Europe’s Ticking Demographic Time Bomb
Europe’s population is shrinking and aging so much so fast that a major decline in European living standards is now statistically inevitable within the next 15 years, according to data contained in a publication titled “The EU in the World: A Statistical Portrait.” The 113-page report — published by the European Union’s official statistics agency known as Eurostat — shows that Europeans increasingly are relegating themselves to the global margins, as their relative share of global wealth and trade shrinks. The main culprit is the refusal by Europeans to produce more children.
Eurostat estimates that the world’s population reached 6.9 billion people at the beginning of 2010. Asia accounts for more than 60 percent of the total (China, 20 percent and India, 18 percent). By contrast, the European Union’s 500 million people account for 7 percent of the world’s total population, and the United States with its 320 million inhabitants currently makes up 5 percent of the world total.
But the Eurostat data also show that while the world’s population increased by more than 130 percent since 1960, Europe’s population increased by only 25 percent during that same period, and will peak in 2025 before embarking on a permanent downward trajectory. By comparison, the U.S. population increased by 70 percent over the past 50 years and is expected to continue growing at a healthy pace well beyond 2050.
The report also shows that most of Europe’s population growth over the past decade has been due to mass immigration from mostly Muslim countries, and not to natural population growth by native Europeans. The data show that Europe’s population growth due to net immigration (the difference between immigration and emigration from an area) was more than twice the rate of natural population growth.
By contrast, Eurostat data show that America’s total population growth over the past decade has been more than four times greater than the rate experienced by Europe, and natural population growth has consistently been more than six times higher than the European rate.
At the same time, the Eurostat data show that Europe’s population is aging at a rapid rate. This will increase the old-age dependency ratio to unsustainable levels in the near-term future. The old-age dependency ratio shows the level of financial support for the retired population (aged 65 years and over) provided by the working age population (those aged between 15 to 64 years).
More specifically, the Eurostat data show that the European Union had a 26.1 percent old-age dependency ratio (population aged 65 years and over as a percentage of the population aged 15-64) in 2010, a figure that is forecast to jump to 31.5 percent in 2020, 38.7 percent in 2030, 46.1 percent in 2040, and a whopping 50.6 percent in 2050. According to Eurostat: “The EU-27’s old-age population will increase to such an extent that there will be fewer than two persons of working age for each person aged 65 or more by the year 2050.”
By way of comparison, the United States had an old-age dependency ratio of only 19.4 percent in 2010, a figure that is forecast to rise to 24.9 percent in 2020, 31.7 percent in 2030, 34.0 percent in 2040, and 35.1 percent in 2050, well below every single EU country.
Consider Germany, which currently ranks as the most populous country in Europe and the fourth-biggest economy in the world (China recently leapfrogged Germany to become the world’s third-largest economy). According to projections by the German Federal Statistics Office, the German population is forecast to shrink by as much as 20 percent by 2060.
Germany’s population of 82 million in 2008, the largest in the European Union, will decline to between 65 million and 70 million over the next five decades. By 2060, 34 percent of the population will be older than 65 and 14 percent will be 80 or more, up from 20 percent and 5 percent, respectively, in 2008.
The number of pensioners that will have to be supported by working-age people could almost double by 2060, the report says. While 100 people of working age between 20 and 65 had to provide the pensions for 34 retired people last year, they will have to generate income for between 63 and 67 pensioners in 2060, it says.
The German statistics office’s projection assumes a birth rate of 1.4 children per woman through 2020, an increase in life expectancy to 85 years for men and 89.2 years for women by 2060, and net immigration of 100,000 people per year.
“While the number of older people increases, fewer and fewer people will be of an age at which they can work. This will have consequences for the social security system,” the report says.
“Germany will clearly decline as an economic power, especially in comparison to up-and-coming nations such as China and India,” reports the Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging.
you can still dream of a anglo-saxon hegemony !
France isn’t forecasted 70 millions, but 80 millions, et toc !
“France isn’t forecasted 70 millions, but 80 millions,”
Of which 30 million will be Muslin. Enjoy being a dhimmi.
no, this isn’t 1960 years anymore when you could expect such groth, the muslims know Internet and can revolution the world where your paralysed, they aso know all about condoms and pills !
cut 30 millions in half, it would make you look a bit less bigot
Pardon?
“cut 30 millions in half, it would make you look a bit less bigot”
Even at a fertility rate of 3 children per woman (half of what it was in Algeria), the Islamic birth rate in France is more than double the Christian rate.
I hope you are getting fitted for your burkha.
yeah, with a birth rate of 2 to 2,2 concerning 95% a caucasian population !
the only immigrants that still have , say 3 to 6 children, are the new-comers, already the 2nd generation has less children, and the third’s is of the average french one
So don’t take yourpredigest clichés for granted
Marie Clod,
Learn to spell!
Bohica Bob
hello Bobby, how ya doin these times, still obsessed with horse language?
