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U.S. Population Hits 300 Million
ChrisK87 writes "The United States' population will hit 300 million on Tuesday morning, just 39 years after it reached 200 million, the US Census Bureau estimates. A 'population clock' will record the milestone at 0746 (1146 GMT) — a timing based on calculations that factor birth and death rates and migration." From the article: "But it is not possible to say if the 300-millionth American was a new-born or crossed one of the US borders. Correspondents say that there is not expected to be the same hullabaloo as when the figure of 100 million was reached in 1915, or the double century in 1967 when President Johnson gave a speech and newborn Robert Ken Woo Jr was hailed the 200-millionth American by Life magazine. Today, the population figure is mired in the divisive politics of immigration — a hot-button issue ahead of the 7 November mid-term elections, they say." The story has lots of interesting stats and graphs, for those of us so inclined.
My name ees Jose and I am dee tree hundred million person in dee Joonited Stace. I come from Chihuaha Mehico and my favorite color is jello.
One thing I would like to know is: How the hell are you going to support all those people when the oil runs out?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
... but for me it would have only been 299,999,997.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
At the current rate of birth/death in the US, we'll hit 400 million in approx 2043, with the southern states gaining the most. It makes sense that the south would gain more, because I can't see how we can support that many more people in the bigger northern cities.
stuff |
Anyway, congratulations. I heard on the radio this morning the states are the worlds third most populous country, right after China and India. Surprised me.
Anyone know why the US is stilling growing significantly, as opposed to most European countries? Which demographics are producing most children? How much does the number of legal immigrants contribute to the growth?
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
I blame the Vikings myself. Things were just fine till they came over, had a nice time, didn't take the hint and then told the rest of those pesky Europeans about the place. ;-)
America is the only developed nation which is still robustly growing. Our own average fertility rate is just above 2 kids per woman, which is enough to sustain population. The substantial immigration provides grows.
Economist thinks, religion has something to do with the fenomenon...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I wonder how they could be sure of the number if they count illegal immigrants - I mean we only have a guesstimate figure for how many of them are in the country anyway. The number could easily be off by a couple mil.
One reason could be that there are more catholics in the US and the pope says that contraception is bad (is the contraceptive pill free in the US?)
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
The demographics producing the most children are hispanics, around 3 times the general population last I checked.
The number of *legal* immigrants has little effect because it is hard to immigrate to the US legally. The number of illegal immigrants, however, has a very large impact on the growth rate, as per the answer to your second question.
Anyone know why the US is stilling growing significantly, as opposed to most European countries?
Higher birth and immigration rates.
Which demographics are producing most children?
Red states. I'm serious. Comapre Utah to California. (I'd give you the stats if I were less lazy.)
How much does the number of legal immigrants contribute to the growth?
Don't know, but for comparison, I read that of all immigrants in the world (people who leave one country for another to live), 3/8 of them have the US as their destination.
Another stat I can't be bothered to check, but sounds reasonable.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Wider-spread religiosity and gender-equality are the factors according to this article.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It's the divisive politics of Illegal immigration. I know and have read of no one who is against immigration in the U.S. We're all too closely descended from immigrants.
It's *Illegal* immigration that causes the rift.
Don't lose control of the words. Words mean something.
Rednecks.
Generally speaking, low income families are producing the most children. The grand ass, John Gibson, used this notion to incite his viewers to have more babies, lest the Hispanics become the racial majority in the US. John Gibson is really a terrible person.
Basically, the poorer you are, the more children you have. So inversely, the richer you are, the less children you have. Just think about it this way: People that are rich have time that is very valuable, so they can't afford to have many children, because they would waste too much of their own time.
Poor people, it seems, have nothing but free time, and can therefore have more children. Although the care they give per child is less than the care given by parents who have fewer children.
We just resort to cannibalism and man-powered industry.
300 million fat spoiled Americans. yay
I mean the US is the 172nd most densely populated country, giving each citizen almost 8 acres of the country. India and Japan have 10 times the population density. Are a few extra immigrants really somethign to get worked up over?
"Welcome to the U.S. Alejandro you are the 300 Millionth American. Your prize? Deportation. Have a nice day!"
overseas Americans like me, which account for at least 4 million or so people.
Call me when we hit 3,141,592.
The prize is welfare benefits, social security benefits, and a job where you pay no taxes.
Simple: nuclear power plants. You know, like France does now...
...my fellow Americans, and our millions of illegal aliens: It seems like just yesterday that I was strafing all your homes. Now. I'm standing here begging you not to make such good automobiles.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
We use the Haliburton weather machine and program it to rain food from the sky. Then we eat babies and Democrats. Pssh.
I agree. . . the sprit and promise of Lady Liberty is still very much alive.
You know what though, you know what the immigrants who were welcomed by the Statue of Liberty did? They stopped at Ellis Island to register and apply for residency.
-CR
"So is the BSD licence even more 'free' (than GPLv2)? Yes. Unquestionably." --Linus Torvalds (TinyURL.com/2vugzl)
A few reasons. Europe is mainly 'full' -- its landmass is less than that of the US IIRC, or darn near close...they have 700+ million, the US just hit 300. Alot of central Europe is mountain region remember, they just don't have the wide open plains like north america.
Also, Europe is comprised of very old, mature set of societies. Less social and economic mobility; all the land is owned and in use. The US still has large amounts space and sparsely populated cities. The rustbelt has a negative population growth for example.
Finally, I think the social objectives are a bit different. Speaking in very broad terms, most European societies are not as materalistic. There's alot of negatives to materialism as a motivator, but it does give your economy a very powerful engine. This creates oppportunity, which in turn attracts immigrants.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
At some point there should be plenty of old people's houses vacant, but that just doesn't show on their price tags right now.
Here are a few: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/UnsolvedProblems.htm
A quick google turned up this article
h tml
http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/tilove092006.
Cheap UK and US VPS
Seriously -- mod parent up.
There's no "immigration debate," at least not in mainstream politics; the debate is over illegal immigration.
Immigration per se isn't a divisive issue at all. Except for the very far-right fringe, I don't think anyone is seriously arguing that we should stop legitimate immigration of people with skills that are in-demand, here in the United States. The disagreement is in how to deal with the large number of illegal immigrants, doing mostly low-value work, and the consequent social problems that having an effective sub-class of workers entails.
The only debate I can think of that involves legal immigration has to do with the way the U.S. grants refugee status, and the "anchor baby" phenomenon, but those are closely tied to the same issues that make illegal immigration important; they're not really fundamental questions about immigration.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I wonder what "Baby #300 million's" Slahshdot ID will be when it logs in for the first time.
Yeah, because nobody got turned down back then.
You do realize that when all the European immigrants came over at the turn of last century, there was no such thing as an "illegal immigrant?" Immigration was exceedingly simple. And everybody got to stay except for the Asians (Asian Exclusion Act, anyone?).
Now, you have "illegal" immigration which ignores the 50,000 or so illegal Irish immigrants in NYC, but focuses on Latinos. What we're gearing up for is another Operation Wetback (Wiki search it).
Didn't know about any of this? Well, maybe the "debate" you've been having has been narrow and uninformed, then.
Oddly enough, most American Catholics don't really in practice give a damn about what the Pope says regarding contraception. They don't even care as much about abortion as you might think; the two most Catholic states (by far) are Rhode Island and Maryland, both of whom have decently liberal laws regarding abortion, and while the institution of the Catholic Church bitches constantly about it (I live in one of those two states) the parishioners kindly and gently ignore them. No, most of the religiously-based conservatism in the US comes out of Dominionist churches and sources in the south and midwest.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
Why should the unstopping growth of population from one million to the next be a cause of congratulation?
What are the real advantages of continuing population growth, and how do these relate to the real disadvantages?
As a matter of policy, should population be allowed or tacitly encouraged to grow without limit?
...And still not a girlfriend in sight. ;)
Sanity.html - Error 404 not found
That is an easy one to answer. Our southern borders are wide open. This allows thousands of illegal aliens to cross into this country every day. 99% of these illegals are completely uneducated and can do nothing but drain our welfare systems. You will hear in the news the bogus claims, "They are good people coming here to work.", and, "They are only doing the jobs that Americans won't do.". Both of those theories are ridiculously flawed. Because of this, our country is being slowly destroyed. It is amazing, really. It is amazing that we will destroy our own country just so we can tell ourselves (and others) that we are nice people. We are a society of PC-martyrs. We will get exactly what we deserve.
Teenage pregnancies might me a partial answer it. They've gone down a lot more in most european countries. According to this diagram http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/content/vol324/issue735 0/images/medium/16874.gif it looks like it would be something like half in europe compared to the US (BMJ -> British Medical Journal). So maybe "planning" for children is much more common in europe and leads to fewer children.
heh.
I could argue that, with less people, the focus on the education of the individual would be greater, thus there could be a better chance of developing the intelligence to solve these problems...
i vote we fix that starting with you. ;P
Rewind to back when there was only 1/10th the population. Was there war? Yes, of course.
Man is still man, regardless of the world's population. We'll figure out something to kill each other over.
there's an idiot born every minute!
Yeah, cuz back in the day when the population was much smaller, there were no such things as war (over land), famine, pollution. Sure humans made less of an impact on the Earth on a global scale (ie global warming), but I think your utopian view of a less populus world is inherently flawed. Cities from the early days of the industrial revolution were heavily polluted, and also had less people in them.
If you are about to mod me down, keep in mind that this post was most likely sarcastic.
Let's not bundle the whole of Europe in one basket. There are large birth rate differences between European countries and religion (or catholicism as you mentionned) seems to have little to do with it: Italy very catholic, low birth rate, France, mostly atheist high birth rate. The main differences in Europe seems to come from different state/employer benefits for women and cultural attitudes. For instance in Germany or the Netherlands, a woman with a young child is frowned upon if she goes to work, whereas in France it's the reverse.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
I'm not trolling here, but if you really do believe that then kill yourself. Obviously you don't think that you should have been born(or is it just the "other" people that don't deserve to be around). You will consume less resources when dead, so you think that a smaller population is a good thing so naturally you should kill yourself.
I'm definitely onboard with sustainability theory, but I cringe when people talk as if the planet's just bursting at the seams with people. It isn't.
Furthermore, people are not hamsters. Each person who is born has a brain, and intelligence that can be applied to solving problems such as "overpopulation". I suspect inefficient resource allocation is a larger part of the poverty problem than raw "mouths to feed" numbers.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I didn't say that merely having 1/10th of the population would solve all of our problems, merely that they would be solvable.
Also - I disagree with the notion that humans are inherantly warlike. Sure, you could look back over all of our history and draw that conclusion, but history is written by the winners - and winning (used to) = superior force which drove warlike behavior. From a Darwin perspective, we evolved warlike tendancies, but the reality is that it has become a de-evolutionary trait and it is just a trait, not innate.
