[expatpat]

The white European population is declining and aging, but don't the immigrant demographics compensate for that?

[Mike Darancette]

European populations are not having children at replacement levels.

New words to John Lennon song:

Imagine there's no Germans,
It's easy if you try,
No French or Belgians,
The English have all died...

[TopQuark]

Europeans are demonstrating in their behavior that they don't believe the future will be good for children.

No silly: in post-Christian Europe, people have no duty to either G-d or each other; such people live for themselves and indulge into pleasures.

[Mike Darancette]

Can it be that all national populations lose their will to have children when they get sufficiently comfortable?

Actually I have always been of the opinion that a society loses it's desire to have children when children become expensive and bothersome to raise.

[AirmanAlaska]

This is truly awe inspiring. I love it. Now if only we could turn the microscope on Canada and see what their 51% tax bracket (that kicks in at 50G's Canadian money) has done to THAT nation.

[RKV]

Great article.

[FairWitness]

but while in Europe the socialists consolidated their grip on public thinking during those years, our "democratic socialists" didn't — and never recovered from Ronald Reagan's two-term presidency after 1980.

Thank you, and bless you, President Reagan.

[TopQuark]

Human birth rates rise under two circumstances.

No, there are at least three.

One is when people think they need to have a lot of kids for any of them to survive. The other is when human beings think their children will have it better than they do.

The third reason --- and I think this is one is seriously at play --- is that one needs children to secure old age. If mortality is high, there is a risk of not having any when you are old yourself. When poverty and risk are high, more children are necessary.

Socialism removes this need by assuring a person of support in his old age. But this is only a part of the story: the other is the overall wealth and a dramatic improvement in nutrition and medical care in the Western world.

[Savage Beast]

What this means is that Europeans and Americans should arrange a summit meeting--on the double--to (1) close European and American borders to immigrants from Muslim countries and (2) work out a NAFTA-like treaty, whereby Americans can merely move to Europe to take up the population slack. With a little imagination, the Europe of the future could be indistinguishable from North America--prosperity and all. Maintain the status quo, and the Europe of the future will be indistinguishable from Afghanistan.

[Ahban]

What about the role of abortion in sending cultures to the dustbin? How many young would be Europeans were subtracted out this way?

How much less would we need immigration from Mexico if those 40 million young Americans had been allowed to be born?

[Cacique]

A brilliant analysis. I have been saying the same thing in my own way for ages. Europe is commiting mass suicide.

[Jim Noble]

>>By 2030, Zinsmeister notes, every single worker un the EU will have his own elderly person 65 or older to provide for through the public pension system<<

Actually, with 5-6 children/Moslem woman, and 0.9 children/Eurowoman, the EU will be an Islamic Republic and the public pension system will no longer be of concern.

[rmlew]

Europeans have to choose between 2 visions for the next century:
1. A prosperous set of countries maintaining culture and history, while economicallyadapting to the changes in the world
2. Lebanon writ large with the Developing World demographically overruning collapsing societies and literal or cultural civil wars.

If Europe wants 1, they need to deregulate (screw the EU), open trade, and become less socialist. They will also need to stop the government-leftist native population control programs called Sex-ed.

If they want two, they should just set cruise control.

[MattinNJ]

Spain has a shot to pull out of this quicksand trap. They are deporting illegals faster than they come in, they are slowly eliminating socialist programs, and have a young, popular, and conservative leader whose name presently escapes me (Aznar?).

Italy's Berlusconi(sp?) is great but I think socialism/communism/fascism/statism runs too deep there.

[aristeides]

A cultural climate can change practically overnight. After Hitler came to power in 1933, didn't German fertility rise dramatically? After the Allied victory in 1944-5, didn't fertility throughout Europe rise just as dramatically? Who knows what effects the current war might have?

[Always Right]

But that won't wash. The U.S. is wealthier, both in aggregate and per-capita, than Europe. A pro-market political party in Sweden recently pointed out that by American standards of purchasing power, most Swedes now live in what U.S. citizens would consider poverty.

Impossible. Everyone knows the US has the worst poverty rate in the world....