The Geopolitics of it all

[Kirkhill]

But when the next crisis comes along, and the response looks iffy, I’m going to trust my own instincts more.

Next time big data tells you something, scream

The Covid Inquiry is teaching us an important lesson: if the models sound wrong, they probably are

www.telegraph.co.uk

 

[Kirkhill]

Miriam Cates is Conservative MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge


The problem is endemic in the west.

Give women the choice to have more babies​

If fertility rates don’t rise, the UK faces economic stagnation or vastly higher levels of immigration
MIRIAM CATES6 November 2023 • 7:00am


Storks aren't delivering: Falling birth rates are endangering our prosperity – yet 92 per cent of young women in the UK want at some stage to be mothers
After a post-war baby boom, Britain now faces a baby bust. The UK fertility rate fell to a low of just 1.56 children per woman, well under the oft-cited 2.1 needed for demographic stability. As a result, since the 1970s the ratio of working age people to pensioners has dropped from four-to-one to three-to-one. It continues to fall.
The economic consequences of this shift are mind blowing. If you think that in 2023 taxes are too high and care workers too scarce, you have seen nothing yet. A paper released last week by demographer Paul Morland and economist Philip Pilkington shows that to avoid this economic catastrophe we would have to accept such extraordinarily high levels of immigration that by 2080 40 per cent of the UK population would not have been born here.
Alternatively we must resign ourselves to economic stagnation, permanent inflation and a crisis in elderly care. Unless, of course, we increase the birthrate.
Few in Britain are talking about these issues. That’s why today I am hosting a Centre for Social Justice discussion in Parliament to raise awareness amongst MPs, journalists and policy makers about the need to take declining birthrates seriously. We also need to start proposing solutions.
The good news is that the shortage of babies is not due to lack of demand. Exclusive polling commissioned for today’s event shows that 92 per cent of young women want children and that the average number of children desired is 2.4. In other words, if women were able to have the number of children they actually wanted, we wouldn’t have a problem.
But whilst the desire is there, sadly it often goes unfulfilled. Only a tiny minority of the young women in our poll said they don’t want children, yet on current trends one in three will likely never become mothers.
This represents a deep personal tragedy for many. Policy makers must seek, as far as possible, to remove the barriers that prevent those who want to have children from doing so.
Our polling gives some indications about where to begin. The most common factor cited for delaying starting a family is the impact on household finances. Although it will take considerable political will to address this, generous tax breaks for families and a radical approach to housing would be a start.
Half of young women cited career impact as a reason for delaying children. Legislators and employers should create guarantees for mothers to return to their career at the same level following a break.
Although economic factors are clearly important and must be addressed, this is not the whole answer. Many Western countries have cheaper housing, better family tax policies and even universal free childcare – but still have lower fertility rates than the UK.
Perhaps the most significant finding of our poll was that nearly three quarters of young women feel society doesn’t value motherhood enough. Our culture too often paints motherhood as drudgery rather than celebrating the incomparable fulfilment that so many women find in bearing and nurturing children.
We must value mothers more. But we also need to teach young people the facts about female fertility. Seventy-eight per cent of those surveyed believe there should be better fertility education in school. A surprising result of the poll was that most young women believe waiting until age 35 is not too late to start a family and that fertility treatments make conception possible at any age.
Whilst celebrities having children later in life – and through IVF – fill popular culture, the sad truth of declining fertility is that whilst the chance of a woman in her 20s conceiving is 25 per cent each month, this drops to under 5 per cent at age 40. And IVF over 40 has a success rate of just one in 10. For too many women, delaying motherhood means never becoming a mother at all.
So what is to be done? Reducing economic barriers to family formation is difficult but essential. Improving fertility education is within our grasp. But culture change will be far harder to achieve. It is incumbent on those in public life to start talking about children as a blessing, rather than a burden on parents or the economy. But the important first step is to recognise that fertility-rate decline is a serious problem that needs creative solutions.