Today, the population figure is mired in the divisive politics of immigration
No, it's the divisive politics of ILLEGAL immigration, and no amount of propaganda is ever going to change that, you disingenuous little cretin. It's the ILLEGALS that are coming in and refusing the melting pot, and creating a Blakinization of the Southwest. Many of their activists speak OPENLY about making the whole area hispanic only, and forcibly removing non-Hispanics or "eliminating" them. If you read their propaganda, you can almost call them Nazis without rvoking Godwin. The slogan of one of their activist groups is "For those in the race everything. For those outside the race nothing."
Some of you ideologues need to wake the hell up, put aside your precioussssss Party line politics, and see this invasion for what it is. Why the hell else would Mexico oficially and publically oppose the USA controlling its border? Where else in the world (other than disputed borders) would you see that?
The grass is always greener on the other side. Hence the wars and such would still exist as any condition that exist with current population can exist with smaller populations.
solve these just by reducing the population.
1. Religious difference.
2. Resource difference (from your land is more fertile, has more shiny rocks, is upwind, you name it)
3. Global Warming (as if its population based, we would just blame it on something else, lets see, the previous conditions work)
The harsh reality is that most of the world sucks but its far easier to blame Western countries, in paticular the US, for the world's problems that to actually admit the real problem. the real problem is that there are millions of people who needlessly die because no one will act. Why won't they act? Because of the same problems that would occur at 1/10th the population - they don't agree with you because of your religion, your country, you choice of house colors. The idea you propose would have been fine if SOMEONE ELSE proposed it, but coming from you... well... do you get the freaking idea?
We still won't do whats right in Dafur and similar because of these issues. Afraid we might upset group A if we intervene, so instead of hurting their feelings we let millions die.
We had WARS, famine, disease, and such back before we had as many people in the world as exist in the US alone. Whats changed? Just the fact we can add a comma or two to the number
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Uh huh. Humans had no problems when there were only 600 million of us, right? Civilizations never collapsed from war or famine.
Please tell us you're not contributing to the population growth.
Developers: We can use your help.
...should be enough for anyone.
>Higher birth and immigration rates.
Higher birth maybe but several European countries have higher immigration rates. Alas I'm at work so I don't have my info to hand but there was a chart of the various countries immigration stats and US was surprisingly far down the list, 4th or 5th ISTR.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
How come? Aren't all prostitutes ugly portuguese gals?
I didn't say that merely having 1/10th of the population would solve all of our problems, merely that they would be solvable.
reading comprehension FTW!
Are a few extra immigrants really somethign to get worked up over?
It is when it's a few million, and if the immigrants in question consume more in services than they contribute in GDP; if that's the case, then they are a net economic loss, and decrease per-capita GDP and with it, the overall standard of living. While previous generations of working-class immigrants were basically self-sufficent and used little in the way of public-sector social services, this is not the case today with many people who are immigrating illegally.
Besides which, "eight acres for every person" is a mis-statement. Much of that land you're talking about isn't really habitable, or is already being used for other purposes (such as food production). There's lots of "empty" land in the badlands of Wyoming or up in Alaska, but you're going to have a hard time getting the people wading across the Rio Grande to go there.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The saying is "There's a sucker born every minute." It is often credited to P.T. Barnum, but that is disputed.
If you're going to be a anonymous coward bigot, at least do us the courtesy of using correct quotes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_is_a_sucker_bor n_every_minute
The issues you mentioned can be, in a simplistic way, rooted in excessive population; in reality the problems lie mainly on the distribution of the population.
Part of the solution to global warming/pollution will come from large cities being more efficient, especially on how people can use less resources for transportation. Such improvement can hardly be put into practice if instead of having large cities, people live scattered in a large area. In that sense, having higher population density is probably a better solution than being bitter about how large the total population is.
France has higher birth rate because of the large muslim contingent. Birthrate among native French women isn't higher than in other European countries.
in the US, white women have 1.8 children on average (below the replacement rate)
hispanic women have 3 children, almost twice that number.
Well, I am not speaking to the reasons for Europe's birthrates. You can't turn a corner here in the US without hearing about 'family values' and the 'baby culture'. Some people pop out kids for social acceptance, others do it for intrinsic cultural values that often come from religion (Catholicism being but one of them). A noticeable trend appears to be that child rearing is most often inversely proportional to income and intelligence, which is bad news. Of course there are always exceptions.
Actually, lots of immigrants got turned away. That's what Ellis Island was for.
I am an only child, thus my birth was technically population reduction.
"Now, you have "illegal" immigration which ignores the 50,000 or so illegal Irish immigrants in NYC"
I don't think they're being so much 'ignored', it's just that 50K pales in comparison to estimates of 10-20 MILLION.
traveling from Europe to the holy land was much harder in those days, but they still went and did it.
Face it, people want what they can't/don't have, and will kill to get it..regardless of how many people are there are to start with.
OK, stop raising people everybody.
That's just the same as a Malthusian thinking, isn't it? Read Malthusian catastrophe.
Even if we know that having only 1/10th of current world population would be beneficial to the world at all, how can we get ride of the "undesired" 9/10th ? Once you can answer that, maybe we could adopt your solution. I'd happily agree with you.
Sounds about right for a local crisis just before the presidential elections that would require for the president to stay in power for an unspecified amount of time. Bird flu anyone?
I'm confused. A Washington Post story says that the 300 millionth American may have just walked across the Mexico border. Umm, doesn't American mean a citizen? Sure, illegal immigrants have children in the U.S. who are citizens, but last time I looked, newborns aren't walking across the border.
Penny - plain text accounting
And exactly what religion do you think all these Joses and Marias are? Hindu?
What you are missing is that during the first half of the last century the USA did not have the welfare state that is currently in place here now. Because of this if you came into the USA before the 1940's, you were expected to either work or starve. Soup kitchens and other charity was setup by PRIVATE individuals and other charity organizations (mainly Christian churches). These were supported by PRIVATE citizens who donated to those causes, there was no government support or bail-out like we have now. As such new immigrants were a boost to the economy by providing a cheap and willing labor force since those coming over were looking to ASSIMILATE and BUILD a new life here in America. What we are seeing now is that there is a large and growing population that does not want to assimilate, does not want to contribute and only wants to take what they can. Now to be fair there are a lot that do want to come and be a part but those are the exception not the rule and typically are the LEGAL immigrants. By having this bloated welfare system that gets bigger everyday, immigration must be limited to those that will come and work otherwise the net drain on the system will cause the economy and the country to collapse. That is why student, work and tourist visas are easy to get but limited in duration while permanent immigration visas are much tougher to come by since part of the process requires you have a job and a sponsor (who is supposed to take care of you if something happens to you job so you aren't a burden to society) or that is how it is supposed to work.
I always am a little perplexed when that sentiment is expressed. What family values are being promoted by having 50+ hour work weeks, no national health plan, preschool that is glorified baby-sitting, a laughable primary education system, and open hostility to reproductive rights? All that aside, right now it is prohibitively expensive to have children under this system. Granted, this is purely anecdotal, but within my circle of friends (all around 30ish), nobody is having kids or planning on having kids- its just too comfortable to cohabit in sin and live it up.
Sig cannot be found.
Ah, so you're his conjoined twin?!
As a matter of policy, should population be allowed or tacitly encouraged to grow without limit?
We're supposed to live in a democratic country. Therefore, "policy" should be whatever the hell the People say are doing.
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you're 19 or younger. If that's the case, I forgive your naivety. If that's not the case, you just might be too stupid to live. Help solve the problem you're identifying and kill yourself.
It is amazing that we will destroy our own country just so we can have cheap labor.
Although I dislike Political Correctness, it isn't why the US is letting in illegal immigrants. PC is part of it, but it isn't the root cause. Yes, we will get what we deserve when the US is broke and China assumes its place as the dominant power in about 40 - 70 years.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
Borders are only for people. With NAFTA and GATT, there are very few barriers towards capital or goods crossing borders. This means money will follow poverty. That poor area will export the excess goods, becoming wealthy. At which point, capital will move to the next poor area. Since people can't move to follow the jobs, once rich areas will become poor again after the capital flees. At this point, borders are all about maintaining a cheap labor pool.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I see opposition whenever I suggest unlimited legal immigration, which is the most practical way to solve the illegal immigration problem. If we let all (except criminals, etc.) immigrants in, illegal immigration would be within the capabilities of DHS to tackle. That some people still object to this tells me that it's not just about the fact that many immigrants are illegal.
Yes becaause 200 years ago, when the world population was a tenth of what it is now, we had never ever ever had any wars for land... Greed for power has been the problem here for the last 6,000 years.
The US produces 24% of world carbon emmissions and has less than 5% of the population. If you take the median average of carbon emmissions per person, and limited each person to using that much, then the world carbon emmissions would be less than half. It isnt how many people you have its how you use the resources. Waste is the problem here.
As for pollution, it isnt people its what people do with resources. Africa has a lot of people, and little pollution, compared to european and american pollution levels. Again, waste is the problem.
It is NOT about population levels it is all about resource use and social attitudes.
Next.
We're continuing to grow because, though our immigration policies aren't perfect, they are not nearly as racist as the policies in most european countries, and, despite everything, people still want to move to America.
(I'll skip the obvious joke about how Americans are just growing and growing, in population as well as belt size...)
I am an American living in Japan, where the population has just started shrinking as of this year. No one has babies -- too much stress, cost, and there are subtle pressures to have 1-2 kids because everyone else is having 1-2. It's odd and a little scary. Is population shrinkage (which will be small of course, and much less imporantant than the tendency of people to get the heck out of the "inaka" (the sticks) and head for the cities, either big ones or medium sized ones) really a bad thing? Does it mean permanently shrinking GDP, or is it just one more of those things that we'll deal with? (I suspect the latter).
Anyway, it's great to read all those books from the 1950s about how we'd all be shoulder-to-shoulder by now, with absolutely no room to stretch in any direction. Just goes to show.
You've got a friend in Japan: http://www.jlist.com
Well, beyond a genetically engineered virus that would kill people of sub-standard intelligence, we could at least try to work towards it as a goal. Here are is a good 1st step: TAX people for breeding rather than giving them tax breaks!
Anyone know why the US is stilling growing significantly, as opposed to most European countries? Which demographics are producing most children? How much does the number of legal immigrants contribute to the growth?
Legal immigration and hispanic birthrates are what contribute to the growth. In some states (ie Utah) Caucasian birthrate is above replacement level, but in most states it is not. Europe has the same problem, Caucasian people are pretty much dying out. African Americans aren't much better, as they are right around replacement rate (2.1), and I suspect in a few years they will fall below it.
As cultures/people become intigrated into western society they tend to have less children. The availability of Birth Control, higher education, and workplace oppurtunity for women are what I believe causes it, along with dropping sperm counts.
But I don't want to reduce my consumption! If there were 1/10th the poulation it wouldn't be a problem. Again, the more people there are, the less feedom an individual has.
dropped out of the running. Used to be when I was a kid in the Cold War everyone always talked about how heavily outnumbered we were against the Russians. What did they have, 350 million? So it really shocked me when Russia recently said they only have 150 million. Wow. Didn't think the Baltics and Kazakhstan had that many people.
