I think it has a lot to do with the dominant self-image that people are infused with by their culture, too. Everything from advertising to entertainment in the West or urban centers in general glamorizes and orbits the single independent hedonist or actor. This is clearly the path of least resistence, and certainly the "disposable income" to be fought over is greater in the hands of the single earner than in those of a family. So we don't grow up particularly envisaging ourselves as family people; kids see the stresses their parents undergo and compare it to the freewheeler image -- and say, "Who needs it?" The feminist message collaborates indirectly with this of course, and the upshot is that young marriages, the usual source of more-than-replacement birth rates, plummet.

As to the EU and Canada, (and, btw, a fortiori Japan and Eastern Europe) the primary difference with the US -- to the limited extent that it is avoiding this demographic crunch -- is actually illegal immigration. But the US is also caught in a demographic dillemma: bolster population with fast-breeding illegals, or lose the wage-earner base needed to carry the economy.

It is interesting that the societies like Iraq, Afghanistan, and KSA that have either (or both) suffered huge losses of adult males or kept women in breeding purdahs are suffering from the opposite problem: large bulges of unemployed youth.

Maybe what we need is a UN Enforcement Office of Global Demographic Balance and Procreation! ;-)

Does it never occur to these researchers that the simplest and most probable reason is the excessively high tax burden that precludes people from affording a large family that might be in play here?

Tollhouse, I haven't done the research to dig up comparative numbers but it's my impression that at least some of that tax burden returns in the form of maternity and child support payments, however ... different policies in different European countries.

I think you do Europeans more credit than they deserve:

When you don't particularly value your culture, the civilization in which you yourself were raised, then why perpetuate it?

IMO, Europeans don't even realise that not having kids means an (eventual) end to their culture. An argument could (and probably has) been made that this is because the state handles most things anyway, so procreation isn't our responsibility.

"demographic collapse" is such a loaded, slanted, and biased term.
With world population projected to peak at "only" 9 billion largely because developed countries are limiting birth rates to below replacement, "demographic salvation" would be at least as appropriate a term.
Is the 6 to 9 children per woman in many Islamic states somehow healthier?
It makes me laugh when conservatives in the US get their undies all bunched up about "collapse" in Europe.
Some indicators showing that the US is much closer to "collapse" than Europe.
• The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (The New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004).
• The United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
• Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the Earth. Seventeen percent believe the Earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).
• "The International Adult Literacy Survey ... found that Americans with less than nine years of education 'score worse than virtually all of the other countries'" (Jeremy Rifkin's superbly documented book The European Dream
: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, p.78).
• Our workers are so ignorant, and lack so many basic skills, that American businesses spend $30 billion a year on remedial training (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004). No wonder they relocate elsewhere!
• "The European Union leads the U.S. in ... the number of science and engineering graduates; public research and development (R&D) expenditures; and new capital raised" (The European Dream, p.70).
• "Europe surpassed the United States in the mid-1990s as the largest producer of scientific literature" (The European Dream, p.70).
•• The World Health Organization "ranked the countries of the world in terms of overall health performance, and the U.S. [was] ... 37th." In the fairness of health care, we're 54th. "The irony is that the United States spends more per capita for health care than any other nation in the world" (The European Dream, pp.79-80). Pay more, get lots, lots less.
• "The U.S. and South Africa are the only two developed countries in the world that do not provide health care for all their citizens" (The European Dream, p.80). Excuse me, but since when is South Africa a "developed" country? Anyway, that's the company we're keeping.
• "U.S. childhood poverty now ranks 22nd, or second to last, among the developed nations. Only Mexico scores lower" (The European Dream, p.81). Been to Mexico lately? Does it look "developed" to you? Yet it's the only "developed" country to score lower in childhood poverty.
• Twelve million American families – more than 10% of all U.S. households – "continue to struggle, and not always successfully, to feed themselves." Families that "had members who actually went hungry at some point last year" numbered 3.9 million (NYT, Nov. 22, 2004).
• The United States is 41st in the world in infant mortality. Cuba scores higher (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).
• Women are 70% more likely to die in childbirth in America than in Europe (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).
• The leading cause of death of pregnant women in this country is murder (CNN, Dec. 14, 2004).
• "Of the 20 most developed countries in the world, the U.S. was dead last in the growth rate of total compensation to its work-force in the 1980s. ... In the 1990s, the U.S. average compensation growth rate grew only slightly, at an annual rate of about 0.1%" (The European Dream, p.39). Yet Americans work longer hours per year than any other industrialized country, and get less vacation time.
• "Sixty-one of the 140 biggest companies on the Global Fortune 500 rankings are European, while only 50 are U.S. companies" (The European Dream, p.66). "In a recent survey of the world's 50 best companies, conducted by Global Finance, all but one was European" (The European Dream, p.69).
• "Fourteen of the 20 largest commercial banks in the world today are European. ... In the chemical industry, the European company BASF is the world's leader, and three of the top six players are European. In engineering and construction, three of the top five companies are European. ... The two others are Japanese. Not a single American engineering and construction company is included among the world's top nine competitors. In food and consumer products, Nestlé and Unilever, two European giants, rank first and second, respectively, in the world. In the food and drugstore retail trade, two European companies ... are first and second, and European companies make up five of the top 10. Only four U.S. companies are on the list" (The European Dream, p.68).
• Three million six hundred thousand Americans ran out of unemployment insurance last year; 1.8 million – one in five – unemployed workers are jobless for more than six months (NYT, Jan. 9, 2005).
• Japan, China, Taiwan, and South Korea hold 40% of our government debt. (That's why we talk nice to them.) "By helping keep mortgage rates from rising, China has come to play an enormous and little-noticed role in sustaining the American housing boom" (NYT, Dec. 4, 2004). Read that twice. We owe our housing boom to China, because they want us to keep buying all that stuff they manufacture.
• One-third of all U.S. children are born out of wedlock. One-half of all U.S. children will live in a one-parent house (CNN, Dec. 10, 2004).
• "Americans are now spending more money on gambling than on movies, videos, DVDs, music, and books combined" (The European Dream, p.28).
•

"European Dream" is the word, all right. Though I prefer the Ajami-like moniker "Dream Palaces of the Europeans".

Hey Tom... what's the average jobless period for all those unemployed in Europe's 10-12% unemployment economies? And how many of them are on welfare rather than any form of unemployment insurance (which, like its name, denotes a temporary stipend)?

Guess all those huge companies aren't as much help as they ought to be, somehow. Wonder how that works?

