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To: liberallarry
well, from an economic point of view, you can certainly predict.
I will give you some facts.
The author says that the Europeans argue about not wanting children because of high taxes and inaffordability. That is somewhat lame. If you look back in history, whenever there were hard times, people had more children. That can be proven up to the pre WWll days. The average German woman had as many as 7-8 children.

Because of the declining population, their health system IS broke, their Retirement system IS broke. Even though Health insurance contributions are at 15.9% of income with the employer matching it. Retirement contributions are at 19,8%, again matching by the employer.

In Germany there was not a single IPO last year. That means that there is no investment into industry from within or from foreign companies.
Socialism has priced that country out of the world market place for the future.

In 15 years, 55% of Germans will be over the age of 60. Who will pay for the promised financial security?

Add to that the Brain drain that has engulfed the Nation due to poor possibilities. When the Taxes go even higher and living well is more in doubt, the Brain drain will accellerate even more.

Germany has been paying a monthly stipend for each child(as do the rest of EU coutries) since the '70s, to no avail. Population keeps declining.
In the US, we need population increases to further improve our quality of life. In the last 25 years we grew from 200 million to 300 million. Result: Productivity inproved tremendeously, we have a better standard of living, Unemployment, despite this increase stayed level.

The future belongs to America, certainly not the EU with rules and regulations that could choke a horse.


etc., etc.........................
19 posted on 02/14/2004 8:18:31 AM PST by americanbychoice2
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To: americanbychoice2
Because of the declining population...

I don't think there's a direct relationship between population change and any of this stuff. How many IPOs did Algeria have last year...or Egypt...or Nigeria? All experienced tremendous population growth. Israel, on the other hand, grows slowly but produces enormous technological advances.

The things to look at are technological changes and the ability of institutions to adjust. Remember the Luddites who predicted disaster as mechanization displaced agricultural workers? There's no inherent reason why technological advances cannot reduce the costs of goods and services to the point where very few workers are needed to provide both to everyone...but can we devise a society which will accomodate those changes?

23 posted on 02/14/2004 8:29:50 AM PST by liberallarry
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