Marie-Claude: Most of these people think Glenn Beck is sane and that Europe will be muslim within “one generation”. They also think that all muslims are out to take over the west. Its just like anti-semitism, the “wily muslim” is coming to subjugate our women and make us all follow Taleban sharia law. Its the latest american paranoia, theres lots of money in it, just witness the careers of people like Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer.
Radical (and not so radical) Moslems have stated repeatedly that they are out to take over the West. It is part of the doctine of their cult, to spread Sharia Law to the infidel. Where have you been for the past 20 years, in a cave?
16,909 Muslim Terror Attacks Since 9/11.
Terror Attacks by Other Religions: None.
For nations to ignore this fact, is to commit national suicide.
See the website: http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/
Too bad we can’t all be as smart as you (you apparently think that the comments you made represent sanity). Dizzy Dean said “it ain’t braggin’ if you can do it.” In the spirit of Ol’ Diz, “it ain’t paranoia if they really want to kill you.” And how do we know that they want to kill us? Well, their “Holy Book” tells them to kill us, they tell us they want to kill us, and when they get the opportunity, they kill us.
Too bad more people aren’t smart enough to see that the REAL enemy is the right morons, like Glen Beck, who think an Islamic future would be undesirable.
Left out of this is the already incurring demographic implosions of Eastern Europe, Russia and East Asia.
With Russia, which is Islamifying even faster than France, you have to be scared when (not it) the Muslims will gain control of its massive nuclear arsenal.
The described decrease of population is a logical development within societies with highly productive economies (fewer people produce more – surprise!). There would have been a difficult time period of 25 years whith too many pensioneers. But after that – we would have done fine.
By trying to avoid those difficulties, we imported a huge and dangerous problem which will last for many decades; probably forever – Muslims. Well done!
This is not news. Author Mark Steyn wrote about this years ago in his book, “America Alone.” Just goes to show you how selfish and self-centered the Europeans have been all these years. So now, because they were obsessed with their own hedonism, they get to deal with a future where they will have to be supported by a bunch of Muslims in their old age. That is, of course, unless the Muslims decide to take over their countries first. And do you think the North African Muslim immigration problem is bad now? Just wait and see what happens when Libya falls and you have about 100,000 refugees flooding Sicily or Italy’s mainland since Libya is just a short boat ride away. They ain’t seen nothing yet, especially since Algeria and Tunisia aren’t too far behind Libya.
Liberty,
As I point out above, the problem is that the demographic death spiral goes well beyond the socialists in Western, Southern and Northern Europe.
Russia, Poland, Ukraine, and for that matter, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, are not overcome with a self-hating cultural elite, and their birth rates are just as low.
What separates out Western Europe is how it is willing to surrender its culture, not that it is breeding itself out of existence.
The article shows that Europeans increasingly are relegating themselves to the global margins, as their relative share of global wealth and trade shrinks.
but when it goes on to describe the Muslim immigrants it doesn’t give us any idea whether they are capable of producing the wealth needed to keep these societies alive.
Whether as the situation now appears to be in Britain and Scandinavia where many of them are living on taxpayer money, if this will change or not.
In what world are you living in that a further increase in the U.S. population, especially almost exclusively from failed cultures in the Third World, is considered healthy?
It makes me really angry to hear such drivel. If one cannot have a healthy economy and good life without a growing population then we are all doomed since there is only this one planet. What are we thinking of? America needs it population put back at least a hundred million and more would be good.
Population growth is by far the worst problem this world faces.
In my opinion and based on my personal experience, we are blessed with most of the immigrants we get, especially the Mexicans and Brazilians. (I am not talking about the drug lords who are another story.) The people who cut grass, shovel snow, babysit children, pay their taxes, put their children in college to become doctors and lawyers and politicians are good people. They are honest in their business dealings. The men take pride in working to support their families. They keep their eyes (and hands) to themselves when women walk down the street. They are godfearing but have no fear of hard work. We are blessed with these people, compared to the ones in Europe who are only good for collecting welfare and blowing things and people up.
Historically speaking, almost all Americans are either third-world immigrants, or descendants of third-world immigrants. Millions and millions of Irish, Scots, Italians, Germans, Russians, Poles, Jews, Vietnamese, Chinese, Indians, Mexicans, and so on didn’t come here because everything was all hunky-dory in the Old Country. They came here from miserable destitute countries, worked like dogs, and contributed to the American economy and culture. I say, bring ‘em in!
What makes us so much stronger than Europe is that immigrants come and melt into a single culture; although they retain some of their old heritage, they intermarry and become unmistakably American. My Scottish/Irish/Italian sister married a Jew. Here in Southern California, for example, I see lots of half-Asian/half-Caucasian every day. I went to middle and high school with lots of Iranian girls, and they had no problem dating American boys; I never see them wearing head coverings.
