Categories: Mark Steyn

Beating swords into welfare cheques

MARK STEYN: Hedonistic benefits, low birth rates—Europe needs protection from itself

by Mark Steyn on Thursday, June 3, 2010 10:55am - 309 Comments

Johannes Eisele / Reuters

The trick in this line of work is not to be right too soon. A couple of years back, I wrote a bestselling hate crime. Don’t worry, I’m not in plug mode; indeed, I shall eschew even mentioning the book’s title. But its general thesis is that the jig is up for much if not most of the Western world. “Alarmist,” pronounced Maclean’s, reflecting the general consensus of polite society here and in Europe.

Polite society has spent the years since playing catch-up. So if you don’t want your fin du civilisation analysis from a frothing right-wing loon you can now get it from the house-trained chaps at the New York Times:

“Europeans have boasted about their social model, with its generous vacations and early retirements, its national health care systems and extensive welfare benefits, contrasting it with the comparative harshness of American capitalism . . . ‘The Europe that protects’ is a slogan of the European Union.”

Protects from what? Right now, Europe mostly needs protection from itself, and its worst inclinations:

“With low growth, low birth rates and longer life expectancies, Europe can no longer afford its comfortable lifestyle.”

The Times hits all the Steynian themes, including the Continent as defence-welfare queen:
“Europeans have benefited from low military spending, protected by NATO and the American nuclear umbrella.”

Absolved from having to pay for their own defence, Continentals, like Canadians, beat their swords into welfare cheques, and erected vast cradle-to-grave social entitlements. Even under the U.S. security umbrella, they proved unsustainable. Why? Because Europeans stopped breeding. And, even with unprecedented levels of immigration, they’ve been unable to halt population decline. Again, that was mere Steynian alarmism a year or two back. Now it’s received wisdom. Here’s Time magazine:

“Germany is shrinking—fast. New figures released on May 17 show the birth rate in Europe’s biggest economy has plummeted to a historic low.”

That’s true. Time doesn’t really provide much in the way of historical perspective, but, for the purposes of comparison, in 1964 West Germany alone produced 1.35 million new babies; in 2009, a united Germany managed less than half that—651,000 births. In 1964, Germany was undergoing its postwar economic boom. In the mood for a reprise? On the depleted manpower of 2010, that ain’t gonna happen.

And these days, remember, Germany has to support a continent. It’s the economic powerhouse that’s supposed to be rescuing the euro and preventing the five soi-disant PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain) from having the Big Bad Wolf of reality blow their house of straw to smithereens. Dream on. “Germany’s working-age population is likely to decrease 30 per cent over the next few decades,” says Steffen Kröhnert of the Berlin Institute for Population Development. “Rural areas will see a massive population decline and some villages will simply disappear—Germany will become a weak economic power in the future.”

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Tags: economy, Germany

More by Mark Steyn

Claire M

What is the purpose of life, for the non-Christian?

Easy. The purpose of life is to keep living… In other words, to provide the necessities to yourself and your family, and the people you love. Life is a good in itself. This is something that is so self evident for most of us that it hardly bears stating. Steyn is absolutely right to say that when it is the state rather than the individual that maintains your life, you lose that sense of life having a purpose, because the state takes that purpose away from you. it is no wonder people on welfare are less happy than people who live off a modest salary that they have earned themselves. I'll bet any money that the independence from welfare factor correlates more strongly with happiness and life satisfaction than the religion factor does.

http://intensedebate.com/people/minaka minaka

When you do not labor to support yourself or any children you bring into the world, you can have no genuine self respect. A sense of entitlement inculcated by the socialist state, lack of shame that tax paying others slave to support you and yours is a poor substitute.

In fact, the groups who make most use of Welfare resemble addicts and their sad outcomes. American blacks and Natives in both Canada and the United States suffer high rates of alcoholism, drug use, family dysfunction including children requiring foster care, incarceration for crime, suicide. The same thing happens to whites on Welfare but the proportion is much smaller.

