If You Are Contracepting, You Are Part of A Very Big Problem

Madrid Blogspot ^ | January 27, 2009 | Patrick Madrid

[ga medic]

I assure you that I cannot afford to have more children. I have 5 now, and 2 on the way. It has been a struggle financially, and I truly don’t know how I am going to pay for 2 more, including my wife out of work for a couple months. This has nothing to do with an expensive house or a pool. It has to do with the fact that kids are expensive. Mine don’t wear $200 shoes, and we don’t have a pool. We have never been to Disney World. We are not afraid to make sacrifices, we just have very little left to sacrifice.

Right now, I am praying that my babies will be born healthy and my wife will be ok. I am praying that we will somehow manage to make this work. I don’t give a **** about the Muslim population’s reproduction rate. Until you have been where I am, you really know nothing about this.

[steve-b]

More gloom-and-doom nonsense, just like the New Ice Age and Global Warming.

[steve-b]

For most of human history the human population of the Earth was less than a billion.

And every great civilization of those times was, by these gloom-and-doom arguments, critically underpopulated.

[annalex]

I have 5 now, and 2 on the way

God bless you for that. I assure you -- I've been posting on these threads for a long time -- no one's comments here were intended to hoist any kind of perpetual breeding program on anyone. Each circumstance is different. The Catholic rule of thumb used to be 4 children, you are well ahead of me and most. The industrialized West's average is, I believe, 1.2 children and that is very sad. The remarks were addressing 1.2, not 5+2.

[steve-b]

This "economist" needs to get out more. Driving on the Beltway at 6 PM ought to be enough to shake the delusion that the problem is too few people.

[annalex]

The criterion of national health is not the absolute population numbers, but worker-to-elderly ratios. They are driven by birth rates.

[steve-b]

That’s virtually meaningless, given the number of other factors (death rate, changing definition of “elderly”, productivity per worker, and a plethora of others) that enter into the economic picture.

[annalex]

Who can disagree. Everyone inside the Washington Beltway should be on a cot in a re-education camp in Montana and not driving around posting on blogs.

[annalex]

I agree again! All these are factors. The birth rate is something most easily adjusted. You know how? Ask.

[cowtowney]

“I find that interesting considering the underclass is breeding like rabbits.”

Don’t blame them for doing the right thing. Your upperclass should be breading like rabbits, too, despite what Nancy Pelosi says. But, then again, how can you afford that new Beemer or pay off that college tuition loan and have children, too? Right?

[Antoninus]

I find that interesting considering the underclass is breeding like rabbits.

They're also aborting like Margaret Sanger's step-children. Visit a local abortuary and see who the primary clients are.

[Citizen Blade]

Eventually the more populated countries will slow down and the ratios will be more static

China's fertility rate is 1.77 children per woman, while India's is 2.76 (and plunging).

This demographic decline is happening everywhere in the world where living standards are increasing. The poorer the country, the higher the fertility rate.

[Antoninus]

True, I love kids and would have had more if I could have afforded to.

That's pretty funny. You live in the richest nation in the history of the world, and you claim you can't afford more children.

[steve-b]

Actually, the other factors are far more easily adjusted. Everyone wants to live longer and to produce more, so no social engineering is required — just good old-fashioned ingenuity.

[Sloth]

Ridiculous. The idea that I somehow owe children to society is as abhorrent as some of the leftist greenies' notion that we are morally obligated not to reproduce. How about I manage my own family and ALL of you collectivist tyrants just leave us alone?

[steve-b]

Yep. The demographic transition is a natural result of social and economic success. Complaints about it are just the usual whines that spew from elitists when people insist on doing what they think is best rather than doing what the elitists think is best for them.

[Citizen Blade]

Ridiculous. The idea that I somehow owe children to society is as abhorrent as some of the leftist greenies' notion that we are morally obligated not to reproduce. How about I manage my own family and ALL of you collectivist tyrants just leave us alone?

This is only an issue because we have set up a socialist pyramid scheme of pensions, medicare and the like.

With people living longer and having less children, a system where people get to retire at 65 and be supported by the working population is simply untenable.

[Antoninus]

More gloom-and-doom nonsense, just like the New Ice Age and Global Warming.

And yet, you still can't name for me one nation in history that thrived while undergoing a major population contraction.

[annalex]

I never experienced a need for extra ingenuity while making children.

[steve-b]

Huh? So, you are pinning your argument on the premise that Stalinism is superior to the (partly) free body politic of modern Russia, Comrade Antoninus?