Posted on 02/14/2004 6:55:47 AM PST by Kieri
European Dominance: Fact or Fiction?
By Dale Hurd CBN News Sr. Reporter
Demographers say that to keep a population's numbers stable, the magic number is 2.1. That is the birthrate needed in any society to replace the number of deaths.
CBN.com – BRUSSELS, Belgium -- You can feel the anticipation in the city of Brussels. When the European Union enlarges in May, it will become the world's largest economic superpower: 455 million people in 25 nations, with a combined economy that Europeans enjoy telling Americans will be even larger than that of the United States. The prospect of pushing around the United States has some Eurocrats drooling. The vision is not of a single European super-state, but of a multilateral collection of nations that together will be an economic superpower, and if it chooses, will be able to stand up to the United States.
But alas, the dream of European dominance appears to be stillborn. A looming demographics disaster unparalleled in modern times threatens to send Europe into the dustbin of history.
Europe's population numbers have begun a free fall that could leave the 25-nation EU with only half the population of the United States in 100 years. Pretty amazing considering that 50 years ago, just the 15 members of the present EU had twice the population of the United States (296 to 152 million). But the 25 members of the enlarged EU will be only one-third bigger than the U.S. (450 to 293 million). And, as present birthrates and immigration levels play out, by 2050, the U.S. population could stand as high as 550 million, with the 25-nation EU at 360, and plummeting.
"I have no doubt in my mind that the greatest challenge facing Europe is the demographic problem," says Tim Evans, who heads the Center for the New Europe in Brussels. "The political leadership of the EU have set in a tablet of stone the promise that by 2010, Europe is going to see more economic growth and more prosperity than any other part of the developed world."
That looks increasingly unlikely. No modern society faced with a declining population on the scale facing Europe has seen economic growth.
Why aren't European women having more children? The two reasons given most by Europeans are that women are choosing careers over motherhood, and the high cost of raising children in Europe.
Dr. Cecile Philippe is president of the free market think-tank Institut Molinari. She says, for her and other French women, it is a matter of economics. Europeans can't afford to pay for large families and a bloated welfare state.
"People cannot really choose how many kids they want to have. To build your life, to become rich and wealthy enough to have the possibility to offer your kids what you think is important. This is simply not a possibility anymore. You look at what you can do. In the case of children, how many can you have, and very often you decide not to have the second one or the third one, because simply you do not have the economic means to do that. You're trying to make enough money to take care of yourself and pay your taxes, and maybe then you'll decide how many children you will have. But I don't call that a choice."
Evans says, "Taxes are so high in Europe. And the cost of the welfare state and regulation is so high that people actually don't have the money to raise children. I think if you look at failing state education on this continent, if you look at tax rates of 40, 50, 60 percent, then you begin to understand why parents, if they're planning to have children, …usually plan increasingly to have one or two."
Demographers say that to keep a population's numbers stable, the magic number is 2.1. That is the birthrate needed in any society to replace the number of deaths. In 1960, Europe's was 2.6. Today it is 1.4. The U.S. number is just under 2.1, but is augmented greatly by high immigration rates. In Italy, where the rate is an alarming 1.2, the government has been experimenting with paying families to have more children. It is not working. The Italians are on a course to disappear from the planet completely in the next 100 years or so.
Small towns and villages across Europe are depopulating. Deustche Bank warns that Germany could be a tiny nation of 25 million by 2100.
If you are thinking all this is going to mean are some sweet real estate deals in Rome or Paris in 20 years, think again. The political fallout from Europe's demographic disaster will be felt around the world. It will create a huge drag on the world economy, and historic political and strategic changes. By 2050 there will be almost as many retirees as there are workers in most European nations. That's unsustainable, unless benefits are slashed dramatically, or retirement ages are raised considerably. And this is what happens in Europe today when governments try to do that. They strike. Europe will be an even less reliable ally for Washington, since what nation struggling with bulging retirement rolls is going to want to spend more on defense? And increasing numbers of Arab and Muslim immigrants, with three times the birthrate of native or white Europeans, are likely to turn Europe against Israel and the United States even more.
