Same trends re: Muslims also occurring in Ottawa.
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Harry Pollard Sent: Friday, October 22, 2010 10:39 PM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION'; 'Keith Hudson'; 'pete' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Revival of fertility Ed, I hate to burden you with the thought but our experiences are somewhat parallel, though we had 5 children. There is a argument that the Muslims have larger families than the indigenous populations of Europe who are not reproducing. Mark Steyn wrote a book on it. Given a generation or three, Muslims will be close to a majority in France and perhaps elsewhere. This will be used to scare people, of course, (Sharia is here!!!) but the contention appears to have some traction. Harry ******************************** Henry George School of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 9104 818 352-4141 ******************************** From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Thursday, October 21, 2010 12:46 PM To: Keith Hudson; RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION; pete Subject: Re: [Futurework] Revival of fertility I suppose there are a number of reasons why populations decline. Perhaps some people, being rational, look out at their resource base and tell themselves "oh, no, no, there simply aren't enough resources out there to feed and keep us, so we can't have any more kids" and perhaps others will have enough children, but only enough, to keep them in their old age. I must admit that I didn't think of either of those things when I fathered my four kids. On reflection, I think I just got horny and there they were, resources or old age be damned. However, I've been to one place in which the reasons for declining birth rates and declining population were really quite obvious, Russia in the mid 1990s. Given the chaos happening there at the time, people would have been nuts to have kids. So either by abstention, abortion or whatever, they managed not to have them. Population declined and, even though things have stablized considerably, it is still declining. What this suggests to me is that social conditions, what people are living through and how they see their future, must have at least some bearing on whether or not they have children. Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: Keith Hudson <mailto:[email protected]> To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME <mailto:[email protected]> DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION ; pete <mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, October 21, 2010 6:33 AM Subject: [Futurework] Revival of fertility And yet another new thread for the third question that Pete Vincent replied to: > Does the declining birth rate in advanced countries mean ultimate > extinction? I can answer that one easily: of course not. People are responding to the obvious overpopulation of their environment. There are clearly no rich frontiers available to exploit, no empty land rich with bounty. (There are those who might try to mount arguments against this assessment, but they won't gain traction with the perception of the average individual). When populations decline to the point where sufficient resources are clearly available for offspring to thrive comfortably, higher rates of breeding will resume. The more interesting question is, will a steady state be rapidly achieved, or will there be ongoing oscillations. That will be great data for computing overall behaviour of large population systems - an underdamped feedback system. I suggest that this isn't quite right. Parents won't have more than replacement numbers of children for the latter's sake, but only for their own sake in old age. It is in those countries (most of Western Europe) in which the state has assumed responsibility for looking after dependent old people that parents have had fewer and fewer children. But as these governments are already showing that they'll be unable to do this in future years then, well within the coming generation, parents will start saving a great deal more than now for their old age (and not buy consumer goods as governments want them to) and have even fewer children than now. Increasingly deprived of their tax base, what will governments do then? Almost certainly they will accelerate what's already going on (in England anyway) in state-run nursing homes (that is, treating old people badly) and in state-run hospitals (that is, starving old people). Until the culture changes, and for a long time to come, governments won't have the courage to carry out mass euthanasia in a kindly way. But when they do, and the prevailing culture supports it, it's only then that I can envisage parents in the Western world resuming their role of having two or more children again on average. Keith Keith Hudson, Saltford, England _____ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
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