I just got done reading a long piece at National Review by Lyman Stone, a Hong Kong resident, called Our Global Birth Dearth. It’s behind a pay wall, unfortunately, but they do allow three free articles.
I first subscribed to NR when I was perhaps 21 years old, and carried the subscription for a couple of decades. I ventured off into liberalism, and dropped it. I recently re-upped, not imagining that I would find much of interest, and generally that is true. I don’t care about party politics or Trump or the Democrats or the elections. NR cannot go near the notion that any major public event might be a hoax. In fact, such ideas would be quickly subject to derision.
So why am I paging through each issue, reading this and that, quickly discarding the rest? Why do I have a stack of the magazines off to my left here? Generally speaking, it is crisp and humorous. The writing is good. That is how I remember the magazine during the Bill Buckley era – smarter than anything else in the genre. Remove the humor and insight, add gloom, and it becomes The Nation.
Articles are geared to people with attention spans longer than a Tweet. The Birth Dearth piece is six double-column pages, 5,700 words. It is aimed at a select readership, those who can process a large volume of information. Damn few left.
The article itself is loaded with insight, and I will offer just one gleaned therefrom and offer one criticism: In the United States, fertility rates have dropped from 2.12 children per woman to 1.72 today, and this has happened in the last 13 years. Such a rapid decline is dangerous and unprecedented. Most of the 5,700 words are centered around economics, but the United States is not alone – Hispanics are right there with us, Mexico experiencing a similar decline. The situation in South Korea is critical. Immigration is not a solution.
Let’s drive this thing home: My wife and I are invested in a long-term plan that is centered around someday selling our home and undergoing a major lifestyle change, either renting as we travel the world, or buying a condo where someone else shovels the walk (better yet, in a place that doesn’t require shoveling). What if there are none who want to buy this big house with room for a family of six? Now we are talking serious economic repercussions – now it is personal. Now it is about us, dammit.
My criticism: In the next-to-last paragraph, Stone, who is 28 and has a wife and one child, offers a few remedies for the situation, among them making Social Security more generous for people with children; adjusting the college subsidy programs to encourage having kids; and adjusting tax policy to help people offset the enormous burden of child bearing. All well and good. But he lets the front wheels veer towards a ditch when he calls for a carbon tax “…to address a major form of long-run uncertainty as people think about whether to have children …”.
I don’t know from that whether Stone thinks climate change is a real thing, only that he thinks it ought to be treated as a real thing to be remedied by an onerous tax to get people to be a little more optimistic about the future. In general, NR is pretty good on climate change, the magazine suffering under a long and expensive SLAP lawsuit instigated by Michael Mann and the forces behind him, his “closeted friends.”
But Stone needs to be more frank, or to alter his own perceptions: Climate Change is a hoax. There is a lot of speculation as to why it is being perpetrated on us, among them money-making schemes like carbon trading and taxes. But without regard to intent, the effect of the hoax has been pessimism about the future among our youth. This alone could explain the drop in the fertility rate over the last thirteen years. Climate change is essentially anti-human, wanting fewer people on the planet, especially those whose skin happens to be varying shades of brown. It is, and I don’t often use this word, evil. Lyman Stone and his generation need to lighten up, enjoy life and have positive thoughts about our future. The planet is fine, the last ten years have been among the most prosperous and healthy for humankind.
Stop moping! Start having more kids. They are such a delight, especially when grown.
Piece of Mindful 
Wholeheartedly agree that the climate change hoax and drops in fertility rate are linked. It’s amazing to me how well the public programming/brainwashing can have such a significant impact on the birth rate. Shouldn’t humans just want to have offspring? Isn’t this a basic drive of ours? It’s amazing to me how deep the programming can impact people. Quite honestly, I have given up on my own generation. Cynical maybe, but what can I say? Millennials are indefensible, and this is coming from one.
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As I said in my comment below, I completely and wholeheartedly disagree with the link between the climate hoax and drops in fertility rates. My experience has been that cognitive dissonance works in favor of the biological imperative to reproduce. People have a way of wanting and having babies even when their minds them it’s a bad idea… because they have no money or because the media tells them the sky is falling. Elite leaders like Bill Gates have been pretty blatant about wanting the population to decrease and they’re working hard on it. Linking it to climate change or any other fear-mongering is, I’m pretty sure, a form of gaslighting.
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I guess I don’t think it’s fair to call Mark’s point gaslighting. Maarten’s link below is an excellent resource for how we are being hormonally manipulated, but do you really think that it’s ONLY the hormones? We’re not sterile…clearly people’s mindsets have something to do with it as well. Both ideas have merit…it’s a combination of the two. Unless Bill Gates vaccines are making people sterile, they are still capable of having many children if they want to. Clearly, the brainwashing plays a role.
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Gates and his collaborators have been caught sterilizing women in third-world countries through vaccines. This is publicly available information, not conspiracy theory. I don’t for one minute think the project is limited to other countries. I also don’t think every vaccine makes everyone sterile. Maybe only a certain percentage–enough so that people don’t get suspicious enough to make the link.
Also, I did not accuse Mark (or you) of gaslighting. Mark’s overall criticism of the article was that it legitimized the climate change hoax, and I agree with that criticism.
I’ve never seen evidence that mass belief in negative propaganda of any kind (or, for that matter, actual economic and societal disaster) prompts a statistically significant number of people who choose not to have babies. Then again, I haven’t looked for such evidence, either. However, I suspect the imperative to reproduce can’t be subverted to the extent that would be necessary for the drop in fertility over the past 13 years. I could be wrong, though, Fauxlex. Just going with my gut here.