I would argue that if we accept the premise of the article then would should not just be celebrating motherhood but also celebrating young mothers. Instead of discouraging young, fertile women from having babies, as we have been since the Victorian era, we should be accommodating them so that they can have babies and an education concurrently. And careers. And more freedom to change partners over their lifetime. The nuclear family has many benefits but "till death do us part" comes with a lot of costs as well.

Left to their own devices the ladies might produce a world more like Indiana where I encountered families where generations were 17 years apart.

Baby - 0 years old
Mother - 17 years old
Granny - 34 years old
Great Granny - 51 years old
GGG - 68 years old
GGGG - 85 years old

With 2.4 babies per mother GGGG would have something like 150 to 200 offspring to support her and her mate in their dotage.

The other sine qua non is optimism. People in general, and young women in particular, have to believe there is a future and a future worth having.

Since the Club of Rome report of the 1970s and the Population Bomb we in the west have been doing everything possible to make that future bleak if not non-existent.

Economics and Culture play roles in this but Optimism is the key factor.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Economics and Culture play roles in this but Optimism is the key factor.

Science, of course, is the problem

Visualizing the World’s Plummeting Fertility Rate

In this graphic we explore the world’s declining fertility rate over the last 60 years and the disparity in fertility rates between nations

www.visualcapitalist.com

 

[Kirkhill]

Science records and enables.

Politics decides the culture.



Long before internet memes were changing policies and cultures there were books, radios and TVs. And a single class of Preachers.

The Church of Malthus.

How the Myth of the Population Bomb Was Born

As the world passes 8 billion people, a look back at the modern origins of neo-Malthusianism

rogerpielkejr.substack.com

 

[Brad Sallows]

Discouragement isn't the problem. Birth control is. For a few decades now, people have had options that never existed before. What people want is at odds with how we evolved. People should be having children in their '20s, but that doesn't fit the way people prefer to live.

 

[GR66]

Maybe something like a form of Guaranteed Income for young mothers that transitions into educational allowances or job training when their children reach a certain age?

 

[Kirkhill]

Bookends - 40 years on and nothing changed
The advice is still good.

 

[Kirkhill]

The Left can no longer hide the barbarism of its anti-Semitic worldview

The murder of Jews is being excused

www.telegraph.co.uk

For years, the American Left has positioned itself as giving a voice to the oppressed and offering refuge to those suffering; its response in the wake of October 7th has destroyed any uncertainty about its true moral compass. Equivocate or even excusing indiscriminate murder surrenders any vestige of moral high ground the movement once held. All that is left is the remains of Left-wing liberalism and a shell of empty syllogisms.

October 7th has shone a spotlight on a grotesque intersection of the academic Left and visceral anti-Semitism among some groups. The relationship between the two movements is symbiotic and converges on a similar hatred for Jews. The progressive paradigm of the “oppressor and oppressed” has found footing in delusional histories of the origins of the state of Israel.

It doesn’t matter that gay men and women are murdered in Gaza and the West Bank, or that women continue to face oppression and abuse. The progressive Left has decided that effectively embracing anti-Semitism is worth it if it means maintaining fealty to the oppression industrial complex.

Liberalism was once a combination of two principles: procedural liberalism (equal rights for all before the law) coupled with a particular sensitivity towards remedying social and economic inequalities. The “new Left” that has engulfed academia, HR departments and the United Nations cast aside the first principle in a mad quest to deliver social justice to the supposed oppressed. Now every inequality is viewed as the result of actions, real or imaginary, by the assigned “oppressor”, and never as the product of internal dysfunction within a particular society.

Once the “oppressor” and “oppressed” have been assigned roles, the cast is fixed and immutable, remaining unresponsive to changing political, economic, and social circumstances. And because of the racial framing of most politics in America, the initial casting of roles almost always follows perceived racial dynamics rather than of actual interactions between the parties.