However, the third-world immigrants going into Europe ghettoize and never integrate, which leads to problems like the so-called “youth” riots in France. Europe’s class-based structure and obsession with multiculturalism is at the center of this. Europe would be much better off with American-style constitutions, and cheerleaders for the native culture like we have here in the U.S. Countries like England or France don’t necessarily have to be “white,” but they do need to be unashamedly English or French if they want to survive. America is rapidly becoming “non-white,” but America is unashamedly proud of American culture (certain foolish politicians notwithstanding), and so should survive into the future.
I think you’ve hit it on the head; I’m not so much interested in color as in attitude.
However, if you show a divisive attitude, you’re coloring yourself. Join us and have names like Abdul Jefferson Pyotrvich or pass your summer vacations burning your neighbors car.
I agree, James, with your comment about the definition of “healthy.” If you haven’t seen the graph in the short lecture at the address below, it’s well worth your time. By 2050, our population (at current rate of immigration and birth/death rates) will be double. With the congestion and decaying infrastructure we have now, can you imagine what it will be like then? I’m 75 now, so won’t have to worry about it too much longer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muw22wTePqQ
You’re mad! Why would you ever invite such a thing? What could possibly reduce our population by a third? The Rapture, perhaps, but that’s clearly not what you were thinking. That leaves war, famine, pestilence, or genocide.
Shutting off all immigration and kicking out illegals will eventually bring us back to 200 million – slowly.
However I was thinking of a national lottery where a third of the population is forced to walk into a fast food style suicide mill. That oughta knock Justin Bieber’s coming mustache and yawning cat videos off the front page.
Unfortunately the brain dead and brain washed europeans will not get it no matter that their society and values are heading down the tubes. Whenever one questions the “perfect” society that hell hole on earth called the liberal welfare state that works so well in europe, you are shouted down by the enviro freaks and vegan twits and other nut heads that seem to populate europe today. The welfare state is a failure, the EU is a failure, their politicians have sold them down the tubes for 30 pieces of silver and the next Ghadaffi oil shipment. Look at the rats in UK Academia fleeing back into their holes as we discover their shady connections to middle eastern dictators and facists. So these people have brought this debacle on themselves and it will be up to them to save themselves or become eurarabia. We have a hard enough time here in the US fending off our own brain dead liberals who feel they want a “perfect society” just like europe. Including our president for life and facist in chief.
This is one of the most astute and entertaining paragraphs I’ve read in quite a while. Brilliant!
Agreed.
You forgot to mention the same “educated elite” entrenched in their major propaganda media e.g. BBC and other (not only LSE) elite universities and Parliament spent the past 40 or so years disdainful and moralistic of the vulgar, unsophisticated, bullying American gunhappy cowboys. Under whose defense umbrella they have been able to provide their vaunted cradle to grave welfare dependency.
Which did not stop their preaching the wrong and immorality of America Copied smirking by their American “educated elite” cousins: PBS /NPR NPB/ Harvard-Yale-Princeton-Stanford etc. Setting social / political systems
engineering for the commen Americans to copy these failed experiments. So These educated elite did and still cannot, see what real world grounded persons can, and did.
We are now appaarently stuck with their programs in the preswent CEO of USA, while they go sailing merrily off into the sunset to write their scholarly tomes and lecture to the ignorant for vast fees.
Well, the only good thing you can say about the inevitable Islamization of all the western nations is that they’ll be fully depleted of natural resources by the time they have become Muslim.
Except for the US who will have barely scratched the surface of her oil reserves.
Here’s a radical idea to help out Europe’s population problem.
Instead of arresting our illegals and returning them to Mexico – where they will simply walk back across in a couple of days – send them to Europe. There are numerous benefits to this program:
1. Gets them out of our hair.
2. Prevents yet more Muslims from going there.
3. They’ll be productive citizens instead of leeching off of us.
4. Their religion – Catholicism – is on the wane in Europe. Their presence may help bring it back.
5. Did I mention it gets them out of our hair?
this is a good idea, immigrant exchange program, you send some mexicans and get some poles, it’s all ok, as long as you still get christian or just normal people moving
What is left out is that the M.E., China and others are simply a couple of decades later in this trend.
Morocco, Algeria are at replacement levels, Iran and Tunisia are under replacement levels. Other places, like KSA and Egypt are over replacement level but the fertility is falling like a brink in the water.
There are tensions in Algeria for the presence of black Africans immigrants that find the place of their taste and don’t want go in Europe (too cold and harsh).
The only places with a fertility that don’t go down are in Africa (Nigeria in particular). But there are movements to limit the family size, as their governments understand that six children per woman are a recipe for eternal war and instability.
In some European countries indigenous people is showing greater fertility than second and third generations of immigrants.
All that is need is the collapse of the welfare state and many immigrants that live on the dime of the taxpayers and of crimes will find difficult to find something to eat and a place where to live. They fertility will fall in the end.