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Yeah, but the third-world countries are where the fertility rates are off the charts. I’m not denying this is an aim of theirs, I am just saying that here in Western countries it is ALSO related to the brainwashing. This is also public information, like the article I shared, so I don’t think it’s fair to call Mark’s point gaslighting. Maarten shared a link on the hormone side of it…nobody is denying the relevance there, but to say it’s not at all related to the brainwashing is not correct.
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Fauxlex, the type of propaganda you’re talking about wouldn’t target the vast majority of women who have babies. They are not making an intellectual choice. In many (most?) cases, they are making a very unintelligent choice considering their own life circumstances. If abject poverty, addiciton, abusive relationships, etc. don’t prompt them to abstain from baby-making, climate change propaganda sure as hell won’t do the trick. The very notion that a statistically significant number of women would forego children because of climate change is laughable to me. The propaganda is in the article you linked to–the notion that a statistically significant number of women choose to have or not have babies on an intellectual basis, and that their understanding of the climate change problem prompts them not to have babies. If you believe that, then you are less likely to link the dropping fertility rates to vaccines, pollutants, contaminated food, and the various endocrine-disruptors Maarten’s article enumerates.
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I just don’t understand how you can say the propaganda doesn’t reach the women. You keep saying things that imply since you know a woman who had kids, there couldn’t possibly be a trend of this propaganda actually reaching certain women. You say this propaganda isn’t targeting them, and I have no idea why you think this. It is a common fallacy that if someone sees something in their personal experience, then they won’t believe it if they’re told things are different elsewhere. This propaganda IS reaching the women/married couples of my generation. Counter-examples are meaningless here. If you know of a couple who had two kids, this doesn’t negate that there are other couples who are choosing to have only 1 child or none, not to mention the group of women who choose to remain single due to a liberal lifestyle. You may not consider that related, but brainwashing is brainwashing. Sure, climate change is just one piece of the puzzle, but I don’t understand why you are so adamant that brainwashing doesn’t relate to fertility rates. Oh well. We’ll have to agree to disagree on this one.
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Fauxlex, just saw the comment I’m responding to now. I am not saying the propaganda isn’t reaching Millennial women. I’m not even saying it doesn’t make some Millennial women resolve not to have babies… just like traumatizing propaganda in the ’60s and ’70s made some women resolve not to have babies. But in the face of biological imperative–and in the absence of toxins that render them sterile–their resolve is statistically about as dependable as an untreated chronic alcoholic’s resolve to not get drunk, and in both cases, all the propaganda in the world won’t strengthen that resolve, all other things being equal.
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https://qz.com/1590642/these-millennials-are-going-on-birth-strike-due-to-climate-change/
As I said, my generation is awful.
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Yeah, my sister and brother-in-law vowed not to have a kid because they were broke. Then they did. They vowed not to have another one because they were still broke. Then they did. Then they vowed not to have a third one because they were still broke. Then they did.
Also, this article is about a “mostly online” community of 300 people. It’s about a statistically insignificant number of kids talking about why they don’t want to have kids, a group that will no doubt be rendered even more statistically insignificant when they, you know, have kids anyway.
The article promotes the notion that the population is decreasing itself rather than being decreased. I still don’t buy it.
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I really do not mean to negate that your personal experience is different, but we are talking about a population of hundreds of millions of people here. Your personal experience is not really relevant to the greater trend, and there really is a set of brainwashing geared toward Millennials which causes them as a tendency to be less likely to want to have large families. Maybe one child. Brainwashing plays a role in this. You can argue that the hormonal side of it and the Gates Foundation side of it is much more important, so we shouldn’t get distracted on the brainwashing, but the brainwashing is definitely part of this.
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I used my personal experience because I’m pretty sure anyone who reads it (including you) can think of women they have actually known in their actual lives who have done exactly the same thing.
Yes, I have seen some of the propaganda aimed at Millennials suggesting that they should not have babies, or should only have one, etc. Hippies were told the same thing in the sixties. Maybe it works on a statistically insignificant number of people. But the importance of that propaganda is that it brainwashes people into thinking fertility rates are dropping because a statistically significant number of Millennials are choosing not to have babies for purely intellectual/ideological reasons. With all due respect, Fauxlex, I don’t think you’re going to convince me this is anything other than nonsense.
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I think you confuse the fact that YOU consider it nonsense with whether or not it actually IS nonsense. I am a Millennial, and trust me…it is actually reaching our generation. I know several who have no children and wouldn’t want more than one, and in no small part due to their leftist political beliefs, and I know none who are like you speak. Do not let your own personal experience cloud you into thinking this is how it works for everyone.
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We’ll agree to disagree, Fauxlex. Maybe we’ll revisit this after the Millennial women in your personal experience have reached menopause. Then we can tally up how many of them squirted out a kid or two despite their ideological opposition to doing so. Until then, I think we mostly agree on the important points anyway.
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“… squirted out a kid or two …”
LOL!
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Again, “a kid or two”, so even at best those couples I know might have one child and rarely two. Many none. These are real people choosing to not have many kids. It is in some part because it has become the new social norm, fuelled by propaganda and brainwashing, that they should have fewer kids. The days of couples having 6-7 kids are gone, yet we are still fertile enough to have 6-7 kids. What cause is left other than propaganda, new social norms being supported that fewer kids are expected? It is not all spooky sterilization vaccines and messed up hormones (both of which are real problems). You just refuse to acknowledge that masses of Millennials are choosing to have dramatically fewer kids specifically because society is telling them they should. How you can deny the brainwashing ties in with the fertility rates is a mystery to me. Yes, we agree to disagree.
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Has that new social norm, fueled by propaganda and brainwashing, caused the dramatic drop in fertility over the past 13 years though?