Chronic welfare is toxic to the receiver and draining to the payer. Only a leftist thinks this is a good thing because it puts him, the pusher into power with the votes of the addicted.

JohnTheAthiest

Paul Ehrlich has been proven wrong on all of his limits to growth hysteria but his followers continue in concrete bound technophobia. The irony is that shrinking population, something many favour, can only thrive economically with continually advancing technology translated into increased productivity, something made almost impossible by the regulatory, welfare, and statist mindset of these Luddites. In other words, the limits to growth crowd want, whether intentionally or through ignorance, negative growth necessarily accompanied by economic decline.

Chris

To John,
Can you really claim to be an atheist, when you can’t even spell the word “atheist” correctly?

Daulat Ram

Astonishing !
Oliver

DID THE WORLD END YET?!
I CAN FEEL THE CLEANSING POWER OF STEYN ALL OVER ME!!
I BASK IN HIS UNABASHED GLORY!!

Gonzales

Quit trolling.

Either say something meaningful, or kindly refrain from talking.

http://intensedebate.com/people/minaka minaka

You mean shouting, like a crazy person on the street corner…

Daulat Ram

I am amazed that Steyn is STILL making good money from running his hilariously discredited, obviously bunkum thesis that high European welfare is the cause of the continent's low birth rates, unlike those lustily btreeding, rely-on-yourself "healthy" low welfare countries like his beloved US.

It is a thesis that warms the hearts of rightist loons, but is laughable.

Just take a look at the CIA World Fact book.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by…

The US has a rateof birth per thousand of 14.0. Germany – Steyn'sultra-welfarist bete noire – only 8.18…….

Sten's anti-welfarist case proved?

Not at all. Guess which place has an EVEN lower birthrate than allegedly welfare-sterilsed Germany? That paradise of the low government spending fiends: Hong Kong: coming in nobly at 7.47….Uh oh, Steyn!

Gonzales

Maybe you should actually go to Hong Kong someday and see what life is like there.

Also, Hong Kong isn't a country, it's a region of China.
Gonzales

I just want to add that you shouldn't rely ok Wikipedia for your facts.

Daulat Ram

I was citing the CIA World Factbook. A good source even for rightist loons, I presume.

But in case you still have doubts try this OECD Fact Book for 2009: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KCENB3qVpzgC&a…

It shows that as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, South Korea has the SECOND LOWEST rate of the OECD countries: 6.9 per cent. this is far less than the US rate of 15.9 percent. But the South Korean birthrate at 9.3 per thousand is also well behind the US one of 14.0. So much for lower social spending leading to higher birthrates.

Daulat Ram

Second lowest rate of expenditure by governments on social welfare as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, I meant, above.
Gonzales

Unless you can prove that it's part of any overall trend, one example means absolutely nothing.

Daulat Ram

My whole point is that there is no indication that higher welfare spending means lower birth rates, as Steyn claims. Some countries with lower welfare spending than the US, like South Korea and Japan, also have lower birth rates. On the other hand, there are countries with considerably higher welfare spending, like France, which approach the US birth rate.

The only overall trend if you compare countries is that by and large, the very poor countries have high birth rates, much higher than the rich ones. High birth rates is a function, then, of economic underdevelopment, not of high welfare spending.
Gonzales

Steyn is talking about the West. Korea (and Japan) are very different.
Daulat Ram

If Steyn was talking only about the West, it becomes an even merrier farce for him.