But there's a country that should start accepting immigrants, especially from any place but China. All of Siberia's replete with oil and timber and natural resources and just plain elbow room, and China's incredibly populous, right next door, and hungry for resources. Eventually they'll figure that out, and with a third of the people to defend it that they used to have, Russia will crumble. It'll be the Golden Horde, Take 2.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
People that are rich have time that is very valuable, so they can't afford to have many children, because they would waste too much of their own time.
You're thinking about it backwards. Has it occurred to you that rich and middle-class people are well off precisely because they don't have kids? Kids are expensive. They reduce the overall household income (by causing one or both parents to work less, or even quit their career altogether), in addition to raising household costs (increased food consumption, clothing, water use, education, sports, etc.). The net effect being that it holds families back financially.
People don't start out rich and then "decide" whether or not to have kids. Kids prevent people from getting rich (generally), whereas those of us who opt not to kids can put that money to other uses, like investments.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
May be flaim bait but I dont care....
"Are a few extra immigrants really somethign to get worked up over?"
DAMN STRAIGHT IT IS !!!
I was at the ER the other day and they would not look at my broken foot
until I gave them, and they validated my insurance.
At the same time an illegal imigrant came in with a broken arm.
He was treated and released befor I was even looked at.
Now I have to pay his medical bill.
screw that
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
"Sure, you could look back over all of our history and draw that conclusion" -sodade Isn't that how conclusions are drawn?
...Attending a Jesuit university. I don't know if this is just because of the Jesuit influence, but fundamentalist Christians would surely hate our guts. Non-literal reading and analysis of scripture, ethics not entirely based on the papacy, evolution is fine (both embraced by John Paul II actually), toleration and even support of gays. Overall, a lack of hate or bigotry, even against some of the more hard-hitting issues like abortion. So yes, there does seem to be a "liberal" flavor to American Catholicism though I would technically call it moderate (in a number of Catholic communities at least). Though I did see some pretty fundamentalist Catholics while I was visiting in Arizona. So it really depends on region I suppose.
That's because we want people who come to the US to be productive members of society, not leeches that live off welfare. Additionally, it has long been the case that immigrants need to demonstrate some degree of proficiency in English.
With those two requirements in mind, I say that anyone who wants to come in should be allowed, provided they don't have a criminal record in a reasonable country, or for a violation of our laws (sorry, if you've been convicted of murder, we don't really want you!).
This is to make sure that those coming to the country are not going to provide additional strain on our already limited resources.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
Popey also says that pedeophiles are bad - that never stopped anyone.
There is plenty of room for growth in the northern half of america. The reason that southern states grow the most is because they on average have lower levels of education and have a weaker economy. The dumber you are and the poorer you are, the more kids you have.
It is a defense mechanism that all animals possess. When your survival is in jeopardy, start popping out offspring with the slim hope that some will actually survive to adulthood. In the animal kingdom all but the most fit just die off. But in our world of welfare, the rest of us keep them alive and make the problem worse.
It is just a problem of morality. I could never look at a 1 year old baby that is starving and say that we should just let it die. But to fix most of our societies problems, we shouldnt be helping them. But because most of us are not immoral monsters, the lowest class of our citizens will continue to reproduce rapidly.
--
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
nt yah, itz lame.
Love sees no species.
Chances are it was a birth that produced the 300,000,000th American, because international flights that bring in new immigrants don't tend to arrive in the early morning.
I read the internet for the articles.
There exists a process that can turn just about anything carbon-based into oil. That article was published in 2003, but a more modern article (which I can't find online) says the cost to make this oil comes out to higher than the cost of crude oil- IIRC $80-$90 a gallon. Once crude oil prices exceed the cost of manufacturing this oil, I'm sure this technology will spread rapidly. Right now, I think this and other alternative fuels are what keeps OPEC from pricing crude oil higher.
I doubt it has very little to do with "family-oriented midset" (at least within the population as a whole, perhaps in certain subgroups), it has far more to do with basic urban planning. Most Europeans (at least compared to the US) live in densely populated cities, which tend to have small or even slightly negative population growth. While the U.S does have quite a few very large cities, they are not growing any more than their Eurpoean equivalents. The parts of the US that are growing the most rapidly are the 'smaller' more recently developed urban areas. Maricopa county (Phoenix, AZ) was barely a blip on the radar when the US passed 200MM people 40 years ago, but now it is one of the top five most populated counties in the nation. There are probably a half a dozen cities within an hour or two drive of where I lived in Southern California ten years ago that barely consisted of a freeway offramp or two back then but are now pushing 50K or 100K population.
In a nutshell, the US is growing rapidly because we have a lot of room to grow yet, and we aren't (for the most part) hesitant to use it, something that very few European countries have.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
Obviously, but my point is that "history" is a flawed basis for drawing a conclusion re: the warlike nature of man as it tends to be written by the groups that managed to beat down the rest...
Apparently government is against legal immigration especially of highly educated people (BS,MS, PhD). Try to immigrate to US legally. There is three ways: 1 simple. Marry US citizen. No problem here as long as you can get to the country and find somebody who want to marry you. If you are married already, well you have a tough luck. Only divorce can help. Even if you get married you can not work legally for 2 years. That helps welfare and Social Security a lot. 2. Invest at least 0.5 M$ and hire 6 US citizens, not very easy for every one. 3. Through the family, as long if you are not from Philippines because you have to wait 15 years or Mexico (13 years)to be able to apply for permanent residence. For other countries something like 5 years, Off course for all that time you have to wait in your country or be in on your family support since there are no worker visas available. 4. Through employment, not possible since there is no worker visas available and there is about 500 000 people waiting in line for permanent residence with only 100 000 permanent resident cards a year. Wait again 5 years If you add family members to people waiting in line the number will double and waiting time appears like 10 years. Good luck to all legal immigrants! Now you know why people immigrate illegally.
Surely, in this day and age, in a time when computers are capable of out-playing chess masters, when we can map the human genome, when cars can drive themselves, and planes can take off, fly, and land without human intervention, surely, in this day and age, the government should be able to find out when it issued its 300 millionth citizenship documents, should it not?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I don't disagree.
The "cheap labor" is actually quite expensive when/if you factor in things like free health care, free education, welfare, and on and on and on. If we were to simply cut-off the "need" part of the equation by imprisoning those who hire illegal aliens, we would be half-way there.
Food for thought
If each U.S. citizen could live in an area of 5 square meters (roughly 54 square feet), then all 300 million of us could live happily in the city of Houston, with room to spare.
Let's not forget that Humans may have come close to extinction about 70,000 years ago perhaps reaching a low point of 2,000 people. So we should be happy we have all these people now!
Have the people actually been asked whether the population should go on growing?
I know some poor people who would kick your ass after hearing that kind of bullshit. But they're too busy working their second job to worry about dumb ass spoiled kids like you.
"...how can we get ride of the "undesired" 9/10th ?"
Isn't that one of the functions of (limited) war? Round up the malcontents, ship them off to bash in each others' heads, and in the process you're shoving a long stick into the gene pool and giving it a good stir.
... live in northern New Jersey.
--- We are not in the 8th dimension. We are over New Jersey.
It's simple. The more food we produce, the more people exist. It's been scientifically proven.
Put 30 mice in a cage. Give them food for 30 mice, the population is stable. Give them food for 50 mice, you'll find 50 mice in a few birth cycles. Again, give them food for 30 mice, eventually there will only be 30 mice.
Multiply by a few billion, factor in mass farming, and you have a population spinning out of control.
Many people responding to you seem to be ranting off about illegal immigration draining our welfare system.
Huh? Many years ago the welfare system excluded illigal immigrants from receiving aid, and even reduced the level of aid given to legal non-citzens. So, I really do not see what welfare system the illigal immigrants are draining.
Also, someone made a comment about most illegals come here for the sole purpose of draining said resources when in actuallity most illegal immigrants come here to work at wages far below the minimum wage. No, they aren't the exception, they are the rule. Most Mexicans crossing that border hear the call of American companies looking for cheap labor. If the thirst for cheap labor ends, you will see a severe decline in people crossing the border.
You can see the level of racism when these issues come up. Blame is placed on people who have very little to do with the situation. Rather then rant off about illegals or rant off about H1Bs (as I have seen in many other articles) why don't you get your represetative government to do something about it. Clearly they should be able to.
Or, to put it another way, it is far too burdensome to get married and have children (sometimes even in that order
You're certainly right. There is nothing about America that is really family-values oriented, even though the term "family values" gets thrown around a lot, mostly to justify hating other people.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Well, they could be a resurrected corpse, say. Or an android.
Don't be so closed minded.
You know, there's a new santuary state that's forming. It's called Mexico. You can be proud to fly the Mexican flag there. You can be proud to work there. And you'll never be called illegal. Don't let the gate hit you in the ass on the way out. Thank you for visiting. Now go home.
Sigs? We don't need no steekin Sigs!
No kidding! In John Gibson's white-hooded world, I would be a "race traitor" since my wife is not white. What is ironic, though, is that most "white people" in the USA (at least those who can trace an ancestry back to at least the Civil War) are already fairly mixed with the Native population, much more than is generally let on.
do hermaphrodites count as 2 people?
"But it is not possible to say if the 300-millionth American was a new-born or crossed one of the US borders."
Can't they use stopwatch?
No, you don't need to kill yourself - merely have no children. Telling someone who thinks population reduction is a good idea to kill themselves IS trolling - sorry.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I read in Smithsonian magazine last night that the US allows more legal immigrants than the rest of the countries in the world combined. Kind of blew me away.
Read any good sonnets lately?
Well that's wonderful. More food for thought: if we were all the size of hamsters, but square, with interlocking pegs on top, I could use most of the population of America to insulate my garage. That's an equally useful statement.
Don't be foolish: just because you could concievably live in five square meters doesn't mean that you'd want to, or that you could somehow cram all the infrastructure that it takes to support a person (food production, waste management, power generation, etc.) into that space. Not to mention that unless sedated, most people would probably go batshit crazy and kill each other if forced to live like that.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
It's especially lucky for America that we have good Catholics like my nephew who will follow the restrictions against contraception, as it's clearly a Sin Before God and all that, yet they're perfectly happy to have as much pre-marital sex as they can find, engage in divorce multiple times (my father managed *six* wives before St. Peter came a-callin', although it was Episcopalian), and so on and so forth.
You've got a friend in Japan: http://www.jlist.com
Well the fact that the most Catholic country in Europe (Italy) also has the lowest birthrate does not lend credence to your theory.
Does God treat us as servants or friends? Check my homepage.
According to the World Factook, the European Union has a population of 456 million people in an area "less than one-half the size of the US."
After work I think I'll go down to the bus from El Paso. The 300 Millionth American citizen should be just getting here from Juarez. I want to get a picture of him.