People don’t have 5 or 6 kids as a norm anymore because they don’t have land, livestock and crops that need tending to. That norm went away a long time ago. One or two squirts has been the norm for quite a while. And as an older college student who spent a lot of time among Millennials a few years ago, I don’t see them being any more immune to the imperative to reproduce than my own Generation X or my parents’ Baby Boomer generation, propagandized and brainwashed or not. But that’s just personal perception. Keep me updated on your strong-willed, close-legged millennial friends.
(Btw, maybe the Morning After pill has allowed your generation to follow through on its resistance to babymaking more effectively than previous generations. That could be statistically significant in the short term. Long term, though… I maintain chicks who are capable of making babies will do so no matter how they are propagandized. The only thing that will really stop them is if their equipment and their partners’ equipment gets disabled.)
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When you get time, and I know it is a lot to ask someone to drop everything and read a 5,700 word article that I think was worthwhile, I do hope you take a look at it. The author does indeed address these issues.
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Mark,
I just read the entire article. My objections to it go far beyond the last paragraph that talks about a carbon tax. The whole article struck me as intellectually dishonest. It was an exercise in mental masturbation, and the climax was: MORE CENTRALIZED FEDERAL CONTROL.
In the first part of the article, he supports what I’ve been saying about how propaganda and/or the actual state of the world doesn’t dictate whether or not people make babies. He tells us that U.S. birth rates fell to two children per couple during the Roaring Twenties, not the Great Depression. After leading with the general statement that birth rates have fallen dramatically in the past decade, he goes on to say that fertility decline in the U.S. among white, black and Asian women has been comparatively modest, but Hispanic and Mexican-American fertility decline has been dramatic. Then he spends the rest of the article talking about the dire consequences of population decline without addressing that rather alarming disparity. The issues he addresses aren’t specific to the Hispanic community. In fact, he’s very deliberately pushing the emotional buttons and setting off the emotional triggers for your demographic, Mark: Well-off, conservative white men. Moreover, the economic problems he seeks to whip you into a frenzy about have nothing at all to do with the dramatic decline of Hispanic fertility in the past decade, and everything to do with the well-known and long-established fact that your generation and my generation and now the Millennial generation haven’t cranked out babies in the massive quantity your parents’ generation did. He is talking about problems that we’ve known about and been facing for a long time. Then, apparently forgetting everything he said earlier in the article about how economic circumstances do not have a predictable or comprehensible connection to fertility rates, he proposes that the federal government needs to do all kinds of shit to make America fertile again.
I may be missing something, or a lot of somethings, because I found myself getting really angry and exasperated as I read the article. If so, I hope you’ll set me straight.
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Nothing made me angry … his exhortations for tax credits and the like are the ONLY things government can do to address a real problem. I doubt any of that would have real impact. The problems are structural … we have gotten wealthy as a society, and children now represent a burden. Women don’t perceive themselves as walking wombs … that idea has been pushed hard since the 60s and has taken a firm hold. This is our reality now … we aren’t making enough babies to do the work that need to be done.
What is most strange to me is how higher education has gotten so expensive that it is a lifetime burden for all but the ones who get scholarships or who have families that can afford it. What is going on in the colleges is no different now than when I was a student. People are learning Trades and skills with a whole lot of other nonsense thrown in to stretch it out four years. No way is the $15-60000 per year justified. Most kids would turn away if loans were not so attainable, and college debt then becomes lifetime anvils. I see more and more kids doing their first two years thing community college, a good thing, and hope to see more apprenticeship, but overall, the burden of higher education needs to be trimmed, and taken over by the government. It’s a complicated subject, and I know people will scream “socialism*!”, but it is the only way.
We had dinner in Switzerland at a dormitory-style refugio a few years back, and sitting near us was a ski-bum kind of kid. He had entered college and not worked hard, got poor grades and was turned out. With it he was saddled with his tuition for the misspent years. That made sense to me, that education should be a public burden, but that we should not have to pay for slackers.
Anyway, I see a need for higher education in this day and age, and see the cost as unreasonable, and think that young people are unwilling to saddle that burden and are therefore unwilling to have children. As with health care, other countries do it better. This is, I admit, only a small aspect of the problem.
*There is, in my view, no such thing as socialism or capitalism. Neither system, if ever really implemented, would work. These are just buzzwords. It is a pragmatic world.
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Mark, I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying. But if, as the article very clearly states in its opening section, societal circumstances don’t influence baby-making in predictable ways, then nothing you’re talking about–and nothing the author talks about at the end of the article–has anything meaningful to do with fertility rates.
Since the author does not cite his sources, I have no idea what he means when he says recent fertility rate drops among white, black and Asian women have been “comparatively modest.” For all I know, that could mean they’ve been statistically insignificant. Maybe it represents the kind of meaningless fluctuation that climate alarmists exaggerate in our weather patterns and want everyone to panic about. Also, I have no idea what he means when he says the fertility rate drops among Hispanics has been “extremely large.” So why is the article titled “The Global Fertility Crisis,” instead of “The Hispanic Fertility Crisis?” He never addresses this obvious question. He spends most of the article implying that the fertility rate is dropping, or may soon be dropping, at an “extremely large” rate among all segments of the population, while providing nothing to back up this alarming scenario.
And then he proposes that we take actions which, by his own admission earlier in the article, won’t affect the issue of fertility rates in any meaningful or predictable ways, if they affect them at all. Some of them sound great, like the earned-income tax credit, federal welfare and housing programs, refundable child tax credit, etc. He then proposes that the federal government takes control over local municipalities and state governments by granting or withholding aid based on whether or not it likes their zoning and land-use rules. This seems to be getting quite a bit further away from the problem at hand if we’re still mindful of what he said in the beginning of the article. And in the second-to-last paragraph, he very slyly tacks that ridiculous carbon tax bullshit on at the end of a sentence that proposes changes to student loan and higher education programs that we should obviously be making anyway, regardless of fertility rates. I think this whole thing is a slimy propaganda piece aimed at an older, more educated audience. I see no reason to trust the author’s intentions.