The US Census Bureau has bad news for his worship of America as the beacon of low welfare and high birthrates, presumably because of the White (Western) population. Here is what it has to say:

"Among the racial and ethnic groups studied (non-
Hispanic White, Black, Asian, and Hispanic), Hispanic
women (any race) were the only ones reaching the end
of their childbearing years with more births than the
number required for natural replacement—2.3 births
by age 40 to 44.3 Black and non-Hispanic White
women were below the replacement level, averaging
about 1.8 to 1.9 births by that age…During the year prior to the
2004 survey, 794,000 foreign-born women gave birth,
resulting in a fertility rate of 84 births per 1,000
women. The fertility rate for native women was lower,
at 57 births per 1,000 women. "

So a lot of the higher US birthrate is due to Hispanics, who of course are to a very significant extent racially mixed, including Amerindian and African elements.
Daulat Ram

Non-Hispanic White women in the US, note well, are BELOW replacement level in their birth rates – so much for the rough-tough US low-welfare model saving the White population from the "fading away" fate of the welfare-drugged Europeans……

This all becomes totally ridiculous for Steyn's precious theory when you remember that these Hispanics are likely to be on average recepients of MORE welfare handouts than the Whites…..And their welfare handouts, far from stunting their propensity to breed, does not it seems stop them being the mainstsay of the very famed US higher birthrate worshipped by the Steynists as proof of the virtue of low welfare…!!!!

What ho!!!!
Daulat Ram

Apologies for spoiling your weekend.

Mark Steyn is not the gleaming pinnacle of intelligence he is so often taken to be at Maclean's. Actually, his arguments are typically shoddy and ridiculously easy to deflate. On the US vs European birth rates issue he is particularly guilty of talking through his hat.

He and his like are back numbers now.
Gonzales

Is there any particular reason you insist on typing like a kid whose just ingested to much sugar? Why so many exclamation points? And why do you love welfare so much?

Also, my weekend is going to be great. Thank you for your concern.
minaka

Daulat Ram, you should try something at the beginner level rather than Steyn's writing. He does not hold that the ones TAKING the Welfare are not breeding, in fact the opposite. Muslims in Europe are disproportionately on Welfare including polygamous families and have large numbers of children as do Hispanics in the USA. It's the people PAYING taxes supporting multi-generation Welfarists who feel they can't afford more children of their own.

In a Welfare state, the productive working members of society have fewer children than the parasitic group. So stop your misplaced self-congratulation on letting the air out of what you misrepresent as Steyn's argument because you don't understand it. Incidentally, people in the United States collect Welfare as socialism has reared its ugly head there too.
Daulat Ram

MINAKA:

So here we go round in a circle. Sten's theory is laughable, so his defenders have to invent new ones to save his face.

Gonzales at first suggested that my statistics were dubious. I pointed out they came from the CIA FactBook. He then suggested that if South korea and Japan have very low birthrates despite considerably lower welfare spending than the US, this was because of a cultural difference; Steyn was talking about the West. I accepted that for argument's sake and showed how it makes Steyn's theory even more absurd, since the higher US birthrate is dependent on Hispanics, with non-Hispanic Whites not even reproducing at replacement levels. Gonzales quits complaining about my use of exclamation marks.
Daulat Ram

MINAKA:
Now you come along with another explanation to help out the hapless Steyn: OK, societies are not reproducing not because everyone in Europe has too many state entitlements to have a sense of responsibility to society and have children, but because the hardworkers pay the lazy guys too much welfare to be able to afford children themselves; instead the lazy guys have them……Steyn doesn't say anything of the kind, but never mind. Suppose he did. It would still leave him in a hole. How would he explain then why in the US with its lower welfare non-Hispanic Whites still do not even replace themselves? And why is that not an argument for MORE welfare entitlements, not less? If children are what interest you?
Daulat Ram

It's so easy to run rings round perplexed rightists……Ho ho !
Gonzales

"Gonzales quits complaining about my use of exclamation marks."

Why? You're still doing it. It makes you look like a fool.

Daulat Ram

A comparison of countries' birthrates indicates no consistent overall trend other than that the more economically developed a society, the lower its birthrate is likely to be.

Black African countries are right at the top in terms of birthrates. But among them, Botswana, the richest, has only half the average rate of the rest. France, one of the countries Steyn most loves to sneer at for its welfarism, scores 12.57, below the US. But alas for Steyn, this is higher than the low welfarist South Korea, at 9.3……..And one of the VERY lowest birthrates is enjoyed by none other than a country notorious for its tight-fistedness when it comes to welfare handouts: Japan, at 7.64.

