34 replies to this topic

[Render]

Quote

The rate of babies born in the United States hit a record low in 2011, a new analysis shows. Researchers say the drastic drop in the birth rate among immigrants has greatly contributed to the overall decrease.

http://www.livescien...ts-new-low.html

[notoverrated]

this is a good thing right?

[with bells on]

yeah, its good isn't it??

[Simbi Laveau]

How can immigrant births,affect this.....immigrants have a ton of kids here,to keep living here. Their child is a citizen,so they cannot be deported. Hispanic families come here,and have no less than two more kids,if not more .


This is why so many Chinese move here. To get around the one child rule . Dunno if I believe this one ,as it sounds fabricated to cater to an agenda about immigration .
I could be wrong .

[Cradle of Fish]

Ahh yes lets victimize the immigrants. The statistic goes against your preconceived notion therefore they've got an agenda.

I was suprised when I saw that Australian birth rates were low because my sisters at that point had 4 kids each. Look, not every immigrant is an illegal who comes into the country and spawns just so they can't be kicked out.

[Simbi Laveau]

Cradle of Fish, on 03 December 2012 - 12:03 PM, said:

Ahh yes lets victimize the immigrants. The statistic goes against your preconceived notion therefore they've got an agenda.

I was suprised when I saw that Australian birth rates were low because my sisters at that point had 4 kids each. Look, not every immigrant is an illegal who comes into the country and spawns just so they can't be kicked out.

Come to a supermarket here in nyc ,or ride and ambulance in Harlem for a week,and after you've seen the hundred plus immigrant families,who have 7 kids,all of which they are getting a Medicaid stipend for ,and they flash their Medicaid card at the grocery check out ,for the 400$,worth of food they are getting,all calculated on the amt of children they have,then tell me how its a preconceived notion .
Come live here,watch it in action for 30 years,and then you can tell us all,why the system works so well.
When sandy hits,families who have lived her for  their entire lives ,can't get relief money ,but a family of 8 immigrants from the Dominican republic ,are all doing fine  up in east ny .
As I always say ,I do not whip the info out of the air,I and probably any other paramedic or nyc police officer,can tell you the same thing.
Needless to say,this goes on in every major city in the USA .
Ask me about how they abuse the ambulance system ,and we all pay for it .


http://www.cbsnews.c...62-4000401.html

And I have plenty of immigrant friends,mostly thru work .They go out and get a job with a work visa,not milk the Medicaid system .
This article says 300,000 kids are born to illegal immigrants in the USA,yearly .
Does that sound like a decline to you ?

They have kids here,, to stay in the country ,and get bigger medicaid checks . So,forgive me if I find this all a little hard to believe .

http://www.cis.org/i...elfare-use-2011

Edited by Simbi Laveau, 03 December 2012 - 12:32 PM.

[Jeremiah65]

Maybe people are reluctant to have kids because they are finally realizing they cost a lot of money?  Maybe when you can barely feed and shelter yourself is seems kinda foolish to bring a helpless, innocent life into this world to suffer in poverty?

Some people want to deter birth control....why?  They need the next generation of undereducated work horses to prop up the crony system with slave wages and miserable standards of living.

Cheers to the people that realize now is not a good time to procreate unless you are financially well off AND stable.  It's about damn time...

[karmakazi]

Simbi Laveau, on 03 December 2012 - 12:16 PM, said:

Come to a supermarket here in nyc ,or ride and ambulance in Harlem for a week,and after you've seen the hundred plus immigrant families,who have 7 kids,all of which they are getting a Medicaid stipend for ,and they flash their Medicaid card at the grocery check out ,for the 400$,worth of food they are getting,all calculated on the amt of children they have,then tell me how its a preconceived notion .

Immigrant families who have a lot of kids... sounds familiar.  After all, early NY was populated by a lot of good Roman Catholic Italian families.

I don't disagree though - I don't think anyone should receive assistance for more than 2 kids.  1 kid could be accounted to a mistake, 2 could be accounted to not learning your lesson, but having 3 or more, if you already need government assistance, is just plain stupid.  You can't have 3 kids and not have figured out by then that they cost money.  Continuing to have more children should only happen if a person/couple accepts sole responsibility for those children and the government should encourage that... but it doesn't.

[Render]

I thought everyone would come in this thread and rejoice after spreading all that bs that overpopulation is happening and we need to cut birth rates and maybe let nature destroy some villages and what not.

So what? Scared of overpopulation and willing to let everyone die, as long as it;s not your own country that has cuts in its birth rate?  Rrrriight....

