# A scarier strategic problem - no people



## Edward Campbell (19 Jan 2007)

Here is a strategic dilemma which is a helluva lot more pressing and _waaaay_ scarier than the ‘no oil’ possibility at:  http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/37017.0.html  This is from today’s (19 Jan 07) _Globe and Mail_ and it is reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070119.wrreynolds19/TPStory/Business/columnists 


> The incredible shrinking country
> 
> NEIL REYNOLDS
> From Friday's Globe and Mail
> ...



I have a bit more faith in immigration *IF* we adopt a sensible immigration policy aimed at getting 500,000 people a year (twice the current number) from, almost exclusively, China and India.  The low fertility rate for (especially Chinese) immigrant women reflects that fact that the majority are in dual income families.  That’s fine, so long as they have one child per family; we just need to recruit more and more of those families.  I agree with Reynolds about not recruiting immigrants from _”high fertility”_ countries – we need sophisticated, easy to integrate immigrants.  The _”high fertility”_ countries are, by and large, home to unsophisticated, hard/impossible to integrate immigrants.

We have _economic room_ for many, many more productive immigrants.  The question is; do we have the _social room_ for them?  I fear not; if my fears are well founded then Reynolds is right and, in a few generations, Canada will be nothing but a memory and a remote resource and recreation base for Asians.


----------



## Long in the tooth (19 Jan 2007)

China is far from an option as their population is set to implode like a fusion bomb.  By 2020 there will be 1 billion chinese, but only 400 million females and 300 million males with no chance of a (monogamous) wife.  What did they expect with a one child policy?

We could be looking at the first case of voluntary extinction.... isn't that a cheery thought?


----------



## MarkOttawa (19 Jan 2007)

It's interesting that some of the best commentary in the _Globe_ is buried in the Business section where far fewer people will read it, e.g.:
http://www.rbcinvest.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/PEstory/LAC/20070118/RCONFERENCE18/Business/business/business/4/4/7/
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/Page/document/v5/content/subscribe?user_URL=http://www.theglobeandmail.com%2Fservlet%2Fstory%2FLAC.20060919.RREGULY19%2FTPStory%2FBusiness&ord=970248&brand=theglobeandmail&redirect_reason=2&denial_reasons=none&force_login=false
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/Page/document/v5/content/subscribe?user_URL=http://www.theglobeandmail.com%2Fservlet%2Fstory%2FRTGAM.20060217.wxrjobs17%2FBNStory%2FBusiness%2Fhome&ord=971106&brand=theglobeandmail&redirect_reason=2&denial_reasons=none&force_login=false

Mark
Ottawa


----------



## MarkOttawa (19 Jan 2007)

Worn Out Grunt: Russian and India have problems too.

Growing Old the Hard Way: China, Russia, India: Living longer but poorer
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/2912391.html

Mark
Ottawa


----------



## Brad Sallows (19 Jan 2007)

Sell your home now and start renting before prices start to fall.

We don't have to be poorer, but people who've grown accustomed to creating work for themselves in the public service might find themselves learning more directly productive trades.

Good news is that GHG emissions will fall.


----------



## Kirkhill (19 Jan 2007)

Three other options - 

Start having more babies

Encourage girls to get pregnant young so they can have their babies early and still have a life (that is a more traditional pattern) 

Figure out how to make abortion unnecessary by removing the social stigma associated with unwed motherhood (not a western problem but still a problem in traditional cultures) and by removing the financial and career burden on women that results from carrying a child to term.

Some might argue that this will encourage more girls to be less careful and have more babies...............

Then the next problem to solve will be how do you bring them all to a productive adulthood - and that seems to be a work in progress with the kids we currently have.


----------



## tomahawk6 (19 Jan 2007)

The French have long had a policy where French women are paid a monthly sum for each child.This doesnt apply to immigrants in France.


----------



## CrazyCanuck (19 Jan 2007)

If we redirected money from all those "unnecessary" social programs (The little pet project things that nobody knows about until somebody complains their funding was taken away) towards an awareness campaign, increased education capacity (when the numbers start to go up after the initial drop), an improved foster care system (some people may realize that they didn't really want a kid, maybe because they were too young), and then throw in some tax releif we could possibly effectively combat this (best word for it I think) epidemic.


----------



## a_majoor (21 Jan 2007)

This is actually "old" news, the problem is more acute in Europe since the population crash is predicted to begin @ 2020. Mark Steyn has written about this as well.

The problem of population crash seems well established in most wealthy Western nations, the United States seems to be the notable exception (although even there the "native" population seems to be just at the replacement rate, with population increase coming from immigration). Why this should be so is probably "cultural", that is to say some factor(s) in contemporary Western culture discourages the idea of families, which is very alarming considering families are the very foundation of human civilization.

One interesting conjecture is that the western families which are reproducing at a positive rate usually belong to conservative religious groups or other groups with more traditional (or Social Conservative, if you will) values. In a generation, Liberals and Socialists will become a rapidly shrinking minority within the shrinking population of the West, while the growing portion of the Western population will not take kindly to being the resource and recreation base of Asia. 

One other conjecture; the population of the West recovered from the "Dark Ages" and grew in strength, agricultural and trade wealth during the last period of Global Warming during the European Warm Period from @800-1300AD. Maybe global warming will help our descendants as well.


----------



## TN2IC (21 Jan 2007)

How do you get 1.5 babies per woman? I am still looking for this half bath in my house.    ??? I found one full.....


----------



## a_majoor (21 Jan 2007)

Mark Steyn's book "America alone" is built around the demographic threat:

http://www.officiallyscrewed.com/blog/?p=694



> *OS Bookshelf - America Alone-The End Of The World As We Know It By Mark Steyn*
> 
> When I first heard Mark Steyn speak I thought to myself “This man is going to get knocked off by a hit man!” If that wasn’t enough to get me hooked then perhaps it was the ease with which he lays out facts and cuts through the politically correct haze most other writers/speakers are surrounded with.
> 
> ...


----------



## Royal (24 Jan 2007)

I hear what is being said.  But how accurate are the numbers?  As a society we are definitly weak: Merry Holidays, not Christmas.  Look at the amount of crime that goes undetected/unreported becasue we are afraid of retribution and bringing attention to ourselves.  Society is weak, but the underbelly of our society (the criminal element) is strong.  Illegal immigrants, sweatshops, all fly nder the radar, within the underbelly.

I thought that when we started the whole mail-order-brides for imigration concept (and those guys make a pretty coin) that we were fostering legal imigartion and population growth?


----------



## a_majoor (9 Mar 2007)

A revier from Daimnation!

www.damianpenny.com/archived/009026.html&title=Steyn%20savaged



> *Steyn savaged*
> 
> Johann Hari didn't think much of America Alone, even going so far as to call it "The Protocols of the Elders of Mohammed." Hari's best argument is that even if Steyn's demographic predictions are accurate (Hari rejects them), he assumes they will continue indefinitely:
> 
> ...



The timeline is longer than Styn suggests, and there is a chance that Ralph Peter's prediction of Europeans reverting to form and imposing some sort of Fascist "Final Solution" on thier unassimilated populations may become the real wave of the future instead. (Of course that might trigger a nuclear exchange between France and Iran....)

The future is very uncertain, as it always was


----------



## time expired (9 Mar 2007)

This is terrible news,the forest will spread, there will be fish in the rivers and oceans,the buffalo
will reappear on the plains and the population could get down to a level that this planet can support.
IMHO we have been trying to scr$§w with Mother Nature for far too long,an overpopulation in any
specias results in fighting,killing of own young,drop in birth rate,all this without a feminist movement,
and usually results in a collapse of the population.So I think this is great news unless you happen
to be deeply involved in the stock market.
       Remember its not nice to fool with Mother Nature.
                                               Regards


----------



## reccecrewman (10 Mar 2007)

With the costs associated with children, is anyone actually surprised this is occuring?  If you have 1, 2 or worse, 3 or 4 children, the financial drain on the family is brutal..........  The cost of daycare so the mother can go back to work more or less eats her entire paycheque.  Speaking on my own experience, my wife makes about $400 every two weeks.  The cost of our daycare for that two week period is $350.00 - $35.00 a day.  That's alot of hours worked by her for what? One dinner out every two weeks.  The government really should be moving on a plan for daycare similar to Quebec's to encourage re-population.  

Regards


----------



## Roy Harding (10 Mar 2007)

reccecrewman said:
			
		

> With the costs associated with children, is anyone actually surprised this is occuring?  If you have 1, 2 or worse, 3 or 4 children, the financial drain on the family is brutal..........  The cost of daycare so the mother can go back to work more or less eats her entire paycheque.  Speaking on my own experience, my wife makes about $400 every two weeks.  The cost of our daycare for that two week period is $350.00 - $35.00 a day.  That's alot of hours worked by her for what? One dinner out every two weeks.  The government really should be moving on a plan for daycare similar to Quebec's to encourage re-population.
> 
> Regards



Well - we had three children (early '80s - when I was still a Private - LONG before a Pte's pay was anything close to livable), and did the same math (although daycares, as such, were just beginning to exist at that time - our math more involved stay-at-home Mom's offering babysitting).  Our conclusion?  It wasn't worth it for Wendy to work.  She became a stay-at-home Mom (occasionally offering babysitting services.)  She remained such until our youngest was in school - she then went on to a full-time career in the CF.

I understand (mostly through friends who have grand-kids) that many young couples today are making similar choices, for similar reasons.  There is (in my OWN, UNSUPPORTED) opinion a side benefit to this - kid's end up having a parent at home during their formative years.

I can understand why a Mom would want to remain in the workforce even when the math is against it - professional currency, retention of skills, etcetera.  Each couple has to make their own choice on the matter - it's a very personal decision.


Roy


----------



## a_majoor (12 Mar 2007)

reccecrewman said:
			
		

> The government really should be moving on a plan for daycare similar to Quebec's to encourage re-population.



The record of socialist jurisdictions ranging from Sweden to Quebec seems to indicate that governments cannot induce population growth, and indeed that cradle to grave socialism discourages families. The only socialist program that I can think of off the top of my head to encourage population growth was run by Nazi Geremany in the 1930's, where the object was to marry SS men to suitably "Aryan" women and create a master race of genetically pure "Ubermensch". I doubt that would go over very well today.

As for large families, in my experience, people who would be classed as "Socially conservative" have larger families regardless of the financial strain. In another generation or two, people of the "liberal" persuasion will have bred themselves out of existence.........


----------



## Dale Denton (12 Mar 2007)

I don't understand the worry and speculation. Who would base any piece of information on a prediction for the year 2030. It's so far away, how can you make any speculation of what would happen in 23 years from now? Theres so much time in between now and 2030 that how can you not calculate the fact that things would be as we predict. Nobody can make any accurate prediction of what would happen. Who knows? We might get a baby boom sometime between now and then.


----------



## a_majoor (12 Mar 2007)

Yes demographics is a descriptive science, but has some precision built into it by the simple fact that humans need at least 14 years or more to become sexualy mature and able to have children. Even if every single Canadian family had another child right now, we would not see a further change in the population from this until 2021.


----------



## CougarKing (14 Mar 2007)

S_Baker,

Bots*? Hehehe...You must mean boys...hehehe   

Well one does not need to be conservative to be hardworking...

Here's a related article...

Just because a nation may have decreasing number of native-born people doesn't necessarily mean it's in decline. An immigrant nation can still be a strong one. 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070313/ap_on_re_ca/canada_immigration_growth

Immigration fuels Canada's growth Tue Mar 13, 6:18 PM ET




> OTTAWA - Two-thirds of Canada's rapid population increase over the past five years came from immigration — a force that in coming decades will account for almost all of the country's growth, according to census figures released Tuesday.
> 
> Unlike the United States, where an influx of legal and illegal immigrants has fueled heated debate, there is little public discussion in Canada on the issue.
> 
> ...


----------



## civmick (15 Mar 2007)

QC got their birth rate up, costing them squillions to do it but it's a fact.  Take out QC and I wonder what the ROC rate must be


----------



## chanman (16 Mar 2007)

S_Baker said:
			
		

> Conservative does not necessarily = hardworking.  Nor did I imply that.  The article you point out about immigration is an interesting one....I would ask why CDNs don't want to have children?



It's not just us.

(The Economist) Pocket World in Figures

Lowest Fertility Rates, 2000-2005 (Avg. # of children per woman)


1. 
2. 
3. 
4. 
5. 
6. 
7. 
9. 
11. 
12. 
15. 
16. 
18. 
19. 
21. 
24. 
26. 
27. 
28. 
29. 
30. 
31.
32. 
34. 
35. 
36. 
38. 
39. 
40. 
41. 
43. 
44. 
46. 
47. 

Macau
Hong Kong
Ukraine
Czech Republic
Slovakia
Slovenia
Moldova/South Korea
Belarus/Bulgaria
Greece
Latvia/Poland/Romania
Spain
Italy/Lithuania
Hungary
Bosnia/Germany
Armenia/Japan/Russia
Croatia/Singapore
Estonia
Austria
Channel Islands
Switzerland
Portugal
Georgia
Barbados/Malta
Canada
Macedonia
Cuba/Trinidad & Tobago
Cyprus
Sweden
Serbia & Montenegro
Belgium/United Kingdom
China
Finland/Netherlands
Luxembourg
Australia/Denmark

0.84
0.94
1.12
1.17
1.20
1.22
1.23
1.24
1.25
1.26
1.27
1.28
1.30
1.32
1.33
1.35
1.37
1.39
1.40
1.41
1.47
1.48
1.50
1.51
1.53
1.61
1.63
1.64
1.65
1.66
1.70
1.72
1.73
1.75


As a point of reference, the replacement rate is usually 2.1

The US has a fertility rate of 2.0


----------



## AUADef (18 Mar 2007)

reccecrewman said:
			
		

> With the costs associated with children, is anyone actually surprised this is occuring?  If you have 1, 2 or worse, 3 or 4 children, the financial drain on the family is brutal..........  The cost of daycare so the mother can go back to work more or less eats her entire paycheque.  Speaking on my own experience, my wife makes about $400 every two weeks.  The cost of our daycare for that two week period is $350.00 - $35.00 a day.  That's alot of hours worked by her for what? One dinner out every two weeks.  The government really should be moving on a plan for daycare similar to Quebec's to encourage re-population.
> 
> Regards



There is talk that the current government may allow for income splitting. This would then allow Moms to stay at home with their children (which is much better than baby sitters) and hopefully keep more money in your families pocket than the current $100 a month your wife is bringing in now.  If we can have government policies that would allow greater freedom in raising a family (mostly lifting tax burdens) then a lot of moms won't have to work at 7-eleven or Wal-Mart unless they want to.  There is nothing more world changing than a dedicated mom to her children. Moms are the ones who develop our next leaders, not some socialist day care program. Quebec may look avant-garde in some of their social projects, but they seem to follow Europe in many ways and that is a slow painful death in the mire of huge tax burdens, even if those taxes are paid for by other provinces. Home schooling in Quebec has many examples of how the government views family and your children, oops, I mean their children. 

