What's conspicuously absent from this discussion is the reason for the low birthrates. Was/is it biological? Is it continuously necessary to have families with 10+ kids? Is it even financially possible to have families with 10+ kids? I think the later is the biggest reason, and the government knows this too, so that's why they're importing a new batch of rubes into the system that can be exploited just like the originals before they found out it wasn't worth having that many kids.
Without a welfare state, is population replacement even necessary? The entire premise of this replacement policy appears predicated on the assumption that we exist to maintain the state, instead of the opposite.
The idea promulgated by Musk and others, that if everyone doesn’t start having babies the human race will die out soon, is equally absurd.
Haven’t there have been times in the past when the worldwide population was less than a fee hundred thousand, even possibly in the tens of thousands? If people could bounce back after the ice age with stone tools, it’s unclear how with billions of people are soon in danger of extinction.
What is really in danger other than the modern welfare state and its potential for the funding of the tools of technological totalitarianism?
Two points come to mind. First, The UN and compliant institutions failed due to the problem identified by Frederick Hayek in his Nobel Prize lecture, “The Pretence of Knowledge”, decisions made ONLY on data available to them. Second is my growing concern with school choice which may be headed down the same blind alley. Assimilation is best achieved with second generation education. But as we encourage religious primary and secondary private education, will immigrant enclaves find this as opportunity to avoid assimilation? This “solution” may be our well intentioned downfall.
I like your proposed alternative solutions to fertility, but if SCOTUS supports citizenship for illegal immigrant births, our problems are going to escalate. The fact is economic success is associated with declining birth rates. Poverty is associated multiple births. My former professors would argue that association does not equate with causation, but reality says otherwise.
If the intent was to import a fresh batch of worker bees to keep the honey flowing to all the oldsters on the retirement dole (I say dole tongue in cheek because I know everyone pays Social Security) then why do we continue to import from countries that have such a high percentage that immediately jump on the welfare bus and never get off? Afghans and Somalis in particular. We need to import the worker bees from countries with the absolute best work ethic and an ability to generate taxable income no matter what country they hail from. At least if we’re being pragmatic. I suspect it would be from countries off the coast of Washington Oregon Cali and Baha and NOT off the coast of Texas Florida or any of the eastern states.
"why do we continue to import from countries that have such a high percentage that immediately jump on the welfare bus and never get off?" Very Good question!
As my name indicates, I am an actuary. I'm also a tail end boomer. I was reading about actuarial "solutions" to the well known problems with the US Social Security system around 1990.
It was well known that as the boomers retired, there would be a large increase in the number of retired people, and that would present a strain on the system. The tax rate and the retirement age were increased in the 1980s, but we knew that wouldn't be enough. So immigration was planned as a help to add working age people.
One thing that was never thought about was that there aren't many countries with high IQ, productive people that have people to spare. China is the only one - and it would be "racist" to limit immigration to people from China. Also, there would be the spying and infiltration aspect...
But at least the US is getting mostly people that are Christian in heritage. Europe is in far worse shape.
I've been trying to make the case for several years that one of the biggest problems with large scale immigration is increased pressure on housing, and with demand being economically "inelastic", prices increase to the breaking point for many, many people. People will pay what they can before they double up, live in their cars or leave the area entirely, but when there just aren't enough housing units, some people will have to do just that.
Meanwhile the going price for housing units increases to that average "breaking point" for EVERYONE.
It's only been in the last year or two that I've heard ANYONE else start talking about this.
also ending fractional reserve banking and moving to sound money created by the treasury as the founders intended would relieve the pressure that causes the constant need to have the population increase. think about it.
Fascinating deep dive into the UN Population Division's 2000 report. The dependency ratio modeling in that document is rarely discussed in mainstream policy debates even though it fundamentally shaped immigration frameworks across OECD countries. My econ professor back in the day used similar demographicprojections to explain why every developed nation faced the same tradeoffs. The fact that fertility incentives got sidelined while migration became the default response is probably the most consequential policy path dependence of the last quarter century.
