No handy site, but there’s some international organization which conduct an annual study on productivity. IIRC, the last one indicated that the USA ranked second or third in productivity/ year.
I add “per year” because the study also included something I had never considered before which is the productivity/hour. And in the case, the US producivity dropped like a stone by comparison to other develloped nations (ranking something like 25th or 30th), the highest productivity/hour being reached in some unlikely country (possibly Belgium, but I’m not sure anymore).
Anyway, though gains in productivity are certainly an important indicator of a healthy economy, having a high productivity in itself isn’t necessarily the best thing since sliced bread. I’d rather work less and as a result be less productive and enjoy my (cheaper but way longer) vacations, thank you very much.
That’s generally true. However, there has been during the recent years (at least in France) a minority of second-generation immigrants turning towards a radicalized islam which was foreign to their own parents.
Not per se, but as I said it complicates things: say for instance Egypt tries to nationalize the Suez Canal and charge extortionate fees again as they did in the 50s, and the EU wants to stare them down or even go to war. Say Turkey and Syria go to war and the EU wants to aid Turkey. Say India and Pakistan go to war and the EU wants to support India. In all those situations, a metro Paris that is 10-15% Arab Muslim must be taken into account. The US would only face an analogous situation if Mexico was involved.
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As I can see it, Europe has:
[li]The biggest economy on the planet, and growing[/li][/QUOTE]
As I see it Europe has a huge economy, slowed by stagnant economies in its heart, paralyzed by all-powerful unions. This is not me talking. Do a google on “European economy” or “EU economics” or whatever. Count the positive stories. Count the negative ones. Note the difference. Note how growth rates of 2-3% are reported in the EU as good and in the US as disappointing
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[li]Can easily add 100-200 billion from a 11 000 billion USD economy to counter US military spending[/li][/QUOTE]
Can just whip it out, eh? Pocket change, And the red/green parties won’t mind a bit?
You wanna check and see how much of those budgets are designated for entitlement programs?
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[li]Has huge defense companies[/li][/QUOTE]
Not as huge as you think, nor are they technologically competitive
http://www.iht.com/IHT/DIPLO/98/jf041598.html
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_05/b3818171.htm
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[li]Has technology and brains[/li][/QUOTE]
Much of them coming here.
http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/03/1594&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en
http://www.time.com/time/europe/html/040119/brain/story.html
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v414/n6862/full/nj6862-04a0_fs.html
I’m not trying to pee in your cornflakes, but you’re denying several basic realities here.
European workers work far fewer hours per week, take more vacation, and enjoy all sorts of state-sponsored goodies; it’s fundamentally nuts to assume the company whose workers go 40x50 is going to produce more whose workers go 35x46. Maybe happier, and there’s much to be said for the quality of life issues; I’m inclined to agree with clairobscur. But in raw economics there’s not gonna be a comparison, especially when US laws are designed to encourage entrepreneurialism and EU laws are designed to protect workers.
Similarly, the US has been spending billions upon billions more for defense over a period of decades, to the point that there are serious incompatible-equipment issues when NATO forces work together. You can’t just imagine that that gap can be made up in a couple of years.
No one is saying the EU couldn’t become far more militarily credible if the European people wanted to. But doing so would require a fundamental change in attitudes and priorities. Given a finite amount of resources, Europe has chosen to build the finest citizen-welfare programs in the history of the world, and the US has chosen to build the best army. Neither could choose to have both. Having a military like the US would essentially require having a society like the US, which few in Europe want.
You made the claim so you bring the cite. After half an hour of googling I couldn’t find any study or any other credible data, only doomsday speculations. I read several articles which took birth rate data of Muslim populations in Africa and Asia and applied those to France’s Muslim population. I call that: Not a very scientific approach. As a comparison this article on demography in Israel uses the kind of data that is credible. In particular, your data should include:
[ul]
[li]the birth rates of the Muslim versus non-Muslim populations in France, not from anywhere else[/li][li]projections must adjust for changes in second generation birth rates (normally, children of immigrants integrated into a western society have fewer children than their parents)[/li][li]the expected future yearly immigration of Muslims, adjusted for non-Muslim immigration[/li][/ul]
The problem with these doomsday scenarios for future France being emailed around, is that they rely on flawed data. Apparently, first they inflate the mumber of Muslims, from 3-4 million to 6 million (and they often include illegal immigrants), claiming that the Muslim population of France is 10%. Then they apply the birth rate of another country - usually a Muslim country with a high birth rate - because France doesn’t keep statistic for spesific population groups. Further, they add in that children of immigrants have the same number of children as their parents, which is not true. And finally, in predicting a Muslim France with Muslim laws, they claim that 100% of those born as Muslim stay with their faith, while the fact is that less than one third is practicing Muslims (according to research conducted by Le Monde in 1994, 27% of Muslims were believeing and practicing).
