Jump to content
Join the Unexplained Mysteries community today! It's free and setting up an account only takes a moment.
- Sign In or Create Account -

US Birth Rate Hits New Low


Render

Recommended Posts

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 .

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.com/8301-18563_162-4000401.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/immigrant-welfare-use-2011

Edited by Simbi Laveau
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

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...

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

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....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

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.

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
Link to comment
Share on other sites

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;

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 Guest
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ugh, oh no. It appears that putting some articles in there that have no meaning to me either was a mistake. Because that's the first thing you go after.

I just added them to the post, after i wrote everything else to avoid a follow up post as "oh yeah, says who" ... i don't care about the article, it;s just to prove a point that nobody knows how much earth can sustain so the term "overpopulation" is a fallacy in itself. Just like you guys can write overpopulation is superimportant there are other guys out there (as the articles prove) that write the opposite. Because overpopulation is vague and non-existent.

If I could i'd remove the articles, but I can't edit that post anymore. So do me the favor of ignoring it and don't assume those articles were the basis for the rest of my post. Which of course they weren't.

What you mention about technology not offering the solution to everything. I do believe science holds the answer, because it is already changing things as we speak, maybe it's going too gradually for ppl to notice but it's in effect. It's a multi faceted problem and from all fronts it's coming together. Economically, financially, socially, etc. Perhaps too slowly for some, but still. That's the whole struggle of cost and benefits you are reffering to.

Ppl just like to use terms like "crisis", "doom", "no solution". In the end there always is a solution because the perseverance of humanity can not and should not be underestimated.

Maybe of interest : http://www.mancheste...e-can-help.html

Edited by Render
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Let me site to examples of what happens when you apply highly efficient solutions to the problem of large populations;

1- Irelands west coast once supported 8million people who were almost exclusively dependent on the potato (a wonder crop) for sustenance. That crop failed over a number of particularly bad few seasons and the population crashed with net emigration and about 1million starving to death. The outcome could have been different if the dominant attitude in Britain wasn't one of free-market neoliberalism and an innate streak of anti catholic racism. The powers that be decided to let matters play out in a natural way. The population crashed to less than 1/2 million and has never recovered since.

2- Rwanda was one of the most densely populated and productive agricultural nations in the world relying on a few staples to feed an ever growing population. Innate racial tensions made the pressures of population explode in a genocide of unimaginable ferocity - but fundamentally it was a resource and food crisis which was at play. Again the world chose not to intervene in any meaningful way.

What do these two micro examples have to tell us about the current situation;

1- Ideology and inertia generally overtake the situation and result in the worst possible outcome manifesting

2- dependence on a few highly productive crops (about 8 staples for the world) makes you highly vulnerable to external factors such as weather and disease.

3- rarely do external agents intervene in these situations - and in the case of the world global civilization - we are all we have got to fall back on.

4- large populations can crash dramatically in a few years

The solutions to these problems are;

1- reduce population to manageable levels with large surplus capacity in resources and food especially

2- diversify crops on a local level to build robustness into the overall system

3- change the diet of the world such that meat comprises at most 10% of all food consumed

4- change the economic system to discourage the reliance on cash crops

5- decarbonize food production ( and face the inevitable consequence of reduced overall productivity)

6- reduce supply chains such that the majority of food is supplied from a 100 mile radius of its point of use

The problem is that for each and every one of these solutions we are in fact going in completely the opposite direction. We are building a system which has got failure guaranteed at its very foundations. I am not and cannot be optimistic with circumstances as they are.

You see i have thought about this and know what solutions can address the problem - the issue is that none of them will be applied in the window of opportunity in which we have to implement them.

Br Cornelius

Edited by Guest
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here is an FYI Hispanics in North America were here long before the English so if you are bothered by Hispanics they if you will "population seniority". I used to live in California and heard plenty of anti Hispanic anti immigration talk which always bothered me. White people practiced effective occupation of the California territory to steal it away from Hispanics, gold rush, westward manifest destiny and all? That there is a population of Hispanics that live in the US (legally or otherwise) you can call a balancing of what we did to them.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

PS - Don't use references unless you read and understand them first - otherwise they have a tendency to not support your argument.