Steyn should give this absurd theory a rest. But of course he won't. He has a large family, and this kind of cheap rightist propaganda is profitable. Mark knows what he's doing.

Gonzales

Try harder, please

Daulat Ram

I take it your "Try harder" injuction is directed to Mark Steyn.

Gonzales

I know who i responded to.

Daulat Ram

I am sorry to have punctured Mark's balloon a little cruelly. But never mind…..he's still making good money on his bunkum theory, and feeding a large family. Lucky chap.

Gonzales

Don't worry, you didn't puncture anyone's balloon. All you did was make yourself seem somewhat incoherent.

Daulat Ram

Not everyone can be as coherent as you are, without citing any facts or trying to make a case. But then I guess if one "argues" as you do you are really conceding the case.
Gonzales

You know what they say about assumptions.

Richard

Excellent comments here and a compelling discussion.

Freedom without sacrifice
Choice without consequences
Success without work
Rights without responsibilities
Spirituality without moral obligation

Why is it many Canadians seem so intent to adopt a European model?
LarryG

When Europe runs out of white Europeans to do the work and the maintenance, the whole place will look like Baghdad and without oil like the Arabs have, they will then be in a very large pig-sty. All intellectual vigor and artistic endeavor will wither and die and then the Muslims will have a chance to prove how much they have provided posterity.
Thomas

Population decline is a result of the Welfare system. In the old days when people provided from their own welfare they had larger families to help facilitate that. Just look at Family Farms, it takes workers to tend the farm thus farmers have more children. One's welfare is directly dependent on their children. When government steps in and becomes the welfare giver it incentives the people to have small families, thus birthrates decline. Children are a risk ie. they are expensive. Someone will not incur such a risk unless the reward is greater. By becoming the care giver government reduces the reward and the risk is all that remains. People will have fewer children because large families are now a burden. Except that children will always be needed to provide welfare to their parents. The government makes it an in-direct method (taking money from the young to give to the old). Think of it this way, Children take care of parents, thus parents have a lot of children. The new model, government takes from children and give to parents thus parents want more government, not children. The end result is a declining population and a collapsing economic Ponzi scheme system. Take away government welfare and the parents become dependent on their children, thus they will have more children.

Daulat Ram

THOMAS:

There are no two ways about it; in high-welfare rich nations and in low-welfare rich nations, birthrates are plummeting. Government pensions have nothing to do with it. As people become sure with better medical care their kids are likely to survive into adulthood, they cut their birthrate drastically.

As a matter of fact, people think of the numbers of children they want to have in personal terms, not in terms of what it takes to keep society up to the existing population level. If two children are enough company in old age, or even one, they'll go for that.

One further caution: societies with very low welfare tend to be politically unstable and prone to extremist politics, of Left and Right. Beware of what you wish for.

Ted

And my daughter, in Germany, wonders why I want her to update her US Passport!
Tattvavit

Mark Steyn:
"Europe’s economic crisis is a mere symptom of its existential crisis: what is life for? What gives it meaning? Post-Christian, post-national, post-modern Europe has no answer to that question, . . . that's the bottom line–not introducing a new entitlement but instilling in people for whom life is a diversion a sense of purpose larger than themselves . . ."

Stating life's purpose, the "Vedanta-sutra" begins: "Human life is meant for ascertaining the highest truth," or reality distinguished from illusion for the welfare of all. In other words, human life is not simply for what the animals can also accomplish: eating, sleeping, mating, and defending. To deliver the mind from illusion, mantras, spiritual sounds like Hare Krishna, are recommended, as are hymns, prayers, and so on.
Plier

"This is the crisis of our times…" Wow! Thank God the times have become so benign.
I grew up worrying about nuclear Armageddon! Sleep well Mark. We'll get get through somehow.