Find coupons in Greeley
I'm not defending the characterization of the US as being more "family-oriented", but all of the things that you list demonstrate that Americans rely more on their friends, family, and the community then they do on the government. If you work 50+ hours and there is no national health plan, then you'd better have a family member available to take care of your kids. We also have different circles, because all of my friends just popped out babies this past year (my wife included). A few years back it was weddings. It isn't that expensive to have kids. I blow about $100 a month on diapers, wipes, and other baby stuff. Clothes could get expensive, but so far they have mostly been gifts. We're breastfeeding, so that's essentially free except for the price of the pump. We're now doing day care, which is a freaking mortgage payment, but it lets me get some work done whereas I was staying at home while my wife worked. I'm not sure what you'd want out of day care other than "glorified baby sitting", but they do have these crazy pre-schools that cost $60,000/year and apparently will train your child to be some kind of Wall Street ninja. I don't drink that Kool-Aide. Kids should be safe and have a place to play. I don't buy this scheduled upbringing that kids have today. Kids should not be stressed out - that's for mommies and daddies.
I don't really see why society should pay for people to have kids. If cost is keeping people such as yourself from having children, then groovy. That came out wrong - I don't mean that YOU shouldn't have kids, just that people not having kids is not exactly a problem right now, is it? Europe, on the other hand, need to encourage people to poop out babies, so maybe free child care isn't such a bad idea for them. Public education sucks in the US, that's for sure. But fortunately that's not a universal truth, and we'll move somewhere that has good schools. Call it white flight, but we're not all white :) Same phenomenon, though. The money flees to better areas, worsening the problems in already poor areas.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Soylent Fuel -- it's PEOPLE!
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Well said. I was going to try and say this but you pretty much nailed it.
The only thing I'd add is that it gets even worse when you consider people that have children at a very young age -- i.e. the phenomenon we politely call "teen pregnancy." When someone has a child before they're even able to support themselves, they essentially create two loads on their family (and/or the tax-supported public welfare system): themselves and the child. Not only do they create a new non-worker, but they take themselves out of the working pool, or at least into a lower wage class than they probably would have been in, effectively making two unproductive individuals. Also, there are fairly convincing statistics showing that the children of very young parents often become young parents themselves, perpetuating the problem.
So in places in the U.S. where, for various social reasons, you have high rates of teen pregnancy, you can quickly have generations of people burdened with supporting large numbers of non-working adults and children; it's a recipe for poverty that's basically unstoppable, unless you can break the cycle of young people continuing to have children.
Unfortunately, certain parts of the U.S. political structure are absolutely unwilling to take this problem on realistically, instead pretending that it can be dealt with indirectly.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I could really care less if those Mexicans crossing the border are White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. They are here illegally and they are holding down the wages of all Americans. There is no question about that. If you had a choice between hiring someone for $5 or $10 an hour, which one are you going to pick? Until the government starts hauling employers straight to jail for hiring illegal immigrants, those illegals are going to continue to cross the border en masse.
Does God treat us as servants or friends? Check my homepage.
You can work legally right away, if you do it right. My wife entered the US on a Fiancee Visa and we got married right away; this allowed her to get a SS# and work permit immediately. Going through the process to get a temporary Green Card and then a permanent Green Card has taken longer; we just had our fourth anniversary last month, and we're waiting for the permanent Green Card to finally arrive in the mail. Next year, she'll be eligible to apply for citizenship; we expect that she'll be able to vote in the next presidential election.
This approach has cost a lot of time and a couple thousand dollars in application fees, and only worked because she was still in Canada when we got engaged, and didn't move until we were ready to get married. It was the best approach though, because she was able to work during the whole process.
Obviously we just need to start publishing Slashdot in Spanish; that ought to take care of the problem nicely.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
So, will you agree with me that rugged individualism and family values are necessarily in conflict?
Sig cannot be found.
You make several claims that I believe are not supported by the empirical evidence. I'll pick a couple:
You suggest that new immigrants do not want to assimilate (or wish to do so less than immigrants in the past.
FACT: "the vast majority of immigrants speak English well. In 1990, only 1/4 of immigrants reported speaking English poorly or not at all" National Bureau of Economic Research
It is true that adults that arrive with poor English skills often continue to have poor English skills. This has always been the case to varying degrees, and is more related to critical periods in language acquisition (e.g., its easier for children to learn a new language than adults) than a general lack of effort or interest.
FACT: "Only 7 percent of the children of Latino immigrants speak Spanish as a primary language, and virtually none of their children do." Washington Post citing data from the Census Bueau, 2000
Overwhelming statistical evidence is that by children of immigrants, regardless of country of origin, are highly assimilated, much less tied to their parents country of origin than the United States.
OK, As long as i'm getting all empirical on your ass, I'll also add the following regarding the economic costs of illegal immigration:
FACT: "we find that the average immigrant family received $1,404 in welfare services in years 1-5 in the United States, $1,941 in years 6-10, $2,247 in years 11-15, and $2,279 in years 16-25. Natives averaged $2,279..."
and
FACT: "the average native family paid $3,008 in taxes in 1975. In comparison, immigrant families here 10 years paid $3,369, those here 11-15 years paid $3,564, and those here 16-25 years paid $3,592--in all those cases, substantially surpassing natives' payments."
Finally, this suggests "the consolidated data on services used and taxes paid show substantial differences to the benefit of natives: an average of $1,354 yearly for the first 5 years the immigrant families are in the United States, and $1,329, $1,525, and $1,383 for years 6-10, 11-15, and 16-25, respectively. These are the amounts that natives are enriched each year through the public coffers by each additional immigrant family on average. "
Julian L. Simon, Cato Institute and the National Immigrant Forum
ME: Alot of claims are often thrown around, about immigration and how it is somehow different from the past. I can't speak to your motives, but alot of what seems different these days is that our newest immigrants are brown people that the Europeans immigrants of the early 1900s just don't feel comfortable with. Statistically speaking, there seems to be little different about these new immigrants. Evidence suggests that they will become American as thuroughly as yesterday's immigrants and that America benefits enormously by their presence.
I say, welcome to America, and thank you for supporting me in my old age!
I get your point and agree to an extent but, at some point, we must look at reality. You know the old saying, "If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and makes war like a duck...it is probably duck that makes war." (or something along those lines.) :)
http://www.mlive.com/news/grpress/index.ssf?/base/ news-0/116108910317950.xml&coll=6
Dunno how accurate it is, but they're claiming it was a she, and she was born in Michigan.
Yup, fewer people is why technology progressed so much faster in the old days. Not.
Our main shortage now (as always) is of cluons. More people can mean more cluons--- given a reasonable infrastructure; fortunately the infrastructure is reasonable for a higher percentage of people than has ever been the case before. (ie less hunger, better education, better learning and communication infrastructure)
If there were 1/10th of the population, you *will* have to reduce the consumption.
The less people there are, the less energy produced. Which country in the right mind is going to produce 100GW of energy when its population only needs 5GW?
Less workers to mine, construct or do things in general.
Life will be the same, dude.
People like to stick together, unless they're in the farming business. European colonists in North America stuck to the coast first and didn't expand straight into the Mid-West for good reasons.
The first generation or two of immigrants (legal and illegal) tend to have a high birthrate. Then, after they've been corrupted by American culture, the birthrate falls drastically.
-- SourceI'll correct the gpp by saying the world should be run at a lower rate than full capacity. 1/10 seems fine, it's a matter of sustainability.
"back in the day when the population was much smaller", there were "such things as war (over land), famine, pollution", because the world was being run at full capacity.
Technology caused a capacity increase. Humanity could have controlled this and lived better in a world of greater abundance, but people are so that when they can make kids, they do.
There's two ways to handle a capacity increase : limitless growth (which is offsetting the problem until capacity is reached), and sustainable growth, i.e. control your instinctive urge, and never reach full capacity.
No, racism would be "But it is not possible to say if the 300-millionth American was a new-born or another damn fence-hopping spic." See the difference? Stop crying racism.
And of course it is necessary. Part of the government's job is to know of people. That is, that they exist.
"the average employed American works a 46-hour work week" http://www.libraryspot.com/know/workweek.htm
no national health plan
"Most individuals not covered by private insurance are covered by government insurance programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and various state and local programs for the poor. Much of the cost of outpatient medical supplies and durable medical equipment is borne by state and federal governments in the form of Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare patients and veterans may be able to avail themselves to earned public ambulatory care. Since 1986, a controversial federal law, EMTALA, has required all American emergency rooms which bill federal healthcare programs to stabilize all incoming patients without regard to their ability to pay."
The federal government does not provide these services but US states do (think of US states like EU member nations.
preschool that is glorified baby-sitting
Also controlled at the local level, not the job of the US federal government. BTW the teachers unions have alot to do with this.
laughable primary education system
Also controlled at the local level, not the job of the US federal government. BTW the teachers unions have alot to do with this..
open hostility to reproductive rights
Or maybe just a disagreement with you about when human life begins...
All that aside, right now it is prohibitively expensive to have children under this system.
Huh? people are having more kids in the US than in Europe..
Granted, this is purely anecdotal, but within my circle of friends (all around 30ish), nobody is having kids or planning on having kids
And in my circle of friends (mid to late twenties) about 80% have had their first kid and about a fifth have a second...
its just too comfortable to cohabit in sin and live it up.
So the fact people want free time and disposable income more than kids has what to do with, for example, the election system in the US?
I disagree. Many sociologists and economists (who should know what they're talking about) argue that poor people choose to have more children, consciously or not, because it increases the odds that at least one of them will become successful later in life, thus being able to support the siblings and parents in old age. An evolution-minded anthropologist would say that breeding like bunnies is the best strategy for genetic perpetuation if you're under material stress, while doting on a single child may make more sense for wealthier parents. Also, consider that rural farmers—who tend to be poorer than urbanites—want more children in order to help them take care of the land. Here's one recent article that touches on the subject. There may be some truth to your argument, as well, but the causation is probably stronger in the opposite direction.
This post contains rampant generalizations; please recognize as such and save your flaming for someone else.
And now, a PSA from David Lynch.
Nope. They're not. Actually, there are very few Portuguese prostitutes.
Most prostitutes in Portugal are from Brazil. There are some
insanely hot ones, but most are fat, ugly, brown and have kids at home.
They come to Portugal, charge 200 euros for a little 20 minute,
low quality fuckie and send all that money to Brazil where it buys
you a house made of gold.
The lucky dudes are the ones in Brazil, who bang super-hot hoes
for free, get them pregnant and then ditch them.
A few years later, those fat bitches come to Portugal and sell
for a lot of money what basically nobody wants for free back
home.
I fucking hate prostitutes. Go get a job you filthy bitches.
I hope you all die of AIDS, nasty hoes. Fucking wastes
of oxygen.
Granted, this is purely anecdotal, but within my circle of friends (all around 30ish), nobody is having kids or planning on having kids- its just too comfortable to cohabit in sin and live it up.