And back to The Rules (No. 13)

The Rules[edit]

1. "Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have."
2. "Never go outside the expertise of your people."
3. "Whenever possible go outside the expertise of the enemy."
4. "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules."
5. "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. There is no defense. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage."
6. "A good tactic is one your people enjoy."
7. "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag."
8. "Keep the pressure on."
9. "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself."
10. "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition."
11. "If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside; this is based on the principle that every positive has its negative."
12. "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative."
13. "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."

Now, it is up to the Right to assume control of the moral high ground: to position itself as pro-civilization and anti-barbarism – and to be unafraid to use such language. We must denounce the atrocities unequivocally and unabashedly.

The alternative consists of watching one side of the political spectrum devolve into barbarism dressed up in academic language. For the sake of civilisation, that cannot be allowed.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Canada who?

IN THE INDO-PACIFIC, CANADA HAS CORE INTERESTS BUT WEAK CLOUT​

The Indo-Pacific strategy sits uneasily on two pillars that support Canadian allies in the region with a commitment to demonstrate this country’s relevance to Asian nations on the periphery of China, particularly the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Significantly, Canada seems to pay attention to security issues in the Pacific in alignment with its Atlantic allies rather than standing on its own diplomatic policies. This trend continues to this day.

At the same time, Canada recognizes but has not committed to ASEAN’s self-declared “centrality” in the region. Canada has also not committed to beefing up a security role in the western Pacific in a way that would substantially enhance the military effectiveness of the U.S. and its allies in the region.

Coincidentally, no significant inroads have been made in repairing wobbly relations with India, while relations with China remain in a deep freeze.
In short, the strategy is not designed to increase leverage within the region, nor in relations with the United States. It is minimally designed to reassure allies that Canada is on board while signalling to other Asian nations that it wishes to stay in contact.

The problem with this stance is that it does little to secure the interests of Asian nations not formally aligned with either the U.S. or China.
To those wary of China’s growing might, Canada provides little weight to counteract that power. To those who wish to hedge while securing the benefits of Chinese trade and investment, Canada’s threadbare relationship with China makes for an uncertain partnership at best and at worst irrelevant to their most immediate concerns.

Hyphenated Canadians from the Indo-Pacific do not appear to hold a single coherent view of the region and Canada’s role there. Some prioritize human rights and some prioritize close relations with their ancestral homelands. Some wish to promote democracy and the rule of law, and some wish to play a role in fostering closer economic relations.

Canadian governments wish to engage multicultural communities in supporting regional outreach partly to shore up electoral support for the ruling party but there is no consensus between communities or even within these communities about what is the best role for Canada to play.

Concerns about China’s strategic goals and dissent from liberal norms and values is at the core of the Indo-Pacific strategy. However, Canada’s diplomatic estrangement from Beijing is an outlier among G7 nations and exceeds even that of deterrence-conscious U.S. allies in the region like Australia, South Korea and Japan.

In the Indo-Pacific, Canada Has Core Interests but Weak Clout - The Institute for Peace and Diplomacy - l’Institut pour la paix et la diplomatie

Senior Fellow Jeremy Paltiel writes for Policy Options that Canada’s difficult relationship with China and its inattention to other countries could not come at a worse time.

peacediplomacy.org

 

[Brad Sallows]

Maybe something like a form of Guaranteed Income for young mothers that transitions into educational allowances or job training when their children reach a certain age?

Or you raise kids in your 20s-30s and have a career from mid-30s to 60.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Science records and enables.

Politics decides the culture.

View attachment 81105

'pour people will have died'

I can't take a book seriously, whether by a Dr or not, that isn't proofread or spell checked for such simple mistakes. The author missed it, the proofreaders missed it and the publisher missed it and it's right on the cover.

 

[Kirkhill]

'pour people will have died'

I can't take a book seriously, whether by a Dr or not, that isn't proofread or spell checked for such simple mistakes. The author missed it, the proofreaders missed it and the publisher missed it and it's right on the cover.

Check your specs FJ. That is Four with an F.