Ratbarf

I don't think you realise that nuclear armegeddon is exactly where this is heading, along with a possibility for massive civil war.

Plier

And…" When Barack Obama started redistributing American wealth…" Do dishonest assumptions like this absurd statement not elicit any "whaaa?!"
Moses Weinstock

Where do all of these effete snobs posting here come from?

For once I agree with the 7th century savages now taking over Europe.

They gutted Van Gogh on one of the busiest street in Europe and they will get these folks next.

Here is the USA it will be a bit tougher, since 120 million guns are in private hands and we cant wait to use them!

Ratbarf

Doesn't matter how many guns you have if they outbreed them and you don't have the political will to call a cull.

Trent H.

Not only that,I would, like to add that they will be seized in the coming years by the Federal govt,supported by Judges who legislate from the bench and Congress.The country keeps veering toward the elft so,if we all have to live with draconian gun laws in Europe,Canada,Australia and New Zealand,what makes him think it won`t happen to him.Never say things like ,'it can`t happen here' because it sure can.The guns will be seized in the next decade.It happened to us,it can happen him?

Phil Cardenas

Is there a columnist in North America that is more erudite, intellectually sound, and enlightening than Mark Steyn? (That's rhetorical). A sign of a truly great writer is how much coherence and profound thought he or she can pack into a very short column or book. Density matters. I love conciseness–a virtue that is lost on most writers. This was an outstanding article; I may read this to my high school class.
Yes, "America Alone" indeed. Demography and how it affects world economies should be our most important concern in the world today, but liberal and European thought has crushed one of the first commandments given to man: "Thou shalt multiply an replenish the earth". I get intensely angry when people buy into the premise that having lots of children is a very selfish thing to do; considering the strain it will cause on the resources of the planet and those living on it. Rubbish!! Having children is the least selfish thing we do in this world and we learn to be selfless and sacrificial by rearing children. It is the progressive mindset that destroys the family unit–a unit that, nurtured properly, provides the future workforce, mentors, teachers, writers, military, and yes even politicians (hopefully ones that have a shred of integrity). There is a terrific documentary about this called "Demographic Winter" that expresses the unique problems of demography. It is wonderful; I hope Mark has seen it. http://www.demographicwinter.com/index.html

Daulat Ram

CARDENAS:

As to the high intellect and vast profundity of your hero Mark Steyn, just read what I say in the postings below yours. Your thoughts would be welcome.

Daulat Ram

CARDENAS

A few points to mention to your class:

In high-welfare rich nations and in low-welfare rich nations, birthrates are plunging. Government pensions have nothing to do with that. As people become sure with better medical care their children are likely to survive into adulthood, they cut their output of kids drastically.

People decide the numbers of children they want to have in personal terms, not in terms of what it takes to keep society up to the existing population level. If two children are enough company in old age, or even one, they'll settle for that.

One serious warning: societies with very low welfare tend to be politically unstable and prone to extremist politics, of Left and Right. Beware of what you wish for.

Daulat Ram

What disposes in one go of Steyn's theory that higher European welfare is to blame for crashing European birthrates while lower US welfare maintains the higher US birthrate is the unkind US Census Bureau which states categorically that: "Among the racial and ethnic groups studied (non- Hispanic White, Black, Asian, and Hispanic), Hispanic women (any race) were the only ones reaching the end of their childbearing years with more births than the number required for natural replacement—2.3 births by age 40 to 44.3. Black and non-Hispanic White women were below the replacement level, averaging about 1.8 to 1.9 births by that age..".

Clearly, whatever else the average God-fearing non-Hispanic US White lady is devoting herself to – canasta, "Sex in the City", you name it – it is not, despite her undoubted admiration of Mark steyn, propagating the species. The size of the welfare check doesn't count in this respect.

