Chicagoans like to grouse about winter. And with good reason. However, there's an even more brutal winter looming, and it has nothing to do with snow or ice. It's called The Demographic Winter, and it's coming to the entire planet, ready or not...!
Governments have known about it for years. It's one reason they work so hard to reform their struggling health care and pension systems. Because in a few decades these systems will be groaning under the weight of more elderly people than the world has ever known. Or that the systems can easily support.
The facts are as simple as they are devastating. The global population is shifting. Not necessarily exploding as we once thought, but shifting. From a larger percentage of the producing young to a larger percentage of the retired old. In other words, what's actually happening is not a population explosion, but a health explosion. We are not producing so many new babies as we are saving the lives of so many older citizens!
Soon now there will not be enough producing young to support the health & pension plans for the retired old. And while some whisper the need for some form of eugenics, they themselves are of course always young. Rather than killing off those of us in old age, maybe we should all figure out why this demographic winter is happening.
A complex of factors are at work including: The pill, more working women, more divorce rates, therefore smaller family sizes. So small, that projections show the overall populations in the northern hemisphere will thin while those in the southern hemisphere will continue to grow. But in both spheres, the old faster than the young.
No easy answers. Not much time. Oh, lets see, we could always stop spending so much on wars and invest it in health/pension planning. But then as Malthus taught: Wars are a handy way to kill off excess populations. Hmm, do you think that's evolution's way of handling the problem...? Or is it maybe just dumb politicians....? Or how about dumber citizens who don't do the math with their governments...?
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I think it's just dumb politicians!
ReplyDeleteI like your idea about using the money we invest in wars in US! Why can't the powers that be see that...it's not that difficult to figure out we the people, are more important than killing is it?
I think you're absolutely right....only try getting "we the people" to agree on anything! Just look at "we the people" grumbling and grousing about everything today!Hard to lead an army when everyone wants to be a general.
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