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Tue 22 Aug, 2006 07:25 pm
we need to be f*cking for the sake of mankindand Amerca's future. I'm willing to make myself available to you in order to save the world.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008831
I guess I'm out of it unless I have medical intervention.
But... have fun!!
My view when I first read this was, yeah, well, there will be quite a reaction to all this conservative clamping one of these days. With any luck I'll live to see it.
Sigh...... But, I don't wanna have kids!
Why are we like that? Why don't we have many kids?
Ha!
"Democratic politicians may have no more babies to kiss"
Yeppers, the world will be going to hell in a handbasket.
"Simply put, liberals have a big baby problem..."
Heh. A lot of truth in those words.
I'm not so worried about distribution of opinions over time. More worried about multiple wars and decimation and devestation and consequent lack of means for the many, even more than right now.
All we have to do is get those conservative kids into college so that we can brainwash them.
UN studies over the last half century show a decline right across the board of fertility in industrialized countries. There is no reason to assume it refers to politics--the fertility of rightwingnut women can't be said to be better than that of other women in industrialized countries.
Fertility rates are high in "third world" countries, and the suspicion is that all of this refers to natural mechanisms. In pre-industrial countries with weak economies and no provision for the elderly, having lots of children acts as an old age pension scheme--live with your kids when you get too old to take care of yourself. In industrialized countries, there's far less need to worry about that future, and to produce many children. Many scientists have speculated that this is the product of natural reactions within the populations concerned, over which we have no control.
People just don't like to be told that things happen with their bodies which they cannot control. By the way, the UN studies have suggested that the fertility of men declines as well as that of women.
This is also being studied at the
Oxford Centre for Population Research:
Quote:n the 21st century new demographic developments, unprecedented in history, face the fifty countries of the developed world. These trends may be summarised as 'fewer babies, longer lives, diverse households, older populations, living alone, more immigrants', all of which raise important theoretical issues and practical problems. It is generally supposed that most of these characteristics will eventually be shared by all human populations. Within the developed world itself, however, divergence is often more apparent than convergence, pointing to some diversity in population futures.
OXPOP, as it is known, looks at several other demographic factors than simply fertility.
Quote:Before the Industrial Revolution four features characterized all societies: high fertility rates, little education, the dominance of physical over human capital, and low rates of productivity growth. In modern high income countries we observe the opposite: low fertility, lots of education, human capital as an important a source of income, and high rates of productivity growth.
The preceeding quote is taken from the html version of a pdf document
by a memberof the economics deparment at the University of Carlifornia at Davis, Mr. Gregory Clark.
Quote:There is no reason to assume it refers to politics--the fertility of rightwingnut women can't be said to be better than that of other women in industrialized countries.
Au contrary, according to the linked article...
Quote:According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147 children. If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids.
Dunno about the credibility of the source, but it seems reasonable to me. Children are an important accessory in church. (Half-joking, folks. Or at least not trying to be nasty.)
I was basing my remarks on studies, most not done in the United States of fertility in industrialized nations, and not on the article, which i consider disingenuous, tendentious and productive of flawed conclusions. I was taking a position different, if not entirely in opposition to the article.
Of course, i could see how one would view religious fundamentalists and reactionary conservatives as third-world inhabitants of a first world nation . . .
Setanta wrote:the fertility of rightwingnut women can't be said to be better than that of other women in industrialized countries.
Id think it wouldnt be so much a question of their
fertility, as rather their greater likelihood to
choose having children, or more children.
nimh wrote:Setanta wrote:the fertility of rightwingnut women can't be said to be better than that of other women in industrialized countries.
Id think it wouldnt be so much a question of their
fertility, as rather their greater likelihood to
choose having children, or more children.
That is much more likely than asserting that the notional political alignment of the woman or her spouse is going to have a significant influence on fertility.
Setanta wrote:I was basing my remarks on studies, most not done in the United States of fertility in industrialized nations
But birth rates in Europe are significantly lower than in the US. I wouldnt be surprised if there were a correlation with the greater spread of secularism and liberalism in Europe.
Setanta wrote:nimh wrote:Id think it wouldnt be so much a question of their fertility, as rather their greater likelihood to choose having children, or more children.
That is much more likely than asserting that the notional political alignment of the woman or her spouse is going to have a significant influence on fertility.
Its also what I had understood the point of the article to be:
Quote:Simply put, liberals have a big baby problem: They're not having enough of them, they haven't for a long time
you fellas have taken my sophmoric post and turned it into a serious discussion... WTF? I feel violated....
Bear, if ever i take to homesexual rape, there is no one whom i would more eagerly violate than you.
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You cover a lot of ground, Habibi, when you refer to Europe. In the first place, i think you might be able to make a case that until recently, the core nations of the EU might have had a lower birth rate than the United States. However, just broadly referring to Europe ignores severl things, and also makes me suspicious. Not all of the Balkans can be reasonably said to be as "industrial" as the rest of Europe. Certainly the Soviet state accorded to its inhabitants a level of education and access to health care which those populations had not enjoyed under imperial Russian control. But with the burgeoning immigrant population in the west of Europe, i wonder if birth rates are still significantly lower in that part of Europe. I might also speculate that they may be dropping in the eastern part of Europe. When you say Europe, you are not nearly describing a political, social, economic and cultural unity which equates with the United States. With more than ten million immigrants in this country illegally, never mind how many are here legally, who is to say that a higher birth rate might not be a product of the presence of a far greater proportion of more fertile people recently arrived from "the third world" than is the case in "Europe?"
One of the reason i find the contention that there is any active political factor is the difficulty of establishing a reliable base line, and of producing a reliable sample. That would apply even more in "Europe," precisely because it does not represent a political, social, economic and cultural unity. After all, statistics have been proven to be the leading cause of cancer . . .
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