Sometimes when I can't sleep, I play mind games with numbers, sort of like counting sheep. I woke up one day last week around 4 AM and couldn't get back to sleep, so I got to thinking about my blog post about children. It occurred to me that, considering what I said about middle class demographics and their birth rate, the number of middle class surnames in this country will rapidly decrease. Here is my reasoning. If the birth rate among the middle class is less that two/family (which it is), there is only a fifty percent chance that the surname of the father will be carried on to children. Assuming that he has a male child, that child has a fifty percent chance of having a male child if he marries and has children at all. If you carry this out over very few generations it means that, starting with the original father, their is a 50/50 chance of his surname being carried over for one generation, a 25% chance that his surname will be carried over for two generations, a 12.5% chance that the surname will last 3 generations, and only a 6% chance that it will carry four generations. In a span of around 80 years, most surnames will be extinct. There are of course some variables. Some women will have children out of wedlock, and carry their surname forward. Some religious faiths Catholics and Mormons for instance tend to have more children, and their will be a few other outliers, but overall with our current birthrate the number of surnames will decrease among the middle class.
As in many of my posts, I am now segue into the real point of my blog. One of my good friends sent me a link to a video about Muslim demographics. Here's the link. http://www.youtube.com/embed/6-3X5hIFXYU Now I tend to be an Islamic apologist, and I don't believe that they are universally out for world domination, are at war with us, or that their world view is all bad. I do have some serious reservations about fundamentalist Muslims just as I am suspicious of fundamentalists of all religions. But, I tell you, this video is a real eye opener. It is obviously an anti-Muslim peace of work, and I'm not sure of the voracity of all the statistics in the video, but I do believe that the overall demographic trends it proposes are generally true. I did look this up, and many of the most outrageous claims are false, and the rate of demographic shift is exaggerated. That is that all of Europe and Russia is destined to soon become completely dominated by people of Islamic faith, and it looks like Canada and the United States may not be far behind.
I can't imagine anything we can do to reverse this trend. It's a basic fact that poor people tend to have more children, doing so has always been a way to provide security for the parents in their old age. At the same time, through our welfare system, we have enabled the poor to have more children. I'm not advocating for any change here, it is unconscionable to consider cutting off benefits to the poor and to their children in order to control their birth rates. As a nation, I guess we could provide financial assistance to increase birth rates among the middle class, but we could not do this exclusively for the middle class, and there is no way that our country is going to embark on such a huge voyage of social engineering. The only thing I can possibly think of to slow or reverse this trend in this country is to bring economic justice to the poor and middle class so that the poor will not need to have large families and the middle class can once again afford to have larger families.
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Where are the Children
A week or so ago, I met with a fellow to talk about installing a new door at the house where he grew up, which he now maintains as a rental. When I was young I had friends who lived in this neighborhood, and he and I began comparing notes about all the kids who lived near by. He and I quickly rattled off the names of about a dozen children that lived within a block of his house. I have often thought about the street on which I grew up, and all of the children I knew on this street. In my one block of the street where I grew up, I remember and have counted 26 children. Today, on that same street, there may be three or four children. This is in a town which had a population of less than 10,000 in the late fifties, and has over 50,000 residents today.
This anecdotal demographic shift led me to think about my own family. My mother had three siblings and between the four siblings, they raised a total of seventeen children. All of these seventeen cousins are pretty well past their child rearing ages now, and these seventeen cousins produced, I believe, seventeen off spring. On my father's side, there were six siblings who produced nine children, and my nine cousins and myself only raised, I think, three offspring.
Looking back, I can easily name ten families I knew who had more than four children. Today, I don't personally knew any families with four or more children.
Now I am about to tread very lightly on some very thin ice. Every one I have mentioned up to this point grew up in middle class white families. I don't know how large other ethnic families were back in the fifties, but I suspect their family size mirrored that of the people I knew. The one thing I am certain of is that it has become increasingly difficult for a middle class couple to have a large family. Typically, both spouses work, and neither spouse is willing or able to give up his or her job and stay home with children. The cost of raising children from birth through college has grown astronomically. It seems that the only people who can afford multiple children, are people who are assisted by the government in providing for these children. I suspect that only a very small percentage of these poor children of poor families will have a chance of rising up to middle class prosperity.
Of course declining birth rate is not the only factor in diminishing the size of our middle class. Thousands of people are falling out of the middle class every day due to reduced economic opportunity. As the size of the middle class shrinks, and the poor become poorer, the wealthy in this country continue to see huge increases in their net worth. Perhaps this is the grand plan. To quote Voltaire: "The comfort of the rich requires an abundant supply of the poor."