[Br Cornelius]

Render, on 04 December 2012 - 10:53 AM, said:

I thought everyone would come in this thread and rejoice after spreading all that bs that overpopulation is happening and we need to cut birth rates and maybe let nature destroy some villages and what not.

So what? Scared of overpopulation and willing to let everyone die, as long as it;s not your own country that has cuts in its birth rate?  Rrrriight....

Reducing birth rates has got to be a good thing for us all. As for the rest that's just a bad case of denial and projection.

Seeing the problem of overpopulation doesn't mean that you want us to apply euthanasia to the population, but denying the problems current populations are causing is just plain stupid. Education and secularism and a good dose of government incentives are the only ethical tools we have - its just good to see them working.

Br Cornelius

[Orcseeker]

Render, on 04 December 2012 - 10:53 AM, said:

I thought everyone would come in this thread and rejoice after spreading all that bs that overpopulation is happening and we need to cut birth rates and maybe let nature destroy some villages and what not.

So what? Scared of overpopulation and willing to let everyone die, as long as it;s not your own country that has cuts in its birth rate?  Rrrriight....

Overpopulation is bs? Are you going to tell me how much people the Earth can support or something next? How about you look at the current situation here and tell me a few less people wouldn't take a few problems off the back of the worlds current populace

[Br Cornelius]

Realizing we have a population problem makes realizing that there are no easy answers one of the most depressing situations imaginable. The same is true of almost all the man made environmental problems we face.

So much easier to sleep at night if we just bury our heads in the sand and pretend that there's nothing wrong.

Br Cornelius

[and then]

Br Cornelius, on 04 December 2012 - 02:10 PM, said:

Realizing we have a population problem makes realizing that there are no easy answers one of the most depressing situations imaginable. The same is true of almost all the man made environmental problems we face.

So much easier to sleep at night if we just bury our heads in the sand and pretend that there's nothing wrong.

Br Cornelius

My father in law is 84 and has been preaching overpopulation as a dire event for years.  He is a member of a group called Negative Population Growth and swears by their research and world view.  We talk about it all the time and he has the fervor of an evangelical about it.  The western countries aren't the problem any longer - but the 3 rd world countries have no social safety net except to have enough children to provide for one's old age.  So the population continues to grow.  Nature will eventually thin the herd but it's a shame it will have to be so painful when education could make a major difference.

[Render]

Br Cornelius, on 04 December 2012 - 01:21 PM, said:

Reducing birth rates has got to be a good thing for us all. As for the rest that's just a bad case of denial and projection.

Seeing the problem of overpopulation doesn't mean that you want us to apply euthanasia to the population, but denying the problems current populations are causing is just plain stupid. Education and secularism and a good dose of government incentives are the only ethical tools we have - its just good to see them working.

Br Cornelius

There's a difference between seeing a problem and thinking about it, and seeing a problem and automatically go into Malthus-mode and blame it on the ever so popular term "overpopulation"
Since "overpopulation" inherently blames the population for all current environmental and other problems in the world. That is the problem. And this is why ppl come up with stupid arguments like "nature should eradicate a couple of cities or whatever".
Overpopulation is not the problem, it's they way ppl deal with it. Ppl without vision immediately go to impossible scenarios that are just stupid to even mention, like the eradicating of ppl. Or putting restrictions on how many ppl should be born. It's not possible to carry out these things and rationally everybody knows this.
If overpopulation is a problem now, then it should've been a problem in the past where a group of humans got a lil too big so they had to go further to kill another boar to feed everyone. But that was their solution, they didn't see it as a problem of overpopulation, because they had the vision of how to adjust to the situation. This is what a lot of ppl lack these days and they just go to their default term "overpopulation". Instead of dealing with what will never change, ppl will procreate, and population will inevitably grow. There is no way around that, and to keep insisting that it's that which should be adjusted by unreasonable measures gets us nowhere.

Orcseeker, on 04 December 2012 - 01:35 PM, said:

Overpopulation is bs? Are you going to tell me how much people the Earth can support or something next? How about you look at the current situation here and tell me a few less people wouldn't take a few problems off the back of the worlds current populace

I don't know how much Earth can support, no one does. Which in itself destroys the argument of "overpopulation".
We aren't even close to our limit of providing food for everyone (http://makewealthhis...d-10-billion/   http://grist.org/pop...t-wont-be-easy/)
How about you and everyone else looks at the current situation and starts to think how we can adjust it to the inevitable. Like many scientists are already doing. Look at lab-foods, building higher skyscrapers, building towers for agriculture, etc...
It's a dead end statement to say "with fewer ppl things would be easier to fix". Because there aren't fewer ppl and there will only be more ppl. Of course it's easier to get to a solution with fewer ppl, that's why we have representatives in politics because it's not possible in these times to get everyones opinions, DUH.


