. Rather you've put your finger on the problem. Bad immigration laws and a tax codes that works like a ponzi scheme. It's just like the argument that you should put your children into failing schools so that the schools won't be failing. They are right, it would help- but you PERSONALLY would be foolish to take that advice. Rather, you have to address the underlying problems, like lack of discipline, standards and poor administration to improve the schools. |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-07-13 15:04 |
| #8 Interesting arguments. I have 4 children and do find it difficult to survive on 1 salary. So I now work 2 nights a week and also on Saturdays. Each child has their own personality and characteristics. The joy of raising them is observing their similarities between my wife and myself. My greatest joy is not only raising a future generation of rantburgers but in raising, moral, ethical and realistic children who will have a grasp of the world around them and watching them develop in this manner. I can't imagine being so selfish as to not want these amazing creations. What do you have left when your gone? Perhaps the Japanese should go extinct consumed by their own greed. |
| Posted by: Rightwing 2005-07-13 15:01 |
| #7 How would they be able to enjoy 51.9 weeks of holidays and vacations? Everyone knows they must leave in August so the old folks can die in peace. Sheesh, you ask too much, rkb! |
| Posted by: .com 2005-07-13 13:36 |
| #6 "What if they cannot afford ..." You know, I watch military families find ways to raise 3-5 healthy, educated and well adjusted kids on a single, modest salary. The suggestion that Europeans can't afford kids is laughable -- it's a question of will. Will to dismantle their punitive social taxation, to be sure, but also will to put the furthering of their society's future ahead of shortterm self indulgence. |
| Posted by: rkb 2005-07-13 13:33 |
| #5 Not sure I agree with you, 2b. It's a fallacy to simply assert "there are too many people in the world already". Too many for WHAT? And what KINDS of people? Age? Location? Ability to be (in practice) educated and productive in the modern global economy? It takes a core majority in the West of people educated in western skills and with western values inculcated, to keep going our economies and way of life. While Euros enjoy 6 week vacations and 35 hour work weeks, Islamic immigrants have families of 8-10, overburdening the social support systems while (in most cases) neither assimilating nor producing children who adopt western skills and values. |
| Posted by: too true 2005-07-13 13:29 |
| #4 sigh. I don't disagree with many of the points that the article makes, but the solution - have more babies - does not logically follow as the way to solve problems in tax codes and mismanaged immigration policies. There are already plenty of people in the world, more than enough. Having more children will solve my social security problems, and it will put more workers into the tax base - benefitting me. It doesn't fix the problem in the tax codes. A simple solution for a complex problem - not. The argument is worthy of loons on the left, not on the right. No, no, I take it back. This wisdome is worthy of our Muslim fanatic friends. Let's employ 19th Century solutions to 21st Century problems. |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-07-13 11:11 |
| #3 "Could it also be that you can't afford to feed yourself in europe, much less a family of man,wife and 2.1 kids?" There was a very interesting article about that on the excellent Tech Central Station a while back, can't remember if I posted it here (note it was translated and available in french thanks to a swiss military website) : http://www.techcentralstation.com/012705D.html |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2005-07-13 10:48 |
| #2 so take your shoes off, wemmen. And for that matter, you don't need no skoolin neither. Somebody else needs to create more folks to mow my lawn cheap and make sure my social security check keeps roll'n in. Now get to work - mule. |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-07-13 10:36 |
| #1 Could it also be that you can't afford to feed yourself in europe, much less a family of man,wife and 2.1 kids? |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2005-07-13 10:16 |