Another Economist says more Babies are Needed
by Shannon Roberts
Today I point you to this eloquently written review in the The Telegraph of Stephen D King’s recently published book “When the Money Runs Out” by Charles Moore.
The book gives a gloomy economic forecast. Politicians always appear certain that recovery from our current long recession is just around the corner. Yet King, who is group chief economist and global head of economics and asset allocation at HSBC, asserts that the Baby Boomers’ assumption that the world’s economy will always bounce back may be a false one with little basis. This is largely due to the demographic data that they have themselves have created, and King’s basic premise is that we need more babies to sustain our economies.
This book is yet another reminder from a person with good credentials to open our eyes. In his review, Moore insightfully points out that:
In the first decade of the 21st century, it was obvious that the governments and citizens of the Western world were borrowing too much money, yet almost all the finest minds in banking, central banking, economics and politics devoted their energies to proving the opposite…
…The baby boomers – reacting to the fact that there were (as their name suggests) so many of them – convinced themselves that over-population threatened the health and wealth of the world. Almost the opposite is the case. By failing to reproduce themselves in adequate numbers, the baby boomers have laid enormous burdens on those few children whom they have produced. You can borrow and spend hugely if you know that the generation that will end up with the bill is much larger than your own. If it is much smaller, you can’t; but we have. As a result, Europe is a dying business. Most of the rest of the world is not. So it is winning.
… For 50 years now, European culture has developed the idea that the problem is too many people. Without quite realising, it has developed attitudes that work against the future of the human race. In cultural terms, the celebration of contraception, homosexuality and euthanasia all represent this trend. In economics, the idea of spending rather than saving does the same. So do the Greens, who see the productions of mankind as the enemy of the earth, and attack economic growth without seeming to realise that they are thus advocating impoverishment.
Well said. It is interesting to consider the political forces and agenda’s behind the movements mentioned by Moore. I often find it scary how naive people can be who simply pick up on media party lines. Our brightest minds do not necessarily become journalists! Perhaps it is time to have bumper stickers reading “Save the People” – with the inherent dignity, reason, logic and freedom to love of each person making him or her infinitely valuable and unique.
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