Slashdot Mirror
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."
that's what the US is doing
Well off people don't reproduce as much. But as Idiocracy commented, the idiot crowd can just as well advance the gene pool. Whether we remain civilized or resort to all out tribal warfare, slavery, or feudalism, or leave the world in a choking pulluted, flooded, plague ridden morass with radioactive no-go zones humanity itself will persist. Our aspirations for a egalitarian intellectually absorbed transcendent society are less likely or stable than colonialist domination.
In terms of reproductive habits, it seems like the fast breeders evnetually win unless the elite take a cruel approach.
THat said, I think the progress of mankind has been one of elevation, peace, understanding and freedom. So clearly the cynical view is not supported by societal evolution and birth patterns to date.
On the otherhand there's this years crop of angry republicans that are not very far removed from the president of idiocracy.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Don't worry!
The entire population of Syria are already on their way to help.
There are more than enough Syrians being left in to cover up for the shortfall.
We don't actually need more people in Europe though. Giving people a decent standard of living is all that matters, it's just the old-world financial system that demands a constant supply of new people to pay for the upkeep of the non-working population. Making sure these people have a decent quality of life is not as labour intensive as making sure they get a massive pension that they can spend on importing cheap electronics from China.
and how long before the next Hitler comes to stop that?
Actually, you need far less people today to produce more work than were needed 100 years ago. Many people are just plain useless for today's society. Less people is the opportunity to have less useless people, that is less angry dudes that don't have a clue of what to do with their life. Unemployment will eventually back down. Overall happiness will probably increase.
Video of some good progressive thrash music
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
The problem is that the appeasement politics of leftist parties are actually pissing off lefties like me now.
Seriously. We've arrived at a point where it simply isn't manageable anymore.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is true if the number of people reduces across all age groups. But less children being born means old people becoming a larger and larger portion of the society. And THAT is a major problem.
That means we have to send them some development aid goods. Weapons and ammo, mostly.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
Just for the record, citing from recent news: "With 43 million people employed and fewer than 2 million unemployed, according to new data from the national statistics office, Germany’s active workforce is now more robust than it’s been for decades."
Those who cry for more babies are mostly those who'd like to hire more cheaply.
(remember that the rescue of the Byzantine Empire was the original motivation for the Crusades--the whole thing was ignited by the Byzantine disaster at Manzikert, after all.)
Uh, the crusaders didn't protect Constantinople-- they sacked it.
It was richer, and less well defended, than the Islamic lands that they were nominally aimed at, and they wanted the loot. The crusaders were not the good guys in this portion of history.
If you want to know, why did Constantinople fall to the Moslems? The answer is, it fell because it never really recovered from being sacked by the Fourth crusade.
http://www.historytoday.com/jo...
http://www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/1204.html
http://www.historynet.com/fourth-crusade-conquest-of-constantinople.htm
There will be no "next Hitler", just like there will be no "next Napoleon". Certainly Hitler was no Napoleon. Napoleon was a military genius but his famous military accomplishments (having lost very few battles despite at times tremendous odds against him) were far shorter lived than his achievement with re-writing and organizing law: the Napoleonic Code lives on today in many guises because it makes sense. Hitler was an appalling strategist, an amateur tactician at best (who got lucky a very few times), a ruthless and reckless politician who however managed to motivate a demotivated people through his obsession with national spirit and national identity - crucial for a broken people who had lost everything through a devastating war, revolt and punitive blockade and reparations.
Of course there can always be someone worse than Hitler in the future. But the times are different and the solution will therefore be different.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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.
here in America who believe in all of that. They're mostly white male Christians living in Texas and the American South.
The "culture" your referring to is mostly a byproduct of America meddling in Middle Eastern politics to prevent the spread of socialism. Iran was a secular nation until we decided we didn't like their democratically elected gov't and helped eject them. There are pictures of girls in skirts from the 50s before we stuck our nose in. Iraq was, for all of Saddam's faults, going the same route and Modernizing.
If you going to say their religion lets them do bad things that's true of Christianity in spades. Whatever horrible thing I might want to do to you today there's a line in the bible that lets me do it. Hell, you don't even need to be an Infidel. Oh, and I'll remind you that Christians are not, in fact, infidels. Atheists and pagans are.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The real problem is that unless you want mine-fields and are prepared to gun down people en-mass, there is no effective way of stopping this. Just look at what these people are running from.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
the one that doesn't believe in killing and raping the infidels is better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.
We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers.
We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war.
the one that believes in not killing homo sexuals is better.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/...
...on Friday's Republican campaign event, showing videos of Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal and Mike Huckabee engaging in question-and-answer sessions with extremist pastor Kevin Swanson, who then went on to say that he would smear cow dung over his body to protest a gay couple's wedding and urged the government to execute gays in the future if they don't repent.
the one that believes woman are equal to men is better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
That last one is a longer read.
But it includes such gems as "legitimate rape", sexual assaults in the military excused as "hormone level created by nature" and last but not least - rape as god's will.
P.S. Dear, right-wing, moderators... we can play this game of you trying to ignore facts while calling pointing out such facts trolling until you run out of mod points or I run out of copy/paste.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens