4/25/2005

Birth Rates, Big Gov’t, & More
Filed under: General — nobrainer @ 8:51 pm

I really don’t have a point with this post. I’m just going to throw out some ideas and see if any of them stick.

Lately, as more people have been looking to the future, they have been looking at trends in birth rates. This is wise. However, most are complaining about the low birth rates that are starting to appear. Again, this is wise if you wish to maintain many social systems that basically exist as government mandated pyramid schemes.

Some are going so far as to squarely blame abortion for these low birth rates. And while that is not to be neglected, the question of to have or to not have children is still mostly a matter of preference of the (would-be) parents. We could just as easily blame contraception. Although this ‘blame’ is curious. That indicates, to me, that the high birth rate advocates are insinuating that unplanned pregnancies are necessary and perhaps even fortuitous.

But why are birth rates varying throughout the world? Is there a correlation between government benefits and birth rates? If the gov’t is going to take care of you, you don’t need children for assistance later in life. Does it relate to economic freedom? Does it relate to economic growth? Or is it possible that different groups of people literally have different genetic mindsets?

Similarly how does government mandated “charity” detract from regular charity? How does the the federalization of charity take away from local charity? Can this help explain the decline of churches in the US and Europe? My thinking is that we used to rely more on local communities for help. But as the state and federal governments have gotten into the game, people feel less need to ‘belong’ in their local community circle.

Does anyone think that the main objectives of government hand-outs (social security, medicare, medicaid, welfare) would be just as well served by knocking big government out of the loop? I posit that American’s are fairly generous. With extra disposable income, it seems that we should be able to create (non-beaurocratic) jobs. We should then be able to contribute to the charities of our choice. If the donors decide the charity is mismanaged, they can opt out, i.e. bad charities will be weeded out and the more meaningful will stand out.

That’ll do. Your thoughts?

collapse Wha Says:
April 25th, 2005 at 11:06 pm

Guess I am having a teflon evening. I have been doing something with my brain for over 15 hours. All I even hear at this point is Wha Wha Wha.

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collapse nobrainer Says:
April 25th, 2005 at 11:16 pm

That’s because you’re reading out loud!

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collapse Wha Says:
April 26th, 2005 at 9:19 am

Touche

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collapse upwardspiral Says:
April 27th, 2005 at 4:16 pm

There is one major factor that drives birth rates, and that is per capita income.

Poorer families/cities/countries have more children. this fact can be documented at any time and/or locatoin during the history of mankind (assuming there are sufficient records to do so).

There are several theories as to why richer people want less children, but that is an entirely different topic.

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collapse nobrainer Says:
April 27th, 2005 at 4:46 pm

I’m glad you mentioned that. Something similar had popped into my mind the day after I posted this. It seems I’ve been told that the more educated have fewer children. I think it’s easy to correlate education and general wealth.

Does that indicate that countries such as Italy, per capita, are either that wealthy or educated?

I’ll probably add more later, but I must leave to attend class.

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collapse Hiok Por Low Says:
June 12th, 2005 at 12:47 pm

Hi there,

I am juz an undergrad, dunno how much I know, but I will juz say whatever I know.

I think that we are all pretty familiar with some of the old explainations which are probably still applicable to some degree. Stuff like people lacking entertainment, entertain with sex or farming communities requiring more hands on the fields and stuff.

But I think alot of it has to do with mindset of people. I mean, my cousin is pretty well off, with a successful husband and she herself also very successful. I dare say that they are upper class ppl. But they have 4 children, and maybe more in the future. There are also very less off family with 4 kids as well and live on 1200 a month. I am from Singapore btw. I think it has to do with mindset of people. Whether they feel children are a burden to their freedom. Probably,
its juz that more of the rich feel that children are burden and have lesser of them, plus at a later age, when they gif up on the partying life.

Life has also been getting better for the middle class for alot of countries and these ppl, are literally the backbone of any country. Backbone for economy, for birth, for strength, for army, for rebellion, for ideas, for anything. With these people becoming richer, they want to pursue a career and money. They then want to enjoy more on life, being swinging bachalor or bachalorette. These effects are then furthur enhenced by culture and media. Dun u find that we are constantly bombarded by the media, like mags telling u 10 ways to fuck a gal or 10 ways to slim ur abs or how u should look or should not look. And so, media always plays a part in playing up ppl that are single, most celebs get lost into obscurity after they get married and retire for some time. The free and easy out look is usually the most appealing, esp in our society where everyone feels that they have a lot of responsibility placed on their shoulders. People could then beinavertently be influenced and worse still without themselves knowing it. So I think many people will opt to be single for some of those reasons. Of course not everyone is like that, but I feel pretty good to say a good number of ppl are under such influence.

I suppose that is why birth rates are going down in general.

With regards to charity, I dunno. I feel the same way as u do. I think that the gov wants to have a hand in almost everything in anything in todays society. So oh well.

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