Most people now days say they can't afford children, so they have to stick to only 1 (or 1.5).  Some wait till they have their careers well underway, but then by the time that happens they are 35 or so and really only have time for 1 maybe 2.  

I think another reason for the low birth rate (maybe the biggest reason) is that our society has become so damn selfish, me, me, me!

http://www.fotf.ca/tfn/family/stories/2007/070214_01.html


----------



## chanman (20 Mar 2007)

S_Baker said:
			
		

> Well as I stated before I did my share....I more than doubled the 2.0.



Mind you, I think it's the other party that's the limiting factor, not yourself  

As an addendum, a fertility rate of 5 is exceptional for a Canadian couple, but only average for the Kenyans


----------



## a_majoor (10 Sep 2007)

Russia's demographic decline sharply limits the ability of Vladimir Putin to recreate Russia as an Imperial or even Great Power. The question for the next 20 to 50 years may well be: "who will move in?"

http://hallsofmacadamia.blogspot.com/2007/09/do-you-think-mark-steyn.html



> 2007/09/10
> Do you think Mark Steyn...
> 
> Is working on the sequel to America Alone?
> ...



I suspect the answer isn't what the Blogger is implying, China is also facing a self induced demographic crisis. Population growth in Asia is centered on the 'Stans (the Russian "Near Beyond" which fixtated the Tsars and is still an important consideration for post Soviet Russia). While there will be hordes of young people in the 'Stans who will be available and eager to seek work in European Russia, the Russians themselves will probably be violently opposed. 

An Islamic successor state created by young people from the 'Stans moving in and occupying the empty Russian territories will have access to many rich resources, but unless there is a sea change in Islamic culture (perhaps with the current Islamic "Thirty Year's War" being the cause), they will not have or develop the institutions to get a great deal of added value from these resources. Since Europe and China will also be in the throes of demographic meltdowns by that time, the only plausible market for their resources will be....the United States!


----------



## Colin Parkinson (18 Sep 2007)

I would do my bit to keep the birth rate up with some hot Russian, Slavic, Indian and Persian woman, if I can get my wife to agree.  ;D

Considering how nice looking those woman are, the fact they are not having enough babies seems to point to a social issue with the guys there.


----------



## a_majoor (5 Oct 2007)

The problem with having a demographic crash is you won't have enough hands to do the important work....

http://mesopotamiawest.blogspot.com/2007/10/extreme-demographic-armament.html



> *Extreme Demographic Armament*
> 
> If you liked Mark Steyn's book, America Alone, you're going to love Sons and World Power: Terror in the Rise and Fall of Nations by Gunnar Heinsohn when it comes out in English.
> 
> ...


----------



## MechEng (9 Oct 2007)

Back in the day people started having children at ages 16-18 years old.  Having children was less expensive and it was easier to make a living when you were in your late teens.

Today many people don't start to have kids until there 30.  To make a living today many people need to have either a collage or University education.  And many families have to have two incomes just too survive.  This means people have less time to spend on children.  This means less kids later in life.

My Wife and I are 28 years old and would like to start to have children.  But we only recently moved into a house (from an apartment) and we are both still paying off student debt's.  Money is fairly tight and we cannot afford to have children right now.  But we might be able to in 3-4 years when some of our debts will be payed off.

There are a few major issues that keep people from having children.  Wages have not gone up in 10 years.  Yet the cost of living has tripled. This is forcing people to have kids later in life and forcing people in to two income families to make ends meet.  A highschool diploma is unlikely to get you a good job.  To have a better chance at being successfull you need to have a collage and univerisity education.  This takes time and lots of money.  Tuition has doubled in the last 10 years.

Back in 1970 my parents bought a Semi-detached and was able to pay off their mortgage in 5 years.  In 1975 they bought a backsplit and was able to pay off the mortgage in 10 years.  This was fairly common back then.  Today people have 25 - 40 year mortgages.   Before you know it we will need to be sending what few kids we have to work to support the family.  And then we will have come full circle and become the 3rd world country we have been headed for since 20 years ago.


----------



## a_majoor (15 Oct 2007)

An interesting argument based on a convergence of economics and demography.

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/mail486.html#auxiliaries



> Subject: A demographic theory of war
> 
> Jerry,
> 
> ...


----------



## Brad Sallows (16 Oct 2007)

Back in the day, people didn't feel they needed to be "successful" to raise families.  Next time you drive through a neighbourhood built up in the '40s or '50s, check out the sizes of the homes.  If they have basements, imagine the basements to be unfinished, perhaps with dirt or only very rough concrete floors.  Now imagine raising four or six kids in those houses on working class (non-union) incomes.  The kids didn't get separate rooms; the clothes were handed down; each child might have had only a couple pairs of shoes and less than a handful of pants and shirts at any given time; there were few if any snacks outside meals; nothing prepared for a meal escaped uneaten; and leisure was mostly a product of the imagination and whatever was at hand rather than something purchased at restaurants, theatres, toy stores, and so forth.  Go back a couple more generations and the situations were even more challenging.  I know how the preceding two generations of my family were raised because I asked.  Do you know anything about yours?

Raising a family has gotten, if anything, easier; but the affordability of a basic family has been outstripped by the rise in expectations of each succeeding generation of potential parents.  If you start at 20 immediately desiring what your parents worked 20-25 years to attain, what do you expect?


----------



## Colin Parkinson (16 Oct 2007)

Although the US had a "respectable" birthrate compare to most of the West, it is not even across the country, States that are generally Democrat strongholds seem to have a lower birth rate than the more religious states. In fact looking at stats where left wing people live, the birthrate is quite a bit below replacement. 

As a species left wingers are not very successful reproducers, but as all species they have adapted, they multiple by taking over the education systems and converting other peoples children to their beliefs, therefore maintaining their beliefs.


----------



## MechEng (16 Oct 2007)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> Back in the day, people didn't feel they needed to be "successful" to raise families.  Next time you drive through a neighbourhood built up in the '40s or '50s, check out the sizes of the homes.  If they have basements, imagine the basements to be unfinished, perhaps with dirt or only very rough concrete floors.  Now imagine raising four or six kids in those houses on working class (non-union) incomes.  The kids didn't get separate rooms; the clothes were handed down; each child might have had only a couple pairs of shoes and less than a handful of pants and shirts at any given time; there were few if any snacks outside meals; nothing prepared for a meal escaped uneaten; and leisure was mostly a product of the imagination and whatever was at hand rather than something purchased at restaurants, theatres, toy stores, and so forth.  Go back a couple more generations and the situations were even more challenging.  I know how the preceding two generations of my family were raised because I asked.  Do you know anything about yours?
> 
> Raising a family has gotten, if anything, easier; but the affordability of a basic family has been outstripped by the rise in expectations of each succeeding generation of potential parents.  If you start at 20 immediately desiring what your parents worked 20-25 years to attain, what do you expect?



I agree that the expectations today have increased. But my parents went to college had 3 kids and had their house paid off by the time they were 40.  This type of thing doesn't happen anymore.  The standard of living for people have been increasing for hundreds of years yet only in the last 50 years have we seen the shift in demographics that we see today.


----------



## a_majoor (18 Mar 2008)

Given Canada has a far below replacement fertility rate, we either have to take steps to change the social and political environment that discourages families now, or accept that Canada will fade away perhaps starting late this century. If it is any consolation, there will be lots of Americans from the "red" states who will probably looking for homesteads to settle then.................

http://www.thepolitic.com/archives/2008/03/18/canada-is-aging-we-need-more-babies-should-families-be-considered-producers/



> *Canada is Aging, We Need More Babies. Should Families be considered “Producers”?*
> 
> “The only way to stop the Canadian aging process,” states the 2006 StatsCan report, “is to increase fertility.”
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (8 Jun 2008)

Lobsided demographics might be the real problem of the mid century:

http://www.steynonline.com/content/blogcategory/16/101/



> *KILLING HER SOFTLY *
> Sunday, 08 June 2008
> 
> ‘Someone wins, someone doesn’t win, that’s life,” Nancy Kopp, Maryland’s treasurer, told the Washington Post. “But women don’t want to be totally dissed.” She was talking about her political candidate, Hillary Clinton. Democratic women are feeling metaphorically battered by the Obama campaign. “Healing The Wounds Of Democrats’ Sexism,” as the Boston Globe headline put it, will not be easy. Geraldine Ferraro is among many prominent Democrat ladies putting up their own money for a study from the Shorenstein Center at Harvard to determine whether Senator Clinton’s presidential hopes fell victim to party and media sexism. How else to explain why their gal got clobbered by a pretty boy with a resume you could print on the back of his driver’s license, a Rolodex apparently limited to neo-segregationist racebaiters, campus Marxist terrorists and indicted fraudsters, and a rhetorical surefootedness that makes Dan Quayle look like Socrates. “On this Memorial Day,” said Barack Obama last Monday, “as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes — and I see many of them in the audience here today…”
> ...


----------



## dukkadukka (8 Jun 2008)

I don't want to be a debbie downer on this one.  But am I the only one that doesn't see a problem with it? YES it will cause some problems, but as a world, we are insanely over-populated. There was a line in the Matrix (Yes I'm aware that it's a movie line, but highly relevant) that the  human race is like a plague on Earth. We use up resources and have been growing at a baffling rate.  I agree that economically it will hurt our country alone, but I welcome a downsizing population.  In my own community I've seen an entire forest chopped down for more housing.  Displacing the entire environment and ecosystem.  What was once a lush forest beside my house is now a gigantic newly developed neighbourhood. We moved where we did because there was a low population, far from the city life and in a span of 10 years I've seen it all disappear to make room for more people.


----------



## Kirkhill (8 Jun 2008)

And, dukkadukka, I presume you and yours are the first volunteers in the population reduction programme?


----------



## dukkadukka (8 Jun 2008)

hahaha Well... *IF* I end up having kids... It'll be much later in life.  My "generation" is split down the middle, us career driven gals that don't want kids until we've done everything we wanna do, and those who don't really know what a condom is for (ie. the babies, having babies.)
I know that the population dwindling concerns most people on an economic scale, but the reality is that the population (of planet earth.) is highly inflated and it's created social/economic problems as well as improved social/economic issues from the past.


----------



## Kirkhill (8 Jun 2008)

Unfortunately I have been hearing the same line since 1972 with the Club of Rome report "Limits to Growth" which was promoted in schools exactly the same way that "An Inconvenient Truth" is currently promoted.

Fortunately we have not yet run out of Copper or Oil and we are using a whole lot more silicon than the "Romans" ever envisaged.  We are still here.

I take further comfort from the fact that Reverend Malthus originally postulated limits in 1798.  And we're still here.

As well, while the students of Peterborough, Ontario and Sunbury-on-Thames, England got the message and dutifully reduced their procreation efforts to 1.4-1.8 live births per female  the rest of the world didn't seem to get the memo.


----------



## blacktriangle (8 Jun 2008)

I'm not worried. I married the army, and my baby will be a new porsche! 

In all seriousness though, I don't think many people of my generation are willing to sacrifice quality of life in order to correct the negative birth rate. I know I'm not.


----------



## Edward Campbell (9 Jun 2008)

Hello, popnfesh; I think this cartoon, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Globe and Mail_, sums things up.

We, humans, have been careless of our environment, counting on our innate ability to invent to solve whatever problems we might create for ourselves. The deforestation of England in the 12th and, again, in the 16th centuries, being god examples – in each case technology or other innovations (trade) meant that the _price_ of environmental degradation _change_* was easily paid.

I think you have to go to Asia to see that large, highly congested populations can be sustained – with _adequate_ (not always very good) standards of e.g. human health – without absolutely destroying the environment. You do not have to grow your rice within a one day horse-cart trip from the city- technology lets the people of Beijing enjoy cheap rice grown and processed in Thailand. Ditto for forests and rivers.

Of course there are limits and there are unintended consequences but, popnfresh, do you really think we, humans, cannot lick the real problems involved with e.g. fish farming?

----------

* One man's degradation is another's improvment; 17th century British farmers welcomed deforestaion: they sold the wood (to build ships) and, simultaneously, gained rich, 'new' farmland. 

Edit: typo


----------



## Colin Parkinson (9 Jun 2008)

I am doing my bit, soon will have a 2nd daughter and therefore only .3 children away from replacing myself. The US is the only Western country with a growing domestic birthrate, luckily most of them will not be raised in Democratic households. In fact the only way left wing types can multiple in the west is by taking over education and convert otherwise healthy young into their own breeding stock, talk about a parsetic lifestyle.


----------



## TangoTwoBravo (9 Jun 2008)

dukkadukka said:
			
		

> There was a line in the Matrix (Yes I'm aware that it's a movie line, but highly relevant) that the  human race is like a plague on Earth. We use up resources and have been growing at a baffling rate.  I agree that economically it will hurt our country alone, but I welcome a downsizing population.  In my own community I've seen an entire forest chopped down for more housing.  Displacing the entire environment and ecosystem.  What was once a lush forest beside my house is now a gigantic newly developed neighbourhood. We moved where we did because there was a low population, far from the city life and in a span of 10 years I've seen it all disappear to make room for more people.



While the Matrix was a fun movie, I hope that you do not see humanity as a plague if you indeed count yourself part of humanity.  You moved where you did, and now you are upset that other people have done the same as you?  Were any trees harmed in the making of your house?  Are you somehow separate from it all?  The term "downsizing population" gives me some concern.  Do you see humanity as a mass of statistics?


----------



## time expired (9 Jun 2008)

I think the European socialists will help solve Canadas demographic
problems for us if we give them a chance.Their multi-culti illusions
will turn many of these countries into places that educated,qualified
people will no longer wish to live and raise families.This could be a 
tremendous plus for countries like Canada, Australia and New Zealand,
the US will also profit .This is already happening in the UK,thousands
qualified people leaving every year.I believe South Africa will soon be
in the same situation.All we have to do is ignore the screams from
the left and adjust our immigration policies to take advantage of this 
mass of qualified people who wish to come to Canada. Something like
the postwar immigration wave that did so much for this country.
                                  Regards


----------



## jzaidi1 (9 Jun 2008)

The one thing I have come to realize in my short 33 years of existence - Predictions are always going to be made, but the opposite usually happens.  One example is the promise of the 4-day/4 hour-per-day work week that technology was "predicted" to accomplish.  All we have done is create super-efficient systems which allow a company to exploit more talent/brainpower/labour from fewer individuals.  

So predicted a Western population decline will inherently result in legislation that will change the outcome of the original prediction.  More tax payers should equal more money for defense initiatives 

J


----------



## dukkadukka (9 Jun 2008)

Tango2Bravo said:
			
		

> While the Matrix was a fun movie, I hope that you do not see humanity as a plague if you indeed count yourself part of humanity.  You moved where you did, and now you are upset that other people have done the same as you?  Were any trees harmed in the making of your house?  Are you somehow separate from it all?  The term "downsizing population" gives me some concern.  Do you see humanity as a mass of statistics?


I think we view the quote differently.  I do view myself as part of the plague, but I try to contribute in ways that won't destroy the planet!
As a "world" society, we have destroyed forests, rain forests, and are using resources faster than the Earth can replenish them.  My house has been where it has been for 75 years. It is my grandmothers first house, the house that my father grew up in. What was once a thriving ecosystem surrounding my house, has quickly turned into a giant industrial park, a large neighbourhood. 
The downsizing population may adjust those problems by not needing more oil, not needing more nickel, not needing more steel and the list can go on.  As a Western society I don't fancy having a community like, say China, where everyone lives in 50 story buildings and the mass of people is just too overwhelming. An exchange student traveled to my city, and she was astounded at the room we had here, the amount of forestry and that we actually had back yards.  Personally I don't want to live in a world where I can't find a "natural" tree because they've all been destroyed to build more homes for houses.
Though I agree economically that it is frightening because of the perks of our generation.  Things are made, and more often than not, made by people.  With a downsized population there may be a decrease in the capabilities of production.  Though many productions are now not man-made and it's just about finding solutions to the problems.  
I don't think that the human-race can find the solutions to the crumbling Earth in time.  Back to the quote, that the larger the human race grows, the more problems the Earth will have. The Earth has had the opportunity to replenish its resources for millions of years and the human race has quickly used up most of those resources that have sustained the earth. I suppose the Earth has had a good run.


----------



## jzaidi1 (9 Jun 2008)

This then begs the questions.  Would you want to have children, knowing that they will be living in an increasingly difficult and unsustainable world?

J


----------



## dukkadukka (9 Jun 2008)

Uncertain.  It's all speculation about how long our planet has left.  But it's clear in the past few years that things are going wrong, very fast.  In Canada, cancer has risen significantly.  In other countries, natural disasters are becoming ever more clear about the status of our ecosystem as a whole.  There's is something wrong with our world and I don't think that we can figure it out before it's too late.
 Since I'm pretty... "anti-kid" for personal reasons, it's too early to tell if I would want children living in this world, let alone children at all. (I'm a contributer to the declining population that's for sure!)


----------



## Colin Parkinson (9 Jun 2008)

dukkadukka said:
			
		

> I think we view the quote differently.  I do view myself as part of the plague, but I try to contribute in ways that won't destroy the planet!
> As a "world" society, we have destroyed forests, rain forests, and are using resources faster than the Earth can replenish them.  My house has been where it has been for 75 years. It is my grandmothers first house, the house that my father grew up in. What was once a thriving ecosystem surrounding my house, has quickly turned into a giant industrial park, a large neighbourhood.
> The downsizing population may adjust those problems by not needing more oil, not needing more nickel, not needing more steel and the list can go on.  As a Western society I don't fancy having a community like, say China, where everyone lives in 50 story buildings and the mass of people is just too overwhelming. An exchange student traveled to my city, and she was astounded at the room we had here, the amount of forestry and that we actually had back yards.  Personally I don't want to live in a world where I can't find a "natural" tree because they've all been destroyed to build more homes for houses.
> Though I agree economically that it is frightening because of the perks of our generation.  Things are made, and more often than not, made by people.  With a downsized population there may be a decrease in the capabilities of production.  Though many productions are now not man-made
> ...



Yet population is crashing in Russia, part of Germany that have been cultivated for centuries are going back to forest. Even Northern BC has less people living in it than in the early 20Th century.  China has approx. 25 million surplus males and inbalance of sexes will impact on the population in the next 2 generations. Progress in living standards and health, education as creates a drop in birthrate. If you want to resolve population issues, increase the standard of living, it will self-correct. Most people have multiple kids in the hopes that some will survive to care for them in the future. 

Cheer up at the end of the day everything on this planet is doomed.  ;D


----------



## a_majoor (9 Jun 2008)

People have been having children since the human race began, and I suspect that with a five million year record of success to date, "we" will continue to reproduce regardless. As Robert Heinlein observed in one of his novels; we are the decendants of survivors; our ancestors dealt with fire, flood, the plague and wars and we are end result.

The problem seems to be that the age old reasons to have families seem to have been subverted in the West and former Soviet Bloc nations, and are being forcibly supressed in China, while the natural ratios of male to female births is also being subverted by other cultures once they can access Western medical science. The peoples who are not reproducing are in the process of being replaced by the people who _are_ willing to reproduce; Mark Styne's argument in America alone is most of "those" people are not willing or able to live by the civic conventions and common ideals of the Western nations they choose to settle........(the native born who continue to reproduce at above replacement levels also are subversive of the memes of modern "progressive" thought, but not of classical liberalism).

WRT human impact on the natural environment, that argument was settled at least 5000 years ago. Humans have _always_ changed the local environment to suit themselves, and you could argue that without today's use of energy and technology, most humans would be living in grinding poverty and disease; hardly the fate any moral person would wish on their neighbours. (Think of that the next time someone is preaching that humans should reduce their use of enerrgy and technology i.e. Kyoto).

There is no inherent contradiction with population growth and environmentalism, especially in placess where property rights and the Rule of Law are respected. Given the chance, the vast majority of property owners will take effective steps to protect their property, and much environmental damage occurs where there are no strict property rights; the so called "Tragedy of the Commons". Even closer to home; what is cleaner and better maintained; a public park or a private yard? 

My take is the one resource which we never have enough of is minds. A declining population means fewer and fewer people will be able to think about the problems at hand and come up with solutions, and those who embrace Progressiveism or anti western barbarism certainly are already taking themselves out of the equation.


----------



## Kirkhill (9 Jun 2008)

dukkadukka said:
			
		

> ....Things are made, and more often than not, made by people.  With a downsized population there may be a decrease in the capabilities of production.  Though many productions are now not man-made and it's just about finding solutions to the problems.
> I don't think that the human-race can find the solutions to the crumbling Earth in time.  Back to the quote, that the larger the human race grows, the more problems the Earth will have. The Earth has had the opportunity to replenish its resources for millions of years and the human race has quickly used up most of those resources that have sustained the earth. I suppose the Earth has had a good run.



You are overly pessimistic dukkadukka.  Right now I am living with the consequences of reduced population growth and migration.  The company I work for is setting up a traditional industry in Alberta.  The traditional method, which worked well for millenia, also worked well for them in their previous location.  They used to have lots of people to operate the plants.  They don't any longer.

In moving to Alberta, despite the knowledge that while the labour force is younger it is also more likely to find alternative employment, the company is inclined towards maintaining the traditional solutions.

Meanwhile the technology has been around since the 1980s to get the job done in an 8 hour day with 3 people in a smaller plant when the traditional operation requires a large floor area, and 20 people a shift with 3-5 shifts a week.  The capital cost is a bit higher for the new plant (not so much as you might think because the old style plant had to be bigger) but the operating cost is way down.  Computers and electric motors can replace an awful lot of broken backs.


----------



## Kirkhill (9 Jun 2008)

PS, I would strongly recommend reading more history and a bit of paleogeography to get a sense of how bad things can be.  It tends to put our modern problems in perspective.  

Keep in mind that in the past, with small populations, a relatively minor event could have a major impact.  For instance, consider Vancouver and Saskatchewan.  It is conceivable that Vancouver could lose a Million people overnight as a result of crowding into a highly active chunk of land that could be washed away or break off with little notice.  Meanwhile, Saskatchewan, with a population of only a million, is unlikely to ever see a cataclysm that would wipe out the entire population all at once.

I fully agree that over-capitalized and over-crowded monstrosities like New York, London, Calcutta, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver are high risk locations.  They are more likely to experience disaster just on the basis of crowding and ridiculous population densities.

Meanwhile, those living in the countryside, with Yaks or SUVs, are generally going to be much harder to kill off.  At very least they will have more notice of hard times coming and have more of an opportunity to adapt to circumstances.

Strangely enough it is those people in the country that feel confident enough in the future to have more kids and that also tend to vote away from liberal/Liberal tendencies.

Meanwhile, after reading your profile, I hope things are looking up for you these days.

Cheers.


----------



## dukkadukka (9 Jun 2008)

Kirkhill said:
			
		

> You are overly pessimistic dukkadukka.  Right now I am living with the consequences of reduced population growth and migration.  The company I work for is setting up a traditional industry in Alberta.  The traditional method, which worked well for millenia, also worked well for them in their previous location.  They used to have lots of people to operate the plants.  They don't any longer.



I may be overly pessimistic but it's a reality in my mind. 
Look at Canada in general.  Breasts are the yellow birds of our society.  The cases of breast cancer alone are steadily increasing and we must ask, WHY? What has changed, what in our environment (either man-produced or other) is causing this.  Also with the decline in frogs (frogs breathe through their skin, they are dying as a direct correlation with something in the air quality in which we breathe as well). It gives me a fright because with everything that is causing these phenomenons is clearly man made.  
The Earth has had a perfect balance for millions of years, excluding instances in history which wiped out species, and in the past, 100 years or so the Earth has been in steady decline.  Personally (my opinion and my opinion alone based on my current knowledge) the more the human race expands, the worse it will get unless steps are made to halt, reverse or find a solution.  Global warming is not a myth! The global crisis is not a myth.  
I'm merely a more statistic/knowledge kind of girl, I am presented with facts and use those facts to generate ideas to understand why. In the past 3-5 years there has been a rise in global phenomenons, whether it be the increase in disease in our species, the decline of another species or tornadoes/typhoons/and other natural disasters.  These are not just random occurrences but rather a product of what our species is doing to the planet we inhabit.


----------



## dukkadukka (9 Jun 2008)

Kirkhill said:
			
		

> Keep in mind that in the past, with small populations, a relatively minor event could have a major impact.  For instance, consider Vancouver and Saskatchewan.  It is conceivable that Vancouver could lose a Million people overnight as a result of crowding into a highly active chunk of land that could be washed away or break off with little notice.  Meanwhile, Saskatchewan, with a population of only a million, is unlikely to ever see a cataclysm that would wipe out the entire population all at once.
> 
> I fully agree that over-capitalized and over-crowded monstrosities like New York, London, Calcutta, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver are high risk locations.  They are more likely to experience disaster just on the basis of crowding and ridiculous population densities.
> 
> ...



I wasn't speaking merely of wiping out entire cities! It's more that the decline of a population, in my opinion, is more welcomed than something I view as scary.  
I currently live in a relatively small town! But our economy here is booming.  It's rising and more and more people from larger cities like Toronto are moving here for a smaller life-style and to enter our booming mining trades. 
(And thanks, things are certainly looking up! Merit listed on the 6th of this month finally! I've never had a poor opinion of the world and welcome bumps in the path I'm on, but the problems in which the Earth is going on give me a slight fright.  I'm a tree-hugging hippie at heart.)


----------



## Colin Parkinson (10 Jun 2008)

dukkadukka said:
			
		

> I may be overly pessimistic but it's a reality in my mind.
> Look at Canada in general.  Breasts are the yellow birds of our society.  The cases of breast cancer alone are steadily increasing and we must ask, WHY? What has changed, what in our environment (either man-produced or other) is causing this.  Also with the decline in frogs (frogs breathe through their skin, they are dying as a direct correlation with something in the air quality in which we breathe as well). It gives me a fright because with everything that is causing these phenomenons is clearly man made.
> The Earth has had a perfect balance for millions of years, excluding instances in history which wiped out species, and in the past, 100 years or so the Earth has been in steady decline.  Personally (my opinion and my opinion alone based on my current knowledge) the more the human race expands, the worse it will get unless steps are made to halt, reverse or find a solution.  Global warming is not a myth! The global crisis is not a myth.
> I'm merely a more statistic/knowledge kind of girl, I am presented with facts and use those facts to generate ideas to understand why. In the past 3-5 years there has been a rise in global phenomenons, whether it be the increase in disease in our species, the decline of another species or tornadoes/typhoons/and other natural disasters.  These are not just random occurrences but rather a product of what our species is doing to the planet we inhabit.



The earth has been in "perfect" balance?  barring the 5 or so extinction events and the ongoing loss and introduction of new species. Keep in mind that our lifespans have lept ahead and that many people who would not have survived birth did, Lot's of people who would have not survived as infants, kids or young adults all have. So of course we will have people dying of stuff they didn't see much of before. Also the reason people did not die of cancer much in the 18th century was they do know what to look for and death certificates would be little use as early death was considered natural.


----------



## DBA (10 Jun 2008)

dukkadukka said:
			
		

> I may be overly pessimistic but it's a reality in my mind.
> Look at Canada in general.  Breasts are the yellow birds of our society.  The cases of breast cancer alone are steadily increasing and we must ask, WHY? What has changed, what in our environment (either man-produced or other) is causing this.  Also with the decline in frogs (frogs breathe through their skin, they are dying as a direct correlation with something in the air quality in which we breathe as well). It gives me a fright because with everything that is causing these phenomenons is clearly man made.
> The Earth has had a perfect balance for millions of years, excluding instances in history which wiped out species, and in the past, 100 years or so the Earth has been in steady decline.  Personally (my opinion and my opinion alone based on my current knowledge) the more the human race expands, the worse it will get unless steps are made to halt, reverse or find a solution.  Global warming is not a myth! The global crisis is not a myth.
> I'm merely a more statistic/knowledge kind of girl, I am presented with facts and use those facts to generate ideas to understand why. In the past 3-5 years there has been a rise in global phenomenons, whether it be the increase in disease in our species, the decline of another species or tornadoes/typhoons/and other natural disasters.  These are not just random occurrences but rather a product of what our species is doing to the planet we inhabit.



From the Canadian Cancer Statistics for 2008:



> Breast cancer incidence rose steadily but gradually between 1979 and 1999 but has since declined significantly by 1.7% per year.† Much of the increase was probably due to the gradual uptake of screening mammography that took place during the 1980s and 1990s. This results in identification of cases of breast cancer earlier than would have occurred without screening. Similar to prostate cancer, screening may have eventually exhausted the pool of prevalent cancers in the screened population, resulting in recent declines, as the incidence rate dropped back closer to prescreening levels. However, changes in risk and protective factors such as changing patterns of childbearing and hormones likely also have played a role.



This pattern is common with any new testing that can discover a condition earlier or the introduction of wider use of existing tests. Detected rates will go up, the press will hype it and people will worry and buy papers and magazines. Media needs something people are interested in to get them to watch/listen/read and one way to do that is to hype things like increased detection rates as proof of some deeper worrying trend. 

A lot of media seems to be a mix of "suck up" and "we are all doomed" story lines. These have to be slanted for something (suck up) or against something (we are all doomed) so media becomes more partisan to float the stories. Lost in this process is comprehensive reporting and articles start to read like op-ed pieces.


----------



## Edward Campbell (6 Sep 2008)

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Globe and Mail_, is an article to which we should give careful attention because it also applies to Canada;

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080905.wreckoning0906/BNStory/International/home 





> Europe's demographic bombshell
> 
> DOUG SAUNDERS
> 
> ...



Immigration is absolutely essential for Canada’s future prosperity – hell’s bells *increased immigration is essential for our very survival*.

BUT we need carefully targeted immigration. We need to recruit people who will, largely, “_hit the ground running_” and integrate, fairly easily, into a sophisticated, tolerant, liberal-capitalist *culture*. There are, at this moment, two ‘good’ sources for large numbers of those ‘desirable’ people: China and India. There are also some ‘bad’ sources – areas that offer people who have, by and large, demonstrated difficulty in adjusting to Canada, even in the second generation.