 

[GR66]

Or you raise kids in your 20s-30s and have a career from mid-30s to 60.

That's the problem. With the cost of housing, etc. couples in their 20's and early 30's are focused on building enough wealth to be able to afford children rather then having children.

 

[Brad Sallows]

That's the problem. With the cost of housing, etc. couples in their 20's and early 30's are focused on building enough wealth to be able to afford children rather then having children.

Not much point if it takes longer to build the wealth than it does to hit the fertility downturn at 30 and the steep downturn in mid-30s.

 

[GR66]

Not much point if it takes longer to build the wealth than it does to hit the fertility downturn at 30 and the steep downturn in mid-30s.

Hence my point that IF you were to decide that financial incentives were the way to go to encourage parenthood then you should focus those incentives on young people in their prime child bearing years.

 

[Halifax Tar]

Hence my point that IF you were to decide that financial incentives were the way to go to encourage parenthood then you should focus those incentives on young people in their prime child bearing years.

Massive tax deductions scaling up per child to a max of 3. From birth until when they are no longer considered a dependent.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Massive tax deductions scaling up per child to a max of 3. From birth until when they are no longer considered a dependent.

There already isn't enough tax revenue to cover spending.

Just drop immigration intake. Housing dominates all other cost factors, and the pressure to have more of it comes from having more households. The stable or slightly declining population we have ought to have fixed this long ago. Stop paying attention to the arguments people make up that we "need" to have immigration because this program or that program depends on pyramid-shaped funding. Fix the programs by being realistic about what they cost, prioritizing them, and cutting some to sustain others.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Miriam Cates is Conservative MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge


The problem is endemic in the west.






I would argue that if we accept the premise of the article then would should not just be celebrating motherhood but also celebrating young mothers. Instead of discouraging young, fertile women from having babies, as we have been since the Victorian era, we should be accommodating them so that they can have babies and an education concurrently. And careers. And more freedom to change partners over their lifetime. The nuclear family has many benefits but "till death do us part" comes with a lot of costs as well.

Left to their own devices the ladies might produce a world more like Indiana where I encountered families where generations were 17 years apart.

Baby - 0 years old
Mother - 17 years old
Granny - 34 years old
Great Granny - 51 years old
GGG - 68 years old
GGGG - 85 years old

With 2.4 babies per mother GGGG would have something like 150 to 200 offspring to support her and her mate in their dotage.

The other sine qua non is optimism. People in general, and young women in particular, have to believe there is a future and a future worth having.

Since the Club of Rome report of the 1970s and the Population Bomb we in the west have been doing everything possible to make that future bleak if not non-existent.

Economics and Culture play roles in this but Optimism is the key factor.

But it seems to me that there is an almost ironclad socio-economic law, almost as firm as F=MA, that says that when prosperity reaches a certain level - North America reached it in the 1950s, Europe in the '60s, even Philippines in the 2020s, the birthrate falls. It seems to apply when we shift from an agrarian to a successful industrial model.

 

[Kirkhill]

But it seems to me that there is an almost ironclad socio-economic law, almost as firm as F=MA, that says that when prosperity reaches a certain level - North America reached it in the 1950s, Europe in the '60s, even Philippines in the 2020s, the birthrate falls. It seems to apply when we shift from an agrarian to a successful industrial model.

Point taken but there seems to be a non-zero number of children desired by a majority of young women as described in the British poll. And that number seems to be somewhere between two and three. Anecdotally, from conversations and observation that seems to be right to me.

There is something else at work other than simple economics.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Point taken but there seems to be a non-zero number of children desired by a majority of young women as described in the British poll. And that number seems to be somewhere between two and three. Anecdotally, from conversations and observation that seems to be right to me.

There is something else at work other than simple economics.

The fertility rate for U.K. in 2022 was 1.753 births per woman, a 0.06% increase from 2021. What some British women are saying, to pollsters, and what most British women are doing (or not doing) seem to differ. The 'replacement rate' is 2.1 births per woman.