Endangered Species: The Coming Crisis of Underpopulation (Including Moslem Iran)

The American Spectator | September/October, 2001 | Tom Bethell

[gusopol3]

Companies reward those employees who are most compulsive about their work...which means they reward those who spend the least time with their families. And less kids require less time.

I agree with much of what you have said. Congratulations upon your planned New Years' event! I'm a father of four myself, and , yes, cuss myself every day for the time I'm not spending with the kids(as I sit here Freeping). It's just one of those things, though, man-- you either buy into the parent thing and say, yeah, this is what we chose to do, and God willing, we're going to--hang the rest of the stuff; or you don't. But note that these devices that are sitting on our desks, and have made this kind of discussion possible, really will impact the future and our ability to spend time with the family, maybe even more so now with anthrax blowin' in the wind.

[gusopol3]

Sobran offered relative birthrates as the rising tide of Islam. If that is the reason for the expectation that Islam will overtake the West, then the data presented generally, and specifically for Iran, make the outcome far less than a "slam dunk." It's sort of a "yellow peril" argument, and the West has held out for 150 years beyond that hasn't it?

[gusopol3]

okay,so maybe we're siphoning off the rest of the world's growth. Again, I apologize for not being able to post the graph, but it shows Egypt, for instance at average 7 children per woman in 1960 and 3 per now, with a continuing downtrend not showing any sign of leveling off.

[gusopol3]

Egypt is the only other predominantly Moslem country for which data is presented graphically, and their births per woman is about the same as ours, no doubt with a higher childhood mortality. Unless shown something to the contrary, I do assume that this state of affairs (Iran, Egypt) exists across the Islamic world.

[Doctor Stochastic]

A correct analysis. The lifespan stuff hasn't been factored in either. For example, pople may believe (correctly or incorrectly) that having two children who expect to live to 40 is not necessarily better than having one child who expects to live to 80. The original article would make a good foot note to the book "The Republican War on Women" which I have seen in bookstores over the last few years.

[gusopol3]

Yeah, there are those of us who do take a great deal of joy in our children, as much or more as others do in really important things like a good book, movie, or a fine wine (or whine.) It beats being crabby, especially on a Saturday.

[gusopol3]

the "spread sheets" normally involved in procreation seldom involve an actuarial analysis.

[Doctor Stochastic]

True.

What I worry about is that the average couple has 2.1 children. It's the .1's that cause all the trouble.

[gusopol3]

they're called the "little shavers"

[FITZ]

Yes immigration in itself won't solve any problems. The area I live has extremely high immigration but they can't build the housing projects fast enough and the county hospital is filled to the max. It's the type of immigrant that comes, if they have no health insurance, auto insurance, education, language skills etc, they will use more than they contribute which is why this area is now considered an economic disaster, 1/3 of the people are on public assistance, 1/2 have no health insurance. 38% drop out of high school, unemployment is always 2-3 times the rest of the nation. The type of immigrant who comes educated and ready to work tends not to have any more children than the typical American, so either way we don't really gain.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[FITZ]

For example, pople may believe (correctly or incorrectly) that having two children who expect to live to 40 is not necessarily better than having one child who expects to live to 80.

I think the problem is that someone supports you until you're about 20 or so, if you work 20 years and live until 40, then no one will have to support you after you die. But if you reture at 60 and then live until 80, you have to be supported for 20 more years and are a lot more expensive than you were those first 20 years. So for this it's better to have 2 who'll cost society anything, but having 2 who'll work until 80 would be even better. If we're going to live long, then we just have to get used to the idea of working long.

[FITZ]

Yes, everything seems reversed from the way it should be. Poor uneducated women who can't feed their children if they don't have a man around tend to have the most, but it should be the other way, educated conservative women have a far better chance of providing for their children even if widowed or abandoned, and they should take advantage of it and have many kids.

[FReethesheeples]

Malthus, I am told, by the end of his own life was not a "Malthusian."

He stopped being right about 1790, when food production first started outstripping population growth.

With teh agricultural revolution (foremerly known as the Green Revoltuion, before the enviro-radicals took over teh term "Green", Malthusianism stoped being a valid descriptive & predicitive & prescriptive model

--- with a vengeance ---

in the laast 50 years;

food production is not an issue;

food DISTRIBUTION (shortages) is a POLITICALLY-CAUSED (Communist-Marxist-Totoalitaraian) phenomenon,

wherever starvation & shoratges exist in the world,

whether in Ethiopia,

Somalia,

Haiti,

the former USSR,

PRC,

Afghanistan,

Iraq,

SE Asia,

or the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa, No. Africa, South America, Central America, the Middle East, or the Far East.

People, with a modicum of education, and ACCESS TO ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY,

are ASSETS, NOT LIABILITIES, more people are ASSETS to GROWTH, not detriments to success, even CHINA (PRC) will grow because it has made its people,

even under conditions of political repression,

generally ASSETS, not liabilites, in creating economic growth, with China's projected gross GDP (NOT per-capita GDP) outstripping the US's by about 2012,

--- because people are assets, not liabilities,

--- & Malthus was WRONG, dead wrong.

[FReethesheeples]

EXCELLENT POST!

Peruvian Hernando de Soto's earth-shatteringly important book, and work in numerous developing nations, seen in his (profound and highly empirical studies in):

"The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Succeeds in the West & Fails Everywhre Else"

complements this picture,

by showing that

Title for real property

is the Foundation and basis for wealth creation and Capital formation,

and that even the POOR in LDCs have "Dead Capital" untitled capital in untitled property that VASTLY EXCEEDS 100-150 YEARS (!!) of Maximum Foreign aid from the "have" nations,

thus turning all the Leftist-ignorant-wrongheaded assumptions of Development Economics on their head!

[gusopol3]

food DISTRIBUTION (shortages) is a POLITICALLY-CAUSED {(Communist-Marxist-Totoalitaraian)} phenomenon,

Considering Rush's frequently repeated example of starving Plymouth colony, which rapidly produced an abundance of food when the communitarian rules were loosened, maybe Utopian, as well? BTW:LDC=less developed country?...Ehh..where does Max Weber fit in to the story?

[FReethesheeples]

Max Weber is not my area, I just know he studied bureaucracies and is otherwise peripheral to my known point.

Yes, "ideological" esperiments, but to be more precise and germane, the "communitarian" Plymouth colony experiment was arguably & descriptively a

"communist" experiment which failed, as I understand it.

Yes, LDC= "Less Developed Country."

[XBob]

he is ignoring the decrease in the death rate. I repeat:

To: gusopol3

This article is a confused, contradictory, pile of crap, and totally avoids addressing the truth. Like the liberals, up is down and down is up: -

World Population
6.199 billion - now
3.912 billion - jan 1970

http://www.ibiblio.org/lunarbin/worldpop

30 posted on 11/10/01 7:45 AM Pacific by XBob

======

there has been a 60% increase in world population in 30 years.

[XBob]

53 - You bring up a very interesting point, but you come to the wrong conclusion - "I think the problem is that someone supports you until you're about 20 or so, if you work 20 years and live until 40, then no one will have to support you after you die"

Very good - you are a break even, if you live to 40. But if you live to 60, then you can support an extra 20 year old. And if you live and work till 70, then you support an extra 1.5. And if you live to 80, and still retire at 70, (the new retirement age) you still support an extra 1 up to 20 year old.