In the past 10% of the people were too poor to reproduce. Take the welfare away and this will happen again.
“Europe’s population is shrinking and aging so much so fast that a major decline in European living standards is now statistically inevitable within the next 15 years”
S’OK…third world Muslims appear to like living as if it’s the 7th century.
The collapse of Europe will come much faster than these simple trend lines would indicate. These kinds of negative trends usually culminate in a discontinuity (crash) sooner rather then latter. I suspect we are about ot witness a collapse of western civilization not seen since western Roman Empire fell apart under the Barbarian invasions. Greece, Italy and Spain will be the first to go and it will probably happen between 2020-2025.
Greece is approaching failed state status right now. They already have a border fence manned by armed guards to keep illegal Turkish immigrants out. But the Greek state will fail in the next decade and the ressurgent Islamic Turkey will move in to reclaim the country. At that point the decline of the continent will accelrate. The end of Europe as we know it is much closer then anybody, except maybe Mark Steyn and Stanley Kurtz, thinks.
The “..Western Roman Empire fell apart under the Barbarian invasions”. Well, the Western Roman Empire was an Empire that occupied other countries and enslaved the people of those countries. And the Barbarians? Well, those Barbarians where they have gone to? Perhaps Germany? Everything depends on the perspective.
Honey, there weren’t “countries” or “nations” around that time, in Europe or elesewhere -
So, rephrase, or even better – quit this historical referrences thing –
Regards -
Perhaps you should study your history a little bit, mis…. because there most certainly were nations, and states. Of various descriptions and types, of course – what is now Germany was a collection of various tribes and kingdoms.
What is curiously analogous to the current situation is that initially, Rome invited the Goths and their relatives in, to settle the western and northern border areas and provide a buffer. It was only when Rome itself became weak and started paying more attention to internal politics than external matters that the “barbarians” started eyeing Roman treasure.
What the article leaves out is that the Social Welfare State encourages this trend, my makingn the marginal cost of child-rearing so expensive as to create an enormous disincentive to have them…. except for the poor and unemployable, who are in effect subsidized for breeding.
Yet in both the US and Japan among the educated classes childbirth is either delayed or is falling off. Immigration also swells the US replacement rate, and if you controlled a bit for it, we’d be no better. It’s a factor not of economic model (which is more why people don’t get married rather than have kids) but of contraception and education imo.
The stupid false premise here is that ‘things’ in Europe will decline slowly. It is just as possible that ‘things’ will reach a tipping point and then change rapidly, either with the expulsion of Muslims or the voluntary but rapid immigration of this or that class of Europeans to friendlier shores. Should secularism overtake the Muslim world – unlikely – then birthrates will plummet and other patterns of emigration to Europe will develop. There will be no void allowed except in Russia where there is too much land to occupy even in the intermediate future.
I agree with #6, James May – about an incorrect focus on population growth. The key issue isn’t population growth but economic and political mode.
If you are supporting your population by a socialist economic mode – then, your population size is limited. That is, a socialist mode takes ‘wealth’ from its productive class and redistributes it to the non-productive class. The problem is: production. In a socialist economic and political mode, almost all the sources of wealth: raw resources and industry are owned by the state. There is almost no private enterprise of small to medium businesses.
What happens in this situation is that this source of wealth production is limited – and the non-productive members of the population, who are deprived of wealth-producing activities on their own – overwhelm the wealth. This is what is happening in Europe – where the welfare state system cannot generate enough to support the non-productive members of the population.
This has nothing to do with population size but with the ratio of production to non-production of wealth.
What is required is a capitalist or non-socialist system of wealth production. This is one where the majority of goods and services are producted by private enterprise. This necessarily moves the majority of the population into a ‘productive mode’. They can be either employees or employers – but – they are working and making their income in small to medium local businesses. This means that the non-productive ratio shrinks and the society can readly handle their support.
Again – this has nothing to do with population size but with the ratio of productive to non-productive wealth producers in the society. And this, has everything to do with rejecting socialism as an economic mode and insisting on capitalist small to medium private businesses as the economic mode.
Both in Europe and in the US high taxes and other government policies have made having a large family too expensive for the middle class. If you are poor, the government will pay for the kids and if you are rich, you can afford the expense of raising many children. But for the middle class, the expense of kids in terms of direct expenses and time are astronomical. Then the government taxes those kids, once grown, and gives the money to others including those who chose not to have children. SS and other programs worked fine when almost everyone raised a number of kids; now, there’s a large percentage of the population that does not have kids but expects to retire and live for decades off the efforts of our children. The government should either create significant tax benefits etc. for those middle class families raising children or cut back the SS and other retirement benefits of those who failed to raise several kids.
But it won’t. Instead, we’ll follow Europe’s downward path.
Over50;
Most rich Americans do not have large families. It’s hardly a question of having the money. People simply want time to do other things than spending most of their lives raising children.