Yes, predicting the future by extrapolating current trends is a dangerous game. In the 1960s there was much attention centered around research that predicted that the world would implode in the 1990s because of population growth. Now many are predicting that the same will happen by 2050.
I’m probably much more supportive of the war on terror than many other on this board. But that doesn’t mean I have to buy the Administrations arguments, nor that I will let my conclusion come in the way of the facts.
Sam: Alien is quite correct on that point. I almost couldn’t believe me eyes when I saw you state that France will become a Muslim majority nation in a generation. That’s crazy. The only way that might be “true” is if one looked only at those French who actively practice a religion.
The CIA World Factbook gives the % of Muslims in France to be 5-10%. I’m not sure why there is such a large uncertainty, but even with the larger number, it would be hard to imagine your statement to be correct.
I am not hopeful about Europe’s medium-term future. The problem is the sclerotic socialism of which the pensions crisis is but a small part. Now I’m a firm believer in having a social safety net, but we do not need what is in the proposed constitution. We need a safety net, not a spacesuit.
The American constitution is short and to the point; the proposed European one is immensely long and full of wooliness if you are being generous, excuses for an inquisition if you are being paranoid.
Let’s not forget the rampant corruption: the EU has not had auditted accounts for many years.
Paradoxically, the American ability to hire and fire workers gives the American economy much more agility: an American can hire workers knowing that if things don’t work out, he can let them go whereas a European faces considerable expense in making an employee redundant.
Contrariwise, the American civil legal system, with its concept of a duty of care, being able to sue without cost on the plaintiff’s part on a contingency basis but still necessitating significant expenditure by the target, high insurance, is widely (and IMO rightly) seen as a big problem for American businesses which we don’t want over here - but seem to be getting anyway. As an aside, I feel that this is reasonably (though far from perfectly) solvable by making the plaintiff’s lawyer liable for the target’s legal costs if unsuccessful when the case is taken on a contingency basis.
If Europe passes this constitution in anything like its current form then Europe will collapse internally within 50 years.
Europe has made two fine steps: a common currency and removing internal borders. Let us hope that we continue to make such fine steps rather than the leap into the darkness that is the proposed constitution.
That would be because under french law, no nominal data including religion or ethnicity can be collected (for instance, there’s no such information collected during census, and the country of origin of french-born citizens is unknown) .
So, the estimates are based on the number of immigrants or naturalized people and their country of origin. For instance, you add up the number of algerians citizens living in France to the number of algerians naturalized during the X last years, add some more to take into acount the illegal immigrants, estimate the number of children and possibly grandchildren they could have had, and assume that the grand total are all muslims. Then, you do the same for the next country, and so on. Of course, if said country isn’t 99,5 % muslim, then you have to guesstimate how many of these people could be muslim.
I’m going to give two links related to this issues. They’re in french, so they will be unhelpful for most dopers, but I do so in order to show that I don’t pull the figures out of thin air. Both articles refer to studies based on the nation of origin, as explained above. The second one is probably the most reliable since it was conducted by the french official institute for statistics, based on a large sample of the population (300 000 +) and included the national origin of the parents of the interviewed, so including at least two generations (which was in itself controversial, because, as already mentionned, collecting datas related to ethnicity is a big taboo in France).
Here are the links :
The first one gives an estimate of 4 or 5 millions muslims (but I would note this estimate is provided by a muslim organization which may have an interest in inflating the numbers), or 7,5% of the population.
The second one estimate the muslim population at 3,7 millions or 6%.
As mentionned by another poster, in any case these figures actually estimates only the number of people raised in a muslim environment. It tells nothing about the number of believers, let alone about the number of people who actually practise this religion. And lack of interest in religion, which is quite rampant in France, isn’t reserved to christians. From a purely anecdotal point of view, I personnally know a number of “muslims”, and amongst them, I believe only one is an unbeliever, but on the other hand, only one actually practice his religion (except for Ramadan. Lot of people never set a foot in a mosque but still fast during Ramadan, which is also a major social and familial event). Of course, my acquaintances probably aren’t representative at all of the french muslim population, but still…
You guys are right - it’s my job to provide a cite. Searches of the web produce tons of secondary cites making the same claim (Muslim majority in France possible in 20-50 years), but I haven’t been able to find the source studies for these claims, or even references to them. Nor have I found good demographic information on the current population of Muslims in France (estimates seem to vary from 7% to almost 20% - I gather the uncertainty has to do with large amounts of illegal immigration?).
