Killing Us Softly – With Liberalism

Why don’t Americans have children anymore?

I’m going to list the reasons I was thinking of. I can do this because I am as guilty as anyone for this problem in the country. I only have two children and talked my wife into stopping there. Here we go:

1. They are (were) too expensive to house
2. They are (were) too expensive to educate
3. They are (were) too expensive to clothe
4. They are too expensive to feed
5. They are too expensive to kick start into independence

Those are my reasons. Remember, at the age you are having them (like me) you are not making as much money as you did later in life – so money is a factor. There are other reasons, but I will let your add to the list if you want to. So, I can’t put the blame on Western women and feminism – at least I can’t. Abortion has not helped the situation, but I don’t think it is the cause of our problem.

If you look around, the problem is everywhere in the more civilized cultures;

“When it comes to forecasting the future, the birthrate is the nearest thing to hard numbers. If only a million babies are born in 2006, it’s hard to have two million adults enter the workforce in 2026.

And the hard data on babies around the Western world is that they’re running out a lot faster than the oil is. ‘Replacement’ fertility rate-i.e., the number you need for merely a stable population, not getting any bigger, not getting any smaller-is 2.1 babies per woman.

Some countries are well above that: the global fertility leader, Somalia, is 6.91, Niger 6.83, Afghanistan 6.78, Yemen 6.75. Notice what those nations have in common?

Scroll way down to the bottom of the Hot One Hundred top breeders and you’ll eventually find the United States, hovering just at replacement rate with 2.07 births per woman.

Ireland is 1.87, New Zealand 1.79, Australia 1.76. But Canada’s fertility rate is down to 1.5, well below replacement rate; Germany and Austria are at 1.3, the brink of the death spiral; Russia and Italy are at 1.2; Spain 1.1, about half replacement rate. That’s to say, Spain’s population is halving every generation. By 2050, Italy’s population will have fallen by 22%, Bulgaria’s by 36%, Estonia’s by 52%… The latter half of the decline and fall of great civilizations follows a familiar pattern: affluence, softness, decadence, extinction… A society that has no children has no future.” -Mark Steyn

The problem is liberalism – or socialism – or high costs, mostly due to tax policies. When people must give their income to the nanny state, they stop being as big a nanny themselves.

Forget feminism - women enter the workforce ‘because it is too expensive’ to make it on one paycheck. It is when over half of the average American paycheck ends up paying a tax of some kind. The taxes are worse in other nations – and notice their birth rates are even lower.

Ignoring Feminism and the Selfish Baby Boomer Syndrome – which contributed nicely – it is taxes that are driving us extinct. – Hank Dagny

Technorati Tags: Tax Rates, Birth Rates, America Alone, Me Generation