I'm going to go out on a limb here, and guess that your friends are mostly college-educated professionals with salaried jobs?
If so, it's no surprise that they're not having kids. They, to put it bluntly, have better things to do. But if you went into the ghetto somewhere and rounded up an equivalent number of people in the same age group, you would probably find a much greater percentage of people that either already have, or are pregnant with, children. Some in their upper 30s might even have grand-children!
People who have jobs and salaries and who basically have a plan for their future, generally don't have kids until they really want to -- which may mean "never." People who are working paycheck-to-paycheck, and have no idea whether they'll be living on the street in six months, much less what they'll be doing in six years, actually have less desire to keep themselves from getting pregnant.
I don't quite understand the motivation, because I don't share it. For starters, I'm male, and second, I'm closer to the first group of people than the second (professionally educated, salaried job, etc.). I can only assume that to someone with no other future prospects, maybe having a child gives them some sense of security or purpose. Or maybe they just don't care either way, and just get pregnant and then don't have any reason to not have it.
At any rate, if you look at various segments of the U.S. population, you'll see very different trends in terms of child-bearing. At the higher ends of the educational and socio-economic spectrum, highly-educated professionals, you see something that's like Old Europe: very low, sub-replacement-rate birthrates (one or at most two children per couple), very wide use of birth control, and tons and tons of money spent on children when they do occur. At the other end, the archtypical person might have a child or two by their mid-20s, sometimes even before graduating high-school (rendering them basically unemployable if they drop out as a result), and depend on their parents for support for the child -- in many cases making the child's grandparents the primary caregivers. These children basically receive only the bare minimum resources in terms of education (public preschool if available, public schools, no college) and in many cases perpetuate their parents lifestyles.
I used to think that the biggest problem was technological -- that the wide availability of birth control (and abortion) to people who have health insurance and disposable income (to afford the $30-70 a month for it) created the gap. However, I'm no longer sure that's true. Someone who really wants birth control in any major U.S. city can probably get it for free or at negligable cost (compared to having a child). All you have to do is walk into Planned Parenthood and ask; if you can't pay, they don't charge.
There are greater social causes driving the birth rates in the lower socioeconomic sectors which are not being dealt with, and we are just beginning to feel the effects of a widening rift in our social structure: between people who spend their entire lives getting ready to have a child, and pour their resources into providing him or her with every possible advantage; and people who start off with close to nothing, and create children who have even less. It's unfair to punish the former for having the foresight not to have children and to want to give them the best life possible, but our current path seems destined to create a two-tiered society, which is not sustainable in the long term.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
...299,999,999 fat bastards!
http://www.uscis.gov/graphics/formsfee/forms/files /N-400.pdf
if filing for naturalization based on marriage to a us citizen, then your fourth anniversary is too long.
see page 1, part 2, item B
you could have applied over a year ago.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Why is this article and every other one I'm reading online speculating that the 300 millionth American will be an immigrant? Seems like a statistical improbability when you take the information from the US Pop Clock, (7 seconds for a new birth, 31 for an emigration to the US), it sums up to almost 4.5:1 that the 300 millionth kid was a baby born somewhere in the US.
Is how this booming population is going to effect the competition required to get into the more prestigious schools/high-end jobs. This coming generation will be forced to perform at ever-increasing levels just to stay "in the game."
.-.
You know what though, you know what the immigrants who were welcomed by the Statue of Liberty did? They stopped at Ellis Island to register and apply for residency.
And the ancestors of the people who were manning the registration desks at Ellis Island had distributed infected blankets to American Indians, amongst other things. The new ones merely take away jobs and distribute money more efficiently.
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
I heard on the radio this morning the states are the worlds third most populous country, right after China and India. Surprised me.
You shouldn't be surprised, this has been true for pretty much all of the last 100 years, the link only goes back 50 years but the assertion is true. As with the current mania for wondering what one billion - read that in the voice of Carl Sagan - Chinese are going to do in the future, the question on the minds of the Western European powers entering the 20th century was what all those Americans were going to do.
Anyone know why the US is stilling growing significantly, as opposed to most European countries?
The US has a larger influx of immigrants and a higher birth rate, those are the two dominant factors in that order.
Which demographics are producing most children?
Recent immigrants and the minority ethnic and racial populations, but not African Americans or Jews. The current trend is for Latin Americans and Asians to increase as a percentage of the population with Whites, African Americans and Jews declining.
How much does the number of legal immigrants contribute to the growth?
Between a quarter to a third of total US population growth is due to immigration as opposed to birth.
It's hilarious balancing "we want immigrants to become productive members of society" against "those [legal] immigrants are taking jobs away from Americans".
Breeding isn't the real problem, as we always need younger brains and muscles. Eldery is the problem, as much as retirement. Europe is having this problem right now: too many people over 60 years old, and they are living even more every day. Humanity is the problem of this world :P
Let me restate: ...
There's no "immigration debate," at least not in mainstream politics
Pat Buchanan is to mainstream conservativism what the Ralph Nader or is to mainstream liberalism; actually less so, since I think Nader is taken more seriously as a politician, while Buchanan has essentially retired from that arena to become a professional blowhard and everyone knows it. He's taking an extreme position for a reason: it gets people riled up, which gets him on CNN, which sells more books.
Not that he should be ignored completely -- his popularity ought to be indicative of the widespread disillusionment of a lot of people in the U.S.; the fact that a lot of white English-speaking Christians agree with him and are blaming hispanics (who they associate with being illegal immigrants) for the country's economic problems is too important to be ignored. The real question to ask is why do people feel that way, and why don't they feel that way about other immigrants (say, Asians)? If there weren't so many illegal hispanic immigrants, would white Americans be less likely to feel threatened by them generally? These are the questions that aren't being asked when you just pidgeonhole the entire thing.
Attempting to marginalize the entire question of illegal immigration because someone is using it to further their own agenda (in this case, to hawk a book), would be like writing off the all debate about the environment because of the PETA/radical-animal-rights kooks.
Don't take an extreme position and think that it's representative of the majority opinion; instead take it for what it is -- a barometer of some people's discontent. Important, and definitely worth considering and discussing, but not necessarily the median or the mean.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I wonder if the birth certificate/immigration papers of the 300 millionth kid/immigrant says something like this:
"Congratulations!!! You are our 300,000,000th person!!! Please click here to claim your special prize!!
(void where prohibited)"
I can neither support nor refute your claims about why people wish to immigrate to the United States. But let's assume that you're descriptions and motivations are correct. That it's the social programs that are drawing immigrants who desire a free ride. Isn't the appropriate response then to say that this is an unintended consequence of the social welfare programs and call into question the validity of those programs? It seems to me that continuing to support restrictions on immigration is an attempt to prop up social programs as if they had no consequences.
If what you're saying is true, that seems to me to be a knock against socialized welfare. Not something that should support restrictions on immigration. Is there something that I'm missing?
Full Disclosure: I'm a classic liberal (in contrast to a modern liberal) and I'm opposed to restricted immigration. I believe that we live in a country of endowed rights, not government granted rights. Which means that the government can neither give nor take away rights. Our rights have been endowed to us by our creator (using the language of the constitution). One of those endowed rights is the right to free association and to assemble peacably. Which means that Mexicans have it whether they're here or not. So do Chinese, Germans and Finlanders. The difference is that some other governments don't protect those rights, and in some cases, wrongly repress those rights. The US government is constituted on a promise to protect those rights within the boundaries of this country. So that when someone from Mexico or China or Germany or Findland sets foot in this country, our government is required to protect their rights to freely associate with any of us who are already here. Immigration laws are based on the premise that you only have those rights if you're a US citizen. In other words, the US Government grants them to you. I believe that's incorrect. I believe laws restricting immigration are counter to the concept of rights described by the constitution. I believe that all such laws should be overturned.
One of the impacts of immigration laws is to insulate the voting American public from the negative unintended consequences of social welfare programs. I believe that if the American public felt the full brunt of those unintended consequences, that we would make changes to the detrimental effects of those policies. But as long as those effects are hidden, there's less motivation to change the policies.
Immigration laws hurt us: they undermine our core values, and they insulate us from the effects of bad policies. I think we would be better off without them.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
I'm talking about much broader questions of allocation than just shipping things around in trucks. In fact, the most important resources are increasingly non-tangible (i.e. knowledge). Globally distributing basic knowledge about agriculture, for example, would go much further toward reducing poverty than any physical resource, or any population control.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
What you slashdot's population have to be to be significant?
Have you read my journal today?
Less social and economic mobility; ...
i onOffice/newsAndEvents/archives/2005/LSE_SuttonTru st_report.htm
...
M obility.pdf
Au contraire...
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/pressAndInformat
In a comparison of eight European and North American countries, Britain and the United States have the lowest social mobility
A careful comparison reveals that the USA and Britain are at the bottom with the lowest social mobility. Norway has the greatest social mobility, followed by Denmark, Sweden and Finland. Germany is around the middle of the two extremes, and Canada was found to be much more mobile than the UK.
http://cep.lse.ac.uk/about/news/Intergenerational
While I agree that there always has to be someone at the bottom, I disgree vehemently that somehow economics is always a zero-sum game. It is not. If you have two countries, both with the same basic distribution of wealth (e.g., the top 1% is 10x as wealthy as the bottom 1% in both cases), then in the country with the higher average per capita GDP, everyone -- including the "poor" people -- will have a higher quality of life. (At least in economics terms -- we can argue all day about whether having a dishwasher and a TV really make you "happier" or not.)
So you'll always have 'poor people,' but what it means to be poor changes based on the average quality of life of the society. In some places in Africa, being 'poor' might mean starving to death. In the U.S., being poor might mean not having health insurance, or riding the bus instead of owning a car. I can almost guarantee you that the poverty level in the U.S. would be a king's ransom in Sudan.
Whether immigrants create more in costs than they create in economic output is arguable; it's a tough question to answer because so much of what illegal immigrants do isn't documented or measured. We know pretty solidly that they consume more in public services than they pay in taxes (there are lots of studies, although you don't have to be Adam Smith to look at the budgets of many municipal and state governments in areas with large populations of illegal immigrants to figure that out), at least on the local and state levels.
The net effect of this is that the government is basically subsidizing the labor costs of the industries (principally agriculture) that employ illegal immigrants. And in doing so, we are reducing the demand for replacement technologies.
There was a time when people thought slavery was necessary, because no one could conceive of a way to pick cotton except by hand. Obviously, they were wrong; after slavery was abolished and the cost of labor increased, the demand for a cotton-harvesting machine increased as well. Now, most cotton is harvested mechanically. The same job that might have once been done by slaves, or later by paid sharecroppers, is now done by a very small number of highly skilled workers (those involved in the manufacture of the machines, and a smaller number in their actual operation).