Br Cornelius

Link to comment
Share on other sites

PS - Don't use references unless you read and understand them first - otherwise they have a tendency to not support your argument.

Br Cornelius

PS - Don't respond to the part of the post that wasn't meant for you. I clearly quoted another poster.

And learn to read a full post to understand that the rest of my post-argument had nothing to do with those silly articles, used to prove a superficial point that overpopulation is a vague term void of any meaning.

Oh, and don't try to lecture me again.

And in a lot of your examples you leave out a whole lot of different things science is working on. You're just proving my point that we are all gradually evolving towards a solution. And as with every evolution, there are bumps in the road, and try outs, and eventually the temporarily most suited solution comes forward.

For example, you keep talking about crops but fail to take into account that maybe in a few decades we wont have any use or need for crops anymore. Labs can take over food production for example.

Anyway, you have your pessimist view, i'll stick to my positivist view.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Techno optimists make me laugh - you've got such a shinny track record to build your hopes on.

Food grown exclusively in vats - Solylant Green anyone :w00t:

PS - I am an environmental scientist and see very clearly the cost benefit analysis of new technologies.

Br Cornelius

Edited by Guest
Link to comment
Share on other sites

PS - I am an environmental scientist and see very clearly the cost benefit analysis of new technologies.

Br Cornelius

Wouldn't a cheap and easy way of reducing global population be to stop sending aid to disaster/famine hit areas? Or would this be an unethical way to cull the population?

Or do we need to draw straws?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wouldn't a cheap and easy way of reducing global population be to stop sending aid to disaster/famine hit areas? Or would this be an unethical way to cull the population?

Or do we need to draw straws?

Education and contraception seem to be the best ethical tools we have. I am not willing to speculate about unethical methods.

Redistribution of the global wealth such that people are not so dependent on large families would probably help. Universal wealthfare was the real kicker for large families in the UK so it has something of a track record of producing results.

It requires us to accept that people in the third world deserve a humane standard of living before we can hope to address the growth of population in the developing world. This is the message of the UN - but they seem to be rather unpopular in some quarters.

Br Cornelius

Edited by Guest
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here is an FYI Hispanics in North America were here long before the English so if you are bothered by Hispanics they if you will "population seniority". I used to live in California and heard plenty of anti Hispanic anti immigration talk which always bothered me. White people practiced effective occupation of the California territory to steal it away from Hispanics, gold rush, westward manifest destiny and all? That there is a population of Hispanics that live in the US (legally or otherwise) you can call a balancing of what we did to them.

I really hate these beliefs in ethnic inheritance. If you truly want to go by the first European language spoken in the Western Hemisphere as to who has rights to ownership, then the Scandinavians beat both the English and Spanish speakers. Then if you want to go by whose DNA contains the most Native American blood, neither white Americas or white Mexicans would even be in the running for that one.

Neither history or language or DNA gives someone the right to steal what belongs to another under international law today, something I hope that Israel realizes soon.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Education and contraception seem to be the best ethical tools we have. I am not willing to speculate about unethical methods.

Redistribution of the global wealth such that people are not so dependent on large families would probably help. Universal wealthfare was the real kicker for large families in the UK so it has something of a track record of producing results.

It requires us to accept that people in the third world deserve a humane standard of living before we can hope to address the growth of population in the developing world. This is the message of the UN - but they seem to be rather unpopular in some quarters.

Br Cornelius

Even with education you will not manage to get the population to decline. Governments in places with negative population growth ship in immigrant to stop their economy going into decline because there is no sustainable way to reduce population (i.e. people get old and need treatment/pension etc, hence they need to tax people to pay for their aging population).

If you are concerned about overpopulation (which i am not, at least for a few years) education would, at best, be a very long term "solution" requiring years of savings to pay for the aging global population.

Edited by Professor Buzzkill
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.