Sounds like you've read one book and just swallowed it whole. Think a little. Be as sceptical of the book as you are toward America. It beats treating Cuban statistics with seriousness, missing obvious unemployment questions, and not even asking about the evolving crime scene in Europe, or the state of education in its own emerging ghettos, or where those pharma companies do large amounts of their research. Or looking at economic growth rates. Etc. Etc. Etc.

There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in Europe. Or in Rifkin's book. America has its plusses and minuses, but the huge holes in your scattershot characterization tend to disqualify you as a reasonable observer.

Personally, I'll add that I'd rather live in a country where 20% of the people believe the sun revolves around the earth, than a place in which rather larger percentages believe that Jews are controlling the world. But scratch those latter countries, and I suspect you'll also find sinilar percentages for the earth and the sun too. You can run "man on the street" surveys in pretty much any country in the world and get hilarious answers to basic questions. Including mine.

Rick Mercer's "Talking to Americans" episodes are a riot and a half. Easy to feel superior, but it's been done here in Canada too and guess what? Just as comical. It's called the human race, dude. I'd love to see primary education improve - but I'm too much the realist to believe that you can abolish those "sun around the earth" survey results. Or that citing them means much of anything at all.

In fact, I'd tend to be suspicious of anyone citing such surveys to make any kind of serous point as a pointy-head with little grasp of the real world.

Perhaps it would be too much to suggest you read a couple of other books, too?

Economics had a lot to do with the decision of my wife and I to stop at three children, but it was complicated by her family's overwhelming tendency towards twins (seven sets in twenty-one successful pregnancies in four straight maternal generations).

I had four brothers and she had three sisters (two of whom were twins). I wanted 4-5 children and Candy wanted 3-4. Our sons were born first (if you gotta have twins, have them first so you don't know how much work it is) and our daughter three years later.

But by then we had a nice house (four houses down from an elementary school, and on the same side of the street) which could have held one more child, but not two more. And Candy's mother had miscarried a second set of twins, while having two sets of twin sisters and three sets of twin aunts & uncles. That's the second most common twin pattern - twins don't have twins but their sisters do.

And we had started our family late - our daughter was born when Candy was 35. A second set of twins had a much greater chance of gestation problems - our first-born twins were seven weeks premature.

So we decided to stop with three. But we would certainly have gone for more if we had the money. It was a close decision. We couldn't afford to move given further major medical bills - our sons' care cost $24,000 in 1982.

I suspect that religious faith had something to do with our preference for large families too, above and beyond having come from them ourselves. While her Presbyterian church is not known for large families (aside from a staggering number of twins - it had to enlarge the nursery twice - we think it must be in the water), mine sure is - German Quaker.

I'll add that a declining population may not be a bad thing for the planet. I can see real benefits.

It is, however, an extraordinarily bad thing for any welfare state. Hence the political and cultural effects that will flow from that fact - only some of which are currently predictable.

As to the Earth going round the Sun in one day, or whether the Sun goes around the Earth, Sherlock Holmes had the best view: why should I care? Of course he thought human memory was rather limited and prefered to load his with more prgmatically useful info - a view subscribed to by Einstein.

Mister Burk,

on the one hand you say that having childern without a partner is irresponsible and on the other hand you complain that there are to few children. Almost all who are in a partnership will get children so where do you think the other childern will come from.

Tollhouse,

it is not tax that is the problem. It is the fact that an average car can only seat 5 and you want to have a seperate room for each child etc. That is the big money problem. It is also true that medical science is so good that it is very likely that your childern will survive you so it is not for economic reasons needed to have a lot of children

_ When you don't particularly value your culture, the civilization in which you yourself were raised, then why perpetuate it? _

More women than ever get children so according to you they value their civilization more than ever. The "problem" is that they don't get many.

This risk-aversion and shyness from life is also the "cause" of their welfare state arrangement. So it all ties together.

#6

official 10-12% unemployment economies

A large group of those unemployed only work officially not.

a,

Tell us about the 5-car seat problem. My wife and I had our own health problems, in succession, and couldn't afford a van until 1995 when our sons were 13, though we built our house in 1983 with an 8 foot high garage door so we could put a full size van in it. The van we got in 1995 sure made a difference on vacations. Having more than three children requires a significant investment in vehicles as well as housing.

Tom Volckhausen: Fourteen of the 20 largest commercial banks in the world today are European ...

Well, hooray for big banks. To the extent that this is true, Yurp leads the world in bank mergers. Is that a good thing?

I believe the Japanese have the biggest bank of them all (created by the merger of Fuji Bank, Dai-Ichi Kangyo, and the Industrial Bank of Japan) - twice as big as Deutsche Bank.

How can Europeans withstand this affront to their manhood? Obviously every bank in Europe must be consolidated into a single Uberbank to erase this humiliation. But what if China retaliates by consolidating all of their state-owned banks?

Sixty-one of the 140 biggest companies on the Global Fortune 500 rankings are European, while only 50 are U.S. companies ...

That statistic doesn't say much for Europe, IMO. More mergers are needed! Besides which, the biggest companies in Europe are British Petroleum and Shell (which is why their foreign policy is ALL ABOUT preserving the "stability" of OIL markets?) and they are poor in comparison to the US and Asia when it comes to electronics.

I'll say one thing for Europe - they're not stuck with the idiotic anti-scholarship of Jeremy Rifkin. That's our burden to bear.

Joe,
Just because I quoted from one book does not mean that I have read only one book. As I recall, I read a few different books while getting my BS in mechanical engineering/ MS in civil engineering.
Having spent substantial time in Europe, I am well aware of Europe's problems, but I believe talk of "collapse" is ridiculous and hysterical, especially when the US runs deficits/debt loads which are a significantly greater percentage of GNP than most Europeans countries. By those standards the US is closer to collapse than EU (not that I believe collapse is imminent in either case).
Clearly global competition and demographic transition will pose challenges to Euroland welfare states. Unemployment numbers are not at all precise with many measurement variations and I am unconvinced that real unemplyment is higher in EU than US. Personally, I would rather be unemployed in Germany than a minimum wage slave at Walmart or McDonalds in the US. The EU quality of life is clearly better (as is health care, education, etc.)

Similarly, the Bush policies of disinvestment in social welfare have already had grave consequences for the US and promise to have more.
When this generation of US baby boomers is eating dogfood in retirement because the GOP has defunded Social Security to give rich people tax breaks, worrying about how Europe will fund its' demographic transition will not be the most pressing concern. Maybe estimating calories/$ in Alpo versus Purina will be higher on the priority list.

