America's 21st-Century Population Edge (The 21st century will still be the American Century)

WSJ ^ | 05/24/2012 | Ben Wattenberg

[Capt. Tom]

The author places a lot of value on quantity of people and economy of scale but quality seems to be overlooked. What benefit is population growth from emigration if it does not add to our quality of life and if it is mostly takers, not makers?

Agreed. - What this country needs are more Americans, and not just more US Citizens. There is a difference. - tom

[Iron Munro]

Agreed. - What this country needs are more Americans, and not just more US Citizens. There is a difference.

YES! - That's what I was trying to say!

You wrap it up quite nicely.

[Road Glide]

“Ben Wattenberg is right. Demographics and geography IS destiny.”

Yes, mick, demographics -is- “destiny”:
http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/2012/5/18/in_texas_7_in_10_children.htm

Do you really, really, think these newcomers are going to grow up and vote “conservative”?

[Carry_Okie]

The marital fertility rate is half that. There's a serious problem right there.

Between the pill, two parents working to pay for a horde of welfare brats with access to "affirmative action," funding their own kids' educations, saving for retirement, and paying for parents to live in separate houses on Social Insecurity, it's a wonder anybody has more than two kids.

[mick]

Yes. The welfare state is doomed. Once entitlements are reduced and folks are back to fending for themselves as our ancestors had to do. For example: The black family had lessor out of wedlock births than whites before the welfare state destroyed them. And Hispanics are a religious and socially conservative people. Progressive liberalism destroys everything it touches. Destroy IT and this country will OWN the 21st century.

[tbw2]

Growth through immigration is only good if they assimilate or reinforce the existing culture, instead of creating balkanization.

[mick]

I read the link. Thanks. But I don’t think it changes my assumption - IF we destroy the entitlement state ALL immigrants become Americans in order to survive and prosper. Just like the English, Germans, Irish, Italians, Jews, Finns, Swedes did before them. Nobody came here AS AMERICANS....the rough and tumble capitalist system made us Americans. I honestly believe that if we return to that our country will be fine. Changed? Of course. But still the land of the free. And the toughest guy on the block.

[Mrs. Don-o]

That’s why the entitlement state must go.

[LastNorwegian]

No doubt the US would have been exactly the same country if those migrants had been arabs, Thai, Mongols and Nigerians...

‘American’ is nothing more than an amalgamate of the cultures that settled the US.

[mick]

I suggest you read the historian Frederick Jackson Turner and his thesis about the frontier and other forces shaping the American character.

Frankly, your statement"‘American’ is nothing more than an amalgamate of the cultures that settled the US." is as false as false could be. Every immigrant who brought his "culture" to these shores was changed by the experience. The political and economic institutions established by the original English settlers allowed for this. And every group that came after,left free to develop itself in this New World, was also changed by it.

And your snide comment that implies the "arabs, Thai, Mongols and Nigerians" could not become Americans as well is also wrong. I know of plenty of arabs, thais and Nigerians who are as American as you. Although, I admit, I don't know of any Mongols!

[mick]

FYI...

The Turner Thesis

In 1893, three years after the superintendent of the Census announced that the western frontier was closed, Frederick Jackson Turner, a historian from the University of Wisconsin, advanced a thesis that the conquest of the western frontier had given American society its special character. At the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, marking the 400th anniversary of Columbus's discovery of the New World, Turner argued that the conquest of the western frontier as the nation's formative experience, which had shaped the nation's character and values. Western expansion accounted for Americans' optimism, their rugged independence, and their stress on adaptability, ingenuity, and self reliance.

[Amberdawn]

I do, they’re called Native Americans.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks SeekAndFind.

The estimates for the world population by year 2100 often run to a peak of 9 billion around 2050, with a subsequent levelling off.

In my humble opinion, the US population will be as high as 3 billion by year 2100, with the world population being as high as 50 billion. The current ratio of US population to world population is about 5 per cent, and that ratio will be higher in favor of the US population.

By year 2100, humans will have self-sufficient colonies on Mars, but the population there will probably still be measured in the thousands or perhaps hundreds of thousands. The number of people working in microgravity environments will be at least in the hundreds, and probably in the thousands, and that will be excluding humans living and working on (more like in) the Moon.

Extra, extra ping to the X-Planets and APoD lists.

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks SeekAndFind. According to the United Nations and the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. takes in more immigrants than the rest of the world combined... Drive in the suburbs and exurbs of many major American cities and you will see McMansion homes with three, four or even five children... In suburban settings, some affluent parents are deciding that for a decade or so raising a large family is more important than having two earners A Longer Perspectives topic. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[Winstons Julia]

Preach it!

[HeartlandOfAmerica]

Man, every time I come into one of these threads about the future you people REALLY depress me! Nattering Nabobs of Negativism. Agnew had it right.

You'll find NOBODY who's more up on America's future than I am. I keep an eye and track on where science and technology is going and I'm here to tell you, America's future is going to be GLORIOUS! Yeah, we may fall on our collective a$$e$ at times, but consider some of the following.

Even discounting the outrageous strides that our military is making, have any of you looked at what we're doing with stem cells?

We can change a skin cell into a stem cell and change it back into a heart muscle cell! Or a brain cell! Or a nerve cell! We're learning to understand how they operate to the extent that we now can hold out TRUE hope to repair spinal cord injuries and amputations and blind or burn victims for TOTAL repair of any of these ailments. And not in the next 100-200 years! In the next 10-20 years!

We've also figured out the 5 stem cell lines that make up the human lung system and think that we can repair damage like emphysema and other lung and heart conditions.

We have a lab here in the States who decided to try and create a human bladder using nothing but stem cells. So they built a scaffolding and started to bathe it with bladder stem cells. Over and over day after day they did this until lo and behold, they had a bladder! But that could be a fluke. So they thought they'd do it again and again, *POOF* they came out with a human bladder made to order. And they did it again and again and again until they came to the conclusion that they'd better do something with it or find a new line of work.

The upshot is that there are hundreds of people walking around with artificial bladders made of human cells instead of some plastic composite that could be rejected.

Any of you ever here of 'Shapeways.com?' Go check it out. You can design a product using a CAD program like Google sketch-up and submit it to them and they can build you your product using a special desktop printing technique that you can sell! Just like a replicator on Star Trek.

Speaking of printing, do you realize that we're learning to print human organs on printers? And solar panels sheets that are flexible and can be pasted on anything?

Our business world is disappearing into our desktops and the US govt isn't able to comprehend this. There isn't a problem with American's there's a problem with politicians.

Shotguns have been around since the 1600's or so? British hunting weapon? Well, they're still the same thing as they were back then. It took an American to sit down and rethink their design. There's now a beast called an AS-12 that's an automatic shotgun. It comes in drums of 20 or 30 shells that can fire on full automatic. They've also redesigned the shells for them. A grenade that can be shot out of one with fins of it's own for stability. And that's one of 40 new kind of shells that they developed for it!

You people may not be interested in it but there are millions of people making a living doing nothing but internet businesses. Ebay leaps to mind but there are hundreds of other ways to earn an income on the internet.

And that's only a slight touch of what America's future looks like. It's going to be bright and glorious and I have little respect for you doom and gloomers!

Godspeed,

HoA