Gonzales

Shut up

Daulat Ram

Looking at societies right across the globe indicates that as they reach higher levels of economic development, as women gain education, as people get to like having modern consumer goods, as they urbanise, population growth drops steeply. This has been true of societies ranging across cultures and continents like South Korea, Botswana, Iran and Brazil. The Steyn ideal of the good ol' life of prasing the Lord in the three-sided shack in Oklahoma with Pa and Ma and 70 siblings is understandable and romantic…..The sad fact is, in our modern world, it ain't gonna happen.

Sorry, Mark.
Daulat Ram

One can expect, with coming US censuses, that the US Hispanic lady will also be found heading toward low birth rates, like her non-Hispanic sisters. The Hispanics' high rate of reproduction is a passing thing, a carry-over from their Latin American background.

Let us remember, though, that one guy who is doing well out of all this is Mark Steyn. You gotta admire him; he is paying his bills by churning out in half an hour at the laptop this kind of rightist propaganda tosh. It's easy money, and helps with the big family.
http://intensedebate.com/people/Faustino Faustino

You need to get out of grad school.

Joseph

Ironically, I am in grad school, but I'm doing computer science. Political philsophy is just one of my obsessive hobbies…

Gaunilon

"all people are created equal" refers to the notion that all people are created with equal rights, not equal abilities. The first is a precept that has to do with Christianity, not right vs. left. The second, which you seem to be attributing to liberals, is manifestly false.

What is correct in your post is that socialists try to use the state to enforce premise (2) above. This is why socialism yields such poor results wherever it is tried.
Daulat Ram

A look at what happened in Russia and Eastern Europe after the collapse of communism would have warned Mark Steyn of the laughable quality of his theory.

Welfare crashing birthrates? You gotta be joking.

In Russia and Eastern Europe, the old Communist social welfare system vanished; people were put in the very condition Mark and his admirers long to place Westerners: sink or swim, on your own, next to no help from the big bad state…….What happened to birthrates? If Mark is right, they should have boomed and we would be running out of space for all the new millions of Russians and Hungarians…..Nah. The reverse hapened: already low birthrates dropped catastrophically as welfare became unavailable. So low are birthrates now in Russia that serious demographers are talking of the gifted Russian people vanishing from the Earth…….And what does the Russian government do to increase birthrates? They are INCREASING welfare benefits, with some modest indications of more babies as a result.

LC Bennett

Communism amputated all of the appendages of a successful society – self reliance, personal responsibility, dissent, natural rights – and left it crippled. Cripples don't swim well, they tend to sink.

Daulat Ram

BENNETT:

Really? It's just that ex-communists can't do anything right, you say?

Nope.

As a matter of fact, in terms of economic growth the East European countries and Russia post-communism have done quite well. They have adapted to capitalism quite quickly. It is the population growth rates that crashed, after the disappearance of the communist welfare state.

How inventive and illogical you Steynistas are, to defend with incredible stubbornness a ludicrous superstition: welfare crashes birthrates……!

If it is welfare junkies who are incapable of reproducing, if it is welfarism that kills birthrates, how come in the US it is the White non-Hispanic women (presumably devotees of capitalism mostly) whose output of kids is below replacement level?

LC Bennett

-Russia is crony capitalism not free market capitalism. It is heavily state controlled. The middle class is still not strong enough to offset the society crippling policies of generations of communism.

-Welfare clients reproduce quite well, after all they get paid more money to have kids they can not afford. They also do a poor job of raising them (crime rates, for instance). Meanwhile the productive parts of society are heavily taxed to provide for both the welfare class and the government bureaucracy that feeds off the tax money. The middle class gets significantly poorer, not richer like the welfare class, when they have kids. If middle class families had pro-family tax rates, I suspect they would have more kids. Russia would do well to advance pro-family taxes rather than copy the western welfare state model.

Daulat Ram

BENNETT:

So here we go round the mulberry bush of illogic again to somehow save the face of the hapless Steyn…..

So welfarism means, say you, that welfare recipients can afford kids but middle class taxpayers can't? It would be strange if that were true, wouldn't it?