This anecdotal demographic shift led me to think about my own family. My mother had three siblings and between the four siblings, they raised a total of seventeen children. All of these seventeen cousins are pretty well past their child rearing ages now, and these seventeen cousins produced, I believe, seventeen off spring. On my father's side, there were six siblings who produced nine children, and my nine cousins and myself only raised, I think, three offspring.
Looking back, I can easily name ten families I knew who had more than four children. Today, I don't personally knew any families with four or more children.
Now I am about to tread very lightly on some very thin ice. Every one I have mentioned up to this point grew up in middle class white families. I don't know how large other ethnic families were back in the fifties, but I suspect their family size mirrored that of the people I knew. The one thing I am certain of is that it has become increasingly difficult for a middle class couple to have a large family. Typically, both spouses work, and neither spouse is willing or able to give up his or her job and stay home with children. The cost of raising children from birth through college has grown astronomically. It seems that the only people who can afford multiple children, are people who are assisted by the government in providing for these children. I suspect that only a very small percentage of these poor children of poor families will have a chance of rising up to middle class prosperity.
Of course declining birth rate is not the only factor in diminishing the size of our middle class. Thousands of people are falling out of the middle class every day due to reduced economic opportunity. As the size of the middle class shrinks, and the poor become poorer, the wealthy in this country continue to see huge increases in their net worth. Perhaps this is the grand plan. To quote Voltaire: "The comfort of the rich requires an abundant supply of the poor."
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
June Socrates Cafe
I've been a fairly regular attendee to the monthly Socrates Cafe meetings for about the past year. The basic format of the meeting is that we meet at 6:00 pm the first Tuesday of each month in a private room of a local restaurant, order dinner, and decide what we want to discuss. The floor is opened to anyone to suggest a topic in the form of a question. After a list of questions are taken, there is a round of voting in which you can vote for as many of the questions as you might be interested in. Then the two or three questions receiving the most votes are voted on again, though this time, you can only vote for one question. the winning question becomes the topic of discussion.
The questions tend to be more philosophical than issue related, although there is no set rule. The attendees tend to be fairly liberal, although we do have a few very conservative members that while being conservative, are not dogmatic in there views. I suppose if they were dogmatic, they wouldn't be there. We have one person who serves as a moderator, and he generally does a good job of keeping us on topic, and maintaining order.
Tonight's question was "When does assisting someone become enabling someone" This question was posed by the wife of the most conservative member of our group, but it was one of several questions her husband had written down as potential topics. I immediately felt my hackles rise, because I thought I knew where this question was leading, that is, why should "big government" be involved in social welfare programs. It turned out that I was partially right, there was much discussion about social welfare, but, the lady who posed the question opened the discussion with an anecdote of personal aid and the consequent enabling of the recipient. A good part of the discussion centered around family matters where one member of a family is allowed to continue to exhibit bad behavior because he is aided by the other family members. The general consensus of the group on these micro issues was that a good dose of tough love should be administered.
On the Macro level, however, the issue was not as clear. The conservative view seems to be that generally everyone receiving government assistance is simply gaming the system, and a good dose of tough love should be administered (do away with government assistance), along with shifting the responsibility of caring for the needy to the churches and families of the needy, regardless of the actual existence and where with all of these benevolent factions.
This brings me to my own view of the problem, which I certainly attempted to express at tonight's meeting. Actually, I may have over expressed my opinion, which, unfortunately, I tend to do. Here, is the great thing about writing, now I have an opportunity to put my thoughts into some order, and more clearly express my views.
Of course people game the system, be it welfare, food stamps, or unemployment insurance. I think that it is basic human nature to try to gain advantage in any situation, especially if there is no perceived harm in doing so. The fact that some people take unfair advantage does not take away from the fact that most people who receive assistance from the government need that assistance, and would rather be in a position where they do not need assistance. The answers to reducing government assistance are twofold.
First of all, the government, state federal or local, should do a better job of policing these programs. It is penny wise and pound foolish to save money by reducing the budgets of agencies that monitor these programs, and then cry that the programs are corrupt and should be eliminated.
Secondly, and more importantly, most assistance programs could be greatly reduced by requiring that a living wage be paid to anyone willing to work. As a bit of social engineering, the minimum wage should be drastically increased, and companies should be given disincentives for hiring part time workers.