In any event, since all the secondary cites I’m finding (including editorials in the Telegraph and on the GOP web site, so they aren’t just flake cites) seem to come from conservative sources, and none of them mention the core studies that validate the claim, I’ll just have to drop it. Because for all I know, they could all be repeating the same bogus claim issued by someone with an axe to grind.
But is there any question that France will continue to have a rapidly growing Muslim population? The Muslims in France are young, and have high birth rates. The non-Muslim population has birthrates that are well below replacement level. France’s immigrants include a high percentage of Muslims. Those trends point to an eventual Muslim majority if they continue.
Various cites give the current birthrate in France at 1.9. The Muslim population has birthrates around 4.0. If Muslims make up 10% of France today, then in a generation It’ll be over 20%, and a generation after that, well over 40%. Add to that .64 per thousand immigration, predominantly Muslim, and you can see where the estimates might come from.
But I’ll say it again - extrapolating the future by drawing straight-line graphs from current trends is a fool’s game - the kind of lazy analysis that makes groups like Limits to Growth constantly wrong. So I don’t want to engage in the same thing.
There are some elements you’re forgetting. The main one being that the birthrate drops with the second generation to come close to the native population birthrate. Another one is the number of mixed marriage, that, I understand, are much more common in France than in the USA (I assume a by-product of the “integration” policies as opposed to “communautarism”, and of secularism). Also a number of immigrants don’t bring in their families (or are single males), hence don’t have an impact on the long-term demographics.
Let’s say for the sake of argument that your scenario is realistic. That means NATO is dead (Turqey) and the US is no longer a world power (Suez) [I don’t think Europe will engage in a war between India and Pakistan, no matter what].
Today EU has a population of more than 450 million in 25 countries. Within a generation EU will have a population of more than 600 million in 30 countries. There’s no way that 1 or 2 million Muslims in a “small” spot in France will have a say in which war would be fought and when. You’re simply putting too much weight on a small group of people. Europe is much larger than France, and Paris is not the capital of Europe. The only reason why Germany and France is the leading nations in EU, is because Britain has been reluctant to join in.
I think we just have to disagree on the future of European economy. While the US historically has a higher growth in GDP, in my opinion Europe will continue to tap into unexploited gains available by streamlining her inner markets. Given that Europe experienced two world wars which destroyed the infrastructure, I don’t think that Europe has done that bad. It has become the biggest economy in the world, though GDP per capita is far less than in the US.
Add in the fact that China and Soviet, and many others, has been able to built substantial military might without market-driven economies, and it’s pretty clear that the argument that Europe’s economy - even in the shape it’s in today - bars Europe from achieving significant military power falls on its own flawed reasoning. It’s a matter of priorities, not possibilities.
Current spending on defense in Europe is 2.1% of GDP, down from 3.5% sometime during the 1980’s. So Europe could counter US military spending by adding only $100 billion, less than 1% of their GDP, - and still spend less than they did 20 years ago. And there were more red/greens in power in the 1980’s in Europe than there are today.
On the other hand, the US certainly has a huge advantage from big investments over many years. If Europe would want to challenge America’s military might, she would need to invest heavily over, say, the next 20 years. I agree that Europe would not want to do that, Europeans prefer to spend their money elsewhere. But I do think Europe could do it if they wanted to, at least the money is there.
Actually, your cites prove both mine and your point. Europe has several large companies (according to your cite larger than I thought), but they are fragmented and ineffective. There’s a huge upside in consolidating the defense industry, which currently is an ongoing process. Once again, EU is young. The fact that many defense contracts are rewarded to US companies has much to do with longstanding ties, NATO membership and the fact that it’s not the EU, but national governments who make buying decisions. The American technology advantage has little to do with these decisions. One example: Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands (and probably others) are participating in the Joint Strike Fighter program, rather than buying Eurofighter from Germany. But these three countries will get a B-version of the Joint Strike Fighter, not the American version. There has been a lot of discussion about why they decided to buy a less advanced plane than they could get from Germany for the same price. I don’t think this trend will continue, especially if the EU is put in charge of buying decisions.
