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More People In Europe Are Dying Than Are Being Born (phys.org)
jones_supa writes: More people in Europe are dying than are being born, according to a new report co-authored by a Texas A&M University demographer. In contrast, births exceed deaths, by significant margins, in Texas and elsewhere in the United States, with few exceptions. The researchers find that in Europe, deaths exceeded births in most of the counties of Germany, Hungary, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic, as well as in Sweden and the Baltic States. Further south, natural decrease is found occurring in the majority of the counties of Greece, Portugal and Italy. More births than deaths (natural increase) is widespread in Ireland, Cyprus, Iceland, Lichtenstein and Luxembourg. "Natural decrease is much more common in Europe than in the U.S because its population is older, fertility rates are lower and there are fewer women of child-bearing age," the researchers explain. "Natural decrease is a major policy concern because it drains the demographic resilience from a region diminishing its economic viability and competitiveness."
I guess this is how the long term "revenge" for the crusades will happen. If the Muslim populations get high enough, they can vote in the changes to the laws and the old world cultures will fade.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Seriously, the difference between the US and Italian / Irish cultures is nothing compared to the difference between Europeans and Arabs / Africans.
I don't want to suggest that Muslims in Europe cannot or will not assimilate, but the Irish and even the Italians had more similarities to the population in the US at the time than the Muslims do with the Europeans now. And there was a great amount of both interest and motivation in assimilating back then because no one cared much whether cultures were being oppressed or not, so you assimilated or you failed to thrive.
Today, there's both larger cultural differences, mixed with more tolerance of other cultures which has the unfortunate side-effect of making it easier to resist assimilation.
While I can't really make a distinction of what culture is "better", I do know that mixing cultures which are resistant to intermixing and assimilation is a recipe for serious civil strife. That's a serious danger for the future of Europe if they can't find some way to cope with the influx peacefully.
you don't know which culture is "better"? you may be a victim of political correctness. i'm not so let me help you a bit.
the one that doesn't believe in killing and raping the infidels is better.
the one that believes woman are equal to men is better.
the one that believes in not killing homo sexuals is better.
the list goes on, but it always comes back to western culture is better!
Except most Chinatowns in the U.S. are where non-Chinese people go to eat exotic food, not a separate city-within-a-city where any non-Chinese who enter will be beaten (or worse).
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Do you actually live in Europe? Integration does not work. We have whole suburbs of "insert immigrant nationality" because they don't integrate. Even politicians have to admit that multiculturalism failed. The cultures are just too different and there are far too many at the same time.
Except when it does. If you have a large, secular society that orients more along the lines of politics than race, culture, or religion, than over time immigrants and more importantly the children of immigrants become part of the larger society. Some people are real jerks to outsiders no matter where they are or what culture they join--the idea is over generations to try to get their kids to be more and more accepting of outsiders, to be part of the larger community.
Integration is not an experiment that succeeds or fails. It's life, and people and even entire populations change across as little as fifty years. That explains everybody's racist uncle.
"Natural decrease is a major policy concern because it drains the demographic resilience from a region diminishing its economic viability and competitiveness." What a silly argument, given that productivity and and GDP are still rising rapidly in Europe.
Automation is accelerating with AI finally becoming a real thing. Economic output is rising in absolute terms and on a per-person basis. What this should mean is a rising standard of living. But in the US all the benefits of per capita productivity are going to the "owner class". This is the stuff of revolutions.
As long as there are intelligent, healthy people who are unemployed, the birth rate has not fallen enough.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Unless that culture results in lower birthrates, then the killing, raping, misogynistic homophobic culture is better - in an evolutionary sense.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
Between the death of Mohammed and the time of the First Crusade, the following happened:
1. The Caliphate invaded and destroyed the Persian Empire. [Much conversion by the sword of Zoroastrians]
2. The Caliphate took control of over 50% of the Byzantine Empire. [Mass conversion by the sword of Christians]
3. The Caliphate conquered the Iberian peninsula and attempted to conquer the Merovingian Empire in modern day France.
4. All throughout that period and well into the Renaissance, Muslim pirates and raiders took huge numbers of slaves from Southern Europe and coastal territories as far as Iceland.
So no, not revenge. Just a series of efforts by the Muslim world to expand rather violently.
And after that period we have the annexation of much of Eastern Europe, Lepanto, Vienna, need I go on? Anyone who goes "oh noes, teh Crusades" about anyone other than the poor Orthodox Greeks is an ignoramus.
You think muslims around the world are all part of some grand conspiracy to 'take revenge' for the crusades? No, they're just people who see the much greater opportunities and wealth available in European countries compared to the shitholes they live in, and make the rational decision to move there for personal gain.
As for the 'decline' of Europe, they may be decreasing in number, sure, but they are definitely increasing in wealth (positive economic growth) with the effect that wealth and power is becoming concentrated in the hands of fewer individuals. Raw population size is a poor measure of the well-being of a country, otherwise India and China would be the best places to live.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
This. There is a difference between immigration and diaspora. Immigrants are typically very open minded members of their society - they are looking for new opportunities because their own society at home is holding them back.
What we have in Europe right now is a diaspora - people from a totally foreign culture forced to live with another. Of course, one can argue that the refugees are in Europe by their own will, but the economic and social hardships in their own countries is so bad, that I would consider this a diaspora.
The political correctness of the hosts will allow the new foreign culture not to assimilate, and the children of these foreigners will end up outsiders in their own country. At least when there was conscription army in Europe, young males were forcefully mingled with other members of the society. Nowadays, young males are left isolated, exploited and desperate in their own ghettos, ripe for extremist brainwashing centered around their foreign culture and ethnicity.
That's because the USA (and Canada) are blessed by a great filter called the Atlantic Ocean, which lets through people who
a) Passed the immigration criteria for work/residence/background check
b) Can afford a transatlantic ticket and can sustain themselves after becoming a resident
It would be natural that the more westernized immigrants would be coming over.
That does not appear to be the case in Europe. Closer proximity and lower risk of making the land and sea voyages does not filter out the "cream of the crop", like it does in the Americas.
They used to be a separate city where non-Chinese would not enter. People used to complain that Chinese, Italians, whoever were not properly integrating. By which they meant abandoning their own culture and embracing the mayonaisse of American "culture". It's only over time that those other cultures became mixed in better, but the US embraced (badly) parts of their culture instead. We even bitched about the Irish and you can't get any whiter than that.
The melting pot concept is stupid, it just doesn't work to expect immigrants to abandon the old and become clones. There was too much effort spent in the past on forced conformity in many places in US and elsewhere; forcing children to go to English speaking schools and punishing them when their native language was used so that it becomes forgotten over time (most native American languages are functionally dead, children who can't communicate with their grandparents, etc).
Population growth and reduction (in this case) is NOT the issue. The issue is that economies have been created and will only work based on population (and subsequent sales) growth; this is why immigration is often "used" to keep a countries population growing. As soon as sales reduce the model falls over. A re-think of the way global economies operate is what is needed.
The melting pot concept is stupid
Yeah, except your own post demonstrates that it has worked just fine in the U.S.:
They used to be a separate city where non-Chinese would not enter.
Emphasis mine
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.