As the happy parent of 2 children, I completely reject the unfounded claim that small families somehow mean "you don't value your culture". So if I have 2 kids who work hard , achieve, and contribute to society, I am somehow inferior to the crystal meth head with 7 children recently featured in our local paper? Valuing quantity over quality may fit the pro-natalist party line, but the exploding numbers of species extinctions clearly show that 6 billion humans only live on this planet by exterminating many other inhabitants.

The reason banks are big in Europe is because countries are bigger than states and until recently cross boarder mergers (inside the US or EU) were difficult if not outright impossible.

Biggest American company according to stock value is also an oil company IIRC and Europe is stronger in luxery goods.

Glen,
My personal experience is that Europeans are better educated than people from the US, with a much smaller permanent underclass. This is complicated a bit when the immigrant situation is included and some EU nations do better than others in integrating immmigrants.
Working in technology industries, Bill Gates and I agree that the weakness of US education is a major economic liability.
Time will tell if the EU's strategy of social investment pays off versus the US strategy of "keep taxes low and damn the consequences".
EU workers are just about as productive as US workers with many less hours worked, so productivity per hour worked is clearly higher. Might this have something to do with education and social investment?
The whole thesis of the article that started these comments seems off-kilter to me. Social alienation seems much stronger in the US than EU to me. If the baby-having US people love their own culture so much, why are murder rates in the US 2 to 10 times higher than EU rates? Do we show our love with weapons?

I think Robin is hitting close to the truth -- this has to be more of a social thing than an incentive thing. I spend a lot of time in the UK. You would be dismayed at the number of teenaged and single mothers in Manchester, and in all the welfare states in Europe these girls get paid by the government for getting knocked up. If anything the incentives run in the other direction: there are people who will actually get pregnant so they won't have to work. I'm not sure if Robin is right, but something else is definitely going on here.

Joe - "I'll add that a declining population may not be a bad thing for the planet. I can see real benefits."

No. This is textbook Malthusian fallacy. This may be true in third-world nations that have trouble keeping everyone fed, but in developed places like North America and the US, humans are a scarce commodity. As economies become more and more efficient at satisfying the basic material needs of human life, the value of human labour and human ingenuity increases. We don't have enough people, nevermind too much. Read your Julian Simon! ;)

Tom V., having 2 kids is a very different from choosing not to have any.

It may not be the welfare state, or the desire not to have children due to selfishness, or not valuing your culture. Use of abortion as a primary method of birth control is a major factor—infertility cause by scarring as a result of repeated abortions. This is particularly true in the USS-were (the former Soviet Union).

Matt, it is clearly more than values and incentives. Hispanics in California and the southwest have fewer children per generation the more generations they've been here, even when they still live in the barrios where they and their parents, or even grandparents, grew up. The same goes for Californians of Filipino ancestry, though those are more mobile and prone to move to suburbs as soon as possible. Both generally have no more than 2-3 children by the third generation after immigration.

I suspect the fourth generation now growing up will be thoroughly assimilated - my daughter, who lived in the same house all her life before going to college, is in love with a young man of thoroughly Americanized (everything but skateboard mania) Filipino background whose family has lived in Oklahoma for several generations.

a: Biggest American company according to stock value is also an oil company IIRC and Europe is stronger in luxery goods.

No, Exxon has been surpassed by Walmart. And who needs luxury goods when you've got Walmart?

Well, anyway, if the Europeans are fully employed and living high on the hog for a change, I guess we won't have to listen to any more of their cracks about Rich Americans.

Oops. "North America and the US" in that last post of mine should read "North America and the EU."

Tom -- That's another good data point to add. Children of immigrants tend to have less children themselves. So whatever this is, it's clearly something indigenous to developed nations.

My guess is that it's due to the difference in the types of economies in developed nations versus undeveloped ones. In a third world/developing nation, people tend to be tied down a lot more to one geographical area, either because they have to live off their land (agriculture, livestock, etc) or because there's just not a lot of mobility available at all. People live in the same place their family lived, often in the same home, and raise a family there because that's just how things are done. By contrast, developed nations tend to follow more of a Free Agent Nation model -- comparitavely high levels of income mobility, much more job churn, more educational opportunities, much easier physical mobility, etc. The fast pace and mobility of our economies tend to gear people more toward being free agents and things are much more unpredictable, so it doesn't make as much sense to raise a large family. Combine that with a welfare system which is guarenteed to take care of people in their old age and you've got all the right disencentives.

This seems to make sense to me. Anyone else?

#19

I think that that is a selection effect. The Europeans who travel to American are richer and the same is true for Americans who travel to Europe.

#20

Teenage motherhood is a UK problem and not a European, atleast not on the scale of the UK, but their programs are better than welfare in the UK.

#21 number of people in Europe who choose to have no babies is small. It is just that everybody decides too have only two. When you than realise than 10% of couples are baren and you asume that 5% of women won't find a partner than you get a reproductive rate of 1.7 . The number that France and Holland have, two of the more conservative countries in Europe.

Welfare system has absolutely nothing to do with it. I believe that there is even a positive correlation between high but below replacement birthrate and the size of the welfare state
If you get your two.oh kids when you 30-35 then it is highly likely that they both will still be alive and can provide for you(culture has to change for this though) when you die (if you are 90 than they will be only 55-65).
You can also live in a standard 3 bedroom house and drive a standard (and cheap) 4 seat car. Getting 3 kids doesn't make it a lot more expensive but when you get above that than life becomes really expensive or significant substandard.

Also claims of the nearing collapse of the welfare state are a bit overstretch. The number of active compared with inactive people will still be lower than during the fase when a high number of kids were born

Matt,

It does not account for the fact that multi-generation Hispanic families in California have less and less children per generation even when living in the neighborhoods where they all grew up. An interesting story I read described a Hispanic grandmother telling her daughter that she'd regret not having enough children to play as a full basketball team (five kids) against their cousins.

The story also mentioned that most of the grandmother's siblings, and her children, owned their own homes at that point. Impliedly at California prices.

_ "Go to any child-care store in Vienna. Its clients will be predominantly Arabic, Iranian, Pakistani, Turkish, Japanese, Korean, and Black African. Viennese women never bear children -- they cherish their figures and careers instead. The Western-European pension systems made the bringing up of children less advantageous than social climbing and maximization of income."_

If Vienna is like every other western city then the white middle case will move to the suburbs before having kids. The same is probably true of the black middle class but i doubt that it already exist in Austria.

bq, "When this generation of US baby boomers is eating dogfood in retirement because the GOP has defunded Social Security to give rich people tax breaks, worrying about how Europe will fund its' demographic transition will not be the most pressing concern. Maybe estimating calories/$ in Alpo versus Purina will be higher on the priority list."

Let me get this straight the government funded social security. Then the government decided not to fund social security. The government took from the working class to fund social security and said let us hold that dollar for you because you will need it later. The government said gee we are holding a lot of money just for you and it's in a trust fund. Damn that's a lot of MONEY and you know what we can't spend it. Then the government said how do I get my hands on that MONEY. Then the government said I know let's move it from the trust fund to the general fund. Then the government said (damn we're good) I can keep the books clean now lets borrow that MONEY and put an IOU in the jar. Then the government said we as the government don't have MONEY we are not a corporation that builds profit lines into its' services. The government said not to worry we collect more taxes (you didn't give the government enough to provide for social security) and replace the IOU's with the extra taxes we collect. But the government said I want that MONEY let's replace the IOU's later. Now the government says you get no social security because why? Because you stingy people don't want to replace the funds the government squandered. That's why.

"One-half of all U.S. children will live in a one-parent house"

This surprises you? Why? My younger sister and brother were raised in a one parent home for a portion of their lives. Why. Father got old and died. As the years increase your mortality rate increases (immortality - not in my lifetime). It is not unusual that out of a family of four the youngest of the brood will most likely come from a one parent home. Why? That's life is why. Given today's propensity of child birth not occurring until 30's and 40's I would expect this statistic to go up.

If you really want to examine the quality of life in America here's a good site for some research. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Start crunching some numbers and lets start comparisons of apples to apples, oranges to oranges.

It is true what they say about real estate. It really is location, location, location so i wouldn't be surprised if grandma lived in a severly depressed market aka really bad neighbourhood

Deathrate under 55 isn't that high to explain it.

In the 1960s there were only about 350,000 North-African Muslims living in France, with some 1.25 million French living in North Africa

Pied noir were mostly Italians and Eastern Europeans.

Joe, re: your #6 above. Well said.

Tom Volckhausen, where there is room for debate on the President's social security proposals, I don't see the utility of your inventions above. There is no "disinvestment in social welfare" and none of the President's social security proposals amount to "defunding" social security.

These inventions do nothing but discredit you.

More importantly, they have nothing to do with the purpose of the original post at all. Your comments are just poor attempts at distraction.

Tom Volckhausen, what the serious commentators are chiefly concerned about in Europe's future is the demographic time bomb, and it looks much, much worse in Europe than the US (not that it won't be a problem in the US as well). There are several key reasons for the disparity, and the facts are not really in dispute:

First, the birth rate is much lower in Europe than the US. Several countries are down to 1.2 children per woman, and everywhere it's below replacement. These rates are significantly lower than in the US.

Second, government-funded retirement benefits are significantly more generous and start earlier than in the US, compounding the problem. And it doesn't look like any politician can touch this before it gets to complete crisis.

Third, virtually no European country can sustain a high rate of immigration like the US can without significant fraying of the social fabric. The US is used to rapidly assimilating immigrants and especially their children -- Europe is still trying to figure this out. I believe that the US will essentially be forced to maintain high rates of immigration of young people for the forseeable future to keep our (less generous) welfare state solvent, but at least we can.

(The one key area I see Europe as having an advantage in this realm -- their socialized medical systems are much better at saying "no" to expensive medical treatments for their elderly.)

Twenty or thirty years ago I would have agreed with you about the US having a worse problem with an unassimilated underclass, but the US and Europe have been going in opposite directions on this one. I see Europe as being where the US was in the 1970s with unassimilated and angry minorities -- hopefully they will be able to come out of it, but it took us a generation to make the progress we have.

The birth rate between white middle class Americans and Europeans is alike. But America has a lot more immigrants and poor people. That are the people who are responsable for the higher birthrate

The (pre) retirement benefits are being rolled back everywhere in the EU. You may claim that it is not done fast enough but not that it isn't done.

France, Belgium and England (not UK) have been immigrant countries for the last hunderd years.

in re #36-
Curt: actually in the 60's there was only one angry minority worth talking about, the American blacks. I'd assert that was due to the fact that the end of the Civil War and Reconstruction were poorly executed and their effects took a century to overcome. No other minority had that type of experience. Both American Indians and Puero Ricans had similar gripes, but any coherent anger was confined to their reservations or the territory of Puerto Rico.

Contrast the overall US pattern to the European, let alone Japanese, pattern in which immigrant minorities are aggressively segregated and usually denied civil rights in a manner reminiscent of Jim Crows height of power in the South. This contrast makes me doubt if Europe or Japan will effectively overcome their demographic trend's deletarious effects on the social fabric, which ironically might make the National Socialist demands for parental fertility to support the state's integrity come up again in a new format.

Contrast the overall US pattern to the European pattern in which immigrant minorities are aggressively segregated and usually denied civil rights in a manner reminiscent of Jim Crows height of power in the South.

Huh?

"As economies become more and more efficient at satisfying the basic material needs of human life, the value of human labour and human ingenuity increases. We don't have enough people, nevermind too much."

This just doesn't make sense. As economies become more efficient, we need less human labour, not more. We do need more ingenuity, so lets educate and provide entrepreneurial opportunities for the people we have now.

about immigrant populations: Someone did a study tracking women in developing countries, and found the biggest factors in declining birthrate were:
1) cheap available reliable birth-control
2) women feeling self-empowered enough to use it. In other words, women deciding the sizes of their families, not their husbands or tradition.

Blame those ornery women all over the globe who don't want to have more than 3 kids. Once they move to a developed country, they can act on what they wanted to do all along.

You can try to blame this on feminism, but women have always tried to control the size of their families by whatever means they could, and few women want to bear and raise more than a few kids, if they have a choice.

Blindly ideological people crack me up.
"There is no disinvestment in social welfare".
Links below from google to 5,880 stories about Medicaid cuts (what planet is this where there is no disinvestment?)
5,880 Medicaid cut stories

Some excerpts
"A companion to Matt Blunt’s Medicaid cuts, the bill would end coverage of dental, podiatry and other health care services"
"... As a family physician, let me describe a few other patients I saw one week who will bear the weight of Bush's proposed Medicaid cuts"etc.,etc.
But what does reality matter when you have an ideology?
Sometimes I just wish for an honest conservative who says "Fine, let poor people go hungry, homeless, and without medical care, as long as my taxes are low", but no, in IdeoWorld somehow cuts can be made with no consequences for real humans.
BTW, Bush's Social Security plans include benefit reductions around 40% for my age group. The current Social Security surpluses will be used to fund the war in Iraq and tax cuts for the rich, with any payments back into the trust fund unlikely as long as the GOP rules. Somehow, I think spending money that you do not have and Social Security problems are germane to a discussion of "demographic collapse".
On the subject of immigrant assimilation I would agree that Europe has a problem and that the US may have an advantage. Many immigrants in EU are either unemployed or underemployed while US immigrants (especially Asian) are often highly educated/skilled/employed. The company I work for bears this out with about 50% non-US born technical workforce.

Most developing countries are already below replacement rates. Only sub-sahara Africa, some parts of the subcontinent and the Gaza strip still have a high number of children per woman. In the rest of the world you have the two kids per marriage or the one kid per marriage as standard. The only reason most countries are still growing is inertia

Re: #41

BTW, Bush's Social Security plans include benefit reductions around 40% for my age group. The current Social Security surpluses will be used to fund the war in Iraq and tax cuts for the rich, with any payments back into the trust fund unlikely as long as the GOP rules

Using current SS surpluses to pay for current expenses is not something unique to the Bush administration - it's been happening for quite some time. And there won't be any payments back into the trust fund until the Treasury bonds come due, not "as long as the GOP rules" (I hardly see a Dem president putting the money back into SS when they would rather blow the cash on the latest fashionable liberal entitlement program). The only new bits are the whining about funding the war on terror and the "tax cuts for the rich" meme.

And though I'm not certain where you're getting your numbers from, I'm pretty sure the "benefit reductions around 40% for my age group" would come from the President's proposals for private accounts. What you're conveniently ignoring, however, is that the return on those accounts would more than make up for the meager pittance you'd lose from the main schedule of benefits.

Somehow, I think spending money that you do not have and Social Security problems are germane to a discussion of "demographic collapse".

The fact that the Bush adminstration is spending money in a manner you don't like is not germane to the discussion at all. In point of fact, the system is set up explicitly to let the government spend money they do have right now, and replace it with an IOU.

Trying to prop up the trust fund is a losing proposition. Like the CBO noted, "Positive trust fund balances indicate the legal authority to pay benefits but not the budgetary resources to do so." As long as the government uses a trust fund for future SS liabilities instead of actual cash or securities on hand, SS will necessarily be funded by robbing younger workers of their earnings to pay current retirees. That is where the demographic collapse comes in--if you don't have enough young workers, the whole crooked scheme falls apart.

Sometimes I just wish for an honest conservative who says "Fine, let poor people go hungry, homeless, and without medical care, as long as my taxes are low", but no, in IdeoWorld somehow cuts can be made with no consequences for real humans.

Yeah, because all conservatives are rich greedy people with extravagant health care and no concern for the common man. Not a single conservative is an honest worker trying to bring home a few bucks for their family, without the government taking a huge chunk to pay for other people's welfare. How dare those conservatives criticize a mandatory Ponzi scheme that takes your earnings every paycheck, with only a vague promise that (hopefully) sometime in the future they'll be getting back a small amount that's not even enough to live on. Boy, you got us pegged.

But what does reality matter when you have an ideology?

So very true. This statment should be tattooed into every liberal's forehead, so we evil conservatives know what to expect when we talk to them.

"What you're conveniently ignoring, however, is that the return on those accounts would more than make up for the meager pittance you'd lose from the main schedule of benefits."
So you and the Bush administration are SURE about the returns the stock market will deliver over the next 40 years. Interestingly, nobody else is. As Krugman noted
"The Social Security projections that say the trust fund will be exhausted by 2042 assume that economic growth will slow as baby boomers leave the work force. The actuaries predict that economic growth, which averaged 3.4 percent per year over the last 75 years, will average only 1.9 percent over the next 75 years."
Yet privatization schemes are predicated on MUCH higher returns as "Schemes for Social Security privatization, like the one described in the 2004 Economic Report of the President, invariably assume that investing in stocks will yield a high annual rate of return, 6.5 or 7 percent after inflation, for at least the next 75 years. Without that assumption, these schemes can't deliver on their promises. Yet a rate of return that high is mathematically impossible unless the economy grows much faster than anyone is now expecting. "
Talk about a Ponzi scheme, use one set of books to "prove" that Social Security is going broke, and another set of books to flog the privatization scheme that your ideology demands.
Does anyone remember (or care) about Bush's solemn promises that his tax cuts would not cause deficits? Clearly Grover Norquist and his buddies intended to "starve the beast" and are happy that funds for social programs are disappearing, but was Bush mistaken or lying in those easily googled claims?
So the honest, hard-working conservative believes that taxes pay for "other people's welfare"."Currently, 70 percent of Social Security funds go to retirees, 15 percent to disabled workers, and 15 percent to survivors."
How does that honest, hard-working conservative know that he will not have a car accident or a stroke/heart attack and need Social Security toprovide for him or his family?
Answer: He does not know and "other people's welfare" could become a financial lifeline in an instant.
I have seen more than one "anti-government conservative" drawing government benefits when misfortune struck.
But in IdeoWorld only the "other people" ever need disability or survivor support.
And the "other people" should just huddle up on a sidewalk grate somewhere and stop whining.

Why can't the goverment just lend an afwul lot of money, invest it and life of the returns. Then they wouldn't need to tax me.

ps. For anybody who says that it wont work answer me why it would work for a pension plan.

a- Because if they lend it then they don't have it to invest. Your assumptions are self contradictory.

They are not self contradictory.

Lend money cheap because they are goverment bonds and invest it in stock because they have a better return. What is hard to misunderstand?

Anyone else see the humor in a Marxocrat lecturing us on economics ? or counting the leftist media fraud flood that happens every time a non-communist holds the high office. (the homeless issue disapears magically during marxocrat rule, as if all the homeless enter a time warp portal and jump from one to the next Republican Administration.)

Leftist lies vs reality is like looking at communist consitutions, that often read like utopia-humana, the chinese constitution has a garranty of freedom of assembly and expression, what is the reality ?

That the problem with leftists, they still think we will swallow the marketing, and ignore the reality.

Look how his argument is presented in light of two facts he ignores, ignores because it invalidates his assertion.

Fact one, SS is a poor bargain in rate of return, and has a projected cash flow problem, and any tax increase to service it will depress the economy, reducing govt income,

Fact two, historically the same period of time plotted compareable to years of contributions to SS, private investment returns have always been superior by glactic margins even if the worst possible start and end periods are picked.

But what he offers is the marxist autofail blind faith idiology based "solution" from the egalitarian religion that has a perfect record of failure.

And then goes on to rail against those advocating the use of what has been historically dependable success, and in fact the most successfull system that has ever been.

Such is the dependable illogic of the left.

80 Years of failure, and they cant modify their programming.

In fact look at the very problem he is dealing with, the inherrent problem of a leftist "solution" and he still thinks the ponzi scheme can work.

It was even more of a joke when he compared our living standards, productivity, et all.