As for the brain drain, I’m not surprised that many European scientist are working in the US. They have done that for along time. The key point is that Europe is able to educate brains. The European challenge is to keep them. Programs already in place are aiming at increasing Europe’s R&D investments to 3% of GDP by 2010. According to your cite, in 2000 the US spent 287 billion euro on Research & Development, while the EU spent 166 billion. When the goal of spending 3% of GDP on R&D is reached, EU will be spending between 300 and 400 billion.
I agree. The US is so superior today that European forces actually will slow them down in joint large-scale operations. If we were at war, you guys would beat the crap out of us 
So we’re not talking about a couple of years, more like 15 - 25. But it’s just a theory anyway, of course.
Since you repeated this claim, at least you can bring a couple of cites to prove that the Muslim population in France has a birth rate of 4.0. And while you’re at it, bring a cite that second generation immigrants (Muslims) also have a 4.0 birth rate, which must be the case for 10% to become 20% to become 40%.
Ha! You havent’ read many of the world’s Constitutions, have you? Nobody fights more over their Constitution than the Americans.
“rampant corruption” are hard words. Any cite for that (not the audit claim)?
I think European countries differ here. My experience is that the law in most European countries (not EU) stipulates a trial period of a few months, when employees can be fired quite easily.
As for the birthrate you’re mentionning (4.0 childre per couple), here are the figures given on the first site I linked to). It refers only to foreign residents (hence new immigrants). The average number of person/ household are :
For Algerians : 3,51 (1,51 children, assuming the household include a couple)
For Morrocans : 4 (2 children)
For Tunisians : 3,8 (1,8 children)
For Turkish : 4,2 (2,2 children)
Of course, these figures probably include a lot of young single males, driving down the average, and one can assume that when the immigrants are naturalized, they are more likely to settle, have children, bring in their families, etc… However, it doesn’t seem these foreign residents reproduce like bunnies.
Again, no primary sources, but this number seems to me to be widely accepted.
Now why would I do that? I just finished saying that it would be foolish to extrapolate long-term trends by drawing a straight line from the current condition. I’m well aware that birthrates change.
Well then, what about that cite, or link to the thread, that the OECD normalizes USG unemployment figures to make up for the US method of counting unemployed? I’m eagerly waiting.
Thanks for the reply, but foreign residents aren’t citizens, any data for both? And, since I’m a bit dense today, did you mean that Algerian households on average has a male parent, a female parent and 1.51 children? That would imply that the birth rate is 1.51, which is lower than the French average of 1.85. Explain?
[quyote]
Well then, what about that cite, or link to the thread, that the OECD normalizes USG unemployment figures to make up for the US method of counting unemployed? I’m eagerly waiting.
[/quote]
Nope. I searched, but couldn’t find such datas. There probably are datas about the birthrate of naturalized citizens somewhere out there, but probably not distinguishing between muslims and non-muslims immigrants.
I couldn’t tell. I suspect that actually, a significant number of non-naturalized algerian immigrants are single males and considerably lower the average size of the “household”. Still, it implies that, on average, they don’t have that many children. Maybe they have more latter, though, after they are naturalized. But indeed, we would need statistics including naturalized people to tell.
By the way, I found a reference to a UN report estimating that in order to keep the same balance between the active and inactive (retired, etc…) population (assuming a constant birthrate, constant increase of life expectancy, same retirment age, etc…) the EU would need 159 millions new immigrants before 2025 (24 millions only to keep the same active population, but in this case, they would have to bear the burden of a very large inactive population). The figure would be 23 millions for France alone (current population : 60 millions).
For comparison purpose, the USA would need 150 millions new immigrants during the same period to achieve the same goal. So, you’re in the same boat from this point of view. The Americans/Europeans/Japanese will have to allow in very large number of immigrants, or to work longer, or will need a very important increase in productivity, or to bleed white the working population to provide for retired people.
By the way, the 70 millions Turks could prove useful from this point of view, if Turkey joined the EU. 
According to this cite, the current fertility rate in Algeria is 2.04 children per female. This is a dramatic drop. Actually ‘dramatic’ doesn’t do it justice. Just four years ago, it was 2.8 children per female. In 1990, it was 5.1. In 1980, it was over 6.
It’s actually getting hard to research population demographics, because you can’t trust data that’s even a couple of years old. A bunch of cites I found had the fertility rate between 3.5 and 3.8, and I almost posted that. But they were undated, and finally I found a dated source from 1999 that showed it at 3.4. Finally I found the current stats, and they are dramatically different.
The world is undergoing some huge demographic changes right now. It’s getting hard to stay on top of it.