----------



## chanman (6 Sep 2008)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Globe and Mail_, is an article to which we should give careful attention because it also applies to Canada;
> 
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080905.wreckoning0906/BNStory/International/home
> Immigration is absolutely essential for Canada’s future prosperity – hell’s bells *increased immigration is essential for our very survival*.
> ...



You have mentioned before that 'Culture Matters'.  Do you think the demographic crunch will lead to a change Europe's culture?  For that matter, shouldn't Russia's demographic problems come to a head before those of Europe?


----------



## Edward Campbell (6 Sep 2008)

chanman said:
			
		

> You have mentioned before that 'Culture Matters'.  Do you think the demographic crunch will lead to a change Europe's culture?  For that matter, shouldn't Russia's demographic problems come to a head before those of Europe?



I think many Europeans are already battling what they see as a cultural 'challenge' brought on by too many immigrants who are unwilling or unable to _integrate_ into the traditional, established national culture. The immigration is the result of too many unfilled low wage/low status jobs - jobs that e.g. Danes want done but would rather not do themselves.

Russia's demographic crunch is already making life difficult for the Medvedev/Putin mob.

But what's the alternative for e.g. Denmark, the Netherlands and, indeed, Canada?

First: automate or mechanize those low wage/low status but, all the same, important jobs. I have, previously, explained the difference between garbage collection in Beijing and Dallas: the streets are clean and tidy in both cities but in Dallas the work is done by a very few people and a whole lot of equipment. The relative costs to the two economies are fully acceptable.

Second: recruit a steady and increasingly larger stream of immigrants from a few countries with surpluses of sophisticated, well educated people - they will do the low wage/low status jobs for a while (and that's why there needs to be a steady stream of immigrants) and they will _integrate_ easily. They will not become WASPs although, despite the disapproval of the first generation of immigrants, their grandchildren will inter-marry with my grandchildren, but they will not decide to behead our prime minister, either.


----------



## tomahawk6 (6 Sep 2008)

The problem in Europe including Russia is that the birth rate of muslim immigrants in time will make the Russians or British minorities in their country. France has offered a bonus for French women for each baby they conceive. This may end up being the best alternative.


----------



## chanman (6 Sep 2008)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> I think many Europeans are already battling what they see as a cultural 'challenge' brought on by too many immigrants who are unwilling or unable to _integrate_ into the traditional, established national culture. The immigration is the result of too many unfilled low wage/low status jobs - jobs that e.g. Danes want done but would rather not do themselves.
> 
> Russia's demographic crunch is already making life difficult for the Medvedev/Putin mob.
> 
> ...



The old capital and labour inputs into the production black box   

But then, the demographics of the donor countries suddenly become of huge interest of us.  China still has plenty of peasants and a deep pool of unskilled migrant labour, but the wage increases in the industrialized areas suggest that skilled labour is approaching or nearing full utilization; and the lack of good local managerial talent is a long-bemoaned subject for firms in the market that are trying to expand.

Do expect some culture clash between large numbers of immigrants with conservative values with locals who move ever further to the left? (I want to avoid the world liberal as is used in the vernacular as it has, and should continue to mean something else entirely).  The pro-Tibet protestors being shouted down by members of the Chinese diaspora, while entertaining for someone who generally find protestors annoying, come to mind.



> Second: recruit a steady and increasingly larger stream of immigrants from a few countries with surpluses of sophisticated, well educated people - they will do the low wage/low status jobs for a while (and that's why there needs to be a steady stream of immigrants) and they will _integrate_ easily. They will not become WASPs although, despite the disapproval of the first generation of immigrants, their grandchildren will inter-marry with my grandchildren, but they will not decide to behead our prime minister, either.



This seems to be the goal of a number of developed countries with low birth rates.  In the present day, we compete with, at the very least, Singapore, the US, Australia for the choice emmigrats from the two countries you mentioned above.  Generally, I think that you can add Hong Kong, the UK, and certain local cities (Bangalore, China's eastern seaboard) as competitors to attrct the young, productive, educated, and risk-taking people (as a decision to emmigrate) that no one ever seems to have enough of.  What, then, is and will be Canada's unique attraction that makes sure that should emmigration from donor countries slows down, we continue to be the destination of choice (or at least continues for long enough that we can can adjust more gradually?)

Maybe it's time to offshore child birth and start offering rewards for families in other countries to have more children in exchange for preferential treatment when it comes to their applications for visas, access to international schools, and prompter service when it comes to their immigration paperwork?  A longer term view to be sure, but unless you know of a way to keep birthrates above 2.1 when per capita GDP starts rising...




			
				tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> The problem in Europe including Russia is that the birth rate of muslim immigrants in time will make the Russians or British minorities in their country. France has offered a bonus for French women for each baby they conceive. This may end up being the best alternative.



Well, Islam being a religion, I suppose you could always convert more French women...  If the high birthrate stems from Pakistani or Arab or Caucuses culture though, then religion might not be the important factor.  Do the Orthodox groups in the Caucuses have more or less kids than their Muslim neighbours?  (For that matter, you could compare the two groups in the ex-FRY too).  I suppose though, that if they expect that to be the future, they should start entrenching their aboriginal rights now while they still have some say-so on the matter


----------



## Long in the tooth (7 Sep 2008)

I'm sorry, but can't people see the obvious?  If you don't have kids, who do you think will be around to visit?  Horrifically expensive, emotionally draining, but the only surety to our future.


----------



## Kirkhill (7 Sep 2008)

> Thursday, May 17, 2007
> 110,000 abortions per year in Canada
> The Globe reported today that teen pregnancies are down and abortions are declining; it was a decent article, but the last line caught me off guard:
> "In Canada, there are about 330,000 lives birth each year, and about 110,000 abortions."


  Source



> Canada to accept up to 265,000 new immigrants in 2008
> Ottawa, October 31, 2007 — The Honourable Diane Finley, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, announced today that Canada expects to welcome between 240,000 and 265,000 newcomers in 2008.


  Source



265,000 immigrants to offset 110,000 abortions (+ those prevented by birth control).


And ultimately what is the issue?

The issue is the attitude of us in society that sees pregnancy out of wedlock as a problem.  We stigmatize the mothers.  We fail to support them and their children..........and that support issue isn't just a government problem.  It is a problem of all of those "grandmothers and grandfathers" that fail to step up and support their own kin - their daugthers and sons and grandkids.  As often as not the mother is ostracized, and occasionally murdered.

The solution to our declining population?  More families like the Palins - with more government policies that would support the types of decisions that the Palins have made.  Policies that support a conventionally extended family.  Policies that encourage marriage and family, that allow grandparents to accept their grandkids as full dependents and that adjust support accordingly.

In Indiana my wife and I used to remark on the number of incidences of babes in the arms of 17 year old mothers with 34 year old grandmothers, 51 year old great-grandmothers and 68 year old great-great grandmothers.  Assuming that the fathers are of like ages that represents a clan of 4 generations of working age adults in a position to support their infants, - not to mention the 85 year olds who are also often able to contribute, if only as baby sitters and advisors.

If we increase the cycle rate (reduce the generational interval from 27 years to 17 years) and take away the barriers to having and raising out of wedlock children that encourage desperate young women to throw away potential Canadian citizens then the problem disappears quickly.

And that isn't too difficult to accomplish....

All that would have to happen is for those uptight socialists down east to develop the same attitudes  towards families as Albertans and Native Canadians.  For all their problems the Natives are out reproducing the White Folks.

In eastern Canada and BC and the Yukon the birth rate is around 10 per 1000.  In Alberta it is 30% higher.  Even in Manitoba and Saskatchewan it is 20% higher.  In Alberta you certainly are more likely to run into Palinesque clans but in all three provinces you also have a strong Native cohort.  And up north, in the Territories it is 60% higher while in Nunavut it is 140% higher.  Both of those are Native dominated societies.  The Inuit, I would suggest because of their relatively recent* exposure to White Society (as opposed to White Traders) still have the most semblance of their traditional structures intact. Source

It is not that we don't know how to solve the problem of creating more Canadians.  That bit is the fun bit.  The only question is how do we support them.

I would be placing my bet on the clan - and not looking at every new birth as a potential ward of the state and a source of dishonour to the mother and her family.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
* Most Canadian Government intervention in the north appears to have not happened until the era of Diefenbaker and Mowat and the forced relocation of the Inuit to the High Arctic in the 50's.  Consequently their has been less time for the Government to damage their society than there has on the prairies or in the east.


----------



## Kirkhill (7 Sep 2008)

> ....*The most important thing to know about the left today is that it is centered on social issues*. At root, it always has been, ever since the movement took form and received its name in the revolutionary Paris of the 1790s. *In order to drive toward a vision of true human liberation, all the institutions and moral codes we associate with civilization had to be torn down. The institutions targeted in revolutionary France included the monarchy and the nobility, but even higher on the enemies list of the Jacobins and their allies were organized religion and the family, institutions in which the moral values of traditional society could be preserved and passed on outside the control of the leftist vanguard.*
> 
> Full human liberation always remained the ultimate vision of the left--Marx, for one, was explicit on this point--but the left in its more than 200-year history has been flexible and adaptable in the forms it was willing to assume and the projects it was willing to undertake in pursuit of its anti-institutional goals. For more than a hundred years, the central project of the global left was socialism.
> 
> ...


  Source

This exegesis of the left's philosophy is largely in accord with where I find myself.

In Israel the principle internal tension comes from the divide between the Corporatist Jabotinski Faction of the Jews of the Diaspora (Likud) and their fellow Displaced Persons, the Socialists of the Kibbutzim (Labour).  The Nationalists versus the Internationalists (Workers of the World Unite).  This dichotomy is complicated by the presence of a Traditionalist Religious Faction.  

(Please note - if you are offended by flippant comments be advised that I do not question the right of Israel to exist, nor the right of Jews to defend themselves nor to create a society in whatever fashion they see fit. They have exactly the same rights as any other group.  They can have what they can hold.)

The same split of beliefs and factions are played out in every country in the world - including Canada.

The Kibbutzim were described by my Dad's mates in the Paras in derogatory (and I have no doubt, given that we are talking about 18-21 year old "celibates", envious ) tones, as Stud Farms.   Their belief, slanderous or not, was that in the Kibbutzim men of their age not only were not forced to be celibate (officially) but in fact had access to all the women and would never have responsibility for their children because the "State-Kibbutz" would raise them.  For a 19 year old Tom far from home with few friendly female faces around it all sounded too much like paradise and much too good for those "jew-boys" hiding guns to kill them, murdering them in their cots and hanging their sergeants.  There was certainly a degree of animosity - mutual. 

Leaving aside the viciousness of the jew-baiting inherent in that belief (in 1967 Dad could find himself cheering on Israeli Paras), the notion that fostered the concept of the Kibbutzm is at the heart of the ongoing pressure towards separating the family and the church from education, putting it in the hand of a socially inclined state apparatus (bureaucrats and teachers), reducing the standards for removing children from their family (residential schools were part of that continuum and related to the phenomenon that drew socialism out of Manchester churches and Ayrshire libraries and the CCF out of a Scots Methodist Minister - Bill Blaikie will understand the connection).  It is also part and parcel with the push to national early daycare and keeping children in school longer.  

State run "orphanages" are a staple of Stalinist (and for that matter Hitlerian) regimes.  Ceaucescu's being only the most recent and notorious.

It is also the driving force behind Death/Inheritance Taxes.  In the early 60s, when the Beatles wrote the song "Taxman" they and many other Brits, including my Father and Sean Connery, were driven to leave Britain by the taxes imposed by Labour.  This was the era of the National Trust when impoverished "Great" families were required to sell-off/donate/open their estates because the tax burden was too great for them to be able to afford to keep their property.  That was an explicit aim of Labour's socialist policies - to drag everyone down to the same starting point in the expectation that with an equal start and equal opportunity then an equal outcome would eventuate and the millenium would be achieved, So help them God.  And God was an explicit part of their belief system (The hymn "Jerusalem" (lyrics)was, for many years, the Labour Party's anthem - sung along with "The Red Flag" and "The Internationale" - thus reflecting the the internal tensions within the Labour Party).

My Grandfather reflected the personal tensions of that struggle between Nationalists and Internationalists.  He was son of an Ayrshire miner and Labour Party organizer and as such associated with Socialism.  Burns was his favourite poet (Nationalist) but his favourite poem - after Tam O'Shanter - was "Is there for Honest Poverty" - best known for its line ..."The Rank is but the Guinea's stamp, the man's the gowd (gold) for a' that"  a favourite of the Internationalists and the Marxists.  But he, like most of his ilk, was also a staunch Presbyterian, an Elder of the Kirk that held the Sabbath close and a practicing Mason (who like most in those days did not advertize the fact - even to his grandson).  He was also a strong militarist, taking pride in both his family's military service and his own service as an "ERK" in the RAF during WW2.  His wife, a fellow employee of the Co-Operative, and a member of "The Rural" and "The Women's Institute" shared his views

Jock Davidson and the Clydesiders like George Galloway were, and are an abomination to everything that they believed in.

No, I am firmly in agreement with the above article. It is not that there is a conspiracy.  A conspiracy suggests a few directing the many.  It is worse than that.  It is a generalized, cross-cultural belief that somewhere, somehow, sometime - IN THIS WORLD - the lion shall lie down with the lamb (here's the actual quote and here and here
 is its setting).  Just as a note - there is damlittle of peace in that passage.  It is all about revolution, red in tooth and claw, and divine retribution resulting in the good guys winning so that the only people left are those that agree with the aggrieved down-trodden.  

That is an Old Testament passage - based on the concept of the perfectability of this world.  A belief held dear by Scots and Boer Covenanters and Presbyterians and other Calvinists like the Huguenots.

The New Testament which defines "Christians", interestingly enough, takes the opposite view.  There is no perfection to be found in this world.  You will have to wait for the next to find peace.

PS - reference my previous submission - My Grandparents, dearly beloved but still stiff-necked Presbyterians and adorers of Tommy Douglas, would have been amongst the first to Tsk-Tsk at the notion of an unwed mother.  The Left come by their intolerance honestly.  It is in the genes and their traditional, family, upbringing.


----------



## CougarKing (6 Oct 2008)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Globe and Mail_, is an article to which we should give careful attention because it also applies to Canada;
> 
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080905.wreckoning0906/BNStory/International/home
> Immigration is absolutely essential for Canada’s future prosperity – hell’s bells *increased immigration is essential for our very survival*.
> ...



Demographer David Foot was just interviewed on CBC tonight, IIRC. He says that Canada should hold off on to accepting more immigrants since it's unfair to the legions of young, educated people here in Canada who are just entering the work force, which I highly disagree with not only because I am an landed immigrant myself but also because such a measure would be a form of trade/labour, pro-unionist protectionism. It would also clash with your above conclusion/recommendation.