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To me, the key insight in the whole article is that the main cause of the sudden drop in Hispanic fertility rates is thought to be acceptance of American norms.
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And Scott, I think my main disagreement with your position is that I can’t see how it explains variances in the birth rate, except as being a product of sinister, shadowy forces. In your telling, people’s MINDS are not part of the equation. My generation, to you, will overcome their brainwashing of modern American culture and have the same number of children as any other human. It’s a biological imperative, and if the rate drops we should look at the Gates Foundation. To me, this is the nonsense position, and it greatly underestimates the extent to which cultural norms dictate fertility rates. Climate change propaganda being one small part of the greater picture of what American norms have come to mean. Granted, I don’t know that climate change is the KEY piece. Birth rates have dropped for quite some time and seems to be a product of a modernized Western, liberalized country. But what is all the brainwashing and propaganda but a support of that entire system?
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Fauxlex,
Huh? First of all, that’s really not what the article is about. Second of all, if the fertility rate drop among most Americans has been “comparatively modest,” how does acceptance of American norms account for a dramatic drop among Hispanics? I could go along with the idea that Hispanic families have been traditionally larger and that they now have about as many babies as white, black and Asian-American families traditionally do. That actually just makes sense and is, in and of itself, nothing to be alarmed about. It certainly doesn’t constitute a “Global Fertility Crisis” and won’t be changed through land use and zoning laws, higher education reform or carbon tax credits. Like so many “think pieces,” this think piece seems to encourage the reader to think far, far away from anything resembling sense, while feeling very intelligent and informed in the process.
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I never said I agreed with the author, I was just saying that it was a key insight. The Hispanics in America are early generation and finally settling here. How does that not explain the sudden drop? A huge wave of first-generation Hispanics in America, finally accepting “American norms”. I think you have let personal experience and political leanings cloud you on this topic. This blog tends to stay out of the typical right vs. left dichotomy which has gotten so ugly in this country. When people start to see something as linked to right or left (and they identify with one of those sides), then reason flies out the window.
As Mark said, we’re mostly just repeating ourselves at this point. Low birth rates are a minor concern, but I agree that government policies are not going to have much of an impact.
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I don’t see why we are debating. Stone is one of a long line of NR writers who are recruited young, are deeply conservative, and very intelligent. I don’t see the world through the same lens, and so don’t find his solutions practical. But I liked his writing style. It’s unusual to find a 28-year-old with such a broad base of knowledge.
We can all agree that as societies become wealthier, birth rates drop. They claim that 2.1 is the essential number for ZPG and that anything below that leads to contraction and economic problems, especially with an aging population where there are not enough young to support the old. I have no insight and accept that to be true.
He claims we’ve dropped below that, and also that in general world population trends are the same everywhere. This conflicts with opinions I’ve read that African population is going to mushroom. He does not mention this. I know that Europe is stressed, and he adds South Korea.
His solutions are mere nudges, and not of much consequence.
I see additional trends that are exacerbating the problem, though I cannot quantify them. One is the exorbitant cost of higher education, unbearable by most families. The other is the pessimism about the future brought about by climate change, a deliberate strategy as I see it, to disenchant youth.
I don’t see where we have much more to discuss.
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I don’t know that there IS a solution, barring some fundamentally culture-altering event such as WWII.
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Fauxlex, I don’t claim that societal norms have nothing to do with fertility rates. Of course they do. We used to have 5 or 6 babies to work our land for us. Now we don’t. Duh. But that fundamental shift of circumstances hits us in a much deeper place than global warming propaganda does. People get emotional and make all kinds of grand proclamations about their beliefs regarding the propaganda of the day, but their beliefs and thoughts and cocktail party conversations don’t fundamentally change their most primitive instincts and behaviors the way going from life on a farm to life in a suburb or slum does. Is this really such a radical and irrational statement?
If the Great Depression didn’t make a meaningful impact on fertility rates, will the dire yet also rote, contradictory and rather mind-numbing propaganda about global warming do it? It’s just not a significant factor. Even you don’t seem totally comfortable asserting that it’s a significant factor. Yet you persist in arguing with me about it. I don’t get it.
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Really we are just repeating ourselves, because I completely disagree. Where you say, “don’t fundamentally change their most primitive instincts and behaviors”, then why does a liberalized Western lifestyle seem to drive birth rates down? Shouldn’t the biological imperative you keep repeating override that? Reality doesn’t agree with what you keep repeating.
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I never said anything about the Great Depression. I am talking about something much more fundamental than that. Our industrialized, “Capitalist”, Western liberal, internationalist society that we have had since the post Civil War era corresponding with the drop in birth rates. What is the propaganda for, if not to support this societal system?
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Mark,
The issue for me is the “why” of the dropping fertility rates, and the way that question is fudged in this article. I connect, perhaps erroneously, a gradual decline in fertility rates with the stated goals of people like Gates and the Rockefeller family to gradually reduce the global population. It seems to me they are doing this by rendering people sterile in a randomized way. Then they attribute the drop in fertility to choices made by Millennials, or whatever, and connect it to another fiction they’re selling, global warming. The NR article normalizes all of this and gets us thinking about higher education reform and when that doesn’t happen we’ll say, well, at least we got the carbon tax bill, so hey, we’re making a little progress on the fertility crisis. If we’re not being infantilized into accepting nonsense, we’re intellectualized into it.
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Fauxlex,
Oh, wait, you’re talking about “our industrialized, “Capitalist”, Western liberal, internationalist society that we have had since the post Civil War era corresponding with the drop in birth rates?” I thought you were talking about how Millennials are dropping our birth rates because they believe in global warming. My bad.