Because, taxes or no taxes, the middle class people certainly have far bigger incomes than poor welfare recipients. They SHOULD be able, if we apply logic, to be ble to afford MORE kids than the poor. In actuality, as the unkind US Census Bureau serenely repoprts, it is the more middle class, non-Hispanic US Whites who are below replacement level in the output of kids…..

Kindly rethink.
Daulat Ram

apologies for the typos
LC Bennett

I think you missed the point. The welfare class gets richer , via increased welfare payments, when they have kids. They also get every necessity subsidized or for free – dental, prescriptions, eye care. The middle class does not qualify for these benefits so they become poorer (lower disposable income) when they have kids. The incentive to have children is higher for the dependent welfare class than the productive middle class,

It goes back to the old saying about subsidizing what you want more of.

Since the middle class does a better job of raising kids the government should have pro-family tax rates instead of a generous welfare state. The incentive to have children would then move to the taxpayers instead of tax receivers.
Daulat Ram

BENNETT:

Another example of poor argument and failure of common sense.

No serious person who cares for facts would say the only sector of the populace in the US who are having kids above the replacement rate – the Hispanics – are all, or even mostly, welfare dependent. Far from it – the only reasonable assumption is that they probably, on avergage, receive more welfare than the non-Hispanic White population.

But you are getting results for the money: plenty of kids, above the replacement level. The majority White population, it is clear, especially the better off part of it, DESPITE having far more disposable income, will not even have enough kids to replace their own population. (For it is foolish to say that the US middle class has LESS disposable income than welfare recipients…..Even middle class self-pity should not be allowed to go that far. Heck, they'll be complaining next the middle class guy can't afford a hamburger with french fires, unlike the Latinos!).

Nor is it good business sense to take away investment from the ONLY unit in your corporation which is productive and sinking it in a notoriously money-losing sector.
Daulat Ram

By "majority Whte population" above I meant non-Hispanic Whites.
Gonzales

So in other words, you're an idiot.

Duly noted.
LC Bennett

Your argument is muddled. You would have to breakdown the fertility rate for Hispanics based on welfare dependency to make any meaning of you argument. For instance, in Sask., groups like First Nations have both higher welfare dependency and higher fertility rates. They also have higher youth crime rates, need for foster care and multi-generational welfare. Their increased fertility rate has not helped alleviate labour shortages in the province, it increase the strain on public services (funded by taxpayers).

Plenty of kids are only good if they contribute more than they consume. Investing more and more money into something where history shows is unprofitable (multi-generational welfare families) instead ones that have a track record of generating a profit (productive, taxpaying families) is bad business. The welfare class consumes more money than they contribute – they are counter productive, a drag on the economy. Tax breaks that allow families to keep more of their own income are a far better investment.

BTW, your subtle hints at racism are unfounded, unless *you* believe that non-whites and Hispanics are incapable of being successful.

Daulat Ram

A final note for dullards:

Low birthrates mean welfare checks will have to be cut…..Sure. But that will be a RESULT of crashing birthrates, not the cause of them.

And the consequence? Booming, lusty populations of White, God-fearing folks in the West, all singing the praises of the Lord and Mark Steyn, with zero income from the state?

Nah…….Just even (ahem!) LOWER birthrates, like in Russia. FASTER depopulation.

So long.

Gonzales

I'm sure you'll be back very quickly to spout your same nonsense.

Daulat Ram

If we apply Mark's solution, there aren't gonna be no babies, baby.

Gonzales

Give it a rest.

Kelly

I really enjoyed your comments, especially your points about how Canada is becoming the "..developing world's senior's home and geriatric hospital". I am a health care professional in Ontario, and a comment often heard among hospital nurses is "So many South Asians never knew they wanted to come to Canada until their kidneys failed". These people arrive as elderlies and do not generally work – mainly family reunification class immigrants. How long can we afford this? And why are issues like this strangely (and to some of us conspicuously) absent from public debates concerning health care in this country?