By the way, here is my theory on "trickle up economics". So, we constantly hear that raising the minimum wage would cause inflation, and result in fewer workers being hired. Raising the minimum wage is somewhat inflationary, but employers, be they retailers or manufacturers, have to be competitive, so they would not automatically pass on all of the increased wage costs to their consumers. In "trickle up economics", when the minimum wage is increased, suddenly a percentage of wage earners above the previous minimum wage would be reduced to the same level as the new minimum wage earners. Because these people generally have more experience (thus more value to the employer), some of them would receive an additional increase in wages to differentiate them from the bottom tier worker. By the same token, some of each higher tier of workers would see an increase in wages for the same reason. This works right on up to the managers and executive members of the organization, and ultimately forces the owner or corporation to accept lower profit margins. Now, because each tier of worker has more disposable income, that money is spent, more goods and services are purchased, more taxes are collected, and more jobs are created. Don't be fooled by the continual Republican rhetoric about job growth being stymied by government regulation or uncertainty, The only real way to increase job growth is to increase demand for products and services.
As I have written before, I am an institutionalist, I see nothing wrong with big government, I just want to see better government. I don't think the churches, families or other charitable institutions have the reach or the finances to provide all the help needed in this country , only good government and good leadership can provide adequate assistance to the needy.
The questions tend to be more philosophical than issue related, although there is no set rule. The attendees tend to be fairly liberal, although we do have a few very conservative members that while being conservative, are not dogmatic in there views. I suppose if they were dogmatic, they wouldn't be there. We have one person who serves as a moderator, and he generally does a good job of keeping us on topic, and maintaining order.
Tonight's question was "When does assisting someone become enabling someone" This question was posed by the wife of the most conservative member of our group, but it was one of several questions her husband had written down as potential topics. I immediately felt my hackles rise, because I thought I knew where this question was leading, that is, why should "big government" be involved in social welfare programs. It turned out that I was partially right, there was much discussion about social welfare, but, the lady who posed the question opened the discussion with an anecdote of personal aid and the consequent enabling of the recipient. A good part of the discussion centered around family matters where one member of a family is allowed to continue to exhibit bad behavior because he is aided by the other family members. The general consensus of the group on these micro issues was that a good dose of tough love should be administered.
On the Macro level, however, the issue was not as clear. The conservative view seems to be that generally everyone receiving government assistance is simply gaming the system, and a good dose of tough love should be administered (do away with government assistance), along with shifting the responsibility of caring for the needy to the churches and families of the needy, regardless of the actual existence and where with all of these benevolent factions.
This brings me to my own view of the problem, which I certainly attempted to express at tonight's meeting. Actually, I may have over expressed my opinion, which, unfortunately, I tend to do. Here, is the great thing about writing, now I have an opportunity to put my thoughts into some order, and more clearly express my views.
Of course people game the system, be it welfare, food stamps, or unemployment insurance. I think that it is basic human nature to try to gain advantage in any situation, especially if there is no perceived harm in doing so. The fact that some people take unfair advantage does not take away from the fact that most people who receive assistance from the government need that assistance, and would rather be in a position where they do not need assistance. The answers to reducing government assistance are twofold.
First of all, the government, state federal or local, should do a better job of policing these programs. It is penny wise and pound foolish to save money by reducing the budgets of agencies that monitor these programs, and then cry that the programs are corrupt and should be eliminated.
Secondly, and more importantly, most assistance programs could be greatly reduced by requiring that a living wage be paid to anyone willing to work. As a bit of social engineering, the minimum wage should be drastically increased, and companies should be given disincentives for hiring part time workers.
By the way, here is my theory on "trickle up economics". So, we constantly hear that raising the minimum wage would cause inflation, and result in fewer workers being hired. Raising the minimum wage is somewhat inflationary, but employers, be they retailers or manufacturers, have to be competitive, so they would not automatically pass on all of the increased wage costs to their consumers. In "trickle up economics", when the minimum wage is increased, suddenly a percentage of wage earners above the previous minimum wage would be reduced to the same level as the new minimum wage earners. Because these people generally have more experience (thus more value to the employer), some of them would receive an additional increase in wages to differentiate them from the bottom tier worker. By the same token, some of each higher tier of workers would see an increase in wages for the same reason. This works right on up to the managers and executive members of the organization, and ultimately forces the owner or corporation to accept lower profit margins. Now, because each tier of worker has more disposable income, that money is spent, more goods and services are purchased, more taxes are collected, and more jobs are created. Don't be fooled by the continual Republican rhetoric about job growth being stymied by government regulation or uncertainty, The only real way to increase job growth is to increase demand for products and services.
As I have written before, I am an institutionalist, I see nothing wrong with big government, I just want to see better government. I don't think the churches, families or other charitable institutions have the reach or the finances to provide all the help needed in this country , only good government and good leadership can provide adequate assistance to the needy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