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Why does a liberalized Western lifestyle seem to drive birth rates down? Shouldn’t the biological imperative you keep repeating override that?
Whew, I give up. I’m not even sure I know what you’re talking about anymore. To defend you’re point of view, you’ve gone from a very specific assertion–global warming propaganda is a significant factor in birth rate drops–to a variety of much broader statements that you apparently think back this claim up, though I don’t see how, and I have no interest in untangling it all. You are right and I am wrong. I assume that’s what you want to hear, so there it is. Moving on.
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The Mormon and Amish will inherit the earth. Or, at least, the United States. Such has been my opinion now for several years.
Once on Reddit I saw a gif map that showed projected expansion of Mormon population for the next few decades. It was shocking, watching the dark red spread from Utah into the entire Western US and beyond. However, that post was quickly removed and there is no finding it anymore, not even on the sites that show deleted Reddit material. It was as if someone tipped his hand too much, and the curtain closed before the Wizard once more.
As political leftists contracept and abort themselves into extinction, the right-wing groups will continue to propagate. This is a future that no one is anticipating. Because we are all being directed to expect the opposite–a long slide into socialism. I have no doubt that corporate America is discouraging fertility among progressives and encouraging it among compliant conservatives.
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Interesting, Maarten. Too bad that Reddit gif went into the memory hole.
Of course, Mormons and Amish are also likely to be exposed to fewer of the myriad sterilizing pollutants the rest of us are constantly swimming in. The fact that their culture promotes rather than discourages baby-making may also be significant… but as I’ve reiterated too many times already, I think most women crank out babies no matter what culture, society, or their own common sense tell them.
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A very interesting, and as you said unexpected outcome.
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Any growth phenomenon runs into natural barriers. But I would guess Mormon population is constrained as well, maybe not to the national degree, but by economic circumstances affecting everyone. Just the cost of college education alone is a damper on having kids. Those costs have gone off the charts, and I do not comprehend the drivers behind it.
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I dont see the correlation either Scott if anything if the numbers are real perhaps its a result of what we are ingesting. Who knows what’s all in our food, vaccinations, prescriptions, who knows exactly what they are spraying in the skies.
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This is definitely true and I think probably the bigger fish to fry on this subject, but don’t underestimate how susceptible millennials have been programmed to be towards brainwashing.
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I’m not sure I buy the idea that the population decrease in the past 13 years has anything to do with couples choosing not to have kids. Since at least the ’60s our culture has encouraged young people to think twice about bringing children into what is supposed to be a horrific world. Has this propaganda ratcheted up in the past decade? I dunno, maybe… but, in the past 13 years, I have most definitely seen an enormous surge in flu vaccinations, with places like Walgreens all but grabbing you by the collar and screaming at you to get one right there, right now. We’re also pretty much in the dark about the full range of effects our ever-updating and “improving” personal technology (e.g. 5G) has on our bodies, not to mention our minds. Connecting climate change to decreasing population is a slimy manipulation tactic. Years ago, I read an article denouncing in Scientific American denouncing all “conspiracy theories”–any belief that our government and media might be lying their asses off to us–because such seditious talk makes people question climate change which means THE CONSPIRACY THEORISTS ARE KILLING US!! Since the climate change concept so handily bypasses intellect by ramping up emotion, I can see why our media would want to connect it to all kinds of other horseshit it’s selling, including the idea that the world population is gradually lowering itself, rather than being gradually lowered.
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No discussion of birthrates is complete without a mention of the astounding gauntlet of endocrine disruptors that each of us must pass through every day of modern life. I came to maturity before these things were so thoroughly prevalent. But a kid growing up today hardly has a chance for a normal hormonal balance, unless he is growing up in a tribe in New Guinea.
https://www.precisionnutrition.com/all-about-endocrine-disruptors
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I am sorry I cannot find a free version of this to share, but the info herein is useful:
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Thank you for the recommendation.
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I also suspect that the current push for transgenderism, gender pluralism, asexuality, etc. is a calculated cover for the fact that many millennials suffer from hormonal disruptions. We are told that this grand new smorgasbord of orientations and identities is a natural distribution that was suppressed by bigotry and ignorance for centuries, forced into closets or practiced in secret.
Think of the lawsuits if all the soy boys were to realize that the reason they prefer buggery is because of their non-dairy chai lattes and all the sunscreen they were slathered with since early childhood. It surely costs the corporate world far less to promote gender-bending celebrities than to pay for the damage done by their products.
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This is what I was going to say. The way we are taught that women are equal in the workplace, and gender is just a social construct, etc etc. This also feeds right into the lower fertility rates. This is where I was saying that brainwashing really does play a role. This doesn’t necessarily relate to climate change, but brainwashing is brainwashing.
I was particularly sickened recently when I saw an animated movie trailer geared toward children which was clearly just brainwashing them into believing that their gender is something they get to decide.
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I think “Climate Change” phenomenon in its current form it is more a swindle than a hoax. It is working on the hoi polloi for the most part of course. Hope nobody takes issue with my choice of words here. For the life of me, I fail to see why someone took issue on the other comment thread about using the word “match” instead of “game”. I am American but my mindset and cultural heritage is European-ish.
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BTW, for the last 2-3 yrs or so, I am more focused on living longer and caring less about them Millenials and sub-sequent generations. Reading litereature about how to extend phisical life, I am talking about being able to live upt to 250 years young or so. For real, no joking here. I think in the future humankind will be able to get to that even if it is for a few thousand of wealthy ones. Things and products like (I hate to do it but so you get an idea, I am not endorsing or marketing anything, but products like Tru Niagen, etc)
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Quit being so bloody cheeky, bloke.