*However, if you want people to actually "hit the ground running", such as those people from China and India, you have to stop all these labour barriers that prevent them from being PRODUCTIVE members of society, such as the lack of provision of recognition of foreign credentials- which explains why there are many highly-educated immigrants who are initially forced to actually work menial jobs while they go to school at night so they can eventually get local Canadian equivalents of their credentials.* Like the Chinese pediatrician forced to become a cashier or that Indian man with 3 graduate degrees forced to become a security guard simply because no one recognized his credentials in Canada - the latter story obviously featured on a CBC special segment.

*When I mean provision of recognition of foreign credentials, I mean something like allowing them to take the test to get the certification their foreign credentials without them having to go back to school just to get a Canadian equivalent*; this happens in the US as well. I have even heard of a long-practicing doctor from the Philippines forced to become a NURSE in the US simply because it would take longer time and cost for her to get the US equivalent of her foreign medical degrees. Also, IIRC from a CPAC segment I was watching, of one of those Parliamentary Committees/hearings, it was mentioned that in Australia they had a system whereby skilled immigrants would be tested on whether their education measured up to Australian standards even before they were allowed to enter Australia.

In reference to what most of what everyone else on this thread said earlier, Dr. Foot's arguments seemed to agree with the statements here that Russia, Germany and Japan are actually in decline when it came to their populations; he also mentioned the eventual negative effect that China's one-child policy will have on its labour market and how India may eventually overtake China in population as well as a supplier of cheap skilled labour. 

Furthermore, he also actually mentioned 3 powerhouses that will actually surprise everyone in decades to come: *Turkey* (not surprising considering the birth rate of a Muslim population like theirs- Foot said that the EU will actually need Turkey more than Turkey will need Europe), *Brazil* (not surprising as well considering they have a huge largely Catholic population which is reluctant to advocate much birth-control practices) and lastly *Vietnam* (which is another emerging Asian Tiger that he thinks may even surpass China- I think that part of that growth may be owed to the large number of Vietnamese expats/former boat-people/exiles returning who are eager to get a piece of Vietnam's recent boom; the fact that many of these former South Vietnamese exiles, from the various diasporas throughout the West, are Catholic may also help with the later population growth).

I am only surprised that Dr. Foot did not include Indonesia in his list of emerging population powerhouses; one cannot ignore the world's largest Muslim country- with about 234 million people- who are mostly Islamic, although there are some minorities like the Christian Indonesians in the Moluccas area of Indonesia and the usual Chinese diaspora/overseas Chinese community/华侨 that is characteristic of other Southeast Asian nations and whom control a sizeable portion of the wealth there.

http://www.footwork.com/profile.asp


----------



## Colin Parkinson (11 Oct 2008)

Despite having a Univesity of London law degree and 7 year before the bar in Malaysia, my wife had to go through a 3 year process to become a lawyer here, including articling and "play court" Most of the stuff they covered was a rehash of what she previously studied. she also commented that the standards here were lower than Malaysia. Added to this was the fact that for the first year she was not allowed a work permit, which I figure cost us $40,000 in lost wages, which would have helped a lot.


----------



## chanman (11 Oct 2008)

Colin P said:
			
		

> Despite having a Univesity of London law degree and 7 year before the bar in Malaysia, my wife had to go through a 3 year process to become a lawyer here, including articling and "play court" Most of the stuff they covered was a rehash of what she previously studied. she also commented that the standards here were lower than Malaysia. Added to this was the fact that for the first year she was not allowed a work permit, which I figure cost us $40,000 in lost wages, which would have helped a lot.



My neighbours moved to Vancouver from Taiwan back in 1994.  The father is a dentist, and four years later, he still wasn't able to practice, so they moved back to Taiwan while renting out their house here and dropping by every year to check on the paperwork.  They didn't move to Vancouver for good until 2005 or so.  I hope that timeline's not representative for overseas trained dentists


----------



## CougarKing (11 Oct 2008)

Colin P said:
			
		

> Despite having a Univesity of London law degree and 7 year before the bar in Malaysia, my wife had to go through a 3 year process to become a lawyer here, including articling and "play court" Most of the stuff they covered was a rehash of what she previously studied. she also commented that the standards here were lower than Malaysia. *Added to this was the fact that for the first year she was not allowed a work permit, which I figure cost us $40,000 in lost wages, which would have helped a lot.*



See what I mean? Protectionist labour laws. Like the kinds that protectionist, unionist NDPers would favour.

And speaking of which, if the Conservatives want to appeal to a wider immigrant (who are already citizens and can vote, that is) base as well, they have to figure out a response to Stephan Dion's promise to amend for these protectionist measures by not only investing up to 800 million more to fix Canada's immigration system but called for the recognition of foreign credentials and degrees:

http://www.liberal.ca/story_14546_e.aspx



> *Liberals will restore fairness, streamline immigration system*
> RICHMOND, British Columbia – A new Liberal government will reverse the irresponsible immigration measures introduced by the Conservatives last spring and invest a total of $800 million in new federal funding to deal with the immigration backlog, welcome more new Canadians, and ensure that they succeed, Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion said today.
> 
> “Last spring the Conservative government gave the Immigration Minister sweeping discretionary powers to reject whole categories of immigration applications,” said Mr. Dion. “When I am elected Prime Minister I will immediately reverse these unfair and dangerous immigration changes.”
> ...



And how can we achieve that if we have attitudes like this prevailing among some voters?



			
				Bruce Monkhouse said:
			
		

> I don't know about you but I'm in no flippin' hurry to have *some "Doctor" with some third world matchbook degree just waltzing in and becoming a "Doctor" here..............a few years in our school system sounds about right to me.*



 : Umm, You do realize that Canadian immigration doesn't just let anyone in? They accept landed immigrants and even just work permit holders, IIRC, based on a points system whereby they consider a number of the individual applicant's qualifications- including their degrees and so forth. It just seems so retarded that we have these well qualified invididuals who are told they can make a new life here only to find out they can't practice their trade in spite of their qualifications and years of experience. If you want to make sure whether their training is up to par with Canadian standards, then you should have them tested overseas, as Australia does, IIRC, before even allowing them in.


----------



## wannabe SF member (13 Oct 2008)

The idea that we will have to rely entirely on immigration to sustain our population in the future really brings up the risk of cultural clash. Won't the growing mass of foreign-educated people favor the development of some kind of sub-culture more and more removed from our original values? 

My 0.02$


----------



## TCBF (13 Oct 2008)

- We don't have to 'grow' to 'grow rich' and growth just for the sake of growth is the philosophy of the cancer cell. 

- The richest countries in the world OTHER than the USA generally have populations under twenty million.

- I find it morally reprehensible that we strip away the well educated from developing countries so that they may drive taxis in Toronto.  Since it is a case of protectionism by our professions, I believe that the government should insist that NO immigration takes place UNTIL a professional has been accorded the Canadian equivalent and can walk off an airliner and straight into practice.  If the Canadian 'guild' wants him, they can do the accrediting. 

- Our educational budgets are overburdened by ESL loadings.  Priorities should go to those who speak one or both of our two official languages.

- We should use immigration as a nation-building program in a scientific way.

- Refugees: No paper ID?  No passport?  Back to the last country they stopped in (or point of flight origin).  Airline pays the tab or loses their landing privileges into Canada.



-


----------



## TacticalW (13 Oct 2008)

The incongruous said:
			
		

> The idea that we will have to rely entirely on immigration to sustain our population in the future really brings up the risk of cultural clash. Won't the growing mass of foreign-educated people favor the development of some kind of sub-culture more and more removed from our original values?
> 
> My 0.02$



I recall there being an article on how Israel told Canada it was concerned that its stance towards them might change because of the rising muslim population. I suggest we all start making babies and contribute to the welfare of the country and our allies  8)


----------



## Edward Campbell (13 Oct 2008)

The incongruous said:
			
		

> The idea that we will have to rely entirely on immigration to sustain our population in the future really brings up the risk of cultural clash. Won't the growing mass of foreign-educated people favor the development of some kind of sub-culture more and more removed from our original values?
> 
> My 0.02$



Yes; just as, over the past 400+ years, successive _"waves"_ of immigrants have added their "sub-cultures" to the _mosaic_ - enriching it.

Also: we MUST separate immigration policy from refugee policy. We 'recruit' immigrants that we need and want for our own, selfish purposes.

We do not seek refugess and, broadly, we should not 'welcome' them to Canada.

A refugee is, by definition, a person who flees his home in fear of life or limb; the refugee, also by definition, 'wants' to return to his or her home as soon as it is safe. Our refugee policy should aim to 'welcome' refugees to safe, secure places as near as possible to their homes. There, we should provide services - health, education and so on, and we should work to end the crisis which 'made' the refugees in the first place. As soon as the crisis is resolved the refugees disappear - back to their homes.


----------



## Marmite (14 Oct 2008)

I think we have redefined ourselves over the last 20 years. Canadians are seen overseas as being multicultural. Diverse. A true melting pot. When I first came here from the UK in 1979 at the age of 6, living in Ajax, a person of color, or non white, was rarely seen. Today, in my daughters Kindergarten class, in Whitby, she is one of 6 white students. The other 12 are Chinese, African Canadian, Indian and Pakistani. I have no problem with it, but it just goes to show, what an explosion of immigrants we have had over the last 20 years, and how it changes our identity. We are no longer that British influenced, Anglo Saxon, colony that has ruled for all these years. We are a nation of diversity and cultures.

And I disagree that our immigration policies is for our own selfish purpose. Those policies are in place to help others move to a safer, more prosperous place to live.


----------



## Edward Campbell (14 Oct 2008)

Marmite said:
			
		

> ... Those policies are in place to help others move to a safer, more prosperous place to live.



If that's the case then our politicians are quite mad and very bad.

All national policies, in all nations ought to be 'selfish' - they are there, *primarily* to benefit the country and the people in it. If, as a *secondary* or *tertiary* matter a policy can do something for others then that's probably, usually, a good thing but it's not why one makes policy.

The policies that help others move to safer places are the "out migration" policies of other nations - if they allow their people to leave (some nations make it quite difficult) and if we *want* those people then they get to come here. If one of the other of those conditions is not met then those unfortunate people may remain poor and in danger.

As I have said before, refugees are a whole other matter - and it does involve making people safe, or, at least safer. But we must keep immigrants and refugees and the policies involving each very separate from one another.


----------



## CougarKing (14 Oct 2008)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> *We do not seek refugess and, broadly, we should not 'welcome' them to Canada.*
> 
> A refugee is, by definition, a person who flees his home in fear of life or limb; the refugee, also by definition, 'wants' to return to his or her home as soon as it is safe. Our refugee policy should aim to 'welcome' refugees to safe, secure places as near as possible to their homes. There, we should provide services - health, education and so on, and we should work to end the crisis which 'made' the refugees in the first place. As soon as the crisis is resolved the refugees disappear - back to their homes.



I for one disagree with this notion. But both of us can at least agree that political refugees or those being persecuted in their home country -and would not thus not have any place to turn to- should be at least given the option of being able to apply to have refugee status here. And then you have asylees- those seeking political asylum. 

You are obviously aware of those refugees fleeing due to political reasons or those conflicts or social upheavals that may be happening in their nation of origin, and the difference between them and those coming to Canada simply for economic reasons, but whom do not necessarily have anything to offer than the wllingness to work at a lower wage in dollars, such as those thousands of illegal Hispanics that flood the US borders everyday.


----------



## a_majoor (14 Oct 2008)

For refugees, Edward is right. The concept of refugees is people fleeing from persecution but who are willing to return to their homelands if their safety can be assured.

WRT immigrants, a more important point than even skills is attitudes. Skills can be taught, after all, but the people who choose to come to Canada (or lower Volta, for that matter), need to have the attitude that they are making their new home HOME, and there should be no attempt to drag their problems and attitudes from the old country to the new.

Samuel Huntington talks about the ideal of Civic Nationalism in his book "Who are We?", discussing the American experience. What I gained from that work is that large blocks of people coming en mass are trouble because they are "settlers" rather than immigrants, and bring their own defined culture and world view to the new nation, to the exclusion of others. We have seen this in Canada in spades, with Sikhs battling the Indian security service from Canada after the storming of the Golden Temple; Serbian and Croatian "Canadians" providing money, support and sometimes themselves to warring factions in former Yugoslavia, the LTTE levying "war taxes" on Canadians of Tamil descent to fund their insurgency in Siri Lanka and attempts to impose Sharia law and shut down free speech  in Canada by Islamic extremists. 

I think we can all agree that these are not pieces of the cultural mosaic that  are welcome in Canada, but little or no effort is made to assimilate the newcomers to the social,  cultural, political or legal "norms" of Canadian society. Indeed, Multiculturalism explicitly calls for newcomers to remain "hyphenated", and not assimilate at all. I don't support that sort of multiculturalism, especially since it brings the seeds of trouble to our ground.


----------



## TCBF (16 Oct 2008)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> For refugees, Edward is right. The concept of refugees is people fleeing from persecution but who are willing to return to their homelands if their safety can be assured. ...



- Good point - so: Immigrants should be allowed a process towards Canadian citizenship - Refugees should not.


----------



## a_majoor (23 Jan 2009)

Using the power of the State to manipulate human reproduction. No one in this article seems to note the huge imbalance in the male:female ratio that is creeping up in China as a side effect of the one child policy (and will reach fruition in the 2020's. In Mark Steyn's hilarious formulation "China will become the first gay superpower since Sparta"). 

This also becomes a bit scary in the context of the "culture wars" in the United States. "Blue" states have below replacement birth rates, while "Red" states have much higher than replacement rates. At this rate, "Progressives" will become extinct in about two generations while Sara Palin's family will be able to recolonize Canada. "Progressives" are well aware of this, and are currently in positions to manipulate tax codes, school choice and other factors to redress the balance or at least put "Red" states at a severe competative disadvantage. 

Canada has a below replacement birth rate of @ 1.48 children/couple; our elites have decided the solution is flood the nation with immigrants and provide lots of State subsidies to encourage immigration.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/humannature/archive/2009/01/22/the-temptation-of-totalitarian-birth-control.aspx



> *The Temptation of Totalitarian Birth Control*
> Posted Thursday, January 22, 2009 9:46 AM | By William Saletan
> 
> People in a democratic country wouldn't let their government restrict family size ... would they?
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (4 Mar 2009)

More "Gay Superpowers" on the way?

http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/006007.html



> *Sex Ratio At Birth Rises In Vietnam*
> 
> Selective abortion of female fetuses is common in China, India, and some other Asian countries. A Plos One report finds that Vietnam shows signs of following the same pattern with a rise in the number of male births to 100 female births (Sex Ratio at Birth or SRB).
> 
> ...


----------



## Kirkhill (4 Mar 2009)

Surplus males aren't a bad thing if you figure a lot of them are going to end up catching bullets for the greater glory of the greater number.


----------



## a_majoor (7 May 2009)

And people are needed to power economies as well:

http://www.briangardiner.ca/hespeler/?p=1958



> Demographic Depression
> May 5th, 2009
> 
> For almost ten years now if you find yourself sitting next to me at a social function, and make some passing comment about being able to afford a cottage when you retire, or what with the prices of houses what kind of house will your kids be able to buy? you would quickly discover I have a theory. It’s not an optimistic theory, it’s not a pleasant thought, but, I lost nothing when the stock market declined last year because I had an idea what was coming (although, it came three years earlier than expected).
> ...


