Correction: Where have all Europe's babies gone? Will Europe collapse because of a lack of heirs?

Is now the time to buy in or emigrate to Europe (to be in place to inherit its riches before its Boomers and post-Boomer generations die off or dispose of their assets before heading to nursing homes)?

Can you believe that here are a large number of European kids who have NO AUNTS or UNCLES? These are children of only children.

Remember a time when every kid had a ton of cousins and aunts and uncles?

A generation lives for about 70-80 years. Where will Europe be in 80 to 100 years?

From the article:

"By one analysis of U.N. figures, Britain would need more than 60 million new immigrants by 2050 more than doubling the size of the country to keep its current ratio of workers to pensioners, and Germany would need a staggering 188 million immigrants in the same time period. One reason for such huge numbers is that while immigration helps fill cities and schools and factories in the short term, the dynamic adjusts over time. Immigrants who come from cultures where large families are standard quickly adapt to the customs of their new homes. And eventually immigrants age, too, so that the benefit that incoming workers give to the pension system today becomes a drag on the system in the future. A European Commission working document published in November 2007 concludes that "truly massive and increasing flows of young migrants would be required" to offset current demographic changes. Few Europeans want that. Immigration already touches all sorts of raw nerves, forcing debates about cultural identity, citizenship tests, national canons, terrorism and tolerance, religious versus secular values."

And in respect to that analysis, I think that Europe would rather go broke than allow more immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East into its borders. I have heard from folks in the UK and Ireland that they will fight the islamization of England and Ireland.

(But, if one takes a long term view, it may be already too late to stave off the inevitable. Is it?)

By 2015 -- Just 7 years from now, many of Europe's urban kindergartens will have more children of legal and illegal immigrants of non-European ancestry than children of parents of native European ancestry. It is a shame. And it has all been because of the good intentions of Europeans to do their part to stop having children.

Twenty years from now, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" will be as anachronistic as an episode of "The Tudors".

There is, however, one particular segment of the European population that doesn't buy in to the philosophy of one designer baby. And, since demographics is destiny, the Islamification of Europe will be nearly complete by the time I'm a great-grandfather.

You're off to a great start RIR. You is a baldy after all. Now all You need is some wrinklies on the top of Your head and You will be all set for great grandpaness.

Larry

T&C, you might enjoy this read, too, from Newsweek. It's from last year:

And Larry, the early onset of Alzheimer's is already evident. That is, if my assistants and my ex-wives are to be believed.

But IMO, what they call memory loss, I just call "selective memory".

RIR, ex-wives are usually easier to get along with than soon-to-be exes. I have actually heard of some exes becoming friends after the divorce. But that aside, don't let the exes get you down.

On the link you posted, thanks. I read that article back when it came out the 1st time and forgot about it. It reminds me of several ghost towns I say out West and soon to become ghost towns in the declining pats of the Northeast. My expectation is that there will be some ghost towns, but the real security risk, as I see it, is for internal conflict within the cities entirely because a welcoming liberal, areligious Europe opened its doors to social refugees of an entirely different stripe, and that act of charity and human tolerance has paved the way for an intolerant invasion from within.

Another point, however, is that population decline is seldom considered to be benign. In this case, Europe's genetic pool is shrinking in relation to the world's population (as is the US's European derived population).

If European infertility and population decline were a disease, the UN would be forced to investigate the causes. To the rest of the world, is it seen as a case of just desserts?

I'm not so sure. The Japanese and the Canadians are also flirting with death-spiral birth rates. In fact, no society has ever recovered from the kind of fertility rates that now plagues Japan and Russia--not even the Second World War had such an effect.

I think that to hundreds of millions of the so-called "enlightened", having one child--even if that--was considered the responsible thing to do. To each his own and all that, but it's hard to see how the Europeans, with their enormous social and pension programs that rely exclusively on more younger people than older, will manage to get through the next twenty of thirty years without enormous social upheaval. And--given European history--there's little to suggest such upheaval won't be a very, very bloody affair, drawing in all the nations of the world.

But maybe this time really is different, in that respect. In order to send armies and navies crashing into each other, you need a lot of kids. And this go around, Europe doesn't have a lot of those.

RIR -- Before retiring from DOD, I suggested in a final presentation that demographics was a critical strategic concern. SECDEF got my presentation, but it was only on his retirement that he mentioned in a private farewell to journalists how he, too, saw demographic changes and trends as the greatest unexpected adverse strategic developments of his career.

If the USA is looking at an unfunded pension and healthcare liability in the tens of trillions, and it has a box shaped population pyramid, what kind of liability is Europe looking at? It has an inverted pyramid, with virtually NO base at all.

Good for Europe that they now have strong trade ratios with the US and other parts of the world. Good for them that they can afford their current social programs. But beneath it all, they must be scared witless to know that the current generation of school age youth will be Europe's last line of defense against government bankruptcy and islamization. Tough, too, that these great kids have a lot riding on their shoulders. As I may ahve said before, it will probably lead to internal strife and a virtual civil war.

I never understood the theory that having only one kid is the most "moral" way of going about reproducing. Having siblings teaches kids that they are not always going to be the center of attention, that they have to share and be considerate of others, etc. And the kind of parent who makes this "moral" decision is usually the type that is not going to spend the extra time teaching their only child the things that the kid would learn naturally from having siblings. I don't see how having one spoiled kid is "moral" at all.

well, if islam has its way eurabia will be full of babies in the next twenty years!

no doubt the "earth firsters" are cheering this on.

This became an interesting thread. Whaddya know about that?

I don't have time right now to visit your links--hopefully the thread is still up this evening.

Regards

RIR -- You can always get back to threads even when they slide behind the front screen. Since the issue has a lot of gravity to it, it would be good to see it discussed somewhere where there are intelligent thinkers around to mix it up with. But everyone has grown so comfortable to thinking that having children is a bother and falsely thinking that not having children will save the world. Sure it may save the world, but for whom? And what will their values be when it comes to conservation and species protection?

Imho, if you look at how trashed out some 3rd world countries are, what kind of unequal societies they live in, the un-Christian/un-Western/un-
liberal values they espouse, and the sorry, nasty and brutish lives thay have made for each other, you would have to conclude that sparing your gene pool from continuing on into the future so that some nasty and brutish chauvinists can be more genetically successful than your ancestors will have been is foolhardy. Can we afford to pass on to the solo children of our collective only children, a world that is dominated by characters who can only live as they do in some amoral, chaotic and vile, 3rd world hellhole -- you name the place? As odd as the biology of reproduction may seem, those are the ones who are successfully passing along their genes into the next generation (them and the uber-wealthy Arabs like Bin Laden and the sheiks and emirs and retirees from the Emirates, who have as many children as they can from as many wives as they can coerce into marrying them), not the "civilized" Europeans, Japanese, or wealthy and educated Canadians and Americans.

Exact-a-mundo. For a continent that prides itself on its liberalism--even its libertinism--I wonder exactly how sustainable that is when an increasingly militant and intolerant minority surges in number. Will the Netherlands still have gay weddings, say, fifty years hence? How open will the Benelux countries be to licentiousness, drug use, pornography, drinking--when the soaring Islamic population starts voting in accordance with what their imams say?

Saw this article come across the Bloomberg a few minutes ago:

RightisRight-
re: "Will the Netherlands still have gay weddings, say, fifty years hence? How open will the Benelux countries be to licentiousness, drug use, pornography, drinking--when the soaring Islamic population starts voting in accordance with what their imams say?"

So the fundamentalist muslims of Europe are performing the function of conservative Republicans here in the US. It must make you proud.

I might be old-fashioned. But I always thought that most people who have children are optimistic about the future. They are confident in the world their children will be growing up, and growing old, in.

I'm that way. I have four children, and believe that the greatest place and time in the history of the world to be alive, is right here, and right now. So many of the liberal and enviro persuasion feel the exact opposite, that between rising seas and falling oil supplies and polluted air and water and CO2 that it's a crime against humanity to have children. Child rearing is the ultimate sign of civilizational confidence, and the Europeans have none. The past two generations of moral relativism and squeamishness, of seeing no difference between Kruschev's Russia and Nixon's America, and of having the Yanks pick up their defense tab--have dulled their senses. They're perfectly content with their unaffordable pensions and their month-long state-mandated vacations, and don't mind importing millions of immigrants to make up the difference. So, now, entire towns are depopulating, and countries are emptying out. Eastern Europe is halving its population every 40 years.

Last one out, please shut off the lights. Not that it matters much. The Muslims will wind up with Europe, after all. Funny really, that after centuries of warfare, they will take it by default. Jesus said, "The meek shall inherit the earth". Not sure if he was thinking of post-Christian Europe at the time, and I'm fairly certain the Muslims don't read the Sermon on the Mount anyhow. But in the end, it'll work out for them--all they had to do was wait, patiently.

Wow. And it was an interesting thread until Betelg showed up.

But actually, no European should care what I think. I'm a straight man with no real objections to mainstream Muslims, except for my Christianity. Push comes to shove, I can always grow out a beard and wear my bathrobe all day.

But for all the gays out there who believe that Bush is evil incarnate for not rubber-stamping their marriages, and for all the feminists who wear their silly "Keep Your Laws Off My Bush" t-shirts, they're going to find that there are a lot worse guys out there than James Dobson and Dick Cheney. You don't find a lot of feminists in areas controlled by the Taliban, or which are under Sharia.

And Sharia is coming, to a European continent near you. So, enjoy it while you still can. Amsterdam will be open for business for another, say, fifteen years. Tops. Belgium, slightly longer.

RightisRight-
Europe is an old man, ravaged by war. You're an idiot child playing cowboys and indians, without the slightest clue about the reality of the cap-guns you play with. And one like you is President of the United States.
God help us all.

"But for all the gays out there who believe that Bush is evil incarnate for not rubber-stamping their marriages, and for all the feminists who wear their silly "Keep Your Laws Off My Bush" t-shirts, they're going to find that there are a lot worse guys out there than James Dobson and Dick Cheney. You don't find a lot of feminists in areas controlled by the Taliban, or which are under Sharia."

Good campaign slogan:

REPUBLICANS: More liberal than the Taliban.

I was just counting my lucky stars, and I noticed that the "thank the stars that George Bush is shredding the Constitution to protect me from Sharia law" lucky star wasn't there.

Here's another one.

Republicans: Making the world safe for gays and feminists.

It's clever that you oppose them at the same time.

Clever like a fox, maybe.....????

LOL

Oppose who?

Let's see.

The Republican leadership, under GW Bush has:

*Squandered the US military in an endless occupation after an unnecessary war, weakening us everywhere else, and strengthening our enemies.

*Bankrupted the treasury, and pinned the bill on our descendants.

*Weakened the dollar

*Railed against liberalism, feminism, gays, etc.

Are you sure they aren't jihadists?

continued:

*sold us into hock with China

*eviscerated the Fourth Amendment

*claimed the very Great Writ to be an annoying hindrance in the march of Freedom

How much more damage could the Bush administration do if they REALLY tried (they still have about seven months)?