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Click to access Ehrlich%20-%20Population%20Bomb%20Ch1.pdf
Global elite have not wavered. Increase death rate, reduce reproductive rate. Nothing has changed. Vaccines, military bio-weapons, GMO/toxic foods, etc. all serve the same purpose. Endless wars mop up a fair share too. What’s the mystery?
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https://www.contagionlive.com/news/cdc-reports-13-million-flu-cases-thus-far-in-201920-season
“At this point in the season, CDC estimates indicate that there have been 13 million influenza illnesses, 120,000 hospitalizations, and 6600 flu-related deaths.”
I have an idea: Let’s all freak out about China.
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Fortunately this coronavirus doesn’t have a particularly high mortality rate or rate of infection. If there’s one to freak out about, it’s not this one. But I am sure there will be plenty of fear-mongering.
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Mark, maybe bc it was the first article this month, I did not get the paywall and was able to get to the article in full. Author ends with the following:
“If we fail, the consequences will be imperceptible at first. More funerals than baptisms, a bit more financial strain on the public fisc, not quite as many new businesses, some young people who seem disappointed in where their life has ended up. But in the long run, the story ends in deep strategic insecurity, extraordinary dependence on immigration, lasting economic stagnation, ever-increasing monopoly power, deep political fissures between generations, and, eventually, perhaps even political instability. We are already sampling the first fruits of this harvest; we must take care not to reap the rest of it.”
Author as you mentioned it:
LYMAN STONE — Mr. Stone is an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute-AEI-, a research fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, the chief information officer of the population-forecasting firm Demographic Intelligence, and a former international economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He, his wife Ruth, and their daughter Suzannah live in Hong Kong.
As for the AEI:
AEI has promoted carbon taxation as an alternative to cap-and-trade regimes. “Most economists believe a carbon tax (a tax on the quantity of CO2 emitted when using energy) would be a superior policy alternative to an emissions-trading regime,” wrote Kenneth P. Green, Kevin Hassett, and Steven F. Hayward. “In fact, the irony is that there is a broad consensus in favor of a carbon tax everywhere except on Capitol Hill, where the ‘T word’ is anathema.
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I think the author of the article and some other readers make the mistake to think that the American Empire will last for a long long time from here. Whereas the Ottoman Empire lasted for about 700 yrs and the British Empire 300-ish… I do not think the American one will be that longevous. Anything can happen at anytime, for example, Rockefeller foundation estimated a gloom panorama for the country by 2025 and I guess we can all agree it is not that far from being right.
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They do allow three free reads.
That last paragraph is in tune with Climate Change, where they are deliberately promoting economic stagnation (and the resultant downward pressure on population).
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Curious also that the cartoon for the article about fertility in America, the bird used is not a bird indigenous to the American continent: the white stork.
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I’m not going to fault the artist for not being an ornithologist. Stork relates to fertility.
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I was not exercising criticism regarding the cover, just stated the obvious as some others do here from time to time… a la “Captain Obvious”. Furthermore, who said there was an “artist” created/was behind the cartoon???????????? You hit always the wrong places, miss most of the shots.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_de_Belamy
I guess logical thinking is a separate subject form reading comprehension.
Well, ‘nough for this week. I will have my share of bread and circus this weekend: Go Chiefs!!
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You think it’s captain obvious to know that exact species of stork and their geographical distribution? And somehow that’s a problem with my reading comprehension, eh? Somehow I missed the mark to think a cartoon has an artist? That’s…remarkably stupid attempt at undermining me there, LR.
OH, yes…I know you love American Football matches! Ahem, I mean Football games. Go Kansas! My favorite squad! Our lads are tops!
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I am showing my age by posting this:
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I’ve decided to express my feelings on the subject in the form of a silly poem.
If I were an Eagle I’d not want fewer fish.
In fact I’d want more of them placed in my dish.
The fish they sustain me and, like it or not,
It is fish that I’ll have to cook in my pot.
If the fish disappear then the Eagle might, too.
And then, tell me, what would I put in my stew?
My eaglets are hungry and needing fresh meat.
An abundance of fish makes mealtimes a treat.
We chomp and we chew, we tear and rip up,
but still there are more fish there for our sup.
If the fish were no more I’d weep buckets of tears.
That fish numbers decline is one of my fears!
Up with you fishies! It’s time to go breed!
Only new fish satisfies my great need.
Pay no attention to rumors of strife.
Get busy breeding with friend or with wife.
When the waters are thick with new fishes galore
that’s when I and my kind we rise up and soar,
whirling about high above and unseen,
to dive in the water at sight of a gleam
on the scales of you fish, swimming below.
My shadow eclipses the sun then you know:
I never was trying to wipe you all out.
Your river: my larder! It’s what I’m about!
I’d no sooner see you extinct than myself.
Predation cannot be just put on the shelf.
It’s part of my makeup, it’s part of my soul.
It’s what lets my eaglets grow up and grow old.
So please don’t you fear that I bear you ill will.
I and my eaglets we all love you, still.
For your flesh is our life, your blood it sustains.
As long as there’s prey, the predator remains.
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Love the poem even though the analogy seems off to me. The elite don’t literally eat us. We eat the same food they do (or would if we could afford it). We’re not conveniently tucked away in water that they can’t breathe in; we’re in suburbs and slums they would just as soon gentrify. Predators don’t necessarily want more prey, just more easily managed and convenient prey.