----------



## medaid (7 May 2009)

From someone that looks at Refugee and Illegal migrant cases all day... Everyday...

Keep dreaming about legislative change. Before people criticize immigration policies and procedures,
Let me ask you this, how many of you have looked at the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act?

All 5inch thick at font 9 of it? It is not as simple as some of you have made it out to be, in terms of Refugee status, definition of Refugee under the Act, and gaining citizenship as a Refugee (nearly freaking impossible)...

Anyways... Just saying... From some one who has seen the otherside...


----------



## a_majoor (19 Jul 2009)

Mark Styen on how the structural changes in our demographics will probably have more to do with how our ecponomy and society evolve than anything that politicians can come up with:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZmU0MWFkODk5MTUxZWI4YWQzNGI0NGMzYmRjZWQyMTQ=



> *No future   [Mark Steyn]*
> 
> The "alarmism" of my book seems to be going mainstream. Newsweek's economics editor Daniel Gross belatedly joins the demographic deathwatch on Japan:
> 
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (19 Jul 2009)

I remain convinced that the “answer” for Canada (maybe Australia, too) is immigration: tightly focused and controlled immigration.

As I see the available data, and I may well “see” it incorrectly, we have immigration success stories and immigration failures. Our immigrants tend to find their work at two ends of the spectrum: some are able to use their advanced education to fill the jobs for which too many Canadians are unqualified. For proof, go look at your local university – especially at the graduate schools in science and applied science. Immigrants and foreign students (many of whom will become immigrants) are disproportionately highly represented – especially immigrants from Asia. Now stay a bit late at the office and watch the cleaning crew. They too are mostly immigrants but they are from Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. Some have more than one degree but “we” are unsure that a doctor trained in Chittagong Medical College or an engineer who graduated from the Yemeni University of Science and Technology is quite “up to snuff.” So they work at the dirty, hard, low paying jobs most other Canadians do not want.

As long as we have employment above about 3% we do not need to import workers for low paying, low skill, unattractive jobs – there is (when unemployment is at 8.6%) no shortage of Canadians who *should* be willing to take those jobs.

But, as long as our elementary and high schools will not teach enough young people what they need to know/do in order to complete six to ten years of scientific/technical post secondary education then we do have to import the people we need to provide our heath care, do our R&D, design our bridges and satellites, programme our computers and so on.

We need a whole lot fewer of the people who lack the skills and knowledge to do the jobs for which we have too few qualified Canadians; conversely, we need a whole lot more of those who can fill those jobs. Put simply: we need more and more Asians – East Asians (mostly Chinese) and South Asians (mostly Indians). Conversely: we need fewer and fewer Africans, Latin Americans, Middle Easterners, West Asians, Caribbean peoples, and so on. Most Europeans and Americans, who come in numbers too small to mention, remain welcome.

We need to do a couple of things:

First, and *most importantly* – separate immigration and refugee policy and operations from each other. They are not even remotely related, one to another, except that people come to Canada. Immigrants are not refugees and refugees are not immigrants and mixing them, even allowing low level bureaucrats to deal with both together, is poor policy and bad administration.

Second – use the _Notwithstanding_ clause to deny newcomers Charter protection just because their feet touch Canadian soil. We need to follow Australia’s example. No one “enters” Canada until an immigration or refugee officer decrees, in writing, that one is “landed.” Those who cannot be “landed” can, then, be returned, forthwith, to their point of origin. The business of “landing” anyone, immigrant or refugee, is serious and must be taken seriously by politicians and civil servants.

Third – establish a sane refugee policy. Refugees, by and large, do not want to be immigrants. Some do, but they need to be moved to a different line.

We have a human *duty* to provide refuge to those in danger; that refuge need not be, and generally should not be in Canada. Canada should operate and maintain refuge camps near, but not in, dangerous places around the world so that those in need may find a safe haven from which, soon rather than later, we hope, they may be able to return to their own homes.

Part of our refugee policy should involve removing the danger that creates refugees in the first place. Often that will require a robust military capability.

Fourth – find and recruit the immigrants we want rather than just waiting at the counter to see who shows up. Open new immigration offices in India and China – that need not be as expensive as it seems if every single immigration office in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, West Asia and the Caribbean is closed and those in Europe are cut in half. That doesn’t mean people from regions outside East and South Asia cannot immigrate – it will just take longer to get the paperwork done. Canadian immigration agents should be out visiting universities in China and India looking for the young, smart people we want to come here and help us build our country. They, and their spouses, should be offered quick approvals and, even, assisted passage. We should not cancel the family reunification programme – by which parents and aunts and nieces and nephews come to Canada -  but we should make the whole process slightly slower and more difficult.


----------



## chanman (20 Jul 2009)

Mark Steyn seems to miss another possible alternative - working for life - retirement is a recent, and possibly temporary phenomenon.

Population aging was also very recently the subject for an Economist special report:  http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13888045

Edward - in the long, *long* run, isn't poaching the best and brightest of other countries only feasible so long as Canada remains a desirable destination for immigration, and said countries continue to produce a steady supply of would-be immigrants?  Will the needed numbers of future immigrants continue to be available when China hits their own demographic crunch?  Many East Asian countries already sport very low birth rates.  Macau, Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea all have fewer average children born per woman than Japan, but in the case of the first three, are bolstered by immigration, and in Korea's case, the fall in child bearing rates likely occurred much more recently in Japan.


----------



## Edward Campbell (20 Jul 2009)

chanman said:
			
		

> Mark Steyn seems to miss another possible alternative - working for life - retirement is a recent, and possibly temporary phenomenon.
> 
> Population aging was also very recently the subject for an Economist special report:  http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13888045
> 
> Edward - in the long, *long* run, *isn't poaching the best and brightest of other countries only feasible so long as Canada remains a desirable destination for immigration*, and said countries continue to produce a steady supply of would-be immigrants?  Will the needed numbers of future immigrants continue to be available when China hits their own demographic crunch?  Many East Asian countries already sport very low birth rates.  Macau, Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea all have fewer average children born per woman than Japan, but in the case of the first three, are bolstered by immigration, and in Korea's case, the fall in child bearing rates likely occurred much more recently in Japan.




Yes, indeed. In the _immigration *game*_ we have to become and remain a "winner:" a more desirable *goal* than, say, America, Argentina or Australia and, especially, more desirable than China, itself, or Hong Kong and Singapore.


----------



## Edward Campbell (22 Jul 2009)

This, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _National Post_, is a column that is, loosely, related to the topic at hand:

http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=1814572


> Jihad rules! Jews suck!
> 
> *George Jonas*, National Post
> Wednesday, July 22, 2009
> ...




He is quite right: Canada is becoming *”a country of two nations into a country of a dozen xenoliths: Inward looking, hostile fragments, jealously guarding their ethno-religious distinctions as entitlements, while resenting the entitlements of others as privileges,”* and *“the opposite of integration is disintegration.”*

Two nations/_deux nations_ is a silly enough mythology that that has done serious harm over the decades, especially when it received explicit support from the national government. Multiculturalism is completely misguided claptrap.

We have a _national_ culture. We are an essentially liberal, democratic, capitalist people – less liberal and less democratically inclined that either our American or English friends; more liberal and more capitalist that, say, the French. We are rather akin to the Scots, with many of their virtues and equally many of their vices – especially in fields like labour relations, a deeply conservative faith in collectivism and a distaste for our bigger, richer, more liberal Southern neighbour.

We should expect immigrants to adapt, slowly, to be sure, but surely, to “our” culture; they don’t need to embrace bagpipes or even maple syrup but they do need to embrace, to integrate into a tolerant, secular and resoundingly pluralistic society.

Tolerance, I repeat, does not mean that one *approves* of another’s beliefs or customs; it means that you understand and believe that the _other’s_ *right* to believe what she wants outweighs your distaste for that belief.

Being secular is vitally important, especially in a pluralistic society. We must all understand and accept that NO religion is, in any way, “better” than any other. We are not, any longer, a _Christian_ nation, much less any specific sort of Christian nation. Religion, of any sort, should have no place in our public life. The Navy’s new Queen’s Colour should not have been “blessed” by a veritable phalanx of priests, imans, rabbis and assorted other shamans; it should have been “dedicated” to Her Majesty’s service in a wholly secular manner. _"We can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground,"_ Abraham Lincoln said, at Gettysburg, because _“brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.”_

By and large, left to our own devices, most Canadians manage pluralism very well. The few who do not must not be allowed to “hide” behind the curtains of multiculturalism; they must be exposed, by the lights of tolerance and secularism, as the *failures* they are, by the failures they make of their own lives in Canada.


----------



## TCBF (23 Jul 2009)

- Our best hope for success is to limit immigration to those who come from  cultures that can seamlessly and peacefully adapt to and adopt our culture.


----------



## The Bread Guy (23 Jul 2009)

TCBF said:
			
		

> - Our best hope for success is to limit immigration to those who come from  cultures that can seamlessly and peacefully adapt to and adopt our culture.


Any suggestions on how to determine/delineate such "cultures"?  As opposed to individuals from _any_ culture who can seamlessly/peacefully adapt/adopt, regardless of the culture they come from?


----------



## TCBF (23 Jul 2009)

milnews.ca said:
			
		

> Any suggestions on how to determine/delineate such "cultures"?  As opposed to individuals from _any_ culture who can seamlessly/peacefully adapt/adopt, regardless of the culture they come from?



- I was hoping someone would ask me that!
 ;D
- No, I don't.  In any case, it would be politically and scientifically impossible to legislate a cultural ban.  However, there are many beliefs that are inconsistent with our beliefs - but we cant necessarily screen for those either - freedom of thought, and all that.  Perhaps a Human Rights Tribunal could give us a list of unwanted cultural attributes, but Human Rights Tribunals are a bunch of Totalitarians anyhow.
- So, when screening INDIVIDUALS, what SHOULD we use to assess their immigrant potential.


----------



## a_majoor (23 Jul 2009)

I'm sure that there are a battery of psyc evaluations we could use to test for tolerance, flexibility of mind etc, but this is just a mugs game.

Anyone who is determined to come to Canada fo whatever reason could wargame the tests, hire a coach, find a criminal enterprise that would steal tests and supply the "right" answers or just sneak across the border.

TCBF is sort of alluding to what Edward (and to a lesser extent I am) is saying, that is, it is about culture.

Our liberal, democratic, free market, Rule of Law culture is best reflected in the Anglosphere group of nations, but most of these nations also have a demographic bust going on, and in some cases are actually coming unmoored from their Anglosphere roots (the UK under New Labour is a very unsettling example). As well, while our culture may well have deep foundations and Scottish roots, generations of our "elites" have worked very hard to uproot these foundations (with great success in our urban areas).

What the actual "answer" really is I have no idea. I suspect that undoing a lot of this social engineering would cause a rebound in our birth rates, since humans have a natural inclination to reproduce (and have a history going back almost 5 million years to prove it), so how do you go about doing that?


----------



## The Bread Guy (24 Jul 2009)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> Our liberal, democratic, free market, Rule of Law culture is best reflected in the Anglosphere group of nations, but most of these nations also have a demographic bust going on, and in some cases are actually coming unmoored from their Anglosphere roots (the UK under New Labour is a very unsettling example). As well, while our culture may well have deep foundations and Scottish roots, generations of our "elites" have worked very hard to uproot these foundations (with great success in our urban areas).


All this, at the same time as we see people from cultures some worry about integrating and living normal lives here (we hear a lot about the "car in the canal" incidents, but not so much about all the others who just want to keep working and paying the mortgage and tuition for their kids).



			
				TCBF said:
			
		

> - So, when screening INDIVIDUALS, what SHOULD we use to assess their immigrant potential.


Sadly, I have to agree with Thucydides - there are rules in place, but like screening for recruits, you can't always tell the weiners from the keeners beforehand.



			
				TCBF said:
			
		

> - I was hoping someone would ask me that!
> ;D


Happy to oblige!  ;D


----------



## a_majoor (29 Sep 2009)

Europe's demographic bust:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327271.800-population-europes-problems-will-grow-as-it-shrinks.html



> *Population: Europe's problems will grow as it shrinks*
> 29 September 2009 by Reiner Klingholz
> 
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (5 Oct 2009)

And Russia's demographic crash. The big question is who's going to move in?

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/10/04/general-eu-russia-falling-population_6964469.html



> *UN: Russia must adapt to shrinking population*
> By DOUGLAS BIRCH , 10.04.09, 11:01 PM EDT
> 
> MOSCOW -- Russia's population has fallen by 6.6 million since 1993, despite the influx of millions of immigrants, a United Nations report said Monday, and by 2025 the country could lose a further 11 million people.
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (9 Mar 2010)

The problem, according to this article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, is not “no people,” but it begs the question: are we getting the people *we need*?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/canadas-visible-minority-population-to-nearly-double-by-2031/article1494651/


> Canada's visible minority population to nearly double by 2031
> *Statistics Canada reports that two out of every three Torontonians would be non-white in 20 years*
> 
> Jill Mahoney
> ...




My ‘problem’ is not with visible minorities, a fact to which those who know me personally will attest, but it is with the socio-cultural _baggage_ that some minorities bring with them and which does not disappear with the first _native born_ generation.

Our biggest _national_ problem is _productivity_ and productivity is enhanced by people who, above all else, value education and achievement and ask little from the state, perhaps because they do not trust the state to protect their, personal and family interests. Some of the fastest growing _communities_ in Canada come from _collectivist, *illiberal*_ societies that tend to look towards elites and, inevitably, the state to solve problems for them – that’s precisely the sort of people we want to exclude.


----------



## CougarKing (9 Mar 2010)

Although the opposition parties claim that most of last week's throne speech was all "old stuff", the development below -as stated in the throne speech- shows that the current government continues to go in the right direction, ensuring that all skilled immigrants have a chance to become productive members of society, as discussed before in a number of earlier posts: 



> We are a country of immigrants. Our identities are bound up in the stories of ancestors from hundreds of lands. To share these stories, our Government will introduce legislation to establish Pier 21 in Halifax – the site where so many began their Canadian journey – as Canada's National Museum of Immigration. *It will continue to work with the provinces to strengthen recognition of foreign credentials through the Pan-Canadian Framework for the Assessment and Recognition of Foreign Qualifications. *  To better protect would-be immigrants, our Government will take steps to shut down unscrupulous immigration consultants. Our Government will also introduce legislation to speed up the revocation of citizenship of those who have concealed their war crimes.
> 
> Read more: National Post link


----------



## Kirkhill (10 Mar 2010)

Re: the visible minority issue....

The addition of more minorities is inevitable and necessary unless and until the caucasian community has more babies, or at least suffers more of their babies to survive.  Productivity increases can only take us so far.  1945 was 65 years ago.

But the tendency of those minorities to congregate in cities for jobs, to congregate in communities for mutual, together with the collectivist traditions of some/many - traditions that will be reinforced by self-imposed ghettoization, will increase the drift between rural Canada (Canada writ large) and urban Canada (or ToMoVa - Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver).

The question is: at what point does Kenora separate from Toronto?  When does Sparwood separate from Vancouver?  When does Beauceville separate from Montreal?

A related question is:  are Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver sufficiently alike in polities as to be able to define kindred policies?  Or is the differential beween Montreal ( 70% white and predominantly francophone) and Toronto and Vancouver (40% white with a heavy seasoning of what Quebec chooses to  define as allophones) so great as to render it impossible to find a common path?

Toronto and Montreal were sufficiently reviled by their hinterlands when they were seen to be populated by the same peoples.  Will that gentle antipathy become more pronounced if the cities are not only separated by lifestyle and mores  but also by race?

Is there a likelihood that the visible minorities can be convinced to become farmers and ranchers, trade in their flash BMWs for a pickup truck with a gun rack in the back?

Personally I think the answer lies in the creation of three more provinces - Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, and  revert to the oiginal Confederation concept which, after all, was designed to accomodate disparate cultures with little in common but economic interest and a desire by some to ensure that the Americans were kept out.


----------



## Edward Campbell (13 Sep 2010)

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_ is a great column that addresses another of our major Canadian weaknesses:



> More Americans than Chinese? A lot can happen in 100 years
> *Canada just can’t seem to maximize the advantages immigration offers*
> 
> Neil Reynolds
> ...



First, a quibble: Reynolds is a good enough economist to know, based on overwhelming historical evidence, that the birth rate declines as _per capita_ GDP rises. His thesis rests on the idea that the current fast growing crop of _illegals_ in the USA will remain poor and, consequently, fecund. I doubt that’s going to happen; I expect the millions and millions of _illegals_ to prosper; I also expect that America will find ways (the plural maters) to stem the flow of illegal immigrants – in part by strengthening the borders, in part by ‘buying’ better opportunities in Latin America.

That quibble aside, Reynolds raises two vital points:

1.	_”For Canada, immigrants are another government program that never quite works the way it was intended to work. We haven’t even been able to get much entrepreneurial advantage from our troubled “investor class” program; many immigrants feel kept-down; government reports lament the poor economic performance of our immigrants.”_

2.	_”Free man,” he_ Li Liu_ says, explaining his remarkable achievements. “Free market.” He gets it.”_

Canada seems unable to ‘get it.’ Several countries, e.g. Singapore, run very successful “investor class” immigration programs: they do so because the rules are designed to _attract_ investors; Canada’s are designed to placate home-grown socialists who detest wealth and hate the idea that money might get one to the front of the queue. It is a socio-cultural problem that will continue to constrain our growth and productivity. We also tend to fail in the “free man, free market” arena; we are, vaguely, _European_ in our approach which means we are most likely to become poorer and poorer, generation after generation. We tend to favour the European approach because it appeals to our sophomoric, knee-jerk anti-Americanism.

Canada needs more and, above all, "better" people if we continue to grow and prosper in the 21st century. The policies we need to attract them are fairly clear and simple but, unfortunately, also very _American_ and, therefore, unlikely to find favour amongst Canadians - including amongst many Conservative voters.


----------



## CBH99 (14 Sep 2010)

I know this is a bit of an old threat, but its 3am and I'm bored...SOOOOOO...

Question for people who are smarter than I am.  Why does the population of the world & individual countries need to grow??  Why is population reduction seen as a problem??

I would have thought that with population reduction we would see a reduction in crime, poverty, wars, etc, etc.  

Also, in economic terms, does a smaller population necessarily translate into a weaker or smaller economy??  In some cases, would a smaller population not translate into a stronger economy, due to less people relying on state provided programs??

I know this is an old thread, but as I was reading through it I got curious...


----------



## Edward Campbell (14 Sep 2010)

My opinion, put most simply: in a _conservative_, Confucian society (like China) reducing the population is a good idea. The Chinese do not have extensive _social_ programmes, beyond very, very limited "free" health care and pretty broad "free" elementary education. Many , probably most Chinese people find it strange that one would allow much less want the state to e.g. care for one's aged parents. Now, *that is changing* but the change is slow and moderated by deeply ingrained (and 2,500 year old) social custom. Thus, in contrast to most Western socialistic states which are also, like Canada and the USA, highly 'advanced' welfare states, Chinese income taxes are low because there are few 'social' programmes to support. Most government spending is politically 'discretionary' - on things like infrastructure and defence.

Thanks to Bismarck _et al_ we are in a different boat. We have 'social' programmes that are, by and large, politically *necessary*. And these programmes rely upon an ever growing population of workers and taxpayers to pay for e.g. my healthcare, pension, transportation and even continuing education in retirement. You don't want to mess with my 'entitlements' because my age group, 60+, is growing fast and votes at a much higher rate than, say, the 20 and 30 _somethings_. 'We' need more of 'you' to work and pay taxes.

Now it would be possible to live better with fewer people if we would become much more *productive*,* but see many of my old posts and you will understand that Canadians, especially, are happily wedded to the habits of low productivity.


__________
* Most Canadians think that "better" productivity means making workers do more for less. That's nonsense; productivity means making workers do more for the same (or less) 'effort' and for about the same, maybe even higher, wages. Poor productivity in Canada is not a labour issue; it is a *failure* in management and government.


----------



## GAP (15 Nov 2011)

Why Americans (and probably Canadians) Won't Do Dirty Jobs
In the wake of an immigrant exodus, Alabama has jobs. Trouble is, Americans don't want them
November 09, 2011, 11:00 PM EST
Article Link

Skinning, gutting, and cutting up catfish is not easy or pleasant work. No one knows this better than Randy Rhodes, president of Harvest Select, which has a processing plant in impoverished Uniontown, Ala. For years, Rhodes has had trouble finding Americans willing to grab a knife and stand 10 or more hours a day in a cold, wet room for minimum wage and skimpy benefits.

Most of his employees are Guatemalan. Or they were, until Alabama enacted an immigration law in September that requires police to question people they suspect might be in the U.S. illegally and punish businesses that hire them. The law, known as HB56, is intended to scare off undocumented workers, and in that regard it’s been a success. It’s also driven away legal immigrants who feared being harassed.

Rhodes arrived at work on Sept. 29, the day the law went into effect, to discover many of his employees missing. Panicked, he drove an hour and a half north to Tuscaloosa, where many of the immigrants who worked for him lived. Rhodes, who doesn’t speak Spanish, struggled to get across how much he needed them. He urged his workers to come back. Only a handful did. “We couldn’t explain to them that some of the things they were scared of weren’t going to happen,” Rhodes says. “I wanted them to see that I was their friend, and that we were trying to do the right thing.”

His ex-employees joined an exodus of thousands of immigrant field hands, hotel housekeepers, dishwashers, chicken plant employees, and construction workers who have fled Alabama for other states. Like Rhodes, many employers who lost workers followed federal requirements—some even used the E-Verify system—and only found out their workers were illegal when they disappeared.

In their wake are thousands of vacant positions and hundreds of angry business owners staring at unpicked tomatoes, uncleaned fish, and unmade beds. “Somebody has to figure this out. The immigrants aren’t coming back to Alabama—they’re gone,” Rhodes says. “I have 158 jobs, and I need to give them to somebody.”

There’s no shortage of people he could give those jobs to. In Alabama, some 211,000 people are out of work. In rural Perry County, where Harvest Select is located, the unemployment rate is 18.2 percent, twice the national average. One of the big selling points of the immigration law was that it would free up jobs that Republican Governor Robert Bentley said immigrants had stolen from recession-battered Americans. Yet native Alabamians have not come running to fill these newly liberated positions. Many employers think the law is ludicrous and fought to stop it. Immigrants aren’t stealing anything from anyone, they say. Businesses turned to foreign labor only because they couldn’t find enough Americans to take the work they were offering.

At a moment when the country is relentless focused on unemployment, there are still jobs that often go unfilled. These are difficult, dirty, exhausting jobs that, for previous generations, were the first rickety step on the ladder to prosperity. They still are—just not for Americans.
More on link


----------



## wannabe SF member (4 Dec 2011)

This situation kinda makes me wonder if it would be possible for a country to implement a welfare system based on job availability. Basically, if there are many jobs available, state handouts will be low so as to force people to take these jobs.


----------



## a_majoor (4 Dec 2011)

Actually what will happen is wages will start a non inflationary rise as business starts to feel the pinch of labour shortages. The boom wages in places like Alberta, Saskatchewan, North Dakota and Texas demonstrate what happens when the shortages are regional, the European "Black Death" saw general wage increases throughout Europe since 30% of the population had died off. (this will be the situation in Canada)

In Canada, we will probably see a huge influx of Americans when our demographic "bust" takes hold in the mid 2020's, the location is close and the culture is quite similar so they won't have too much difficulty adapting (and the US still has above replacement level birth rates, so there will be lots of them to do the jobs we no longer can.) By the 2040's, they will be a large and potent force in business and politics, and could well usher in changes that shift Canada into a limited Republican form of government.


----------



## a_majoor (25 Dec 2011)

Mark Steyn on the withering away of the population:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/286634



> *Elisabeth’s Barrenness and Ours*
> Who celebrates a birth nowadays?
> 
> Our lesson today comes from the Gospel according to Luke. No, no, not the manger, the shepherds, the wise men, any of that stuff, but the other birth: “But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John.”
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (16 Mar 2012)

long term demographic changes will make the future very different from what was expected. Structural changes will overturn lots of current policies and probably many political parties and movements will discover that the underlying demographic changes are beyond their ability to influence. The other result of demographic change is that open societies will have a disticnt advantage over closed societies:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/04/europe-8217-s-real-crisis/8915/



> Europe’s Real Crisis
> The Continent’s problems are as much demographic as financial. They won’t go away soon.
> 
> By MEGAN MCARDLE
> ...



http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/03/14/does-the-anglosphere-still-rule/



> *Does The Anglosphere Still Rule?*
> 
> I’ve been attending a State Department lunch for British prime minister David Cameron today and found myself thinking about some recent points Joel Kotkin and Shashi Parulekar have made about the prospects for the English speaking world.
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (23 Mar 2012)

The progressive model drives Italy to extinction?

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/03/20/italian-war-on-young-becomes-fight-for-survival/#comment-69221



> *Italy Winning Its War on the Young — And Losing Its Hope For the Future*
> 
> Italy is not a good place to be young and, not surprisingly, there aren’t that many young Italians coming along. ISTAT reported in January that youth unemployment now stands at an astonishing 30.1 percent, a record high for the country. Rather than striking out on their own, young Italians are increasingly living with their parents well into their thirties and forties, and many now are contemplating a lifetime without long-term employment. The opening to this Times piece is particularly evocative:
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (8 Apr 2012)

After spending their, their children and grand children's inheritance, the German Boomers make a final slap in the face of the young. Expect lots of new German speaking neighbours in the years ahead as young Germans flee the opressive tax regime:

http://www.smh.com.au/world/germany-set-to-tax-young-20120405-1wfh3.html



> Germany set to tax young
> April 6, 2012
> 
> "The German Chancellor's ruling party is seeking extra sources of revenue to pay for soaring pensions and bills for social care costs as Germany's 'baby boomer' generation ages amid a decline in the birth rate."
> ...


----------



## GAP (8 Apr 2012)

If this takes off, most of the Eurozone will do it.....talk about shooting yourself in the foot... :


----------



## a_majoor (8 Apr 2012)

Happily for us, a wave of European immigration over the next 10-15 years will do nicely to paper over our own demographic bust and provide the pool of skilled workers needed across this nation. They will probably be joined by a wave of Americans with similar ideas. I'm all for this since this will solve a lot of problems for us, and cultural integration will be less of an issue with European and American immigrants.


----------



## Kirkhill (8 Apr 2012)

But Thuc:

From the States you are likely to get Democrats and all the Europeans have been raised by Social Democrat teachers.

Careful what you wish for.  :bunny:


----------



## a_majoor (8 Apr 2012)

Those people may want to come in abstract, but the wave of American media personalities who threatened to come to Canada if George W Bush was re elected never arrived.

Since our immigration system will be screening for workers with marketable skills, I suspect the filter will be pretty good at screening out Dems and Social Democrats. As a twofer, it means more and more people back in the old country voting benefits for themselves and providing higher and higher incentives for the remainder to leave. As a historical aside, when Belgium nationalized their healthcare system decades ago, doctors began packing their bags and leaving. To fight the trend, the Belgian government of the day drafted all the remaining doctors and held them in country as part of their military service requirements.

Expect measures like that, seizure of chattel property, exit taxes and other means to counter the exodus of working age people from Europe


----------



## a_majoor (13 Apr 2012)

Until the incentives to have children improve, I suspect technological "fixes" like this will be more theoretical than real. Still, it is nice to think that we could turn out generations of new Canadians in sufficient numbers to stop the demographic bust if we decided to do so:

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-04/lab-grown-human-eggs-made-stem-cells-could-make-women-fertile-forever



> *Human Eggs Grown in the Lab Could Produce Unlimited Supply of Humans*
> By Rebecca BoylePosted 04.12.2012 at 3:00 pm15 Comments
> 
> The first human eggs grown from human stem cells could be fertilized with human sperm cells later this year, potentially revolutionizing fertility treatment for women. This could be one more step on the path toward reproduction sans human interaction — in this case, a potential parent wouldn’t even need to donate her eggs. But it could also turn stem cells into an infinite loop, of egg cells into embryos into stem cells, and on and on, in a fractal-like repetition of reproduction.
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (30 Apr 2012)

Japan's future is very similar to where we are going demographically, the only variable is we allow virtually unrestricted immigration whereas the Japanese allow virtually no one in. Even without people we have the ability to bank on resource wealth, something Japan does not have. The political and economic consequences of Japan essentially disappearing from the world stage are scary to contemplate.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/douthat-incredible-shrinking-country.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss



> *Incredible Shrinking Country*
> By ROSS DOUTHAT
> Published: April 28, 2012
> 
> ...


----------



## CougarKing (29 May 2012)

link



> *Canada in midst of mini baby boom, shows new census figures*
> 
> By Andy Radia
> 
> ...


----------



## Sythen (8 Aug 2012)

http://whatsnext.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/07/video-urges-singapore-couples-to-make-babies-now/?hpt=hp_c2



> (CNN) - This week's over-the-top marketing campaign is a YouTube video from Mentos that hopes to convince Singaporeans to get busy. Like literally. It asks them to "make a little human that looks like you and me" and "make Singapore's birthrate spike" on National Day, a Singaporean holiday, which will be celebrated on Thursday.
> "This August the 9th, it's time to do our civic duty," a deep-voiced man says in the video, produced by an ad agency on behalf of Mentos mints. "And I'm not talking about speeches, fireworks or parades." (Woman in the background: "But I like that stuff.") "I'm talking about the stuff after that stuff. I'm talking about making a baby, baby. You ready?"



More on link.

I have several friends from Singapore, and they always said that Singapore's most important resource was its people. Looks like they are the first State looking to correct its population decline. I wonder if a marketing campaign like this will actually work? Guess we'll know in approx 9 months!


