Demographic Winter (A little long)

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m posting this in this forum because I will fully admit that I do not have the stones to venture into great debates and take a position and stick to it if I am wrong. I don’t have the education in economics to declare it outright ridiculous even though the theories posited by these people seem so.
I’m talking about the Demographic Winter Movement.

IMHO, this is a very thinly veiled attempt at the conservative religious and nationalist separatists (is that even a term or something my brain manufactured?) to target what they see as a global decline in their way of thinking and thus power they hold in society.

It seems to me that even though they are exceedingly careful in not mentioning religion, or out and out saying that each country should keep to themselves and leave eachother alone, that it is an attack on sectors of society that generally do not propagate. (The GLBT community, childless couples, etc.)

I bring this to you, because I’m really wanting to know if my ideas about this “movement” hold water. I hope that someone who knows something about economic trends can shed some light on whether or not what these people say is true or whether or not it is simple fear mongering. I cannot imagine that a declining birth rate will be the sole cause for the eventual destruction of people. I think that it is far more delicate a situation than that, and if there are more people, the spreading thin of environmental resources would be a greater problem.

As an agnostic woman with no children, (by choice) and a very strong marriage, I find a repugnance in their tone that suggests to me that they’d rather see no immigration, stronger christian family values, and a reticence for true progress.

I started by watching the trailer for the film, which, y’know, it’s a trailer, so you don’t get a whole lot of information from that beyond (OMG! We’re all gonna die!) And moved on to the Q&A to find out more. That’s where I really started rolling my eyes. It seems easy to dismiss and deconstruct the fallacies and contradictions in their arguments on a paragraph by paragraph basis.

For instance, in one breath they say that population decline will ruin the care of the elderly as there will be less tax money to support people who can’t work. In another, they point out that the U.S. is at population stability. Our Social Security system is a disaster, so doesn’t it follow that population has no actual bearing on whether or not a country’s pension system is strong?

Also, they claim that immigration is just robbing Peter to pay Paul. If international travel to meet a family’s economic needs isn’t the answer, how do you explain an immigration population boom’s failure to make up the difference in a country’s tax system? What difference does it make if taxes from wages and life in a host country comes from a person of different descent except to say that a foreigner’s ability to meet the standards of the host country is somehow sub-par?

This is my favorite place to help me shape my ideas about the world. I need help on this one.

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I think you’re misunderstanding their argument here. They’re saying that if worldwide fertility rates are dropping, then population migration doesn’t help, because all the people who are entering country A are leaving country B, so there’s no net gain in people.

3

But wouldn’t it be a normal shift if there were plenty of people leaving country B because there are better economic opportunities elsewhere where population is declining?
For instance, Zimbabwe is having a terrible economic time. There was an article today about Mugabe giving cars away to doctors to entice them to stay in the country because they weren’t making enough to stay. According to this Zimbabwe’s population is growing. If educated people are leaving toward countries that will pay them more for their work, besides the loss of affluence, what is country B really losing as far as population is concerned?

Now Zimbabwe has some damn serious other problems that are contributing to poverty and instability, but if their population is growing, is that not necessarily one of them?

That’s just the example I can think of off the top of my head because it was in the news today, and you could be right about misunderstanding that part of the argument. But it seems to me that if the total of the whole world’s population is declining, there doesn’t need to be economic growth for those areas where it is declining faster. There are many parts of the world where the population is a direct detriment to their society because of starvation and not enough of anything to go around. If we can’t deal with the global population as it stands, how can we in good concience push to make it bigger?

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Faruiza, I share your opinions, and think you’re right that it’s the religious conservatives that are behind this campaign. Just read this section of the Q&A on the site to get a good picture of what they’re trying to say… (bolding mine)

I find this extremely repugnant…

RE: Women putting off having children for careers… What they’re saying is that a woman’s duty is to have children, for the sake of “obligation” and "posterity, " and choosing to have a career or to have a life of their own is only going to *doom the human race *(those selfish women)! Oh, and divorce is also helping to kill off the human race… just stay in bad marriages, people, or else we’re going to die out!!

Yes it’s definitely culture and the news media (as opposed to common sense and free will) that is “indoctrinating” us to kill off our species. Yep, us women are being brainwashed to want “personal growth” and to “live for ourselves” (i.e. make our own decisions, get educated, have careers, and god forbid, stay single, or choose to be child-free). After all, it’s our duty to be perpetual baby machines - we were born with uteruses afterall. That’s our function - not be be happy or have meaningful lives.

And most importantly, it’s the “secularization” of our society and the lack of religion that causing us to live our lives freely, and to make our own choices, which in the end will kill us!! How dare we make our own choices to be child-free or to have small families! If we had god, we’d be pumping out the kids, just like Jesus wants.

Remember – every aspect of modernity works against family life… We should all revert back to the dark ages where religion ruled everything and women didn’t work and just stayed at home bearing a child a year until she died or reached menopause… It’s a small price to pay to save the human race! By the way let’s outlaw birth control and divorce! :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

God this shit makes me sick.

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Fortunately, this kind of thing isn’t terribly effective.

Religious beliefs aren’t the most important thing for most people when it comes to how many kids they will have. Catholicism says that artificial birth control is bad. American Catholics don’t tend to have more kids than non-Catholic Americans (once you correct for socio-economic status). And look how well the Catholic anti-birth-control stance is working in Italy…

If “secularization” lowers birth rates, why did China need to implement a one-child policy?

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So someone is upset that there is not enough population increase? Takes all kinds I guess.