Having a huge -- effectively bottomless -- pool of subsidized, cheap labor stunts both technological and economic development. By keeping the cost of goods artificially low, it prevents labor-saving alternatives from being developed; and labor-saving devices are the hallmark of civilization, because they allow people to move their attention and labor to higher and higher-value activities. As people move to higher-value activities, they can afford to purchase more (or have more leisure time), and their standard of living increases. Simply throwing more people at the problem is no way to develop economically; at best you can achieve a sort of slow development of your upper class, growing the gap between the top and bottom of society ever wider, but the cost is that you create a vast, disenfranchised underclass, and that's bad for business all around.
There is no inherent superiority argument here; I never said that the illegal immigrant was in any way an inferior person to the American worker -- to do so would be racist, and worse than that, factually wrong. However, having a country with a vast surplus of labor is destabilizing, and leads to social stratification. If we want to be a nation of aristocrats and serfs, then we ought to just create an official "second class" citizenship (call it a "permanent worker visa"), open the doors, and stop lying to ourselves. But if we want to actually work towards a goal, however unattainable, of egalitarianism, social mobility, and stability without draconian enforcement, allowing a vast pool of unskilled laborers to remain and stifle growth is not the way to do it.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Yea its not like we have the rocky mountains in the us or anything.
"Furthermore, people are not hamsters. Each person who is born has a brain, and intelligence that can be applied to solving problems such as "overpopulation"."
And as soon as each of these persons is born, huge and powerful corporations that run this country begin their long and persistent work on turning them INTO hamsters.
Whatn the hell does this have to do with the post?
I suspect you were just loking for a reason to bash immigrants with your il informed opions.
Clue -> Not all immigrants are illegal.
Plus it turns out the are good for the economy overall, but Rush(the fat tard) doesn't want you to know that, now does he?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Maybe because Europe isn't the heaven on Earth some want the world to believe and in spite of most media spin the USA actually is a better place to live and so people are leaving Europe and immigrating to the US.
Not really. I mean, if you can't rely on the government, you HAVE to rely on family, friends, or the community. I guess if your definition of a "family" is mom, dad, and the kids, then yeah - it would be hard to do this while maintaining the standard of living that Americans seem to expect. Child care or the loss of one salary can really cut into having one car per adult, cable TV, a nice lawn, and the 45-minute commute to work. However, that's a narrow definition of family. My wife is an immigrant, and her whole family on her Mom's side lives in one big house. They all take care of one another. Not really because they have to, but that's just the way it is in their culture. That is decidedly a family, too. I don't really see what the government has to do with family values, other than politicians claiming that it does. Maybe there is something to the third-world style of living all together and depending on family. Where they come from, the government is worthless yet they still have a strong family bond. They would probably argue that the government raising your children while you go to work, all so that you can live in a small "family", is not in line with family values. Family values to them means having everyone from great-grandma to the smallest children under one roof, eating at the same table. In the US we call this "Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter". Then we send great grandma back to the retirement home and the kids back to pre-school.
That said, I'm an American, damnit, and so I like living away from the family! My kid goes to day care, my Grandparents are in retirement villages or homes, and my parents live 3 hours away. The house full of immigrants that houses my wife's extended family is 5 hours away. I won't claim that this is building any sort of "family values", but I'm not exactly gunning for that, either. :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
It's isn't about cheap labor, it's about getting people to do back breaking work.
In new mexico, there are farmers that pay 15 and hout plus benefits(note, thie money would be taxed.) and they can't find enough labor.
Because no one wants to do it.
We used to have migrant that would come into this country, do this crap labor, then go home to mexico when the season was over.
This was a good program, even if the workers we're 'illiegal'.
They pay taxes, do the work no one else will, get employer paid benefits, then go home. This means that they putinto the tax system, and then not use the taxes.
BTW, MOST immigrants are not on wellfare, and they DO PAY TAXES.
Note: you do not need an SSN to pay taxes.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So you are saying we should blame the fence rather than the burglar? And we should blame the drug user rather than the drug dealer?
I agree that we should be arresting CEOs and others who are hiring illegal workers. But at the same time we should be taking DNA samples of every illegal immigrant then shipping them back to their country of origin along with a note in their native language indicating that we'll be killing them if they return illegally.
I'm all for people looking for a better life, but if you just move from a shithole to less of a shithole and don't change your lifestyle then you're just going to make your new home into a shithole. Immigrate legally, try to adopt the things that make the new culture desirable in the first place and maybe your life will be better.
The decline in total arable land is offset by a serious increase -- beginning in the early 19th century -- in the amount of food that can be grown on a given quantity of land?
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
> We're all too closely descended from immigrants.
:-)
I suppose the question is whether our ancestors immigrated legally or not? Granted, most of us were initially welcomed, but we never exactly left when we ended up at odds with the Native Americans, either. And even then, the debate is over whether we loosen or tighten our standards for legal immigration.
Or perhaps a better point then is that we simply want to avoid repeating the Native Americans' mistake and ending up displaced by Mexican immigrants who are here without our permission? I just hope they don't make me live on a reservation
And the difference is, despite all those things, people in the US still tend to insist that they have their family. If you were married to your job in Europe or Japan, there would be a higher likelihood of just not getting married and wanting to have 2 kids, a dog, and an SUV (hey they barely have SUVs over there). People here in the US will make that family even if it ends in divorce and high child support payments.
For a counterpoint I would like you to consider these stats:s /sp.html .13% Pop Growths /it.html .04% Pop Growth
s /us.html .91% Pop Growth
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geo
Spain: 94% Roman Catholic,
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geo
Italy: 90% Roman Catholic,
In contrast:
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geo
US: 24% Roman Catholic,
The facts do not seem to support your conclusion
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
Some people pop out kids for social acceptance, others do it for intrinsic cultural values that often come from religion (Catholicism being but one of them).
;)
I think you left one reason out....some people actually just like kids. I know, it's hard to believe that anyone would actually want to drag around another person who not only can't write their own shell scripts, but can't even wipe their own butts, but it does actually happen. (Hmm, my definition of child seems to match my definition of management, weird....)
A noticeable trend appears to be that child rearing is most often inversely proportional to income and intelligence, which is bad news. Of course there are always exceptions.
I think I'd word that a little differently.....the trend towards raising large numbers of children seems often to be inversely proportional to income and education. Affluent, well-educated people are still having kids; they just seem to come in pairs instead of six-packs
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
I think the most catholic country in Europe would be Vatican city.... nevermind, they have a low birthrate too.
Europe has 10.4 M sq km and 710 M people, vs. the US 9.5 M sq. km and 300 M people, so the US has less than half the number of people per square km (or whatever unit of area one choses to use). You're dead on about the US still having large amounts of space. However, if you count Europe as "west of the Ural Mountains" you have some pretty extensive plains in western Russia, and the western US is pretty damn mountainous, speaking as someone who lives within two hours' drive of several ranges in the western US.
I'm not sure that I buy this. I spent a month there visiting my wife's family last fall, and the societies I saw (mainly England and Sweden) didn't seem any less materialistic than the US. I think you might be mistaking free market, where government regulation of industry is lax, for materilistic. England and Sweden both seemed to have quite a few immigrants. (According to Wikipedia, 13.3% of Sweden's population is foreign.
The U.S. Constitution needs to be ammended with a "separation of business and state" clause.
...welcome our new American overlords. Er, waitaminnit...
Sure, some people got turned away. But you just can't compare our immigration policies of today with the immigration policies of when our grandparents got here. It was much, *much* easier to get citizenship back then.
Hooven and Allison Co vs Evatt is stare decisis, yet the original meaning of the three United States is discernable in the The Judiciary Act, September 24, 1789; only by someone that has developed their English grammar beyond the comprehension and discernment accessible in modern High Schrools and Colleges. Grade-School is a great start :-). Looking into the text, we can see the shadow of a non-appearance by a "United States" by comprehension of it making claims and suing and being sued. Before quoting, please take this notice that codes are encrypted and copyright private law and intellectual property that is not the Law itself but to be compliant with the Law without direct use and reference of the Law; also, Statutes are for aliens in admiralty known as a corporation: adhering to regulation of a statute is evidence of counterfeit surety or securities fraud held by a foreigner, wherefore the purpose of this is to show that one of the foreigners in another "United States" that is moving from admiralty venue into an Exchequer and Equity to demand performance or draw compensation for contracts that benefit a neighboring person.
without prejudice
WTF? This guy, like 5 other responders failed to have the reading comprehension skills to realize that my postulation was not that having less population would solve the problems, but merely make impossible situations solvable. Who gives a fuck that industrial revolution era cities were more polluted? We know better now and have better technology. At the end of the day, having 1/10th the population AND having the level of tech we now have (which was a blatantly obvious assumption in my point) would make our problems solvable.
The illeagal aliens are the ones who make this country run. They do the jobs that we can't get americans to do. They don't get free health care, or welfare- and while their kids do often get a free education, that makes the kids more valuble as workers for us.
Do you really think that people without an SSN are getting free welfare by being in the U.S.?
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
The reason that "illegal" immigration is such a problem, is because "legal" immigration is such a long and difficult process. I have not met a single person who was outraged about "illegal" immigration that wanted to make it easier for immigrants to come into the country legally.
So you are only against "illegal" immigration, right? How about this, we change the laws so that everyone who comes to the U.S. (barring a someone with contagious disease or appearing in an international criminal database), gets made an American citizens, right away, no questions asked. It would be legal, so you wouldn't have a problem with that, right?
The way to stop illegal immigration is to give everyone who wants it a legal way to immigrate!
Welfare generally isn't available to immigrants anyway unless they've worked here for 10 years or more.
I hear people claim that illegal immigration holds down the wages of the American worker, but, with offshoring and outsourcing, is that really true? How do we know that, if a company couldn't hire an illegal immigrant for $5.15/hour, that the company would just hire a legal American for $10/hour instead of just building the plant in Mexico and hiring them for $2.50/hour? Maybe the illegal immigrants are making it possible for there to be some of these jobs in the US in the first place.
This graph from the article:
f /_42205846_us_population_bars416.gif
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42205000/gi
makes U.S. population growth look like it's linear (except for a slight dip in WWII). So where's the huge jump caused by recent immigration that the right wingnuts keep telling us is such a big problem? I don't see it.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
Legal immigration and hispanic birthrates are what contribute to the growth. In some states (ie Utah) Caucasian birthrate is above replacement level, but in most states it is not. Europe has the same problem, Caucasian people are pretty much dying out. African Americans aren't much better, as they are right around replacement rate (2.1), and I suspect in a few years they will fall below it.
My wife and I did our part and have 2 kids. There has always been a part of me that wants a family with 8-10 kids, but do you have any idea how much that would cost? Nope, I can't afford it and we got fixed so we aren't breeding any more.
I predict within 15-20 years by our next major war one of our developed countries will use a bio agent that basically just sterilizes the enemies civilian side with no other affects. With a "weapon" like that, you just smuggle it into your enemies' country spray their population and wait 50-80 years. They could recover, but likely they'll be hit by massive depopulation.