Those who don’t have children are still paying school taxes to educate the offspring of others. That’s A LOT of money. The childless aren’t getting any preferred treatment.
In fact there’s so many middle-class tax breaks that almost half the population is exempted out of federal income tax.
If you did not pay to raise children, you will pull a lot more out of them through social security and medicare than you ever put into school taxes. (Remember, your contributions to social security and medicare were not “saved” for you, they were used to pay the current retired generation.)
My bottom line, the old programs assumed substantially the entire population would marry, raise a number of productive kids and hold a job – that assumption is broken but the programs were not changed to reflect those changes. Now, there are many who do not raise productive children and are retiring on the backs of those fewer who did.
Yes, I’ve educated my eight about the Social Security Ponzi scheme; the three oldest will be voting in 2012.
Of course this is all statistical jibberish. Afterall we have been told so by the politically correct left in this country and by the Thought/Language police in Canada who tried and failed to take down Mark Steyn and MaCleans for their bigoted and false account of world demographics as noted in ‘America Alone’. Totally distasteful this attempt to put up false information when those who know more and are better than we have proclaimed this to be a false assessment. Never mind they have nothing to back it up but feelings. Just feelings and caring and sharing and can’t we all just get along mulitculuraism.
(Note to the serious types: This is meant to be humorous, OK, mocking humor)
Perhaps without the crushing taxation that Europe has accepted like a warm but slowly suffocating blanket, citizens might find it more affordable to reproduce.
We face the same problem here in the U.S., where an effective 50% tax rate on the middle class (when you add up federal, state, and local taxes) can actually affect a couple’s decision to have more children than is required for healthy population growth.
On a somewhat related note, perhaps we might have staved off our own demographic problems had we not allowed the murder of 40 million future American citizens. Have fun with that one, liberals.
If demographics is destiny, and surely it is, Muslim domination of Europe seems inevitable. But then what? Will there be a powerful Muslim Europe? Not likely, because Muslims have never produced anything any where. They take over a country, plunder its wealth and move on. Their history has been much like like slash and burn agriculture, only they slashed and burned and plundered other civilizations. They will eventually run out of new areas to plunder and then civilization will collapse under the the weight of Islam. America will not be spared.
The Declaration of Independence says: “… all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
The wild card is whether enough people will find Islam insufferable before it is too late.
Reply to Chuck “Their history has been much like like slash and burn agriculture, only they slashed and burned and plundered other civilizations.” Perfect analogy Chuck. I will keep this in my quotes to remember file.
One of the most common snide remarks in blog flame wars is to accuse one’s antagonist of living in his mother’s basement. It means calling him a career and social failure. Here are some statistics about men 25-34 residing with their parents in European countries. Take the PIGS countries for example. Portugal: 48%. Italy: 48%. Greece: 56%. Spain: 41%. Or, look at the larger economies: Germany, 19%. France, 13%. UK, 20%. It’s much lower in Nordic countries. Sweden, 4%; Norway, 5%. But, for the EU27 collectively, it’s 32%. I haven’t been able to find the stat by sex for the USA, but combining women with men it’s 11%. One explanation for this would be youth unemployment, which has traditionally been higher in Europe. Another could be the cost of housing. We can eliminate taxes as a cause, though, since the VAT is approximately the same across EU countries yet their fertility rates vary. Therefore, my hypothesis is that it’s tough to get married and have children when you’re living with Mom and Dad.
It reminds me of a Benny Hill skit in which Hill plays a yob complaining about how tough it is to be homeless. The interviewer asks, “Why don’t you move back in with your Mum and Dad?” Hill replies scornfully, “Because they’re already living with their Mum and Dad.”
Jack Olsen;
Having family living in southern Europe, the stats derive from lower rates of marriage, which derive from the difficulty of getting a decent paying job. It can take several years and you really do have to “know someone.” Also, family ties tend to be a lot a stronger in the south than in the European north. Relatives will commonly live together and it is uncommon to have the elderly widowed living alone. People personally take care of their eldsters instead of sending them off to Assisted Living.
I do percieve less loneliness there than in the US (not as many companion animals, also), but that is just my personal experience.
Toady, your answer tallies with what else I have heard, that a young European finds it hard to get a job unless he’s got personal connections.
European middle class kids typically do not work while they are in highschool or college; no summer or part time jobs. So when they graduate from college, they are not “work force” seasoned, so make much less attractive job candidates. It is hard for employers to fire people who don’t work out, so they are much less likely to take a chance on a young college graduate. In the United States, parents expect college graduates to get jobs, and except for the odd $20 now and then, expect them to support themselves. In Europe, there is generally no such expectation. I think parents can afford to keep kids on the gravy train longer because college tuition is basically free–about $700/year, I think. By the time their kids graduate college, American parents are well and truly tapped out so, heave ho! In my experience (I am married to a European and keep up to date with what is happening to my kids’ European cousins and their friends) American kids are much more independent. European parents still support kids into their late 20′s and early 30′s. They may complain but they still do it. What is the chicken and what is the egg?