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If fertility rates were only impacted by sinister means (Gates Foundation, vaccines, hormone manipulation), then poor third-world countries would have the LOWEST fertility rates, because these areas are where the “useless eaters” reside. Instead, we see the opposite. It is the Western liberalization which seems to lead to lower fertility rates. This means that the true cause is the social norms stemming from this lifestyle itself. And climate change is a big puzzle piece in terms of “social norms”. It is wrong that our hormones are being toyed with, and I do believe population control is borderline evil, but these low fertility rates really are a function of the daily propaganda that our fellow citizens are subjected to. Nothing inherently is stopping them from having 7 kids, the vast majority simply choose not to. This is the brainwashing in full effect.
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Fauxlex, your conclusions are not as logical as you clearly believe they are. If TPTB decimated the populations of Third World countries with an aggressive and obvious system of involuntary sterilizations, they’d be shut down, shut out, game over. The same is true if they were obvious about it here. Your conclusion that “Western liberalization leads to lower fertility rates” is based on faulty assumptions from incomplete data.
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Who would shut them down?
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Motorhead,
Who would shut them down? All those people who would say, “Oh! You want me to take that vaccine that sterilizes women against their will? Thanks, but no thanks!” Then they’d have to go around ripping women’s wombs out or slaughtering them or something and, well, that just wouldn’t be civilized.
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No, who are ‘they’? ‘Those’ people being the regular population have no power nor vote.
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Who said anything about voting? They have the power to fight or say go fuck yourself if you try to stick needles in them that they know will sterilize them against their will. That’s what manufactured consent is all about. If you don’t see the point I’m making, there’s no point continuing this conversation. It seems pretty obvious to me.
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The state I reside has made it a mandatory vax of the child or the child is taken.
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Yes, they can get away with that if it’s not common knowledge that the vaccinations contain toxins that sterilize. If it is common knowledge, they have to get more overtly brutal.
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Mass forced vaccination is the objective of Corona. http://stateofthenation.co/?p=5884
SERCO rides again — in our (U.S) Patent Office, believe it or not.
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They are cute and smart, nice way to try and force people to get injected with their shots. This old trick of theirs. I’d like to inspect the vaccine.
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Yes. Consistently on point.
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Who knew that in the midst of autistic vaccinations, increasing fertility deformations, increased inflation and less wages, the “aids” scare, etc. that all you needed to do was talk about the weather and people would stop having sex. If you put a picture of a skull and crossbones on a pack of cigarettes people are still gonna smoke, but maybe if put a picture of frogs falling from the sky along with fire and brimstone maybe they won’t.
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I was about to call it a day, but then remembered that some “truthers” do not watch professional sports or even less any form of TV. So a little nugget for any of you so interested to pass time and do some productive research instead of watching the Super Bowl on Sunday:
On 12/16/11 Black Mamba’s spouse filed a petition for marriage dissolution. Guess who was No. 8/24’s Respondent Attorney? FOX ROTHSCHILD LLP from Philly.
MT: Sorry for posting under this article, but the original one treating this topic is already closed.
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Oh, also: Attending Lakers vs Clippers “match” 2nite. No kidding. I will share my comments of the event next week if you do so permit/desire.
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Bonus points…was half expecting you to write the date as 16 December 2011. Have fun at the game!(Seriously, no dig intended)
PS-The Lakers play the Blazers tonight???
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Yes, my bad. Very emotive gathering more than the game outcome. Got a free ticket, could not have afforded to pay $1100. No kidding, on local ESPN radio they were saying that was the cheapest ticket. The app I used to check, the cheapest one was 800. No kidding… and now that I think of it, for each kernel of truth the committee in Taos gave us, there is a sea of disinformation like the so-called “markers” or “signaling numbers” based on what? 8, 47, etc. Think about it. BC you read MMG, you associated the 1100 ticket price with you know what…It has somehow wrecked the train of thought of many “truthers”.
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Why do I say MMG has been used (and allowed to publish “his” papers & keep doing it!) to wreck truthers’ train of thought using the numeral sp00k markers, dead man’s hand, etc. There are more tactics, gambits he/they use, but this is not the place to break it down… You guys/gals/bots don’t take me seriously or/and you don’t pay attention to what I say bc I am a nobody and that is fine, I do not care since it is true. I am not that accomplished. So let’s have the very own MMG hoist himself with his own petard: “It is possible that it is official disinformation, or it may only be a lucky near-hit from an outsider, allowed to thrive precisely because it is wrong. ” That is taken from the Camelot paper (barindex2.pdf). Too lazy to look it up? Page 6.
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Win by 11.
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Saw a billboard on the main drag of the mid sized city near me with a picture of Kobe with his birth and “death” years and the large word “Legend.”
No sponsorship that I could see anywhere so am wondering who paid for it and why?
Will try to take a picture tomorrow as I know to expect it now.
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After a search , it appears to be nation wide. “Legend’ being stylized like the ‘Laker’ logo. Both he & the logo in purple glow. No Ni*e swoosh in sight. On topic, more available good paying wages would be a start. This Common Core ? And the sex education pushing the Adam & Steve narrative?
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https://www.wlwt.com/article/newport-honors-kobe-bryant-with-legend-billboard/30682666
Must be all over the country.
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Legend = 47 (11).
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http://stateofthenation.co/?p=6150#more-6150 Update: Now ‘aids’ is factored in the mix.
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More from Patrick on “the plan.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW57J56VZCg&t=1483s
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Looking at the County Maternal and Child Health Report for my town it appears a slight increase in birth rates for the last two years including teen births and most girls are single moms with the least wealthy having the most children. The females do get linc and hud housing along with child support payments so there is an incentive to get pregnant, yet not much incentive for the males to become fathers or to stick around. There also seems to be an increase in multi racial births.
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It doesn’t make sense for climate change alarmism to be a primary driver of a drop in birth rates in the past 13 years. Climate change alarmism was a bigger deal 20 years ago than it is today. Sure, propagandists and true believers TALK about it all the time, but as a form of political virtue signalling. Almost no-one is ditching their cars for bikes.
