The Neo-Malthusians

One niche we like to think we have on this blog is monitoring the international linkages that sustain conservative spin. So today a Sunday Business Post (Ireland) op-ed piece gets an approving link on The Corner, the group blog of the National Review (USA):

THE DEMOGRAPHIC CRUNCH AND US [Stanley Kurtz ]
Meanwhile, here’s a good piece on the current politics of demography and the welfare state in Europe. And here’s a big picture piece from Ireland. Note that the demographic problem appears to be completely unfamiliar to the average Irish reader. Of course, Americans barely understand the coming demographic crunch. We’re only at the beginning of this massive worldwide shift.

There are several things going on here. One is reality-based: native-born population growth is slowing in the developed world and any projection forward sees the need for immigration to sustain labour force levels with a rising dependent population. Fair enough. But from that has been spun a multi-faceted global paranoia -- that Arabs will take over Europe, that as a result Europe will be a giant fifth column in the Global War on Terror, and oh, by the way, we're really going to need personal investment accounts in the US Social Security system, just as The Exalted One has proposed.

Hence the drafting of the Sunday Business Post and Mary Ellen Synon in particular to make the case:

Opening the doors to the Eurabian continent

03 July 2005 By Mary Ellen Synon
Last week, in a piece about working women and their reluctance to breed, I quoted Harvard historian Niall Ferguson on the fall in the birth rate in Europe. "There has not been such a sustained reduction in the European population since the Black Death of the 14th century." Some readers were surprised by that, and I can only suggest they look up and pay more attention to what is going on around them. Europeans are disappearing.

Europeans are heading for extinction as surely as the Bushmen of the Kalahari. Another reason to look up and pay attention is to see who is going to fill the gap left by the vanishing Europeans. Ferguson believes that ... "Either today's newborn Europeans will spend their working lives paying 75 per cent tax rates or retirement and ‘free' healthcare will simply have to be abolished. Alternatively (or additionally), Europeans will have to tolerate more legal immigration ... So a youthful Islam is going to fill the gap in an ageing Europe. This continent will perhaps become ‘Eurabia'.

... American theologian George Weigel ... in his new book ... asks the following questions: why does no western European country have a replacement-level birth rate? ... "What is happening when an entire continent, wealthier and healthier than ever before, declines to create the human future in the most elemental sense, by creating a next generation?"

Here's a table showing European Union total fertility rates by country. All countries are below the traditional benchmark of 2.1 for replacement, but that benchmark has less bite than it used to with longer life expectancy and healthier populations. And some countries are very close: the Republic, of course (is that what Kurtz meant by us not knowing about this supposed crisis?) but also the UK and France. The result is that population is projected to fall in some countries, but far from everywhere.

There are two more general issues here. First, these projections of doom violate Stein's Law (from Herbert, not his idiot son Ben) that unsustainable trends can't continue. Does Niall Ferguson, or Mary Ellen Synon, or Stanley Kurtz really think that 75 percent tax rates are feasible? They're not. Something else will change before that eventuality could happen. For instance, other European countries might take a look at France, where child-friendly government policy surely explains a portion of high overall fertility.

Second, we see another example of the fetishisation of "life" [as we noted in this earlier post, this particular usage was put on to our radar screen by Sullywatch]. In which women exist to reproduce, and it's only numbers that matter. Forget quality of life of mother and child. More white babies, please. Epitomised in the jihad to keep Terri Schiavo alive with her brain half its normal size.

Let's leave the final word to Paul Krugman. He wrote last week on America's obesity problem and of course obsesity is a crucial factor in the predictions of fiscal doom that come with rising dependent sedentary populations. So you'd think the Right would be extra keen to find instruments to offset the costs of obesity? Think again:

The pro-obesity forces - or, if you prefer, the anti-anti-obesity forces - make their case in part by claiming that America's weight gain does no harm. There was much glee on the right when a new study, using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, appeared to reject the conventional view that obesity has a large negative effect on life expectancy.

But as officials from the C.D.C. have pointed out, mortality isn't the only measure of health. There's no question that obesity plays an important role in many diseases that diminish the quality of life and, crucially, require expensive treatment ... But the cost of treating the obese is helping to break the back of our health care system.

Note how he captures the conservative focus on quantity, not quality of life.