But why is it hard to get a job? One important reason is that employers cannot easily fire people. If you cannot fire people easily, then you have to be extremely careful when you hire, and that results in high unemployment rates. Attempts to reform the labor laws to allow for more flexibility are met with riots in France.
The anger, the fear, the warnings of the imminent end of European society, the loathing of the non-Christian minority….this really sounds like Europe in 1929.
All these angry, fearful people want is a strong, charismatic leader to emerge from the shadows and save Anglo-Saxon civilization by reinvigorating the white population and vanquishing the hated enemy within the gates.
Sounds familiar.
Nonsense! All of us, regardless of our race or ethnicity are fighting the same fight against radical Islam and the decline of Western civilization. Do you think it is just Anglos who are in jeopardy? The current economic devastation, the assault on free speech, the demise of the Judeo-Christian civililzation that made the Western world the most prosperous and free society in history are in great peril. ALL OF US will suffer the same consequences.
You are right with the exception of your reference to RADICAL Islam. The enemy of civilization is ISLAM and those who refuse to recognize an enemy even when it looks them in the face and tells them it is their enemy.
“…this really sounds like Europe 1929″? No. In 1929, Germany, for example, faced quite a lot of real poverty and misery(not enough bread to eat). The current welfare and job system in Germany(Hartz IV, a system that was introduced by the SPD(Schröder) and the Green Party (Fischer)provides acceptable standards of living for all people living in Germany. However, the old system (pre-Schröder) was fairer to those who had worked before.
“..and save Anglo-Saxon civilization” Oh God, Europe faces real problems, the Anglo-Saxon civilization is not our problem. After all, most Europeans see the British system as a system of classes(upper class, working class, middle class). After World war II, Beveridge tried to bring some justice to Britain, but Mrs. Thatcher succeeded in introducing the current Anglo-Saxon market system. The EU took over large parts of this system and that was the beginning of the end of a Europe many people have been proud of.
Thanks for the Monty Python view.
Both 6 and 15 don’t get it.
6 is wrong because people have been exaggerating the effects of a growing population since the neo-malthusian trend in the 60s. It’s possible to adapt to rising populations with much less consequence than the reverse, by increasing efficient food production, reducing consumption, and making use of a low of low population density land.
15 doesn’t get that it’s mostly the young that can shoulder the risk of starting to small to medium size businesses. It’s not just financial, but mental: being able to see new opportunities and discard old thinking. As the population gets older, wealth creation will slow into wealth preservation.
Demographic decline is going to have serious effects, and I disagree with the OP, America will be affected as well.
No, the key problem is the ratio of productive to non-productive members of the society. Not the size of the population and not the age. But the ratio of those who produce wealth vs those who do not produce wealth.
The problem in Europe is that the proportion of non-wealth producing population is increasing – as the number of people, of any age, who are on welfare, social assistance, supplements, is increasing. Furthermore, the number of people who work in the public service rather than in small to medium private businesses is increaseing. Therefore, what is happening is that the proportion of people living off the taxpayer within a socialist economy is increasing.
The reason for the increase is not the age of the population but (1) the increase in the number of options-to-claim state aid; and (2) the increase in the size of the bureaucracy or public service employment.
With regard to state aid, more and more young families are using state aid, more and more young families are moving into a consumption-only mode of life rather than working in private employment in a capitalist mode. It is only a capitalist economy that can produce wealth – and the problem in Europe is the reduction of the capitalist or wealth-producing economies.
With regard to the second point, the increase in the civil service – these are not wealth producing but wealth-consuming jobs.
So- Europe is imploding because it is not producing wealth. Nothing to do with not producing babies.
Age definitely matters, even if you’re having the same number of kids. Why? Overlapping time in the workforce, plus the rate of population growth. Having three kids in your twenties causes the population to rise much faster than having three kids in your thirties, and it also extends the time when both you and your kids are in the work force simultaneously.
The problem is that Japan, not known for their massive unemployment rate or non-producer to producer ratio, is also suffering the effects. However, your argument isn’t invalid either: as a society ages, more people switch to public assistance due to retirement. regardless of a society’s productive wealth, aging will make societies less prosperous due to this without draconian cuts to retirement.
You also keep glossing over how businesses destroy and not create wealth by failing. Most conservatives who tout entrepreneurship are not entrepreneurs: or they’d note how many businesses fail and how easily they destroy the wealth a person has accumulated over time.
What’s there to get? How many people can you put on this planet before the whole thing collapses? It’s not a nuanced argument – it’s numbers. There are some 160 million people living in Nigeria; that is a sin and a absolute guarantee of a disaster not long down the road.