BTW Robin,, check out the birth rates the red states vs blue, our population is still growing while they are aborting their population numbers ever lower, making demographics a poor indicator of their ability to re obtain power and keep it.

The increased number of pensioners is what is leading to a reduced economic growth not if you want them to pay out of taxes or investements

Are you sure about SS "investement" being worse historicaly than a private plan because i seriously doubt it? Especially the early SS receivers got a golden deal.

So you and the Bush administration are SURE about the returns the stock market will deliver over the next 40 years. Interestingly, nobody else is.

Yes, we are SURE that the stock market will give a better return than SS. The real rate of return on SS currently stands around 3.5% or lower, depending on your personal demographic (charts here ), and is still declining; in fact, the real return was never above 5%, even at the program's inception. The stock market, however, has historically yielded an average of 7.2% gains.

Now we have doom-and-gloomers saying that the stock market won't continue to return 7%. For example, that Krugman column where he declared it "mathematically impossible" to realize those gains. Let's set aside the fact that, given the pace of market change, trying to predict any trend in the markets past 10 years or so is inevitably futile. Let's also pretend to ignore Krugman's heavy bias which leads to automatic rejection of any idea that sounds remotely conservative. Even if we concede the 1.9% GDP growth rate, stock market returns would still be greater than SS returns . Saying that "nobody else" expects stock market returns to add up is not exactly true (heavy math warning!), and there's also good arguments that we shouldn't be using a lower projected estimate of the market's returns. Private account advocates aren't using two sets of books for estimates -- the SS actuaries themselves used the 1.9% number to show SS will go bankrupt; the data on future stock returns is based on the same data. Krugman was the one who incorrectly speculated on the stock market's yield using that number. (Just a cautionary note to never get your data from a single source, especially if that source is Paul Krugman.)

And let's also keep in mind that the return on the stock markets is guaranteed to you as long as it's in your account, while the SS benefits can be cut at any time by the government. You could faithfully contribute for 30+ years to SS, only to have your benefits cut the day before you retire. Do you really want to trust your financial future to the whims of Congress?

So the honest, hard-working conservative believes that taxes pay for "other people's welfare"."Currently, 70 percent of Social Security funds go to retirees, 15 percent to disabled workers, and 15 percent to survivors."

Seems to me the second sentence makes my point for me. Our honest, hard-working conservative (HHWC) is neither a retiree, nor disabled, nor a survivor. The mandatory SS withdrawl from his paycheck largely goes to pay for other people's retirement, and the only thing HHWC gets from it today is a promise that at some point in the future, the HHWC will get to live off the contributions of younger workers.

How does that honest, hard-working conservative know that he will not have a car accident or a stroke/heart attack and need Social Security toprovide for him or his family?

Quite frankly, it's irresponsible to depend on SS to save you in case of an unforseen event like this. Any person who has a family to provide for has a responsibility to plan for their future in case of tragedy. That's what Long-Term Disability insurance, Accidental Death and Dismemberment insurance, and standard Life Insurance is for. It's is a matter of personal responsibility. (Although I would enthusiastically support a plan that kills SS, but replaces it with a safety net for ONLY survivors and the disabled.)

projected spending on SS in 50 years is 6.5% of GDP
Assume return on stockmarket of 7% than you need to have invested in the stockmarket 6.5/7 = 92% of GDP (1) to pay only for SS. Total value of the stockmarket is at the moment 1.5 x GDP. You want to increase demand in stock by 40% don't you think that this would lead to a significant lowering of the yield?

I also find a periode of 50 years not exactly long to predict future stockmarket return. Why not use the last 200 years, can i assume that this is because the first 100 were not good for the stockmarket? The last 50 years also had a large growth in population, which makes GDP growth easy, and that this growth in population will be unlikely to be true in the future because if population growth will stay high than paying for SS is easy.

(1) You can lower this number somewhat by assuming that because the yield is higher than the increase in pension payout but you still get a number that is above 50% of GDP

and the only thing HHWC gets from it today is a promise that at some point in the future, the HHWC will get to live off the contributions of younger workers.

Isn't that true for a pension plan too. If the younger workers decide not to contribute by buying stock than the HHWC is also only left with a promise

"Those who remain ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it"
Social security and the European welfare states were established in response to well-documented market failures which resulted in destitution for large populations. Today's right wing ideologues ignore these documented market failures and their only prescription is more "market solutions". If the market truly provided a social safety net, then industrialized societies would not have universally developed government support for disadvantaged citizens.
The welfare states developed because citizens were willing to tax themselves in order to avoid a society where the elderly and unfortunate lived in dire poverty. In a new climate of selfishness, clearly some right-wingers will gladly accept destitution and suffering for others merely to have a few more percentage points of income. Happily, these selfish people are still a minority in all industrialized democracies.
Returning to the original subject of this thread, 'demographic collapse", currency markets make their own estimates of the future prospects for government solvency with exchange rates. Accepting the conservative dogma that "the market is always right", the plunge of the dollar versus the Euro clearly shows market opinion on relative strength.
I urge all conservatives who believe that Bush's "spend what you have not got" budgeting is superior to the EU's "demographic collapse" to put their money where their mouth is.
Buy currency futures and go long on the dollar and short the Euro! You will have very little company. If you are correct you will make lots of money. If you are wrong and lose it all, at least you will have the consolation of having acted in accordance with your beliefs.

Isn't that true for a pension plan too. If the younger workers decide not to contribute by buying stock than the HHWC is also only left with a promise

If you're talking about one of those old guaranteed benefits pension plans, then yes, it is possible for that to happen. However no one is suggesting that SS private accounts work like that.

What private account advocates do want is something akin to a 401(k) plan, or a stock option plan. If you have an account that holds stocks, then it's not dependant on anyone's promise to pay; you actually own tangible securities with a transparent market value, that you can be sold at market price. If you have a 401(k), it is an account with actual money in it that YOU own and can distribute as you see fit. You aren't forced to give that money to someone who promises to pay you back when you retire; you can withdraw it right now (albeit at heavy tax penalties) or roll it over into another account.

My statement was correct: under the current SS setup, the HHWC only gets a government promise in exchange for his contributions, and the younger workers pay that promise off when HHWC retires. On the other hand, 401(k) plans or stock portfolios don't depend on the younger workers to pay for HHWC's retirement. One system is clearly better than the other.

Tom

Perhaps we can put the welfare state in terms we can all deal with. That being answering the question of what is it exactly that you have to have that you don't have and not one of that which is I want but don't have.

Do you need food and water?
Do you need shelter?
Do you need clothing?
Do you need medical care?
Do you need a pension?
Do you need a TV?
Do you need a car?
Do you need a job?
Do you need an education?