Still, at the EU-aligned European Policy Centre, Political Director John Palmer says increased immigration is the answer for Europe. He said, "We will have to come to terms with significantly greater migration. I think how we handle that will be a very major challenge for policy makers in Europe, but it is going to be inevitable if we are to sustain the living standards, the growth, the competitiveness of the European economies."
But immigration is also the problem. Backed by public opinion, more and more European governments are trying to limit immigration levels, not increase them. Far-right groups who want to literally ship Africans and Asians back to their home countries are growing in almost every European nation.
With economic growth rates already at only about one percent and unemployment at close to 10 percent, Europe's future does not, in fact, look bright at all.
Evans said, "The cost to European economy and European prosperity in the future, if we don't decrease the welfare state, is going to be a sustained and ongoing demographic crisis. And that's going to be a spectacular catastrophe, because not only will we not be the most prosperous world (sic) of 2010, we'll be nowhere by 2020. We'll be a joke."
There is no historical precedent for the demographic disaster facing Europe, unless one goes back to the fall of Rome. Europe has two choices. It can start having more babies, or let in more immigrants. But in 2004, neither looks likely.
As the numbers go up the price of land will skyrocket, so will rents, and so will taxes - thus reducing possibilities for advancement for the vast majority of people.
The hope is that technological advance will somehow mitigate the looming nightmare. Well...maybe. I'm glad I won't be around to find out.
But immigration is also the problem. Backed by public opinion, more and more European governments are trying to limit immigration levels, not increase them. Far-right groups who want to literally ship Africans and Asians back to their home countries are growing in almost every European nation.
Perhaps you didn't notice this. The author thinks that massive third-world immigration is a terrible problem for Europe but a plus for us. I think the author is an idiot.
Well gee, thanks for the condemnation...NOT.
This article was interesting because of what's happening in the EU is part of the problem Russia faces. Their birth rate has plummeted so badly they can't hold up their own economy. Orphanages used to be packed with children available for foreign adoption, but the government shut that down because the abortion rate is now nearly 1 for every three pregnancies. People can't afford to feed themselves, let alone children, because of no jobs and their dependance on the government was cut off.
I don't know about Hurd's conclusions regarding property values, but look what's happening to the US regarding social security alone! There used to be 16 workers per recipient, now its approaching 2 for 1. We're headed down the same wrong-way street.
No. Not the same street. But certainly a street filled with problems. Whether the population grows or declines there'll be problems.
Have you forgotten that the massive decline in population which followed the Great Plague of the 1300's is credited with stimulating the Renaissance? I don't want to suggest that the situations are parallel - I only mean to show that every situation has possibilities.
I'm sorry that I cast my criticism of the article as a personal criticism of you. That was my error...
Yours will be shipped to our desert paradises where they can learn to live without water.
There are all kinds of medium sized towns in the US midwest and west that are already de-populating. Europe is only ahead of what will happen here.
Economies live on growth. No growth, no economy.
The western world is likely facing the same fate as Rome. Declining population, uncontrolled immigration from virtual barbarians, and eventual irrelevance.
At least I've done most of my part. My 2.0 kids have now had their 2.0 kids.
In reality no one can predict what's going to happen.
For most of our history we procreated enormously under very unfavorable conditions. European peasantry were hugely prolific, as are populations of third-world shit-holes. That Europeans and Americans are not currently so is a choice - and new choices can always be made. Look for example at what's happening in Israel where Hasidim are having large families and secular Jews small ones.
It's also true that technology can quite conceivably solve the problems associated with both increasing and declining populations by making increasing urbanization more comfortable and more possible and by mechanizing much more of our occupational life in the same way as agriculture has been mechanized so that less effort if required to produce food and wealth.
What's problematical is our ability to adjust our institutions to the changes...and in this area I prefer the smaller populations or at least population sizes which change slowly.
Most politicians in Washington, including our president, want one nation from Canada to South America. They think we can stand up to the EU if we do this. This article re enforces my view of both the EU and America's open borders policies. That view is: The politicians all over the world are in cahoots in engineering a third world hell for all of us to live in.
Of course it will no longer resemble the United States but the Balkins, with ethnic cleansing and the native population at war with it's own government.
The US will be devastated to learn that the new EU leader will have the EU soaring economically with the US, having no manufacturing or industrial base, tagging along begging for scraps to feed it's angry and rioting underclass.
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