In such a scenario, competition for just about anything rises and morals and ethics goes out the door in favor of a dog eat dog world. Since, when it comes to the Third World, it has been generally speaking a dog eat dog world for decades due to poverty and population, it is only going to get much worse.
The excess populations are imported into the West and that mentality that lacks a sense of the greater good in favor of survival skills by hook or by crook means you are only importing people who make an uneasy fit at best and criminals at worst.
Saying “It’s possible to adapt to rising populations with much less consequence than the reverse, by increasing efficient food production, reducing consumption, and making use of a low of low population density land.” is straight out madness.
On the Indonesian island of Java, a whole new and more productive strain of rice was invented years ago or that island, which has a large population density, would be in real trouble – it is anyway.
John Brunner’s 1968 science fiction novel, “Stand On Zanzibar” was not an exaggeration but spot on in that it takes place in 2010 and with a world with a population of 7 billion. At that time that was considered a dystopian nightmare and lo and behold – it’s 2011 and we have that 7 billion. That novel is a sober documentary compared to your post.
The world’s population has doubled in 40 years and I can tell you the road to 14 billion is going to be one giant disaster after another, full of genocides, wars, mass starvations and pollution on a massive scale which is already happening in any event.
The number one goal of the U.S. should be to drop its population to 200 million and that means ending all forms of immigration because a phone booth can hold only so many people; we were doing just fine when it was 200. We have laws and an attitude about immigration that are firmly locked into the view of 100 years ago – lock the door now because there are limits to all forms of growth. Screw the economy; it’s easier to deal with less pollution and environmental destruction than with more. Look at the giant mountain of garbage that is managed everyday at their site in L.A. We are destroying this planet in a way that is a sin.
What good is a thriving economy when the 48 states disappear beneath asphalt and cement? It’s gonna be one giant heat sink. We seem to have some idea that since we haven’t run out of trees that it’s not possible to do so. Look into the environment and it is a disaster even today. Land is not infinite and neither is water or minerals. We are headed for a disaster of proportions that has never been seen in the history of this world.
Rats, rats, packs of rats – and good ol’ Malthus was right -
[...] How many people can you put on this planet before the whole thing collapses? It’s not a nuanced argument – it’s numbers. [...]
Bingo! (and penicillin, and corn and potatoes). Self-evident truth, but impossible to be discussed because the ‘sensitivity” of this matter… i.e… the UN, where I’d say that 60% of member countries would be in the crosshairs for being a planetary, demographic burden -
Remember, it was in the late nineties when this issue expolded again, and immediately the UN and its left/ liberal bullhorns (NY Times, etc) began yelling that the planet can easily accommodate 7 billion people or so -
And for now, times ain’t brought more intelligence or integrity to the UN or other political outfits -
Beam me up Scotty -
China is doing just fine with a population four times ours and less available land. Sure it’s polluted pretty bad, but so were we during the industrial revolution.
I just don’t understand statements like that. Let’s say everything in your short statement is utterly correct; there is a thing called ‘tomorrow’ and that is what utterly befuddles me – this not going to stop of its own accord – we have to actually do something and not imagine this is a fire that will burn itself out unless you count mass starvation as birth control.
Is the worlds population for some reason I can’t see suddenly going to stop growing? of course not and that is the problem. More people, less resources.
Nigeria has some 160 million people. In no time at all it will be 300 million and you are going to see some shit then brother. Like the rest of the world, tiny Guatemala has doubled its population in the last 4 decades.
Last time I was there almost every store in parts of Zone 4 in downtown Guatemala City has shotgun armed guards during broad daylight – something I had never seen previously. Assaults and gang activity are way up and the excess population in coming to America. This is the Third World in a microcosm and it is a disaster coming down right on our heads. It’s why we should do something now to address the issue but our Presidents are involved in bi-partisan pedantry while the world cranks itself up to a horror.
Demography is one thing but Europe’s unfunded obligations are another.
One thing that the author failed to notice about today’s America is that its current population growth is due mainly to relatively high birth rates of blacks, non-white Hispanics and Muslims, plus immigration from Africa and Asia. For diversity fans it may seem plausible that those populations can successfully carry what has been so far known as the USA into the future. For race realists, however, these demographics seem to be a clear the beginning of the last chapter in America’s history, before productivity crashes through the floor, the country becomes riven with violence and racial strife and ultimately ungovernable in the traditional sense. And with the perfect storm of possible severe energy shortages and crushing debt, this scenario may unfold much sooner than what most of us would ever expect to.
Glad to see “Know-Nothings” like you have moved past saying stuff like that about Irish Catholics
The high birthrate among blacks would be a good thing but for the fact that illegitimate black children outnumber legitimate black children 3:1. Instead of their high birthrate being a blessing, it has become a blight due to fatherless homes. It’s happening among whites, too, just slower.