What became a huge part of life about 13 years ago? iPhones.
Now THAT will slow down birth rates. Via internet addiction, phone addiction, social media addiction, Tinder, etc.
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Finally~ ^^ The I-POD zombies are factored in. How many millions of lives were cut short w/abortion the past 50 years?
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Charlie, the public by and large doesn’t get too upset about climate change, but the schools have been working overtime on the kids to make sure they buy in. It is, as little Greta told us, stealing their childhood. What a bummer to be a kid and think the planet is going to hell. How dare they!
Of course there are other factors at work. Generally as people become wealthier they have fewer kids. “Men Are Pigs,” AIDS, serial killers are all projects to drive a wedge between men and women. College costs are unreasonable so that bringing a kid into the world to do anything but be a grocery clerk will cost a fortune. It all weighs heavy on the decision to have kids.
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Yes, excellent point, Mark. The people who get the propaganda from birth onwards believe it the most strongly. Boomers and Gen Xers aren’t too fussed about Climate Change, beyond its signalling value in terms of political tribes. But to Millennials and Gen Z, it’s like the air they breathe. Of COURSE “Climate” is the most important thing. It’s actually kind of sick how the propagandists target kids.
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Just like the Communist have stated: Get to the youth, once you have them the nation shall eventually fall into their hands. Shoot, Bernie is surging in the puppet show right now to get the kids to jump on board the train to Gulag city.
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Yep. Abortion. And birth control. And feminism. And Sex in the City.
50 years ago, most 25 year old women were married with children. Today, most middle and upper middle class parents would actively discourage their daughters from such a path. And most of the 25 year old women’s peers would actively discourage it as well.
This kind of thing is like a slow avalanche. It accelerates as it rolls down the hill.
When The Pill first came out, it enabled promiscuity, delayed marriage, etc., but in a culture that was still geared toward marriage and family formation. Now, the social structures supporting marriage are long gone. No one goes to church, no one goes to dances, no one even goes on dates. Even the young people who want marriage have no idea how to find it.
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Also, Charlie, unlike us (me, I speak for myself here), the allure of sex is diminished as kids are banging one another from puberty on. So marriage is a ticket to monogomy, something they don’t treasure. My first (disastrous) marriage was a ticket to regular sex, which I was not getting.
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I think I got carried away in my own point of view here re: involuntary sterilization. However, your point about “kids banging one another from puberty on” could as easily point to a reason for MORE fertility. Marriage and the allure of sex is more of a male issue perspective. From a female perspective, babies are a ticket to unconditional love, a feeling of importance, and a reason for family and friends and the government to help them if they and their mates are hopelessly incompetent in life. I suppose I’m coming from the perspective that the number of women who reproduce for such reasons–and/or who reproduce despite understanding the reasons not to–outweigh the women who abstain from reproducing for intellectual, philosophical and/or practical reasons. But what the hell do I know about it?
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I sound pretty sexist to myself. But I think if we were to spend an entire day doing nothing but hanging out at Wal-Mart and Toys R Us, we might have a different conversation about the influence of higher education costs, real estate prices, job availability and global warming propaganda on the decisions of fertile women regarding babies. (If Fauxlex joined us though, I’d expect him to remain firm on his stance–even if we made him sit in a Chuck E. Cheese from open to close for an entire week–and God bless him for it.)
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Maybe both points of view are valid, but “class” needs to be taken into account. The “middle class” is more “educated” ie vulnerable to propaganda. (And legitimate practical concerns about having children.) In that cohort women in their 20s and 30s imo delay having kids (or disdain them altogether) while getting advanced degrees or working up the career ladder. Then may find it’s too late for various reasons. Meanwhile the “lower class” are not as drenched in high minded propaganda, plus act on the reasons you gave to have children.
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But “middle class” — not defined as income but rather as family background and aspirational, or self perception and identity— is a large group and may account for the drop in birthrate.
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“Naturally, the educated man does not believe in propaganda; he shrugs and is convinced that propaganda has no effect on him. This is, in fact, one of his great weaknesses, and propagandists are well aware that in order to reach someone, one must first convince him that propaganda is ineffectual and not very clever. Because he is convinced of his own superiority, the intellectual is much more vulnerable than anybody else to this maneuver, even though basically a high intelligence, a broad culture, a constant exercise of critical facilities, and full and objective information are still the best weapons against propaganda. This danger has been recognized in the U.S.S.R., where so much importance is attached to political indoctrination and education, and has frequently been expressed there: too much discussion, too much depth of doctrine risk creating divergent currents and permitting the intellectual to escape social control.” (Ellul, Propaganda, P 111)
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Thank you for that quote, Mark. I’ve certainly noticed in others and myself that the smarter I think I am, the more susceptible I am to being fooled–by propagandists, by dishonest people in my every day life, or by my own self-deluded ego. Funnily enough, I also noticed I felt pretty damn smart tearing you and Fauxlex down on this topic, and was getting pretty sick of myself.
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That’s just self awareness, a good quality.
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Oh, yes C. The ‘pill’ a bloodless chemical kill of the baby. Dear God how many 10’s of millions in the US alone? World wide?
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Mark, you can remove this comment after you read it. After almost two years, seems like the Team is still not over from what Kevin Starr wrote way back. Talking about being deluded, see this latest (2/4/2020) comment from the very own artist himself (allegedly) wrote at the loon party website from ex POM contributor: “Of course, at some point the mainstream guys will have to plug this into their computers and finish it off, but I don’t have that capability. No matter Tokarski and his handlers think, I don’t have access to supercomputers, teams of hidden professionals, and hidden knowledge. All I have is paper and pencils, and my brain.”
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