What an outstanding piece. We don't need low-intelligence, unskilled, lazy, illegal immigrants. We already had enough of the first three. No mention is made of how the Covid shot was also intended to lower the possibility of pregnancy and increase the chance of stillborn babies. We are now in a position of attempting to back up a battleship, but we must find a way to do it.
The requirements for immigration included a sponsor, a job, passing background checks, having valid travel documents, allegiance to our country, and learning the language. None of the 20 million that Biden let in could meet those standards. If they can't, they need to leave immediately, especially the Somali pirates.
Government's of developed countries purposefully created both a population decline and a hatred of Western Civilization by adopting Marxist/Communist ideology and rejecting their Christian heritage as outdated and discriminatory. Destroy marriage and the normal family of one man, one woman and their biological children, increase indoctrination of LBGT+ ideology, and destroy all of the foundations of Western civilization.
To make things worse, they promote and defend the worst scam ever perpetrated against humankind-man-made global warming which has served to destroy more of civilization than their population control and anti-Christian mentalities.
So their answer to the problems they create is always make them worse. Double down on hatred of humanity by encouraging and funding an influx of people's with nothing in common with each other into the West while continuing to decrease it's population using the bioweapon called the Covid-19 vaccination for one thing while knowing the younger generation has been conditioned to reject both marriage and having children.
The pursuit of a majority in a social democracy requires a proletariat. If circumstances don't allow a party, or a state to have its own proles, they must be imported. Selectively importation builds the demographic for the census and the maintenance and growth of congressional districts.
The U.S. federal government is a constitutional republic, but this does not prevent states and territories within the U.S. from being operated as social democracies.
The U.S. federal government was instituted as a constitutional republic but has been an administrative state ruled by unelected bureaucrats and wealthy donors to politicians for many decades.
And the states have become ruled by either a majority of Democrats or majority of Republicans where its citizens are forced to live under majority rule whether they want to or not.
What's conspicuously absent from this discussion is the reason for the low birthrates. Was/is it biological? Is it continuously necessary to have families with 10+ kids? Is it even financially possible to have families with 10+ kids? I think the later is the biggest reason, and the government knows this too, so that's why they're importing a new batch of rubes into the system that can be exploited just like the originals before they found out it wasn't worth having that many kids.
Thanks for your brilliant writ @amuse.
Without a welfare state, is population replacement even necessary? The entire premise of this replacement policy appears predicated on the assumption that we exist to maintain the state, instead of the opposite.
The idea promulgated by Musk and others, that if everyone doesn’t start having babies the human race will die out soon, is equally absurd.
Haven’t there have been times in the past when the worldwide population was less than a fee hundred thousand, even possibly in the tens of thousands? If people could bounce back after the ice age with stone tools, it’s unclear how with billions of people are soon in danger of extinction.
What is really in danger other than the modern welfare state and its potential for the funding of the tools of technological totalitarianism?
Two points come to mind. First, The UN and compliant institutions failed due to the problem identified by Frederick Hayek in his Nobel Prize lecture, “The Pretence of Knowledge”, decisions made ONLY on data available to them. Second is my growing concern with school choice which may be headed down the same blind alley. Assimilation is best achieved with second generation education. But as we encourage religious primary and secondary private education, will immigrant enclaves find this as opportunity to avoid assimilation? This “solution” may be our well intentioned downfall.
I like your proposed alternative solutions to fertility, but if SCOTUS supports citizenship for illegal immigrant births, our problems are going to escalate. The fact is economic success is associated with declining birth rates. Poverty is associated multiple births. My former professors would argue that association does not equate with causation, but reality says otherwise.
If the intent was to import a fresh batch of worker bees to keep the honey flowing to all the oldsters on the retirement dole (I say dole tongue in cheek because I know everyone pays Social Security) then why do we continue to import from countries that have such a high percentage that immediately jump on the welfare bus and never get off? Afghans and Somalis in particular. We need to import the worker bees from countries with the absolute best work ethic and an ability to generate taxable income no matter what country they hail from. At least if we’re being pragmatic. I suspect it would be from countries off the coast of Washington Oregon Cali and Baha and NOT off the coast of Texas Florida or any of the eastern states.