Please tell me exactly what is you need.

I'm not talking about old plans etc. Just the fact that prices drop if the next generation stops buying stock and that this has happen a few times during the last century.

Also claims that stock has a transparent market value when you are talking about the agregate of millions of people is just plainly wrong.
My share in Microsoft has maybe a transparent market value but that is absolutely not true for the shares of Bill Gates.

Current setup of SS: Goverment promise in exchange of contribution. Not a problem if the market doesn't tank otherwise goverment may not fullfill complete promise or has to raise taxes.
Suggested setup of SS: investement in stock. Not a problem when the market doesn't tank but if it does (and it has done so during some past periodes) than your sole.

Current setup SS is better(saver) outside of costs. So next question does it cost more? I don't think so except maybe in the case of the goverment totally controlling were to investement in but if that works (which i doubt) then why not lend more money, invest it in the stockmarket and let it pay off the interest plus my taxes

Re: #54

Returning to the original subject of this thread, 'demographic collapse", currency markets make their own estimates of the future prospects for government solvency with exchange rates.

First, this is a grossly incomplete oversimplification of the currency markets. While there are some currency speculators who base their trades on government solvency, the majority of the action in currency markets is the result of commerce and economic data points. You have to take into account trade balances, inflation, geopolitical instability, central bank's monetary policy, etc.

Second, it's hard to condone currency speculation as a long-term investment strategy. Exhibit A for this case would have to be when George Soros "broke the Bank of England" (and he's not even one of those conservatives you hate so much). The UK wasn't in danger of losing solvency, but if you were on the wrong side of the market at that time, you got burned.

If you really wanted to express faith in the US's long-term solvency, you'd buy Treasury bonds -- which, as a matter of fact, the rest of the world is doing. (In fact so much of our debt is held by foreign investors that it's starting to worry some Americans, and rightly so.) Investors aren't worried about national solvency; but they should be worried about the solvency and underlying economic effects of national welfare programs.

Setting aside the ad hominems about conservatives and right-wingers not caring about people, it should be remembered that the fear of collapse is based on measurable demographic trends that are threatening to overload the welfare programs. Even if you're assuming that we have a moral imperative to provide welfare programs, that they're the "right thing to do", the way they're currently structured are a recipe for disaster. Is it wrong for conservatives to worry about that? They should be praised for trying to point out and fix the problem, not vilified because they dare to criticize your precious programs.

Funny to see those holding up the historic malfeasance of Europe as any predictor for America.

I wonder what Europe would have if they had not suffered the folly of aristocratic wars sending human waves into machine guns, the huge diversion of human and tangible capital.

A history of diverting industrial production into bombs, a consumption of wealth, blowing up and destroying all the infastructure and structures they spent centuries building, and the depletion misdirection of the workforce into the making of cannon, and cannon fodder

Im talking about world war 1, a war that had no reason to happen at all.

Then came even more calamity afterwards, the rise of leftist evil that murdered 174 million people, making it even more expensive, over 4 times more expensive, than the 34 Million battle dead of all wars, and all the forms of that holocaustic leftist evil, National Socialism, and Communism, and more war, waste of human capital and industrial production and sqandered resources.

We dont really see them adopt anything of American success untill the German Free Market Miracle that began in the 50's, and just when it looks like success, the marxist come along and start to destroy that and Germany is now in a marxist ditch again.

Ahh the folly of Europe, they just cant seem to get it right, and just when you think they might (The German free market success) leftist idiocy sets in like a cancer and starts to destroy everything again.

Meanwhile across the pond in America, we continue to have the most success ever seen in world history, and our success is directly in porportion to our faithfullness in the Personal and Economic Liberty and a our failures in direct porportion to our partake of the European leftist poison, the well proven recipie for failure.

Not sorry Tom ... none of us are gullable to fall for marxist claptrap, leftist fake history, or will full ignorance of the unavoidable mechanisms of cause and effect.

Europe is a product of its history, the closer they emulate American ideals the more sucessfull they have been, (that goes for us keeping faith with them here at home too!) and the more they embrace the proven marxist failure, the more they see failure.

Frankly, its a gas to see a lefty in his death struggle to deny reality, to deny the verdicts of history, or to muddle up its verdict with the unrelated costs of disease and war (factors that are both within and without mans control)

To be an advocate of the most successfull of all success that the planet earth has ever seen, todays Republican Conservatives have plenty to crow about, they are vindicated by history, for they are based of a foundation of histories lessons, complete with all it rough edges, humans are imperfect and inperfectable creatures, but bouyed by western mans ability to learn from his failures. (Something leftist man has demonstrated absolutely zero capacity to do)

Leftism is already on the ashheap of mans failures, and it has the singular privledge of being its most costly cruel and bloody human failure, possibly (hopefully) for all time.

And yet the religion of the greatist failure, still pretend to offer us (who follow what is the most success that has ever been) advice for our imperfections.

What an insult to thought itself that is.

Europe will be forced to follow our example or slide further into failure. its already to the point where the leftist media can no longer hide what is happening to yet another socialist folly.

Two bad for the Russians, we threw off a king and got freedom, they threw off a Tsar and got holocaust and 80 years of the iron boot.

What a bummer for them eh ?

_If you really wanted to express faith in the US's long-term solvency, you'd buy Treasury bonds -- which, as a matter of fact, the rest of the world is doing. _

The world is only buying short term bonds and world is mostly central banks which i wouldn't trust for investement advise. Their record is on that point not really good but it isn't really the reason they exist either.

we have a moral imperative to provide welfare programs,

There is nothing moral about it. The voters like them because they benefit from them

USMC,
Of course, what I need is water,food,shelter,clothing, and medical care roughly in that order.
But for me, this is not about self-interest, after 20 years working as an engineer and making real estate investments I will do fine with or without SS. In fact, I am in a tax bracket where GWB's rate reductions benefit me substantially.
For me, the question is "What kind of society do we want to live in?" and not "What is in it for me?". Personally, I want to live in a society where the least successful do not suffer without the basics of life, either because of medical misfortune, bad choices, bad luck or whatever.

Dan
Maybe suprisingly, I somewhat agree with you. Both EU and US will have to adapt to changing life spans, birth rates, economics, etc. Tax rates, benefit amounts will get adjusted to fit new realities. Catastrophe excepted, societies tend to muddle through. I would put my bets on the EU making the changes needed. Certainly, many of the social welfare states have lots of room to adjust benefits before real deprivation becomes an issue (unlike the US where millions of people are already enduring inadequate medical care, mental health services, education, housing, etc.).
So (at what might be the end of a long thread) I just think "demographic collapse" is that much hyperbole reflecting the bias of an observer rather than a likely possibility.

