Lately I’ve read and heard more than the normal chatter about the need to combat overpopulation. In fact, some seem to think that there is a conspiracy afoot to reduce the population, whether by the leaked “virus” or the vaccines. Me? I don’t do conspiracies. For one thing, I think people, for the most part, are too stupid to cooperate with others in order to make a conspiracy work. Whatever success there seems to be in the evil plans of those trying to exercise control, I believe, happens by accident. In other words, any success that occurs comes about in spite of the stupidity that pervades even the, so-called, “brightest” amongst us.
Back in the 70’s, we were treated to Paul Ehrlich’s, “The Population Bomb.” Overpopulation was going to drive famine, mass starvation, disease, and death. We were all doomed.
Today we continue to hear rumors of overpopulation… a few quotations will suffice.
“The world today has 6.8 billion people…that’s headed up to about 9 billion. If we do a really great job on vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 to 15 percent.” ~ Bill Gates (Funny, I thought improved vaccines and health care would raise life expectancies… Shows you how much I know. Of course, the dirty little secret is the DoubleSpeak of UN-reproductive health services.)
“The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.” ~ Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race, Chapter 5, “The Wickedness of Creating Large Families.” (1920)
“A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.” ~ Ted Turner (You know, keep around just enough people to do Ted’s dirty work or as Joe Biden informed us, he was thankful for ‘the black women that continue to stock our grocery shelves in the midst of a pandemic.’ Ted, on the other hand, comes off sounding like he must have just finished reading Aldous Huxley’s, “Brave New World.”)
“Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries” ~ Henry A. Kissinger. Can you believe this guy was responsible for some of our foreign policy at one time?
“That it is now far easier to manipulate with precision the human genome within viable embryos means that we are likely to see the advent of designer babies in the future who possess particular traits or who are resistant to a specific disease”. ~ Klaus Schwab, Shaping the Future of the Fourth Industrial Revolution: A Guide to Building a Better World
These are some of our best and brightest…
Just kidding. In fact, I can only imagine how much better off we’d be if the scenarios these idiot savants presented were applied to their situations.
Population Demographics, in the case of some, can, apparently, be hard to understand. All that data… it’s understandable that a guy like computer-whiz Bill Gates, who successfully marketed the ideas of others as his own, would have a hard time comprehending data beyond his binary world of ones and zeroes.
So, as to “population demographics,” I’ll use myself as an example to make my point.
My wife and I married in 1973 and, subsequently, had six children, who, to date, have given us six grandchildren. We’re only half way there as regards our children giving us grandchildren, so we hope to see a few more, but we’ll stick with the six and six model as it exists right now.
My brother had one child, who doesn’t appear to be pursuing the reproduction path. My sister had one child, who I expect will marry eventually and… well, who knows?
Now, to the Population Replacement Rate (PRR for my argument). Admittedly, it can be difficult to comprehend for the high-minded, as those I have quoted above, so I will help.
A married couple that bears two children has a PRR of two. They have provided replacements for themselves only but have not really added to the overall future population number. The actual number to maintain population is something like 2.3 and a dog… just kidding about the dog😂, but we’ll round down to 2.0 because having another 0.3 children gets messy. The two-child family has done nothing to increase the population and has only maintained the status-quo. Anything below the PRR of 2.3 causes the population to shrink. Maybe you’ve heard of ZPG’ers… that would include childless couples or never-married/never-reproducing individuals, whether by choice or by circumstance, who do not reproduce and think that this helps the world.
Finally, the thing about PRR is that it remains shrouded for a generation or two, i.e., there is a twenty year, or more, lag in population demographics. For instance, in 1973, my wife and I had a PRR of zero. In 1991 that number was +6. Now those six children are working out their own PRR’s, which are not yet fully evident. One take-away here is that rather than becoming a drag on the system I have actually become a net producer by having six children who have become productive members of society. This is all part or Population Demographics. In other words, who do you think will take care of the sick and elderly?
Now, consider the Chinese, who thought, for years that the one child model was a good idea. Suddenly the ChiComs are trying to move, with difficulty, to a two-child model. Apparently, all that brain-washing is proving hard to overcome.
Anyway, unlike the geniuses quoted above, I did not look around, driven by my ignorance of facts, and scream, “The sky is falling. There are too many people. We’re all gonna die,” which last statement is true but based on our shared human experience, however, not some future cataclysm like world-wide starvation.
In fact, especially in today’s world, nobody needs to starve. And when people do starve it is not due to a lack of food, it’s either logistical (due to the lack of delivery, either non-intentionally or – yep, it happens – intentionally), or planned, i.e., attempts by evil leaders to destroy people they see as a threat to their plans – yep, that happens, too. What a world!