I'm just waiting for us to be honest and bring back the concept of clans and houses as being more important than immediate family or the individual. Any discussion about long term breeding patterns is basically just to insure that my offspring has similiar offspring to find and mate with. Anyone remember in any of the Asimov works where "white" and "black" races have both basically been "mixed" out of the population due to interbreeding? Given enough time I'd think that a version of that would happen. Of course you could get clans that try to get their childern only to breed within the clan or with their social peers.
You mean we don't send illegal immigrants to Harvard on the taxpayers dime while good, hardworking white people are forced into manual labor because they couldn't afford a college education?
You mean the idea that illegal immigrants sap our resources more than they provide for our economy is simply a racist myth?
AUGH! MY WORLD IS TURNING UPSIDE DOWN!
Which came first: the chicken or the egg? Do current immigrants not "integrate" because we've made them "illegals" or are we trying to make them illegal because they refuse to integrate?
Instead of disallowing people who want to move here and work for a better life (see: pricinples this country was founded on...), why don't we dismantle the bloated welfare state that supports people who are already here NOT working for a better life?
- In 1915, immigrant citizens came mostly from Germany; in 1967 from Italy; and in 2006 mostly from Mexico
- The average US family had 4.5 people in 1915, 3.3 in 1967 and 2.6 in 2006
- Some 45.9% of Americans were property owners in 1915. That grew to 63.6% in 1967 and reached 68.9% in 2006
- There were 4.5 million people aged 65 and older in 1915, or 4.5%; 19.1 million in 1967 (9.5%) and 36.8 million in 2006 (12.4%)
- Life expectancy was 54.5 years in 1915, 70.5 years in 1967 and 77.8 years in 2006
- About 23% of women were in the work force in 1915, compared to 41% in 1967 and 58% in 2006
- There were 2.5 million cars in 1915, 98.9 million in 1967 and 237.2 million in 2006
- John and Mary topped the list of most popular names in 1915; Michael and Lisa were favourites in 1967; and Jacob and Emily were preferred in 2006
According to my calendar, there's still almost 2 and a half months left in 2006; stated another way, this is the 290th day of the year. We're not even 80% through 2006.It's really stupid to describe 2006 as the past.
Welcome to slashdot where 'I know a guy who...' substitutes for actuall facts.
Corporations want people who are good cogs in the machine. People having families and real lives are too much of a burden and cut into the bottom line.
I would gladly give one of my engineers the time for doctor visits, kisd baseball games, and shcool functions rather than train anyone new. And I find if you do make the time for peoples lives they generally become more loyal employees less likely to job hop, or flake out because they need the stability of a career..
According to the population clock:
One birth every: 7 seconds
One death every: 13 seconds
One international migrant (net) every: 31 seconds
So every minute, there are almost +4 net Americans (born here) and almost +2 net "international migrant[s]" (whatever the heck that means). (And the +4 doesn't even include naturalized citizens.)
How in the world do media outlets figure that the 300 millionth American will most likely be an illegal immigrant?
I dont agree with how that paper describes social mobility. According to the study in Britain and the U.S. a child's income is more directly proportional to their parents. But for their to be strong social mobility, a parent's accomplishments must help their children. If they cannot help their children then all of their accomplishments will fall apart after 1 generation.
Most immigrants came to America not to improve their life, but to improve their children's life. If I can make $150k a year throughout my life, I want my children to have ever possible opportunity. I would be disappointed in myself if my children are not at least in the upper middle class for most of their life. It could only be explained by poor parenting.
To adequetly measure social mobility, you should see if a first generation middle class family is able to pass that status on to their children. See if a parent's hard work is actually making life better for their children.
Also, America's top 25% income earners are more well off than most countries. That will also eschew the numbers.
--
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
"Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses."
-Statute Of Liberty
Abraham Lincoln on DESPOTISM
"When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy [sic]."
--From the August 24, 1855 Letter to Joshua Speed"
Sad to say this;
Of course everyone likes to move to the United States; they were abused to the mind of equals as slaves to their prior government, and are entertained to be ruled by the administration of that US GOVERNMENT for having no knowledge to react to conditions of slavery that are one-straw less of their prior oppression; they are not submit in the tense of their Bible: they are nieve. They are heartily welcomed to dilute the ancestry of the continent, instrumental to spread the suppression of the freemen that are not submit to that US GOVERNMENT because of a higher-standing of parity and exception preserved or reserved or actively exercised. Government is not for the lawful, it is for the lawless and incompetant.
without prejudice
"They do the jobs that we can't get americans to do"
No, They do the jobs that potential legal immigrants will never get the chance to do. There are potential legal immigrants from all over the world who would love to come to the US to do the jobs that were filled by illegal immigrants.
That's definitely true. When quotas were introduced during and after WW1, immigration policy became a lot less fair.
I won't bother looking for 2006 midyear statistics, but it is reasonable to expect that this trend has not been altered.
What clown moderated the parent a troll? The parent is exactly right, the earth is seriously overpopulated.
Certainly wasteful use of resources is... err, a waste. But regardless of how efficiently resources are used, we have a finite amount of them. By the estimates I've seen, the earth can in principle support somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 billion people, sustainably, at the starvation/poverty level. I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound very desirable to me.
Consider the price of housing in California. I did my graduate studies at UC Santa Barbara. When I moved away last year, the median price of a house was 1.2 million dollars - mostly due to the high price of land. Why is it so expensive? It's a very desirable location (mediterranean climate, beaches, mountains, and only a 2 hour drive from LA) with limited available land, and a lot of wealthy people want to live there. If the US population were 1/10 what it is now, the prices would be much lower because the same amount of land would be available for housing, but fewer people would be available to live there.
This is true of almost every resource. As population increases, finite resources are divided among more people and everyone becomes poorer. The one resource for which this is not true is labor (though modern automation makes this less of an issue)... therefore, there is some ideal population (which is obviously much lower than the current population, at least for many of the world's nations) where there is a balance between the availability of labor and the dilution of resources.
-- David Whysong
I was talking about legal immigrants ... I'm sure the government makes even less available to illegal ones.
Quite possibly. However, I don't share your feelings concerning the "small window" feeling; I think it's misplaced, although everyone is certainly entited to their own opinion on such a personal issue.
Lots of people have children when they are in their late 30s or even later, and I don't think this ends up being a net negative to the child.
Personally, I see raising a child as the most critically important thing that I will ever do, or even concieve of doing. With that said, it seems inappropriate to rush into it. If I'm going to raise a child, they deserve to have the absolute best that I can provide, both in the material sense and in the sense of guidance and knowledge. There is no possible way that I'm there yet.
I think the increased financial security and quality of life I'll be able to provide, not to mention just the greater amount of maturity and experience, as a result of waiting until I'm 35 or 40 to have kids, as opposed to having them in my 20s, is well worth the tradeoff of being comparatively older than the parents of other kids their age. (And of potentially having to use IVF, or try multiple times because of the risk of birth defects, etc.)
Deciding not to have children until later in life isn't always the selfish, materialistic, self-centered whim that it gets made out to be; I, as well as a lot of other people I know who aren't rushing into the kid thing, are quite aware of the tradeoffs. I'm not going to put them at a disadvantage later in life versus what I could have provided or been to them, just because I might want to have the support of a family now.
To be perfectly frank, I guess I feel that kids need financial security and a parent who's been around long enough to have a shot at having most of the answers, more than they need a grouchy old man in their lives when they're approaching middle age themselves. If my decision means that there's a good chance I won't live to see their children, so be it; that's a small cost for knowing I'll have done the absolute best job possible of the most important thing I'll ever do.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I wish I had points for you.
As a republican I feel it my responsibity to manufacture criminals. People need punished!
I was simply giving an example based on personal experience. I was not attempting a complex statistical analysis of the phenomenon. However, the general tendency I have described has been well demonstrated.
And I find if you do make the time for peoples lives they generally become more loyal employees less likely to job hop, or flake out because they need the stability of a career
In the corporate world, they generally don't care about loyalty or about employees having job stability. Even in fields like chemistry, where jobs used to be very stable, such is no longer the case. Everything is being commoditized and jobs are being defined such that an employee can be replaced with another cog that they can find (or at least that is the goal). Perhaps it's not that way where you are, but your workplace is rapidly becoming the exception.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
You should really get modded up.
I notice that the '1% decline' folks haven't responded to you.
The only thing I have to add is that the last time I went shopping for fish, except for the stuff that was farmed, the selection wasn't nearly as good as it used to be a few decades ago.
And although it's before my time, if you read historical accounts of the shellfish harvests in New England, they're nothing like they are today. Lobster used to be so common in Maine that it was considered a poor-person's food; you could basically go and pick them up from the rocks in many bays and inlets. Don't even bother trying that today. Similar with clams, although there you also have toxic contamination to worry about.
Were it not for international treaties, I think it's safe to assume that a whole lot of both whale and large sea-fish species would now be extinct. (We got pretty close with swordfish; it's just getting back to normal now.) The free market is great for a lot of things, but that "tragedy of the commons" is a real bitch. Sometimes the market -- and people in general -- aren't really forward-thinking. They'll slaughter the goose today rather than have the golden eggs later a startlingly large percentage of the time.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Yes, those words do mean someting, and we're already loosing one of them. If you enter the country illegally, your an alien, not an immigrant. Even with tossing in the "illegal" at the beginning, we're alreayd starting to elevate their status from alien to immigrant.
There's no such thing as an "illegal immigrant"
You and I have different experience in the corporate world, I have worked at several corporations and not a single one was hard on married employees with kids..
If you are white, making fun of another person's accent is racist. Of course, it isn't racism when Eddie Murphy or Dave Chapelle make fun of white people's accents. That's just hilarious.
If you are white, it's racist to even mention that hispanic people are moving into the country in large numbers. If you aren't white, it isn't racist to say, "Let's get rid of whitey."
Personally, I think race is a red herring, an idea designed to keep the working class of all races from recognizing their true enemy: the hereditary owning class. Damn richers! Kill all dollarheads!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
but we learned how to fix nitrogen over a century ago. Nitrogen is the limiting reagent, except in cases of drought. We can make as much as we want, by a very efficient process. Barring nuclear war or some similar apocalypse, there will be plenty of food for the nine billion or so we will top out at.
It won't be long before under-population concerns start to take hold here in the US, too. It is already a huge issue in Europe, Japan, Korea, etc, where birth-rates are far below replacement levels. You can't count on immigration to bail us forever because birthrates are plummetting everywhere else, as well.
Earth is basically a closed loop in terms of atoms. They are all "recyclable" in that sense. We use about 1/10,000 of the energy the sun provides us, and the sun is not the only source of energy we could tap. There is no chance we will run out of either atoms or energy anytime in the foreseeable future.