Raymond,
Did you see any of the stats I put up earlier in this thread. The US is far from "most successfull of all success that the planet earth has ever seen" based on many metrics including life expectancy, infant mortality, murder rates, poverty levels, cost & quality of medical care,etc. . Somehow I do not expect you to acknowledge these facts and incorporate them into your world view.
Ignoring inconvenient facts is one measure of ideological bias, and I am sure I have my share. I like to think that if someone could show me a market based medical system that delivered better health care at a lower cost with no unfortunates falling thru the cracks that I would support such a system.
Unfortunately, the real world experience is the opposite, with national health care delivering better health metrics at lower cost in every instance where data has been collected.

The German free market success

"Das Wirtschafts Wunder" was not really a free market succes as the system they have now is much more freemarket than the system they had during the 50's.

Tom

Okay now lets get to where food, water, shelter, clothing and medical care come from. Should they come from the fruits of ones labor or off the backs of others? I would assume that you would agree that preferably these would / should come from the fruits of one's labor. Now I understand that there are people with needs. I also understand that there are those with needs that do not have the where with all to provide for them. I would no more expect a two year old to provide for itself than I would a mentally incapacitated adult. I would also agree that we as a society can and should to some extent deal with supplying the needs for these types of cases. We do that now through charities and government sponsored programs.

Now should it be societies responsibility to provide you with these things for your entire life? Should it be societies responsibility to provide you with these things when you are old and gray?

From what I can tell you are an intelligent individual. You've managed to make the money required to lead a comfortable life. It also sounds as though you've managed to make the money to provide for a comfortable retirement. To that end I give you applause and say job well done.

Medical care will be the largest expense of the older society. At some given point we will all die. Medical care aside there is nothing that will stop the inevitable. So where do I invest my money and your dream of a better society in the two year old or the 68 year old? Better yet do I invest in a used ticker for the 68 year old or in immunizations for the 2 year old? Don't get me wrong I value each as much but even society can't stop the inevitable death of the elderly. Can I make their life a little more comfortable? Certainly I can. What's an acceptable expense for that? For the 68 year old that can afford a used ticker I say let them have it. For those that can not when I'm 68 I say immunize the 2 year old. Personally I expect nothing from government in the way of social services. I do not believe it is the government's right to take from you to provide for me. You would do better to give to charity in my opinion. Nor do I believe it is my God given right for government to provide for me. We all make society better by doing for others of our own accord not by being forced to do for others with government mandates.

So when you retire and you collect that social security check every month (which if I understand correctly you wont need). Remember the 2 year old that did not get the immunizations. And if your feeling really generous please donate to the government coffers and tell the government to put it in the social security / medicaid / medicare program for those that will need it. It might keep these programs afloat for another year.

Now you might think I'm being cold, ruthless, and inhumane. I assure you I am being nothing less than practical.

Personally, I want to live in a society where the least successful do not suffer without the basics of life, either because of medical misfortune, bad choices, bad luck or whatever.

Easy Tom ... the world is full of such failures, due to the govt assuming responsibility for those things.

Perhaps you can go there and rot in failure with those that agree with you, rather than imposing your leftist schemes and their proven garranty of failure opon others.

Course, in America famine has never happened, if you want to find mass starvation look to the infamous leftist famines.

Even medical care, our indigent can go to the emergency room and get help, whereas in your leftist failure nanny states you can die waiting in line for weeks.

Easy equasion. leftist solution = always the worst solution.

Its all about the incentives my boy, try to make the leaches too confortable, and you multiply times 100 the number of leaches, and you find their irresposibility means they dont even manage their handouts any better than they manage any other aspect of their life.

Such leftist policy has totaly destroyed the black family, in fact one wonders if that wasnt their intent.

#62 a

"Das Wirtschafts Wunder" was not really a free market succes as the system they have now is much more freemarket than the system they had during the 50's.

And you said that with a straight face too ...

More marxist brainwashing I guess.

Leftist Rosevelt left Hitlers Socialist policy in place. and the economy stagnated.

There was little hope for improvement. Incredibly, the allies -- who had freed Germany from the Nazi terror -- imposed their own form of economic tyranny by maintaining Hitler's price and wage controls.

Enter Ludwig Erhard. Born in 1897 in Furth, and educated at the University of Frankfurt, Erhard had been a disciple of the great free market economist, Wilhelm Roepke. After serving as an economist in Nuremberg, Erhard was appointed head of the post-war Bizonal Economic Council. Looking over the wreckage from six years of total war, Erhard knew that only free market policies could get Germany back on its feet.

Taking the country by surprise, Erhard went on the air on a Sunday night in June 1948.

First, controls would end on a wide range of consumer goods. Within six months, controls on food would be dropped. Erhard gained support for his measures by billing them as a patriotic move designed to replace a "foreign" economic system that had been imposed on Germany. The German people were astonished to hear that all these changes would commence the next morning.3

Almost immediately, the German economy sprang to life. The unemployed went back to work, food reappeared on store shelves, and the legendary productivity of the German people was unleashed. Within two years, industrial output trebled. By the early 1960s, Germany was the third greatest economic power in the world. And all of this occurred while West Germany was assimilating hundreds of thousands of East German refugees.

You call the overbearing labor regs and massive progressive tax rate a "free market?"

Euro socialism, near marxist slavery, is a rather odd defintion of free.

And your mega corps are a sign of dysfunction, not success, the slavery-rate taxation means small business cannot compete with the mega corps.

Thats what our tax cuts "for the rich" here in the states are all about by the way, to make it easier for small business starts. you can have your "Third Way" neo-socialist welfare state failure that will succeed at nothing except rotting the foundation underpinning the whole thing till it comes crashing down.

Raymond, Did you see any of the stats I put up earlier in this thread.

Yes, I rejected them, along with Ted Rauls, Chomsky Singer, M Moore and the garbage from the graduates of course that blend a postmodern gobbly gook of "Gender and the Cultures of US Imperialism" into economic theory that is basically anti-us propaganda.

I would rather want to know what Heyek would have to say, not some moonbat leftist achademic fraud.

I do read articles that compare the buying power and standard of living of our working poor to the Europe middle class, and it seems our poor live better, have more living space, cars, fancy electronic toys, etc.

Try something better than the drivel of some leftist quack.

Raymond, the system the German used after the war was simply not a free market, laizer-fair system and as such can't be described as "American". For that the banks and the unions were way to close to business.

Of course medical care will be the largest expense of the older society. At some given point we will all die. Medical care aside there is nothing that will stop the inevitable.