Fertility Rates: Is Western society self sustaining?

[xorbie]

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Western society has chosen slow cultural suicide. The reasons are many and few. The many include birth control, selfishness, high taxes forcing women to work and some others. The few is simply the growth of secularism. Godless people tend to have a lot less kids.

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Yeah. Why can't we go back to the good ole' days where women knew their place and everyone lived by the bible.

[FlFishOn]

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Western society has chosen slow cultural suicide. The reasons are many and few. The many include birth control, selfishness, high taxes forcing women to work and some others. The few is simply the growth of secularism. Godless people tend to have a lot less kids.

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Yeah. Why can't we go back to the good ole' days where women knew their place and everyone lived by the bible.

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I'm sorry, but is that what you think will pass for debate? Sadly, after a public education in this century it's likely that's above average. Sad indeed.

[xorbie]

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Western society has chosen slow cultural suicide. The reasons are many and few. The many include birth control, selfishness, high taxes forcing women to work and some others. The few is simply the growth of secularism. Godless people tend to have a lot less kids.

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Yeah. Why can't we go back to the good ole' days where women knew their place and everyone lived by the bible.

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I'm sorry, but is that what you think will pass for debate? Sadly, after a public education in this century it's likely that's above average. Sad indeed.

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you make point: "rise in secularism and various women's rights issues (working, birth control) have created sitution where society is committing suicide."

i make retort: "things were much worse in societies in which these conditions did not exist."

yes, this is what constitutes debate.

[Copernicus]

In the late 60s, early 70s the mantra was "Zero Population Growth", and at the time 2 children per family was seen as the optimal rate to prevent "overpopulation".

The fertiity rate in the USA has remained pretty steady in the 2.05 to 2.1 range over that time. However increases in longevity resulted in that being more than sufficient to replace deaths, and insufficient to keep the population from aging. The result, after average out the baby boom and echoes etc is a working population that will be unable to produce enough to support the needs of the total population.

Immigration is not a solution because the contribution to GNP of the average (legal) immigrant is far below the average for the same age domestic producer. Illegal immigration further exacerbates the problem with an overall zero contribution. (Its actually negative but we'll call it zero to avoid another illegal immigration hijack).

A good portion of the apparent shift of wealth toward the upper end is the natural result of those demographic changes...not some failing of capitalism, tax cuts for the wealthy and other political rallying cries.

Technology has filled the productivity gap so far, but I wonder where the next great leap is going to come from.

[nicky g]

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Western society has chosen slow cultural suicide. The reasons are many and few. The many include birth control, selfishness, high taxes forcing women to work and some others. The few is simply the growth of secularism. Godless people tend to have a lot less kids.

If you ask the 'enlightened' European about the imminent death of his 2500 year old culture you get a shrug. They don't see a problem. An Islamic Europe is but a couple generations away. I don't see that as a positive move forward. Really, if you were asked to list the ten greatest contributions to the species from Islamic culture in the past 200 years it's not much of a list.

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It is really ironic that in your first paragraph you express opinions and fears that are the favourite themes of the most reactionary Islamist thinkers (birth control, materialism, Godlessness/secularity, women working), and in the second one worry about Muslims taking over the world. You should investigate reactionary Islam a bit more, there's plenty you'd find there to your taste.

[HLMencken]

Your question is terribly flawed as Western society is in fact spreading all over the world, beyond just N America and W Europe. So the fact that NA and WE have neg growth rates does not mean western society has committed suicide when most of the world is becoming more and more like western society. Western society is not synonymous with native-born European/American population size.

[Propertarian]

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Is having a negative fertility rate, when you have ample resources, a cause for alarm?

[/ QUOTE ] Actually if everyone in the world consumed resources at the rate that people in the U.S. consume them, we would run out of many if not most of them.

[lehighguy]

In the long run, what happens when people no longer want to immigrate?

A good parallel would be someone that is able to maintain a certain standard of living above his earnings by running up credit card bills, but eventually the credit card companies stop extending him credit.

Does western society rely on immigrants to function? If so, what happens if they supply of immigrants ever dies down?

[Darryl_P]

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Are our societies saying they don't want to continue?


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I don't think so. Rather, I think the societies that have been predominantly white up until now are saying they'd rather be predominantly non-white.

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Why don't people want to have kids?

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Again, I think this question is best addressed to whites, since every other race is having plenty of kids.

As a white person who knows lots of white people who are reluctant to have kids, I'd say the most common reason is that society is pressuring us to lose our identity. We work hard to raise kids, then lose them to an identityless, economic-based society. A very bad deal if you're starting from a decent economic level. To cope with this, you either need to be very altruistic or have an environment with LOT of political incorrectness at home. The former is quite rare and the latter takes a lot of effort and vision to maintain without the kids revolting, thus the numbers in both camps are rather low.

[pvn]

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Are our societies saying they don't want to continue?


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I don't think so. Rather, I think the societies that have been predominantly white up until now are saying they'd rather be predominantly non-white.

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Societies don't talk. But thanks for a very good illustration of how ridiculous this fallacy is.