----------



## a_majoor (17 Aug 2012)

Japan seems to be going extinct. Our Birth rate is quite sub par (in the neighbourrhood of 1.4/couple) but Japan is far below that. There are a few possible solutions suggested here, but if they get implimented and how they do remains to be seen. The strategic and economic implications of a depopulated Japan are also interesting to contemplate:

http://www.newgeography.com/content/003019-sex-or-not-and-japanese-single



> *Sex (Or Not) And the Japanese Single *
> by Edward Morgan 08/14/2012
> 
> Back in June 2011, British prime minister David Cameron backed proposals tackling the sexualisation of British children, in a bid to dilute the culture of sex that has swept western nations. The rhetoric goes that the ‘oversexualisation’ of society, as represented in everything from ‘lads mags’ to advertising boards promoting shampoo, has fuelled a surplus of sexual desire that is thought to have contributed to the rise of teenage pregnancy and rape cases in the UK.
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (1 Feb 2013)

More on Japans gradual dissapearance. One thing that people do not think much about is that when a land empties, other people start considering moving in (this is one of the drivers behind the gradual growth of the Chinese population in Siberia; there are hardly any Russians there, and the numbers keep declining. Even in European Russia (West of the Urals), the baby bust is causing some discomfort as Russians realize that the growing centers of population are in the Islamic "Near Abroad"). How Japan deals with this will be interesting to watch.

http://thediplomat.com/2013/02/01/japans-demographic-disaster/?all=true



> *Japan’s Demographic Disaster*
> 
> East AsiaPoliticsPreviewRegionSocietyTopicJapan
> February 01, 2013
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (8 Feb 2013)

While the United States in general has an above replacement birthrate, the internal demographics are not consistent across the board. This could make the United States in 2040 a very different place than today (consider that conservative and religious Americans generally have more children than affluent "liberal" Americans):

http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/02/middle-class-and-affluent-america-has.html#more



> *Middle Class and Affluent America Has an Informal One Child Policy and it is leading to big problems*
> 
> Middle-class Americans have their own, informal one-child policy these days. And an alarming number of upscale professionals don’t even go that far—they have dogs, not kids. In fact, if it weren’t for the wave of immigration we experienced over the last thirty years, the United States would be on the verge of shrinking, too. The global demographic implosion and the demographics of the United States are covered in a book by Jonathan Last.
> 
> ...


----------



## Colin Parkinson (8 Feb 2013)

I have always said that left-wing types are like parasites/wasps. Since they do not replace themselves by breeding, they need to infest the young of others, hence the reason they gravitate to education. By injecting their ideals into young minds provided by other "subspecies" of the Human kind they are able to propagate themselves without expending their energies raising their own young. Quite ingenious and replicates what we see in nature.


----------



## a_majoor (10 Jul 2013)

A look at Canada's changing demographic situation. The numbers are a bit higher today, but not at replacement level; the last time Canadians were reproducing at replacement level was 1971!. Some pretty heavy duty planning will be needed to sidestep the adverse consequences of an inverted fertility pyramid, and of course as millions of retired people start selling their assets and cashing in RRSP's, we could see a very deflationary trend (more and more goods are being dumped on the market, while fewer and fewer young Canadians are around to buy them). OTOH, these elders will have a stack of cash, which could have an inflationary impact on the economy during the demographic bust.

Lots to think about:

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/07/09/domestic-dream-of-2-5-children-per-woman-long-gone-as-fertility-rate-declines-for-third-year-in-row/



> *‘Domestic dream’ of 2.5 children per woman long gone as fertility rate declines for third year in row*
> Misty Harris, Postmedia News | 13/07/09 | Last Updated: 13/07/09 8:16 PM ET
> More from Postmedia News
> 
> ...



The idea Canadians actually want more children isn't reflected in their actions, and the comments section of the article is illuminating as well.


----------



## UnwiseCritic (10 Jul 2013)

I can't say it's overly surprising

I wonder what the ratio of pensioners/retirees will be to the working force in the coming years.


----------



## a_majoor (12 Jul 2013)

UnwiseCritic said:
			
		

> I wonder what the ratio of pensioners/retirees will be to the working force in the coming years.



From CBC Newsonline:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/work/workvslife/247.html



> According to Canada's Urban Futures Institute, some 9.8 million Canadian baby boomers are approaching retirement. About 225,000 Canadians will retire this year and the number will increase to 265,000 by 2005. By 2020, the number of Canadians retiring each year will be 425,000.
> 
> Today there are six workers in Canada for every retired person. By 2020, there will be three workers for every retired person. The ratio will sink further without a dramatic increase in immigration, preferably people with lots of money and excellent job prospects.
> 
> ...


----------



## UnwiseCritic (13 Jul 2013)

These old people better save up!


----------



## mariomike (13 Jul 2013)

UnwiseCritic said:
			
		

> These old people better save up!



Young people, especially those new on the job, better save up. Because, they may be forced to work years longer for the same, or less, pension.

"OMERS considering proposal to reduce pension payouts":
http://business.financialpost.com/2013/05/23/omers-considering-proposal-to-reduce-pension-payouts/

"There are legal impediments to reducing any benefits that have already been accrued by workers under a plan, but benefits based on future work — including by newly hired employees — are fair game."

The proposal, for now at least, was recently defeated.

"OMERS is an umbrella organization for more than 900 employers and their workers in the province ( Ontario - mm ), including paramedics, transit workers, firefighters, police and city workers. It represents almost 429,000 active and retired members."


----------



## a_majoor (16 Jul 2013)

That is just the tip of the iceberg.

With millions fo people retiring and starting to sell off assets in their RRSP's, unloading houses they can no longer take care of, vacation properties etc. etc. you might see an unstoppable wave of deflation as asset prices drop (massive increase in supply but limited demand as young people burdened with debt or trying to raise families have no money or inclination to buy, and there are far fewer potential buyers anyway).

OTOH there will an inflationary effect as well since the economy will be awash in cash from the unwinding of assets and sell offs, although the inflation will probably be directed in fairly narrow areas like health care and personal services.

No person or political party seems to have thought this through or made any real policy or plans on how to deal with this (including me; I can see an outline of the problems but not the full extent or what the solutions might be).


----------



## UnwiseCritic (16 Jul 2013)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> No person or political party seems to have thought this through or made any real policy or plans on how to deal with this (including me; I can see an outline of the problems but not the full extent or what the solutions might be).



IMO, politicians rarely look to the future, few visionaries exist because of the likelihood of remaining in power with long term objectives isn't probable. Not because they're ideas are bad. But because the voters want it now. Which could be why all these people are slapping "Change" into their party slogans.

I did not think of inflation, means my RRSP's are going to be worthless by the time I can retire. 

The only solutions I can think of is increased immigration from younger wealthy immigrants with more potential and increased retirement age. Which makes bad for the younger generation as jobs will be more sparse and thus saving even more difficult. Hmmm now my mind is spinning. One thing leads to another, who knows what the full extent of the problems will be. 

Maybe I should go be an entrepreneur and invest in retirement homes, coffins, graves, etc.


----------



## GAP (16 Jul 2013)

UnwiseCritic said:
			
		

> Maybe I should go be an entrepreneur and invest in retirement homes, coffins, graves, etc.



It's a booming business opportunity....people are dying to get in it.....


----------



## UnwiseCritic (16 Jul 2013)

GAP said:
			
		

> It's a booming business opportunity....people are dying to get in it.....



You just had too. I can see the temptation.


----------



## a_majoor (2 Aug 2013)

Having fewer children is an economic and cultural choice. This article is City Journal tries to summarize the changing cultural values and effects of childlessness has on cities. Having the city core "hollowed out" certainly changes the character of the city (my wife and I used to talk about how we inhabited the downtown of London when we were dating and newly married, now when we go downtown it is like visiting a ghost town; nothing in the city center is remotely attractive or meaningful in any way that would encourage us (or our suburban neighbours) to go there very often:

http://www.city-journal.org/2013/23_3_childless-cities.html



> JOEL KOTKIN AND ALI MODARRES
> *The Childless City*
> It’s hip, it’s entertaining—but where are the families?
> 
> ...


----------



## Colin Parkinson (25 Sep 2013)

Urban planners need the density to maintain their fantasy of efficient transit. Only with high density can transit be sustainable. The problem arises when transit move out from the core areas to provide service to less dense areas, the economics are not there to support such and the viable runs must support more and more non-viable routes. Politicians are bad at saying no to these demands.


----------



## Nemo888 (25 Sep 2013)

Eventually distance will matter again. Oil will inevitably cost many times what we pay now. Cities are for centuries,  something North Americans easily forget. Density will matter again. Then the suburbs will be abandoned first to the poor and then most likely torn down.


----------



## Colin Parkinson (25 Sep 2013)

If transport gets that expensive, then expect the cities to suffer as well, all that food costs to get it to market. Likely you will see a return to smaller urban centres serving a ruralish area. I suspect Detroit will break up into smaller more manageable nodes.


----------



## Kirkhill (25 Sep 2013)

Nemo888 said:
			
		

> *Cities are for centuries*,



Which is why archaeologists have such fun in the Middle East digging up layer after abandoned layer of city.  Coalesce. Agglomerate. Thrive. Poison. Exhaust. Die. Relocate.  Repeat ad infinitum ad nauseam.

Cities die.  Pin-prick colonies thrive in unexpected places and generate new cities which in turn die.  In the meantime mother nature has rehabilitated old city sites which, in turn, are reoccupied when the upstarts die.

Its not nomad, pastoralist, farmer or urbanite (and suburbanites are just a subset of urbanites).  It is all of the above.  Depending on circumstances.


----------



## a_majoor (25 Sep 2013)

Urban planners and city politicans seem to be like Generals plannint to refight the last war.

Moving North American cities back to high density and mass transit were first conceived of as solutions to the oil/energy crisis of the 1970's, and have resurfaced in various guises and for various rationals since then. Oil, in the mean time, is being discovered and recovered in record amounts, while "creative cities" and other planning nostrums to attract people to the urban core continue to crater under the overwhelming power of high cost and competition with other liabilities (like civic worker pension plans) for a shrinking pool of tax dollars.

No one who promotes these plans has ever (to my knowledge) ever looked at the true economic rational for European cities to have been built and rebuilt as high density centers and to make efficeint use of rapid or public transit. The reasons have very little to do with "creative cities" or other planing nostrums and everything to do with market prices for land and the average European income being too low to support car ownership in the post war period.


----------



## CougarKing (22 Feb 2014)

With the ending of Canada's investor immigrant program, as  mentioned in the China superthread, and now the closing of this immigration loophole that help foreign students' on their path to citizenship, will Canada be getting the kind of immigrants Canada would prefer, as mentioned earlier in this thread? 

This article highlights some key points about this change, such as the possibility that Canada would see potential foreign talent poached by the US, Australia, etc.

From the Canadian Press via Yahoo News



> *Changing citizenship rule could hurt Canada's efforts to woo foreign students: observers*
> 
> By Diana Mehta, The Canadian Press
> 
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (22 Feb 2014)

I think what we are seeing is an ill considered but quite comprehensible _political_ response to a _perceived_ ~ but almost nonexistent ~ social problem: immigrants are taking jobs away from native born Canadians.

*It's not true, there are NO useful or persuasive data to suggest that it is true*. But e.g. the Canadian Labour Congress and their allies _want_ it to be true because it, rather than two or three generations of destructive labour laws and policies, explain why unemployment is stubbornly high for a few segments of the population ~ it's those dirty foreigners' faults! And many (most?) Canadians, who are, broadly and generally economic illiterates, believe it's true.

The Conservative government is making bad policy decisions in order to get out in front of M. Trudeau's Liberals who, one can be about 99% sure, will make worse ones in order to appease the same ill-informed constituency.


----------



## a_majoor (6 Mar 2014)

A short piece about changing US demographics. While it is short on analysis, there is a fair bit of detail in a series of graphs in the article; follow the link to look at them:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/03/the-us-economys-big-baby-problem/284237/



> *The U.S. Economy's Big Baby Problem*
> Where did all the infants go?
> DEREK THOMPSONMAR 5 2014, 12:20 PM ET
> 
> ...



For my children, they will be living and working in a time of increasing labour shortages, so real wages can be expected to go up. The unfortunate counterpoint to this is they will also be living during the transition period when increasing numbers of Boomers will be selling houses and cashing in RRSP's and other savings, depressing the markets for housing and financial products, and also fuelling an inflationary spike as hordes of cash are unlocked to pay for their retirement lifestyles and healthcare.

The only actual "cure" for this condition would be to make the Canadian (and world) economy vastly more productive in order to soak up all the excess cash and keep inflationary pressures low. Clearing our regulatory roadblocks and streamlining the tax system to reduce the perverse incentive to invest on the basis of "tax efficiency" rather than productivity or ROI would help, bus as the perques and powers of so many people and institutions depend on the ability to control resources through taxes and regulation, you can expect a fight to the last taxpayer to protect the current system.


----------



## a_majoor (20 Jul 2015)

Japan slowly evaporates:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/07/japans-aging-population-has-already.html



> *Japan's aging population has already abandoned 8 million houses and could abandon 21 million by 2033*
> 
> Population decline in Japan is so serious that parts of the country may be ghost towns in less than 20 years.
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (27 Aug 2015)

More on Japan's demographics and the ecnomic consequences of this will be:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/policy/japan-has-aged-out-of-its-economic-miracle



> *Japan Has Aged Out of its Economic Miracle*
> 
> Demography is destiny, and Japan’s population is getting too old for the country’s economic health
> By Vaclav Smil
> ...


----------



## FSTO (27 Aug 2015)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> A short piece about changing US demographics. While it is short on analysis, there is a fair bit of detail in a series of graphs in the article; follow the link to look at them:
> 
> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/03/the-us-economys-big-baby-problem/284237/
> 
> ...



As long as you keep your health you should be able to be a productive taxpayer until well into your 70's. I plan on working (not a 40hr week mind you) until I'm in my 70's.


----------



## a_majoor (27 Aug 2015)

I think the real difference is _being able_ to work into your 70's and _having_ to work into your 70's.


----------



## a_majoor (18 Jan 2016)

A look at the demographic bust in Europe and comparisons with the United States. Two large maps are in the article, click to link to see them:

http://phys.org/news/2016-01-people-europe-dying-born.html



> *More people in Europe are dying than are being born*
> January 14, 2016
> 
> More people in Europe are dying than are being born, according to a new report co-authored by a Texas A&M University demographer. In contrast, births exceed deaths, by significant margins, in Texas and elsewhere in the U.S., with few exceptions.
> ...


----------



## mariomike (2 Jun 2016)

From Reply #137 

"Takata’s defective air bags recently resulted in the biggest recall of a manufactured part ever."

June 2, 2016

Sixty Million Car Bombs: Inside Takata’s Air Bag Crisis.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-06-02/sixty-million-car-bombs-inside-takata-s-air-bag-crisis
It was a low-speed collision with modest damage. Both front air bags deployed. Solis’s cousin got out of the car uninjured. The dog was fine, too. But Solis didn’t move. He’d been hurt, though at first it wasn’t obvious how. His cousin called Solis’s brother, Scott, who ran to the car. Scott tried to stanch the flow of blood from a deep wound in Solis’s neck; so did the paramedics. Solis died at the crash scene.


----------