Necessitiy is the mother of all creation. That's why science is a constantly evolving thing. That's why you hear more about the electric car again, that's why lab and gmo foods are coming up more in the news.
If ppl lack the vision to see how distribution of goods and food etc should be adjusted to the world population, then of course you get conservaties with no imagination that say "oh , its the fault of overpopulation".
That's like the goverment allowing houses and apartments to be build without garages and then blaming the ppl if they park their cars in illegal places. It's not the population their fault, they're there. that's not gonna change. It's how you deal with it that's the issue.
Or it's like saying if a family doesn't have enough money to make ends meet, they should just kill their children because logically they would have more money left. That's not how the world works of course, the children are there so you have to work around it. Extrapolate that to the world and you have reality.

Br Cornelius, on 04 December 2012 - 02:10 PM, said:

Realizing we have a population problem makes realizing that there are no easy answers one of the most depressing situations imaginable. The same is true of almost all the man made environmental problems we face.

So much easier to sleep at night if we just bury our heads in the sand and pretend that there's nothing wrong.

Br Cornelius

That's exactly what ppl are doing when they blame it on a vague term like "overpopulation". They refuse to see the real issue and refuse to try and find out where the real problem lies and how it should be adjusted.
Instead they just say "we cant fix it as long as ppl procreate". BS.



And population growth is actually freefalling these last couple of years, thanks to medical care, housing, etc... Which brings a long a new problem with it: The replacement rate is also dropping. A reason why a lot of nations are actually pushing ppl to have more children. ( by paying for infertility treatments for example and in Russia, parents get extra baby money if they produce an extra child)

Edited by Render, 05 December 2012 - 11:44 AM.

[Br Cornelius]

Fundamentally you have pointed to a very poor analysis of the issues of population. The article gives a fairly superficial skimming of the issues caused by overpopulation.
First;
The green revolution has two fundamental flaws - almost all of the gains so far have relied on intensifying the energy inputs to the system which is only viable in a cheap energy world. Energy is no longer cheap and is rising by the day and there are no reasons to suggest it will stop rising.
The green revolution produces an initial increase in productivity but at the cost of undermining the long term fertility of the soil. Hence the single most important threat to food production is soil erosion - caused directly by the green revolution.
This has knock on effects in that as productive land is lost to soil erosion it is necessary to bring on line more agricultural land which has concentrated on converting forests to agriculture. in the tropics this rapidly causes the land to degrade and the productivity to fall off. A direct consequence of increased productivity is the loss of on farm biodiversity and pristine habitats. there has been a decline of over 40% in on farm biodiversity in the period since 1980's alone - in exactly the same period that the green revolution helped to feed the extra 3 billion in population which took place over the same period.
The second major crisis is the depletion of fresh water stocks which are none replaceable assets which took sometimes millions of years to accumulate. Run out of water and the green revolution hits a buffer.

None replaceable assets is the real crunch issue with current and projected population growth and this is the basis on which it is said that we would need 2-3 earths to sustain our current level of consumption - let alone a further 3billion with ever increasing expectations for a better standard of living. You can address all of the issues mention in that article you pointed to - but fundamentally the issue of overconsumption and environmental degradation will not go away. A sustainable long term population which addresses all of these resource issues is estimated to be at most 2billion. Taking the current population from 7billion to 2billion in an ethical way is what keeps me awake at night.

Technology always comes with cost and benefits and I cannot see any change in that in the forseeable future. I can see the roll for appropriate low tech solutions to address issues of poverty, but I do not see technology offering a panacea to these pressing ecological crisis. The main reason been that technology always relies on energy inputs to achieve its ends (think life cycle analysis to understand why even low energy technologies require energy inputs at every stage of their lives) and the over consumption of energy is the primary pressing crisis which threatens all aspects of human civilization - especially food production.

PS - the same author addresses almost all of these issues in his follow up article. To quote the author in his conclusion;

Quote

Those are five reasons why it is highly unlikely that the world can support 10 billion people,and there are more reasons besides. I haven’t mentioned peak phosphorus, or the hazards of monoculture and our over-reliance on a very few food crops.

Br Cornelius

Edited by Br Cornelius, 05 December 2012 - 03:42 PM.