So, I proceeded to educate myself, albeit a layman’s education, on the subject of population demographics. What did I find out?
Hold on to your pants, this is not going to play well with the model we are being force-fed. Rather than an overpopulation problem, we are, more likely, going to see a dearth of productive individuals in our future. Remember, any attempt to digest real “population demographics” requires one to look out a generation or more.
The fact is that industrialized countries are already feeling the squeeze. I could try to quote numbers about how Japan or European countries are finding out that their shrinking populations are leading to a crisis regarding their future ability to sustain life as they’ve come to know it, but let’s look here, first.
When the Social Security Fund was first established it was never thought that it would ever be stretched beyond its ability to provide. In fact, I believe the life expectancy rate was actually a year, or two, lower than the initial eligibility age. So, the ratio of the number of people contributing to SS provided an excess in funds. In fact, that’s why there was a Social Security Fund with money available to pay future participants.
Then a couple of things happened. One big problem was that greedy politicians saw a windfall in SS Funds and passed a law allowing the Congress to appropriate excess SS Funds at the end of the year after all SS liabilities had been resolved, and use the money to apply to the budget deficits that just seemed to get bigger every year. If elected officials see a pot of money, they just cannot help themselves by spending it on their pet projects which are really no business of the federal government… but I digress.
The demise of the SS Fund was only exacerbated by, at least what I consider, the real problem, reduced population growth – remember, twenty, or more, years out. Don’t hold me to it, because I haven’t checked it, but my numbers are close – at its inception, the SS fund had about 47 contributors for every recipient, a 47:1 ratio. As population growth began to settle that ratio fell. Throw into that scenario the Congressional raiding of the Fund, changing it from a savings account style fund to a real-time, pay-as-you-go payment fund (i.e., all liabilities to recipients paid for by gross receipts and the balance turned over to Congress starting SS off with a zero balance the next year, other than a pie-in-the-sky promissory Note for Congress, that I can assure you will never be paid) and the problem starts to become evident to anybody paying attention.
As the U.S. PRR began to fall, sitting currently right at, or slightly above, 2.3 now, the workforce began to shrink and age, resulting in fewer contributors supporting more recipients.
Today, it is estimated that 10,000 people a day are retiring, most of them entering the Medicare and Social Security merry-go-round. I don’t know how many new contributors enter our workface daily, but… well, you can probably see my point.
I believe the current ratio of SS contributors to SS recipients is somewhere in the range of 4:1 or, maybe even, 3:1. See the problem? This panacea of reducing population while our current population lives longer begins to create a problem. Of course, there are schemes that have been suggested to resolve that but I won’t bother here, other than to relate one. Biden confidant, and policy advisor to the Obama administration, one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare, Dr. Ezekiel Emanual (brother of the notorious Rahm of “Never let a good crisis go to waste” fame), has stated that people over 75-years of age should probably not receive any special medical treatment. That’s one way to thin the elderly herd. Zeke is on record as stating that he plans to refuse life-prolonging care starting in 2032. That would put Zeke at 79-years of age. Hmmmm, healthcare for he (him) but not for thee – bad grammar used for the purpose of rhyming. BTW, this genius of a medical expert is an advisor to 78-year-old President Biden. “Put the needle down, Zeke, and move away from old man Biden.”
Moving along, some of the biggest population centers are now popping up on the continent of Africa where millions of people are moving into urban centers. If you think these people are reproducing like rabbits, you are misguided. One of the things we have learned about childbearing is that as people become more accustomed to city life and the wonders and benefits of modern technology, the desire to have multiple children diminishes. It costs money to raise children and urban life tends to negate not only the need for more children but the desire for such, as well.
The fact is that while these urban centers are teeming with millions of people, it’s all illusionary. Remember the 20+ year, next-generation model of Population Demographics.
Does one ever wonder, with all the problems that unfettered immigration policies bringing in hundreds of thousands of Muslims, some of them radicalized, have caused in Europe why the Europeans keep welcoming them? They need workers due to the negative PRR Europe has pursued and maintained.
If any of this seems to be too much to swallow, don’t take my word for it, get a decent, scholarly written book on Population Demographics and, I assume, you will see my point and arrive at a similar conclusion: We don’t have an overpopulation problem. In fact, we are slowly(?) approaching the exact opposite.
One point is clear, we won’t have to look for ways to reduce the population because of overcrowding but there will be those looking to reduce the population, including the elderly and the less than perfect, due to the drag on society involved in caring and providing for them.
As always, if you know, or find out, differently, Change My Mind! …please.
Change My Mind! 