[ExI] Underpopulation, not Overpopulation (was Re: To Arms!)

Lee Corbin lcorbin at rawbw.com
Sun Apr 5 09:23:11 UTC 2009


Dagon Gmail wrote:

 > [Lee wrote]
> >    Hmm. You could be right. Thanks for pointing it out. I did
> >    hear that the Russians actually did greatly improve their
> >    birth rate for a while by promising economic incentives.
> >    But after a lot of children were conceived, the government
> >    let slip that these incentives actually weren't *quite* as
> >    promised. A huge lot of abortions immediately took place.
> >
> >    Yes, it would be just like the west to tax itself to death.
> 
> 1.  All of those "anti big gov/pro big market" people,

Yes?  Present.

> do you have the nerve to face the difference between the
> amount of tax citizens will have to pay for (a) all the
 > welfare and development aid and subsidies and left wing
> pet projects

Hideously wasteful, incentive weakening, and wealth destroying.

> and  (b)  the recent bailout?

Hideously wasteful, incentive weakening, and wealth destroying.

What difference? Many, many of us "anti big gov" people
are pro-market, but that *hardly* means we favor bailouts!

> - and don't backpeddle or dance populist river chorus lines by claiming
> the current governments in the US is left-wing or socialist. It is not.

Well, as numerous posters have pointed out, it's
definitely *not* a model of low-regulated free market!

> My guess is the ratio of 20 years of left-oriented programs and 
> right-oriented bailouts of the last two years is 1:10 or more.

What do you mean? I, for one, believe that if you took all
the money wasted on the War on Poverty, all the billions
and billions paid each year to unmarried women for having
children, and all the enormous incentive-destroying welfare
and superfluous unemployment payments, it might very well
match the incredible agricultural subsidies and other
corporate/government colluding corruption for sheer outlay.

> 2. I want the population of Europe to be stabilized at the current 
> levels, but I'd prefer it to go down by about a third.

Nah. The entire problem is that all you people have been
fed a line about the world being over populated. I would
suggest consulting the work of the late Julian Simon,
who argued so effectively that we are notoriously
*underpopulated*, except in certain poor countries
like India or China.

The decline demographic numbers is a prime cause of the
economic malaise affecting the west.

Lee




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