Posted on 03/29/2004 4:33:23 PM PST by Un Canadien Errant
Edited on 03/29/2004 4:35:05 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
The U.S. government encourages families to have children, as many of them as possible. Child tax credits, child-care tax deductions, and family leave policies all reward parents with big broods. The pro-child policies are based partly on romantic notions about mom, family, and apple pie, but they also have a rational goal: We subsidize kids so that our next generation of workers is ready to win in the global economy.
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Not true at all. Many factors affect economic growth. Increasing population is NOT necessary for increasing economic growth. Look at Cuba. Population has grown since Castro took over. The Cuban economy has collapsed.
Why should the workers of 30 years in the future support the generation of today? Aren't people saving for the future? Are they all buying into the lie that social security is some sort of savings program? Are you saying that the socialistic concept of "from each according to his ability ; to each according to his need" be applied to those who currently squander their wealth and will hence be "needy" in the future? DO you think that just because someone pays welfare taxes now (FICA) that they are entitled to receive welfare in the future? I hope that the productive workers of the future line Kongress up against the wall and institute Romanian term limits if they shift any more wealth away from the ones who earn it to those who whine for it.
I grew up when the population of the country was in the 170 million range. Technologically we're much more advanced today - I like having computers, advanced medicine etc., but the vast loss of freedom as government is 1000 times more intrusive today than then and and the vast loss of wealth as bureaucrats plunder far more of the wealth of the nation to pay for their worthless social engineering schemes make the quality of life not as good in many aspects as it was then. This cancerous government growth is fueled in part by the rising population which has lost a sense of personal responsibility and in turn expects their wants to be meet by the labor of others. Look at where socialism is at it's worst. It's in the most densely populated states and areas.
Or if someone choses not to support the welfare state or if someone choses to own firearms for defense or if someone choses to home school their children etc. The only "choices" that liberals support are those that involve making sex free of consequences.
Actually, I think the ticket might be to sell the intellectually weak ones into slavery, to help pay the bills. College ain't free, ya' know!
First, I never said there weren't many factors affecting economic growth. Second, your Cuban example is flawed. Cuba collapsed when Castro took over, and since it isn't a free market situation it can only grow as much as Castro's boot heel allows.
Besides which, you can have an increasing population without much economic growth, but it is nearly impossible to do much growing when your population is in severe decline.
Population is not a key factor in economic growth, productivity is. It isn't how many workers you have it's how much they produce. With the advent of automation, workers have become much more productive, so you don't need as many of them. At the same time a parasitic class has arisen that produces nothing, but waxes fat off the labor of those who do. It is the welfare recipients and the innumerable self appointed bureaucrats who cater to the wants of the indigent as well as spend all of their time devising more and more regulatory hoops for the rest of us to jump through that drag the economy down.
If you could magically ship all of the non- producers (including 95% of all government employees) to Quebec, you would find that the US population would drop severely, the USA's economy would increase, the economy of Quebec would be about the same, and the average IQ of both places would be greater.
For that matter if we could just give NY, NJ, MA, CT, RI, ME, and MD to Quebec the rest of us would be a lot better off.
I take it then, that you are in favor of free trade? Productivity is great, but ultimately you need consumers to buy what is produced. If you can send the non-producing consumers all to Quebec and still get them to buy your stuff, great.
You are throwing in additional factors, but you aren't debunking the population/economy correlation.
Kind of ironic how childbirth incentives don't work. Europeans pay women to have children and they won't, you look at a country like Mexico --- no financial incentives or welfare and they're breeding like crazy --- you'll find hundreds of thousands of children abandoned to the streets.
Actually, it rewards parents who work and pay taxes to have more kids. That's not so bad.
It's the other part of government that rewards parents who don't get married and still have more kids that worries me.
China has a one-child policy and it's economy is growing very fast.
True. But this is not desired by the powerful elites in our society who much prefer our population to be replenished by massive third-world immigration.
Only if they have working parents. If they are being raised on government handouts, then all they learn is to be dependent types --- and we definitely don't need those. Around here you see plenty of 4+ kids with no father --- or rather with 4+ different fathers that never come around and all they know are the government housing projects and a welfare check.
Read the first paragraph of post 67. The second was a form of humor. The first does debunk the link between population growth and economic wealth. If this were true, then India and China would be the most wealthy nations on the planet.
That growth is coming from transitioning from a command economy to a market economy. Beside, China's population is not collapsing is it? I'd give real money if you guys could come up with pertinent examples.
No, it doesn't. And I didn't say that population growth is the same thing as economic growth. You guys are debating a straw man of your own creation. I said that population growth produces economic growth, the unsaid provision is that all other things are held equal. With population growth, you have more producers and more consumers. That doesn't say you have a great standard of living either.
Conversely, you can't have economic growth if your market (population) size is collapsing. Fewer producers and fewer consumers can only be offset so much by increased productivity.
If this were true, then most African nations would have the fastest growing economies in the world. They don't; their economies suck. They're sliding backward (in more ways than one). What produces economic growth is productivity increases not population increases.
Unfortunately all too true. Equally unfortunate there is a large indolent sector of the US population* that agrees with this too.
* which for some strange reason seems to be concentrated in those areas that went for Owlwhore in the last election
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