"why do we continue to import from countries that have such a high percentage that immediately jump on the welfare bus and never get off?" Very Good question!
As my name indicates, I am an actuary. I'm also a tail end boomer. I was reading about actuarial "solutions" to the well known problems with the US Social Security system around 1990.
It was well known that as the boomers retired, there would be a large increase in the number of retired people, and that would present a strain on the system. The tax rate and the retirement age were increased in the 1980s, but we knew that wouldn't be enough. So immigration was planned as a help to add working age people.
One thing that was never thought about was that there aren't many countries with high IQ, productive people that have people to spare. China is the only one - and it would be "racist" to limit immigration to people from China. Also, there would be the spying and infiltration aspect...
But at least the US is getting mostly people that are Christian in heritage. Europe is in far worse shape.
I've been trying to make the case for several years that one of the biggest problems with large scale immigration is increased pressure on housing, and with demand being economically "inelastic", prices increase to the breaking point for many, many people. People will pay what they can before they double up, live in their cars or leave the area entirely, but when there just aren't enough housing units, some people will have to do just that.
Meanwhile the going price for housing units increases to that average "breaking point" for EVERYONE.
It's only been in the last year or two that I've heard ANYONE else start talking about this.
Well done…again.
also ending fractional reserve banking and moving to sound money created by the treasury as the founders intended would relieve the pressure that causes the constant need to have the population increase. think about it.
Fascinating deep dive into the UN Population Division's 2000 report. The dependency ratio modeling in that document is rarely discussed in mainstream policy debates even though it fundamentally shaped immigration frameworks across OECD countries. My econ professor back in the day used similar demographicprojections to explain why every developed nation faced the same tradeoffs. The fact that fertility incentives got sidelined while migration became the default response is probably the most consequential policy path dependence of the last quarter century.
What an outstanding piece. We don't need low-intelligence, unskilled, lazy, illegal immigrants. We already had enough of the first three. No mention is made of how the Covid shot was also intended to lower the possibility of pregnancy and increase the chance of stillborn babies. We are now in a position of attempting to back up a battleship, but we must find a way to do it.
The requirements for immigration included a sponsor, a job, passing background checks, having valid travel documents, allegiance to our country, and learning the language. None of the 20 million that Biden let in could meet those standards. If they can't, they need to leave immediately, especially the Somali pirates.
Government's of developed countries purposefully created both a population decline and a hatred of Western Civilization by adopting Marxist/Communist ideology and rejecting their Christian heritage as outdated and discriminatory. Destroy marriage and the normal family of one man, one woman and their biological children, increase indoctrination of LBGT+ ideology, and destroy all of the foundations of Western civilization.
To make things worse, they promote and defend the worst scam ever perpetrated against humankind-man-made global warming which has served to destroy more of civilization than their population control and anti-Christian mentalities.
So their answer to the problems they create is always make them worse. Double down on hatred of humanity by encouraging and funding an influx of people's with nothing in common with each other into the West while continuing to decrease it's population using the bioweapon called the Covid-19 vaccination for one thing while knowing the younger generation has been conditioned to reject both marriage and having children.
The pursuit of a majority in a social democracy requires a proletariat. If circumstances don't allow a party, or a state to have its own proles, they must be imported. Selectively importation builds the demographic for the census and the maintenance and growth of congressional districts.
The U.S. federal government is a constitutional republic, but this does not prevent states and territories within the U.S. from being operated as social democracies.
The U.S. federal government was instituted as a constitutional republic but has been an administrative state ruled by unelected bureaucrats and wealthy donors to politicians for many decades.
And the states have become ruled by either a majority of Democrats or majority of Republicans where its citizens are forced to live under majority rule whether they want to or not.
Well done, “forced to live under majority rule” is hilariously oxymoronic.