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

[torpidai.livejournal.com]

It doesn't seem obvious at all. Can you provide any evidence of this? What studies lead you to this conclusion?

Step out of your home or place of work, walk in any direction for 2 minutes, now look around you, do you see man-made or natural? show me another animal that can do this.

It's come to a stage where we'd struggle to survive in the wild, our seas have been polluted by us, and our (certainly UK's) Hedgerows are no longer teaming with the naturaly wild foodstuffs they should, Nature should be a struggle, but let the whole of mankind loose in the wild now, we'd be lucky to last 6 months.

[ex-restless.livejournal.com]

None of this has anything to do with whether or not we are overpopulated. Are you going to actually answer the question?

[torpidai.livejournal.com]

None of this has anything to do with whether or not we are overpopulated. Are you going to actually answer the question?

I did, and if you cannot understand, I suggest you take a course in basic English, hell which part of us not having a natural food supply suggests to you I gave no answer?

[ex-restless.livejournal.com]

We have plenty of food. So what next?

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

Let me take this up.
there is plenty of food, but we are in the habit of seperating people from the food, and the means of producing it. food costs most people money, and money is concentrated into too few hands.

around the world, people do not just lack food ( although we are improving road networks and the whole distribution thing), they also lack sanitation , proper housing , primary education, and medical care.

This is what is making people poor. it takes a civil war or something these days, not just a bad harvest to send a famine along. famines are rare events these days, but kids die every day through measles and other vaccine preventable diseases.

[ex-restless.livejournal.com]

So we have an issue of unjust and unfair trade, not overpopulation. This I agree with.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

Seee, I don't think we are over populated per se, I just think we cannot look after six billion people properly, even thogh we could probably support a global population of 10 billion ppl if we did things better.

now, less kids in europe isn't gonna help feed any kids in Asia, but when i look at the way this country is, with kids at school being mugged by other kids who carry knives to school; with a government that gives tax breaks to the very rich and cuts back on social services to thevery poor; withmany kids going to school who are unsociable because they are brought up by totally inadequate parents who probably are drug addicts, alcoholics and other social misfits who wiill simply reproduce themselves - I don't want my kids growing up in a society like that. So, I am not having kids for that reason.

[ex-restless.livejournal.com]

even thogh we could probably support a global population of 10 billion ppl if we did things better.

I think this is a really important point, though. Our technology is such that we can get more food from less agricultural area, we certainly can move towards far less wasteful energy supplies, and so forth. It's very vogue to speak of overpopulation as if the only environmentally responsible thing to do is to have less children, but that's just not true. The environmentally responsible thing to do is to use our technological abilities in ways that allow for much more efficient energy and food production, and the morally responsible thing to do is to engage in fair trade practices, since we already have more than enough food produced to feed the entire world several times over.

[torpidai.livejournal.com]

We have plenty of food. So what next?

rly? without farming? (a non-natural process I may add)