DINKY people and Europe's negative birth rate

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

All over Europe, people are using contraception.
Well, smart people are. Instead of having half a dozen kids or more, smart couples are having just a couple of kids - sometimes , no kids at all, and spending the money that would have gone on kiddy clothes and baby food on consumer durables and ski trips in Switzerland.

And now, the neocons are worried.
see, my wife and I are both DINKYs - a DINKY is like a Yuppy, but stands for Double Income , No Kids Yet. And seeing as we are both in our 50s, I think the Yet is permanent in our case.

So, when we retire, there are no kids to take our place in the workforce.
OMG! the Neocons wail - hhow can you abandon us? how can you walk away and leave the wheels of industry unmanned? Who will provide the cannon fodder for our next bloody and imperialst war?
Who will work in our factories, clean our cars and do our dirty work for the crap wages we are willing to pay?

And we answer " you told us that you never owed us a living. We therefore think that we don't owe it to you to have any kids. I dunno who will, but just be certain that we won't."

And, as birthrates plummet, and smart women see to it that they don't have kids that the capitalists need to keep the system going, the neocons reach for the panic button. they will import immigrants, they will shout about the joys of motherhood. And smart women will laugh and go on ski trips to switzerland instead of plodding behind a pram through Tescos.

I bet that Mrs Thatcher wishes she had never said ' there is no such thing as society. i bet she wishes she had laid on creches, championed the Welfare state and made motherhood a lot easier and desireable, instead of sneering at the poor. But it's too late Mrs T. Your system kicked us in the face, so we took the Child Free option. Enjoy your bleak and child free future while it lasts.

Comments

[tridus.livejournal.com]

The structure of our society is based around people having kids. Kids grow up and pay for all the health care and retirement programs that old people need, then take their place and allow society to propogate itself.

Stop having kids, and two things happen:

1. With nobody to pay for your retirement, expect to work longer and have smaller government. Isn't that what neocons actually want?

2. To combat #1, governments and companies turn to mass immigration (legal or otherwise).

[torpidai.livejournal.com]

3) Save up (Hope those damned thieving bankers and Madeofs of the world don't rob you again) and pay for your own damned retirement??

[tridus.livejournal.com]

OP mentioned Europe, and most of Europe has pretty generous social plans. "Saving up" is not something you see a lot of there. (Not that you see a lot of it in North America anymore either.)

[torpidai.livejournal.com]

OP mentioned Europe, and most of Europe has pretty generous social plans. "Saving up" is not something you see a lot of there.

It aint that generous over here (UK) still pensioners choose to die of hyperthermia or starvation, often, come winter because of their upbringing in more financialy sensible times, prudence kills.

Me, I think everyone by the time they are 40 should have in place a will, insurance policy for death and or at least paid for their own arrangements, That alone would help many. Me, I can't see a rosy future, but I can see me being one of those old doddery 90year olds working in B&Q :'(

Saving does seem to be a thing of the past, I blame availability of credit, hell most kids leave home to go to uni, have no mommie present anymore, £20K per year debt is easy to rack up... Bring back savings, hell raise the interest rates to encourage it, 10% was good for me, way back when, can we go for 15% this time round, pleeeeeeaaassseeee :)

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

But they pay for it in taxes....so in effect the state forces them to save. How dare they!

[torpidai.livejournal.com]

lol I guess they took some lessons from Texans??

The new curriculum would emphasise the role of religion in America's founding, as well as promoting the superiority of the capitalist system.

The Board insists, though, that capitalism will only be referred to as "free enterprise system", largely because of the negative connotations of the word capitalism
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8693397.stm)

but then again, rebranding and re-educating is nothing new hu?

[tridus.livejournal.com]

Actually they pay for it by borrowing. There's a reason countries like Greece and Britian have deficits running 12% of GDP.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

True, but still the UK's national debt is well behind France, Germany, and the United States.

http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/economics/list-of-national-debt-by-country/

Sometimes you have to borrow a bit more, obviously: but we're not in the same position as Greece by a long way.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

Actually this is irrelevant.

You could have 47 trillion in the bank and if there isn't someone to harvest the food on the farm or operate the power plant or fix the roof on your house it isn't going to do you a lot of good.

The issue here is not so much about individual personal retirement but rather generational retirement. This is especially true in most of Europe where the birth rates are so low they are facing a demographic collapse (as in not enough people to operate the critical infrastructure to maintain a society) unless the natives make themselves minorities in their own countries and do what the Turks and Moors never could (that is turn Europe into a Muslim continent).

[torpidai.livejournal.com]

unless the natives make themselves minorities in their own countries and do what the Turks and Moors never could (that is turn Europe into a Muslim continent).

Too late it's started already, in Leicester the white man is scarce. (Indian majority)

You could have 47 trillion in the bank and if there isn't someone to harvest the food on the farm or operate the power plant or fix the roof on your house it isn't going to do you a lot of good.

in this country it's extremely hard and bordering on illegal to ammass more than £1.9 million as a pension fund, but hell, power no worries, we all coped 2-300 years ago in simpler times hu? Hell I can make my own gas in sufficient qty to cook and heat my house, and am quite capable of finding food in the wild, stuff em all.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

So, why am I being whined at by neocons for being child free, exactly?
this is damned annoying , y'know?

[tridus.livejournal.com]

I don't know that they are neocons, but there's a few potential reasons why neocons want people to have kids. I'll come up with a couple, but since I'm not a neocon I wouldn't take this as gospel:

1. The main complaint about people not having kids is that we need kids to maintain "our" culture. Without kids, the only way we maintain our country in the future at all is through mass immigration, which alters the culture.

2. For whatever reason, poor people have more kids then better off people. Better off people are better financially capable of raising kids without government assistance, and of course neocons aren't fans of government assistance.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

If one were to take this as correct, I can follow the logic.
thanks for the info.
someone has told me that actually, in the USA, the neocons are viewed as being those who want to advocate war as an instrument of foriegn policy, and want to ramp up state control in the interests of security, as well as wanting the State to play a bigger role in economics and the market.

Would you like to comment on this?

[tridus.livejournal.com]

That would pretty much describe the George W. Bush government, yeah. There were a lot of neocons in there, and that's exactly what they did (except for the state in the market part, they really want the state out of the market totally except when it's time for bailouts and cleaning up oil spills).

If you look at what the neocons actually did while in power, they really hate taxes and social spending. But they like other kinds of spending, particularly millitary and security theatre spending. They also really like blowing up Iraq for some inexplicable reason. They're partially responsible for the huge deficit the US is running now (the Democrats are also guilty).

They're very much social conservatives, but in no way resemble actual conservatives when it comes to government spending.