The current lowering of birthrates world-wide cannot continue indefinitely.
At some point, the painful effects of underpopulation (economically, demographically, governmentally) will become too great and the rate will stop shrinking.
Likely, it will start growing again.
This means that there will have to be a change in certain societal values (e.g., belief in the myth of overpopulation).
It likely means a change in other values (e.g., acceptance of abortion and even contraception).
But the road to that change is likely to be very bumpy–including unfortunate things like widespread euthanasia, even more oppressive taxation, a world-wide economic depression, a renewed and even more vicious generation gap than what we had last time around (only with the young being materialistic and the old being idealistic), massive human suffering, and the destruction (due to massive immigration or conquest) of cultures that don’t adapt swiftly enough.
What will emerge on the other side of such maladies–and are they a certainty?
Many (including myself) hope that they are not a certainty, that society will come to its senses due to far gentler pressures and mend its course before such eventualities are forced upon us by shrinking birthrates and aging populations.
But I’m not counting on that.
Whether the calamities just named come or not, I hope that on the other side of the societal transition we will have a more pro-family, faith-friendly society than we have now (though the world will still be far from perfect). I think that is the most likely thing to happen–at least here in America.
But I’m not counting on that, either.
HERE’S A (LONG) LOOK BY STANLEY KURTZ AT THE DEMOGRAPHICS OF THE CULTURE WAR.
It’s worth reading.
Among other things, he points out why some quick fixes to the underpopulation problem (like massive immigration and extending the retirement age) aren’t likely to work.
He also points to nightmare scenarios where we don’t end up with a more pro-faith, pro-family society, but a society that is even less friendly to both.
Scary stuff!
Jimmy,
This article is scary.
“So the new demography has put us into an economic trap. High taxes depress birth rates, but low taxes expand demographically driven deficits still further.”
That’s they key. Say you are a Christian parent who wants to have 3-4 children, the wife to stay home, and send the little ones to Christian school. How do you do this with a tax rate approaching 40%? It’s pretty difficult.
The only solution is to import huge numbers of people who don’t come from a Western, Christian backgound who are used by leftists to spread the agenda of “multiculturalism.” So we get more leftism, abortion, contraception and anti-Christianity. (Moslems in Europe vote for leftist parties, by the way.)
Didn’t Malcolm Muggeridge talk somewhere about Western society’s “death wish”?
You mean, a generation will be euthanized by the generation it aborted?
Quite possibly.
In the meantime, one thing that would help would a LARGE increase in the per-child tax deduction.
Well, Mary, one thing that has helped my family hugely has been Bush’s child tax credit. We have seven kids and since the tax credit has taken effect (and increased over the years!) it has been a tremendous help to us, financially. It has definitely been a family-friendly policy.
Thank you for posting that Jimmy. It was a long read, but very interesting, if also very depressing.
It almost seems as if Satan has been planning the whole thing for the past century. A world war that creates the conditions that give birth to culture-destroying communism in the east and sows the seeds for a greater war to come. Then a great depression that created the conditions for liberalism to take hold in the west, with its accompanying disincentives to child-bearing, and for communism to consolidate its power in the east. Then another civilization-destroying war that permitted communism to take over half the world and instilled a cultural self-loathing in the other half. As a result of the war, women would permanently join the workforce en masse, striking a blow to the traditional family and sowing the seeds of feminism. A massive baby boom in the West as a result of that war, coupled with unparalled economic prosperity entrenches liberalism/socialism and the welfare state for good. With more women getting educations and choosing careers, more and more women postpone marriage and children until much later in life. Growing personal wealth, two income households, and a post-war, cold-war fatalism foment an era of unsurpassed individualism and materialism and secularism. Feminism erupts, with its motherhood-hating philosophies. Children then become threats to personal wealth, the equality of women, to the environment, to the world in general (through nuclear war). The Church is decimated in the capitalist West and in the communist East. The conditions are ripe for the culture of death to take hold.
Then Satan pulls the rabbit out of the hat and invents the birth control pill and legalizes abortion. Both are embraced enthusiastically by the East and West. The holocaust of child-sacrifice begins. Marriage doesn’t mean what it used to. The family is destroyed. The civilization begins its demographic collapse. An economic catastrophe awaits us. And just as the culture of death entrenches itself in every nook and cranny of our society, in every court, in every school, on every television station, a resurgent Islamic extremism has been awakened in the Middle East to devour like vultures what’s left of the rotting corpse of Civilization.
Okay, maybe that’s a little over the top 🙂
Thank goodness the democrats are telling us there is no crisis in the social programs or there would be reason for concern. 😉
Civilization will surely not end though. The premise underlying all of these studies, that the youth will ensure that the aging will be able to enjoy a substantial standard of living, is erroneous. We have already witnessed what will happen. Russia has already experienced this. Communism accelerated the impact of massive wealth transfer. Needless to say, you didn’t want to be an old person at the end of communism.
Civilization may not end. Civilization as we know it (and have become accustomed to) very well may. I guess its possible the trends can be reversed, but is it too late? A generation takes a good 20+ years to raise, if not more. And who is going to raise them? Even if the most self-less among us, what is to guarantee they won’t fall into the same trap? What kid from a family of six who barely scraped by is going to want to go through the same thing when they see their contemporaries from one or two child homes given every material advantage, encouraged by our consumer society? It is not at all likely.
For a civilization that seems to buy social darwininsm hook, line and sinker, we can’t even see when we are the ones being weeded out.