China’s population is doing the same thing as Germany’s yet no one is talking about it. The gender gap will only worsen the problem. The rapid growth is occurring in the Islamic world, especially North Africa.
Great. I’ll put this on my list of things to worry about – right after the LHC and asteroids.
I’d much rather have a world filled with people of African descent if they thought like Thomas Sowell, than a world of Europeans that thought like Karl Marx.
Ferguson’s logic seems right to me. That’s why I’m taking my teenage children to Europe this summer, so they can experience the culture before all that’s left are some pretty buildings.
The last time I was there was about five years ago, and already I had the distinct impression I cared more about their history and culture than they did.
Eurostat is simply wrong. We have to stop to measure growth using a quantitative concept: more, more, more ..more coffins, more pills, more illness. Instead Europe should focus on quality, that means European institutions should respond to the needs of the European people: They should provide better education, better food(fresh food and not only food kept fresh), better systems of living(young and old people living together in case they wish to, a more effective health care system, high quality products and not only cheap ones and so on. The concept of greed destroys all European societies. I cannot remember a more unhappy and more hopeless society than the one we are living in at present. Yes,”Germany will clearly decline as an economic power, especially in comparison to China and India” but perhaps we succeed in producing high quality products and a form of living that responds to our needs. Making rich people even more rich is not the aim of most people living in Germany.
better education, better food(fresh food and not only food kept fresh), better systems of living….
But who pays for it? None of this stuff materializes out of thin air. Besides, that’s one reason why the Muslims go there in the first place: all the free goodies that they get from the socialist governments.
“I cannot remember a more unhappy and more hopeless society than the one we are living in at present.”
Are you talking Germany? I do not know how far back you go, but what about: Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer? You know, with the correct intonation. Failing that, remember DDR?
Dear Marianne:
you still need to study a bit of economy and politics. It’s not the proper function of a government to provide food, health etc etc etc. That’s the root of more evils than you can imagine, yes, including fomenting immigration of unwanted parasite-minded people.
Better quality have always been povided but private enterprises and individuals when left to compete with each other. The only proper function of a government is to punish people violating rights of other people, and the Rights are only Life, Freeedom, Private Property; not “jobs”, “housing” or “health care”.
You can thank good old Jimmy Carter for letting him let the alatoha homany return to Iran and unleash a Jihad into the western world. So you either comply with sharia law or you infidel will be put to the sword. Oh thank you jimmi jimmy for having been such a great world leader and do not forget the beer that your brother brewed in When the lights go out in Georgia.
I wonder why the hell older people cannot work. If the age where they die increases, shouldn’t the age in which they become too weak to work increase as well? The whole idea of a retirement age is pathetic anyways, it should never have been adopted anywhere. Particularly one that rests on the shoulders of the workers instead of on the amassed wealth of the person retiring.
The primary driver today of longer life-spans is better quality end-of-life care and medical advances. You may live to 90 with a mechanical heart, but it ain’t gonna help you keep your job as a ditch digger.
If you want me to continue working next year I can accommodate. But then my immediate subordinate won’t be promoted, no place for his #2 etc, down to the new college graduate who will be moving back in with his parents because there job for him. If it’s not up or out for the boomers there will no advancement for Gen X and Y. If that’s ok with you then my wife and I will happy to continue on with our current lifestyle.
You have to be older to understand. People don’t really understand that your body starts to wear out over time, and even jobs like a retail clerk can demand a lot of physical exertion and motion that older people have difficulty with. Very few of us are workers with information, so that means by our sixties, the physical demands of jobs will become more and more intolerable.
What the article leaves out is that the majority of youth of military age in Europe will be Muslim by about 2030. The Islamic Theoracies of Europe may be sooner than anyone thinks. Russia, if not first, may not be far behind. For Europe to defuse it’s ticking time bomb would require action that would make the Holocaust seem as benigh as a child’s tea party. Pray for our grandchildren.
“Europe’s population is shrinking and aging so much so fast that a major decline in European living standards is now statistically inevitable within the next 15 years..”
Yeeeeha……the end of Europa is within sight. The elites…the Franco frauds….the “Brits”….are all now a memory.
Adios Queens…adios monarchs…adios “royalty”…..let the muslims whom you’ve fornicated with…..make your lives totally uncomfortable and miserable.
Long live Britannia….long live the death of…Britannia. Brits….Euros freaks…..you have definitely screwed the pooch.
Can you all bend over now?
Simple math: Europeans birth rate < 2 per family, Muslims 8 per family.
A fitting ending for the con game, greed carnival and complex of self destructive superstitions called the welfsare state.
Søren Kern´s article is very much to the point. Another sign of the decline of Europe is the fact that there is an almost complete lack of trust towards the present European leaders. Only 6% of the Europeans trust trust their governments according to a new poll published by the Guardian.
http://newnostradamusofthenorth.blogspot.com/2011/03/guardian-poll-almost-nobody-in-europe.html
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