A deep, unwavering belief that all hippies hate all nuclear power is a sure sign that you're missing something.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration
See: Global Immigration Statistics
I won't bother to reprint Maxo-Texas' links, but please people, this person is absolutely full of shit and has nothing to back it up with. No links, no papers, not even a "My college professor's uncle's dog said so." Nothing. Just complete made up "facts."
Look, I can do that too: Talk to any REAL slashdotter, and they will tell you that chewedtoothpick is full of shit. Chewedtootthpick's head is full of over 19' of topsoil. As chewedtoothpick will never, ever breed, he is not a part of the overpopulation problem.
Please, please, please mods: mod me down as offtopic or troll if you must. Just look at the thread: chewedtoothpick offers unverified opinions. Maxo-Texas comes back with referenced facts. Chewedtoothpick has NOTHING with which he can respond. Therefore, any sane person would determine that chewedtoothpick is making shit up and should not be modded informative.
Thank you. You may now commence to mod me down. My karma's been capped for years, you aren't even going to touch it. Just mod him down, too. I mean, Mexicans are wasteful? Has he even been there? It's a poor country, they can't afford to waste shit like we can! Look around, who do you see recycling cans you drop on the street? Who recycles all the cardboard boxes lying around? Here's a clue: it ain't white people. God, my head is going to explode if I even try to think about all the ways this asshat is wrong.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You know what else they did? In many (most?) cases, they learned English. My husband's parents were Holocaust survivors, and came here to escape all the BS going on in Poland and elsewhere. They both made a commitment to learn English, because they thought that was the right thing to do. Needless to say, my husband and I both have a major gripe lately about all immigrants, illegal or otherwise, not bothering to learn the language of the land. Everywhere we turn, we find people doing whatever it is they do for work, who can't even answer simple questions, many times giving some indication that they don't speak English at all.
It gets worse of course when you call a business and the *first* thing you hear is a recording in some other language (usually Spanish) telling you hit a button for that language.
If you were to move to France, Germany, Italy, or any other country, you'd be expected to learn the language too. Why can't we expect the same thing here, especially of those who are working in the public eye?
But hospitals can't turn them away and they have to make up the costs of providing those services from *someone*.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
"They do the jobs that we can't get americans to do."
That is false. They only do jobs that Americans won't do at the same pay. I have worked construction industry here in Southern California for 25 years. 25 years ago, construction was a good paying, middle class job filled with skilled and qualified union workers. Now it is a barely above minimum wage profession that is nearly impossible to make a living wage from. It is not because Americans didn't want to work construction. It is because Americans didn't want to work construction for $5 an hour, especially when they used to earn $15 an hour. I personally earned $15 an hour, 25 years ago, driving a water truck for a large grading company. That same company now pays $9 an hour for the same job.
it really has nothing to do with the green card.
a tion.html
http://www.visajourney.com/faq/k1k2visa-naturaliz
8.1)...When can I apply for United States citizenship?
A...As a spouse of a US Citizen, you can apply for citizenship 3 (three) years after approval of your Adjustment of Status. Back at the AOS interview, your passport was stamped with the I-551 stamp and a date. The 3 year countdown begins with that date. This 3 year period does not include long absences from the United States.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I hate the phrase "African American" -- many of my friends in the states are white South African. Are they "African American" too? I don't think so.
That seems to me, to be an argument about which skills are in demand, not about immigration per se.
... the question (and it's a valid one) is "what's in demand right now?" and "what's not being filled by the domestic labor market?"
If the H1B visas were really being given out for fields that we needed in the U.S., I can't imagine that most of the people that have a problem with them now, would have a problem. If they do, then I would put forward that their argument is not really rational.
The main problem with H1Bs that I've ever heard, is the number of them that's given out, and the fields that they're given out for -- basically, that the government isn't in touch with the job market and isn't matching the needs of America to the visas that it gives out.
So still, I'd say that there's very little disagreement that we should stop legitimate immigration of people with skills that are in-demand
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I wonder if the remaining powder will burn?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
vhemt.org
anecdote: a usually short narrative of an interesting, amusing, or biographical incident
Anecdotes (see definition) are not necessarily false. Indeed they are often true and are almost always presented as if they were true, even when they are apocryphal. The problem with anecdotes lies not in their (often questionable) veracity; it is in their relevance.
So this...
You may now consider yourself educated by a southerner. And if I were you, sir, I would avoid lecturing people on the comparative quality of education.
--
(Incidentally, the only source to which I could trace your own anecdote was an article paraphrasing remarks by the Automotive Parts Manufacturer's Association, a Canadian industry group that lobbied Toyota to build the plant in Ontario, where its members would be better able to win contracts to supply it.)
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
Today, the population figure is mired in the divisive politics of immigration
More correctly, it's the divisive politics of illegal immigration. I don't know too many people that are up-in-arms about legal immigrants from, say, Sweden. Well, okay. There's the whole H1B visa thing, but that's not so much a matter of raw numbers as it is selective economic displacement of American tech workers.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
People concerned about race relations are idiots. Discrimination takes place about many more things than just race, and much more intensely. Age, religion, gender, all three affect how one is treated far more than race does. And wealth puts the rest to shame. If you're upper class, you can throw coke-and-daterape parties every night, and never have the cops even drive past your house. If you're lower class, even a regular beer and medium-volume-music party is enough to get a serious grilling from the cops and a fine for noise. A single whiff of pot smoke in the air, and you're all in for a strip-search from sexually deprived cops.
Females aged 18 to 40. They're waaaay ahead of any other group.
If suddenly people's needs were one 10th as high, there would be abundance of resource, and people would breed like rabbits to abuse the resource, and you'd actually even lose the economies of scales made by fairly big individuals.
I'm not sure why you'd blame western society for this. Korea, Japan and Singapore have exactly the same problem.
In any case, how would you define 'western society'? Would Russia and Brazil count? They certainly speak languages that originated west of my land in a Meractor's projection.
More than mere navel gazing.
I'm not sure why you'd blame western society for this. Korea, Japan and Singapore have exactly the same problem.
Honestly, I don't know the demographic problems of Korea and Singapore. I do know about Japan, and I would consider them a 'western' type society even though they have an eastern culture.
In any case, how would you define 'western society'? Would Russia and Brazil count? They certainly speak languages that originated west of my land in a Meractor's projection.
Liberal Democracies, or countries that at least try to have them. That probably would have been a better choice of words.
Before the Soviet Union split up in 1990, it was third.
I could not agree more. I am a foreigner working in the United States. The long-drawn employment-based green card process is a major pain in the a$$. I considered moving to Canada because it's very easy to move out there, but stuck around because I met someone here and am very close to getting engaged to her. As far as the immigration process goes, Canada is better than the United States. I can tell you that from personal experience.
You do realize that 40,000,000 americans don't have health care, right? And that they're much more willing to go to an ER than an illegal immigrant whose afraid of getting sent back to Mexico, right?
Most illegal immigrants are a lot less likely to take advantage of social programs that they can't get turned down from than people think they are. Both because they a) probably don't know they can, and b) are afraid to if they do.
Look at discriminatory societies -- for the most part, the wealthy, no matter what their race, gender, or religion, have been treated like kings. Rich women had access to university course materials and direct access to university professors for centuries before universities actually began admitting women. For all peoples whining about the status of blacks, hispanics, etc, in America, just look at how wealthy members of ethnic minorities live. It's not partcularly different from how their peers do. An American Express Platinum works the same way for Tiger Woods as it does for Arnold Palmer. Welfare cheques go no further for whites than they do for blacks.
I call people who worry about race relations idiots because the invariably act as if racial discrimination is the only form of bigotry that matters. Feminists have a tendency to do the same, although that movement has gotten more serious about tackling discrimination in a more general sense (note the extent to which modern feminism concerns itself with socioeconomics).
My point? Lots of white people have suffered discrimination. The poor, teenagers, the elderly, non-christian religious types (white muslims and sikhs, although rare, can get a really hard time, and do you think a white wiccan would last long in Kansas?), the physically or mentally disabled, etc. Lots of white people face staggering amounts of discrimination. People frequently assume that those with diabetes are alcoholics, because of the slurred speech and poor coordination. Think that makes it hard to get a job? White guy that appears drunk versus sober black guy -- who's going to get hired that day? The diabetic will have a hard time even getting in the door of the building, let along getting an interview and a chance to explain that his condition (and even then -- who wants a diabetic on the company health plan?) The obese, even if they genuinely have a glandular disorder that prevents them from maintaining a healthy wait. People with that disorder that makes one sweat all the time. Heck, people who just slightly socially dysfunctional. Most employers will take the charismatic dude from Venezuela over the shy loner from Wisconsin any day of the week.
Then how do you explain all the members of the dominant social group that aren't white, and aren't men? There are rich, powerful women, rich powerful blacks, rich powerful hispanics, etc. Or would Condoleezza Rice not qualify as being part of the dominant social group? The dominant group is defined purely by wealth and power -- being white and male has zero to do with it. White men may be disproportionately represented, but that's really just a legacy of the time when before women and non-whites had any access to wealth whatsoever. As soon as they could get wealth, they began seeping gradually into the elite. The vast majority of white men are, and have always been, down at the bottom, eating shit with the rest of the world. Most white men know exactly what discrimination is like; they probably just don't call it discrimination, because most people accept the status quo of classism and wealth-based discrimination without question.
That will also eschew the numbers.
Did you mean, "skew" or "obfuscate"?
It's good that you realize that I assume you're idiot. It shows that you at least possess minor powers of inference.
Well, those at or near the bottom can always think that they have some dominance. Klan members probably think they're right up there, despite being sad and pathetic and trivial even by the lofty standards of hate groups. In any case though, we're definitely entering an era where it's going to be much harder to maintain racist, anti-feminist, and christian-only ideas of dominance -- at least here in the West. Canada briefly has had a female prime minister and a gay MP, and has a very Sikh MP. The US has an extremely successful and internationally popular member of government who is black and female -- possibly the only member of her government that wouldn't be spit on if she were to make a casual visit to another country. And her predecessor was also quite black. Actually, Bush's cabinet is rather striking in its multicultural makeup. Certainly one are in which that administration has been progressive -- rather than simply talking about equal opportunities and passing silly laws, they've actually provided equal opportunities.
Oh, you wouldn't accuse Singapore of being a liberal democracy. :-) But we're one of the few nations in the world that offers bonuses to couples having babies. East Europe also, if I'm not wrong, has a similar demographical problem; as we all know, those countries haven't been liberal democracies until a decade back.
Nope, the resolution here isn't a Fukuyama-ian hypothesis or a Western-centric Huntington-ian clashes, but pure Freakonomics-ian demographics; note how historically population-rich urban centers such as Angkor Thom (in Cambodia), or Vijayanagara (in India), have had their populations disappear. I'm in a bit of a rush to make the argument fully, but here's the gist:- after reaching a certain zenith, populations start decreasing, simply because they've become much more efficient, if you will, at propagating themselves. It's the end result of improvements in industrial productivity; you 'produce' enough to replace yourselves.
More than mere navel gazing.